By Dharna Noor

The sweeping package of tariffs unveiled by Donald Trump on Wednesday includes an exemption for the energy sector, which is a clear sign of the president’s fealty to his big oil donors over the American people, advocates say.

Trump’s new 10% universal tariffs – which are higher for many major economies – are wreaking havoc on the global economy and are expected to increase consumer prices in the US. But the levies …

By Edgar Sandoval, Amy Graff, and Neil Vigdor

An outbreak of wildfires fueled by dry conditions and hurricane-force winds was rapidly spreading across the Texas Panhandle and parts of Oklahoma on Friday, prompting evacuations, wreaking havoc on the roads and leaving thousands without power.

Preliminary reports showed that the fires had destroyed some homes in Oklahoma and that at least three people had died in crashes in Texas, according to officials there.

Emergency crews in …

By Lisa Friedman

The Trump administration intends to eliminate Environmental Protection Agency offices responsible for addressing the disproportionately high levels of pollution facing poor communities, according to a memo from Lee Zeldin, the agency administrator.

In the internal memo, viewed by The New York Times, Mr. Zeldin informed agency leaders that he was directing “the reorganization and elimination” of the offices of environmental justice at all 10 E.P.A. regional offices as well as the one …

By Austyn Gaffney

The Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear an argument that aimed to restrict states from suing oil companies for financial damage related to climate change.

The argument was brought to the high court by 19 Republican attorneys general, representing states including Alabama and West Virginia, who were trying to prevent other states, led by Democrats, from pursuing lawsuits against the oil industry. Those states include California, Connecticut, Minnesota, New Jersey and …

v*By Brett McKay, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter*

Alberta’s modernized coal rules will permit strip mining and other surface mining techniques in the Rockies and foothills. Scientists and conservationists are skeptical of the government’s claims these mining practices will reduce environmental contamination risks.

When Energy and Minerals minister Brian Jean introduced Alberta’s Coal Industry Modernization Initiative in December, he said the new policy direction will reflect the highest environmental standards and that new proposals will need …

By David Gelles, Lisa Friedman, and Brad Plumer

In a few short weeks, President Trump has severely damaged the government’s ability to fight climate change, upending American environmental policy with moves that could have lasting implications for the country, and the planet.

With a flurry of actions that have stretched the limits of presidential power, Mr. Trump has gutted federal climate efforts, rolled back regulations aimed at limiting pollution and given a major boost to …

By Cody Bloomfield, Truthout

Acivil trial commences on February 24 that will determine whether Greenpeace must pay $300 million in damages to Energy Transfer Partners, the corporation behind the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL). The lawsuit alleges that Greenpeace “incited” and masterminded the NoDAPL Water Protectors uprising of 2016-2017, in which thousands of Indigenous people and allies gathered on Standing Rock Sioux lands to protest DAPL construction. On the basis of a legally suspect theory of …

By Fiona Harvey Environment editor

Developing countries are calling on the rich world to defy the US president, Donald Trump, and bridge the global chasm over climate action, before the goal of limiting global temperatures to safe levels is irretrievably lost.

Diplomats from the developing world are rallying to support Brazil, which will host a crucial climate summit in November, after last year’s talks in Azerbaijan ended in disappointment and acrimony.

Ali Mohamed, the chair …

By Amy Graff

The Sierra Nevada finally got a big snowfall this week in a winter that has so far been marked by warm storms that have brought more rain and slush than snow to the mountain range. Snowfall totals for Wednesday night to Friday morning ranged from four and a half feet on Mount Rose in Nevada to three feet at Donner Pass in California.

“So far this has been the largest snow maker …

By Darren Incorvaia

The animal killed two goats belonging to residents of Wadi Yahmib, a village within the sparsely populated Elba Protected Area of Egypt. To protect their livestock, the villagers chased down the carnivore in a pickup truck and killed it.

When Abdullah Nagy, a zoologist at Al-Azhar University in Cairo, received a video of the hunt from a colleague who was in the region, he thought he was being pranked.

“I was asking, …

NYA Thanks @historyinmemes!

By Sarah DeWeerdt

AI-powered chatbots tend to suggest cautious, incremental solutions to environmental problems that may not be sufficient to meet the magnitude and looming time scale of these challenges, a new analysis reveals. The study suggests that the large language models (LLMs) that power chatbots are likely to shape public discourse in a way that serves the status quo.

People have debated whether AI will ultimately be good (the technology can reduce the human …

By Oliver Milman and Marina Dunbar

Violent storms and tornadoes have torn across the US south and midwest, killing at least seven people and downing power lines and trees, smashing homes and upturning cars across multiple states.

The outbreak of storms and tornadoes has resulted in at least seven deaths in Tennessee and Missouri, with further fatalities expected to be confirmed. One of the victims has been named: a 68-year-old man named Garry Moore who …

By Martin Fackler and Hisako Ueno

For at least six centuries, residents along a lake in the mountains of central Japan have marked the depth of winter by celebrating the return of a natural phenomenon once revered as the trail of a wandering god.

It would only appear after days of frigid temperatures had frozen Lake Suwa into a sheet of solid white. First, people were awakened at night by a loud rumbling. Dawn broke …

By Kenneth Chang

Starship — the huge spacecraft that Elon Musk says will one day take people to Mars — failed during its latest test flight on Thursday when its upper stage exploded in space, raining debris and disrupting air traffic at airports from Florida to Pennsylvania.

It was the second consecutive test flight of the most powerful rocket ever built where the upper-stage spacecraft malfunctioned. It started spinning out of control after several engines …

By Gabby Kientzle

Washington, D.C. – President Trump issued an executive order this weekend seeking to ramp up logging across federal forests, which span nearly 280 million acres. The order seeks to increase timber production, erode Endangered Species Act protections to speed approval of timber sales, and raise the target for timber offered for sale annually, among other measures that could result in widespread devastation of national forests. Amid mass firings affecting public lands staff, …

By Kiley Price

The world’s largest island is known for its vast ice sheet, sprawling fjords and abundance of wildlife—from polar bears to narwhals.

It’s also one of the latest targets in President Donald Trump’s bid for US energy and military expansion. Since his first term, Trump has talked of securing Greenland for its critical minerals, untapped oil reserves, opportunities for military positioning and central location in the international shipping network, particularly as melting sea …

By EarthJustice

Today we filed the first major environmental legal challenge against the new Trump administration. There will be more to come.

We are challenging President Trump’s illegal attempt to sell our oceans to the oil and gas industry. Amid a flurry of anti-environment executive orders on his first day in office, Trump issued an order to revoke former president Biden’s protection of millions of acres of undeveloped public waters from future oil and gas …

By Damien Pine

On Valentine's Day 1990, NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft snapped what would become one of the most iconic images ever taken: a view of Earth from 3.7 billion miles (6 billion kilometers) away. In that moment, all of humanity was captured in a ghostly fragment of a pixel swimming through an unrelenting sea of darkness — a "Pale Blue Dot" lost in a void.

Carl Sagan — the astronomer, author, and science communicator …

By Gabrielle Canon

Under orders from Donald Trump, billions of gallons of irrigation water were laid waste in California’s thirsty agricultural hub this month, a move that left water experts shocked and local officials scrambling.

The water, stored in two reservoirs operated by the army corps of engineers, is a vital source for many farms and ranches in the state’s sprawling and productive San Joaquin valley during the driest times of the year. It will …

The Antiquities Act is one of America’s most effective conservation laws. Through it, the U.S. has established some of our most popular national parks and iconic landscapes. We’re talking about the Grand Canyon, Acadia National Park, Muir Woods, and more special places like them.

Right now, this critical tool is under threat. Congress is considering a bill that would repeal the Antiquities Act (S.220/H.R.521), and a federal review could put our national monuments at risk.

…

In the U.S., trains started in the early 19th century, with major expansion leading to a “Golden Age” where trains were the main way to travel long distances. However, after 1945, cars and planes became more popular, leading to a decline in train use. The government created Amtrak in 1971 to keep passenger trains going, but U.S. train networks are less extensive than Europe’s, focusing on areas like the Northeast Corridor.

In Europe, trains also …

By Damian Carrington Environment editor

The pace of global heating has been significantly underestimated, according to renowned climate scientist Prof James Hansen, who said the international 2C target is “dead”.

A new analysis by Hansen and colleagues concludes that both the impact of recent cuts in sun-blocking shipping pollution, which has raised temperatures, and the sensitivity of the climate to increasing fossil fuels emissions are greater than thought.

The group’s results are at the high …

By Damian Carrington

The climate crisis is on track to destroy capitalism, a top insurer has warned, with the vast cost of extreme weather impacts leaving the financial sector unable to operate.

The world is fast approaching temperature levels where insurers will no longer be able to offer cover for many climate risks, said Günther Thallinger, on the board of Allianz SE, one of the world’s biggest insurance companies. He said that without insurance, which …

By Lizzie Tucker

The partial eclipse as seen in Dakar, Senegal. A solar eclipse happens when the moon passes between the sun and Earth, casting a shadow on Earth that either fully or partially blocks the sun’s light in some areas Photograph: Jérôme Favre/EPA

An eerie view from Terceira Island, Azores, Portugal Photograph: Antonio Araujo/EPA

People gather to watch the partial eclipse in Fuerteventura, Canary Islands, Spain Photograph: Carlos de Saá/EPA

The sun partially eclipsed …

Robinson Meyer

A major chapter in climate giving has ended.

Breakthrough Energy, the climate philanthropy organization founded by Bill Gates, is closing its policy and advocacy office and has laid off much of its staff in Washington, D.C., Heatmap News has learned.

The layoffs will effectively gut an organization central to the effort to enact the package of clean energy tax cuts passed during the Biden administration. They will also silence one of the few …

Peter Beaumont

The renowned German classical violinist Christian Tetzlaff was blunt in explaining why he and his quartet have cancelled a summer tour of the US.

“There seems to be a quietness or denial about what’s going on,” Tetzlaff said, describing his horror at the authoritarian polices of Donald Trump and the response of US elites to the country’s growing democratic crisis.

“I feel utter anger. I cannot go on with this feeling inside. I …

Quick-moving brush fires burned through a large swath of land on New York’s Long Island on Saturday, fanned by high winds that spewed thick gray smoke into the sky and prompted the evacuation of a military base and the closure of a major highway.

Gov. Kathy Hochul declared a state of emergency and said state agencies were responding to the fires around the Pine Barrens, a wooded area that is home to commuter towns east …

The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 drafted a plan to overhaul the federal government, “Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise,” in order to “to lay the groundwork for a White House more friendly to the right.”

Project 2025 includes at least 45 “right-of-center organizations” and the document, called a “policy guide” spanning government agencies “represents the work of more than 350 leading conservatives,” the associate director of the 2025 Presidential Transition Project wrote. It was published …

TAMMY WEBBER and AMELIA THOMSON-DEVEAUX

WASHINGTON (AP) — Matt Ries has lived in Florida only three years, but everyone told him last summer was unusually hot. That was followed by three hurricanes in close succession. Then temperatures dropped below freezing for days this winter, and snow blanketed part of the state.

To Ries, 29, an Ohio native now in Tampa, the extreme weather — including the bitter cold — bore all the hallmarks of climate …

NYA Thanks FRANCE 24 English!

Climate change, a challenge to our planet, is paramount among the issues facing us all. It is unifying in its scope, a world-wide crisis. The changing seasons with their radical departures from normal weather are a threat to our very survival. Witness the fires in California, as just the latest example. Now California’s air is damaging to breath in many areas.

We, humanity, are causing this problem. We cannot afford to ignore it. Our use …

By Sarah Kendzior

There were coyote tracks at the Missouri mine. They weren’t supposed to be there. No one understood how such a distant predator got in or how to keep it out. But that’s true about a lot of places in America these days.

We were wandering the ruins of Federal Mill Number Three, the largest lead mine in the US until its closure in 1972. For centuries, most lead came from Missouri. Ammunition …

NYA Thanks @Briefintel!