Inside Climate News

As floods and fires ravage the U.S., communities will increasingly be “flying blind.”

Interview by Jenni Doering, Living on Earth

From our collaborating partner Living on Earth, public radio’s environmental news magazine, an interview by Jenni Doering with Alice Hill, a senior fellow for energy and the environment at the Council on Foreign Relations.

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Environmental regulators have launched an investigation into a heavily trafficked lake below the Cirque of the Towers in the Wind River Range, with an enterococci reading 384 times the safety threshold.

By Mike Koshmrl, WyoFile

This article was originally published by WyoFile, in partnership with The Water Desk at the University of Colorado Boulder’s Center for Environmental Journalism.

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Politicians from some of the country’s hottest states are calling on FEMA to update disaster declaration guidelines.

By Kiley Price

In the United States, heat kills more people than hurricanes, floods and tornadoes—combined. Yet unlike these other extreme weather events, heat waves are not considered a major disaster under U.S. law.

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After more than a decade working for BP, Wynn Radford IV has a leadership position at the EPA regional office covering five states, including Texas and Louisiana. He has been cleared to work on matters relating to his former employer.

By Martha Pskowski

Wynn Radford IV, chief of staff for the Environmental Protection Agency Region 6, previously worked as a spokesperson for the multinational oil company BP following the Deepwater Horizon disaster. The April 2010 explosion on an offshore BP drilling rig killed 11 people and caused the largest marine oil spill in history, leaking almost 134 million gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico before it was capped 87 days later

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Using a secretive arbitration system, multinational companies could bankrupt Honduras, one of the poorest countries in the world. A recent advisory opinion from a human-rights court calls for an overhaul.

By Nicholas Kusnetz, Katie Surma

Honduras is one of the poorest countries in the Western Hemisphere. But that vulnerability has not stopped foreign companies from filing a wave of legal claims against the small nation that collectively seek roughly $20 billion, according to a new analysis by advocacy groups, a figure equal to more than five times Honduras’ public expenditures last year.

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Climate change is warming the North Pacific Ocean, leading weather patterns that drive drought in the U.S. Southwest to persist decades longer than they have in the recent past.

By Wyatt Myskow

The drought in the Southwestern U.S. is likely to last for the rest of the 21st century and potentially beyond as global warming shifts the distribution of heat in the Pacific Ocean, according to a study published last week led by researchers at the University of Texas at Austin.

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It depends on multiple factors. But as one expert put it, “if they’re not producing those barrels of oil, somebody else will.”

By Deep Vakil

Investor excitement after The Wall Street Journal reported recently that Shell was in early talks to acquire BP was quickly dampened by Shell’s outright dismissal of the possibility as “market speculation.” But one way or another, analysts and consultants for the oil and gas industry expect further consolidation is coming.

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Environmentalists lamented the agency’s decision, but Colorado officials said it would have little impact on its planned shutdown of coal plants.

By Jake Bolster

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency informed Colorado Wednesday that the state could not close coal-fired power plants to improve air quality in the West, three months after the agency heard arguments from Colorado Springs Utilities requesting it be allowed to continue burning coal to generate electricity.

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The talks, in Jamaica, are before the International Seabed Authority (ISA), the only organization that can legally approve mining in ocean areas beyond countries’ national jurisdictions, according to an international treaty called the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.

By Teresa Tomassoni

Global negotiations over the future of the deep sea are underway this week in Kingston, Jamaica where member states of the International Seabed Authority have gathered to continue shaping a regulatory framework for commercial mining in international waters.

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The disaster disproportionately killed Black residents in neighborhoods that still face the worst health and resource crises. A new city effort tracks these vulnerabilities.

By Keerti Gopal

CHICAGO—Cheryl Johnson was watching the news during the worst heat wave in her city’s history when she learned that a man she’d known since she was a child had been found dead on the steps of a church downtown.

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Regulators have approved a plan to protect against data centers that may contract for lots of electricity and then skip town.

By Dan Gearino

An Ohio utility has won an important fight over who assumes the financial risk of data centers, and the result may help guide decisions across the country.

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In an area long plagued by air pollution, permitting irregularities have opponents of what’s predicted to be the world’s largest supercomputing facility fearing the world’s richest man is getting special treatment.

By Jennifer Ugwa

The Shelby County Health Department in Memphis has approved an air quality permit that will allow Elon Musk’s supercomputer facility—Colossus—to continue burning gas, despite more than a year of protests and numerous campaigns by residents and climate activists who opposed what they said was illegal operation of 35 gas-fueled turbines to power the facility.

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Tom Van Lent is accused of stealing “trade secrets” from the influential Everglades Foundation. He says the foundation has mounted a politically motivated smear campaign.

By Amy Green

A prominent scientist whose work has helped steer a restoration of the Everglades that is among the most ambitious of its kind in human history will surrender Thursday (July 17) in Miami for a 10-day jail sentence, a consequence of a bitter legal dispute with his former employer.

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The GENIUS Act seeks to regulate stablecoin but will do nothing to curb energy-intensive cryptocurrency mining. Another option for minting crypto coins uses far less energy.

By Phil McKenna

Legislation currently making its way through Congress that proponents say will place much-needed guardrails on cryptocurrency will only exacerbate the industry’s insatiable energy demands and climate pollution, environmentalists say.

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The Trump administration slashed fines for safety violations by small businesses and other employers and plans to reduce already rare workplace inspections. Experts say that will lead to more worker injuries, illnesses and deaths.

By Liza Gross

The Department of Labor announced “updates to penalty guidelines” to improve worker safety on Monday that it said will support small businesses and eliminate workplace hazards. The announcement follows the release of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s budget for the next fiscal year, which includes a plan for nearly 10,000 fewer workplace hazard inspections amid an 8 percent funding cut and a more than 12 percent reduction in staffing.

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The focus on artificial intelligence, part of a partnership with Google, raises concerns among some environmentalists and homeowners about the proliferation of data centers needed to power AI.

By Charles Paullin

RESTON, Va.—Virginia’s state government is leaning into its use of artificial intelligence for workforce development and regulation cuts. It’s an energy-intensive move further perpetuating the need for data centers and worsening climate change.

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A follow on to President Trump’s executive order on grid reliability, the report promotes the continued use of a Dominion Energy coal plant that lost over $200 million in 2023.

By Charles Paullin

Advocates for renewable energy in Virginia took aim at a report that the U.S. Department of Energy issued last week on the reliability and security of the nation’s electric grid, faulting it for dated reliance on fossil fuels to meet skyrocketing energy demands from data centers and lacking public input.

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The Trump administration canceled a FEMA program in April that would have funded upgrades to protect the town from flooding. Then the Eno River rose more than 20 feet.

By Lisa Sorg

HILLSBOROUGH, N.C.—About nine hours after Tropical Depression Chantal inundated central North Carolina last week, Jeff Mahagan’s phone woke him at 3 in the morning. The person working on call at the Hillsborough wastewater treatment plant was scared.

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Despite ambitious emissions goals, the state is failing to track and regulate fossil-fueled backup generators. The creeping data center boom will make a bad situation worse, advocates warn.

By Aman Azhar

When thousands of gallons of diesel fuel spilled into Baltimore’s Inner Harbor from Johns Hopkins Hospital on June 4, it didn’t just contaminate the waterfront and threaten aquatic habitat. It also cast a spotlight on a deeper, largely overlooked problem: Maryland’s continued dependence on fossil-fueled backup generators.

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Some experts argue that elements of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act will lead to increased costs for consumers and cede America’s position in the clean energy transition.

By Aidan Hughes

As the One Big Beautiful Bill Act squeaked its way through Congress earlier this month, its supporters heralded what they described as a new era for American energy and echoed what has become a familiar phrase among President Donald Trump’s supporters.

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While government, energy, tech and banking leaders held a summit, protestors warned of worsening climate pollution and a future shaped by “the worst people on Earth.”

By Marianne Lavelle, Kiley Bense

PITTSBURGH—Flanked by titans of the fossil fuel, tech and finance industries, President Donald Trump on Tuesday hailed $90 billion in private investments aimed at building a massive artificial intelligence hub around Pennsylvania’s natural gas resources.

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A growing body of research shows the cascading health impacts of wildfire smoke, from cognitive decline to heart issues.

By Kiley Price

The dog days of summer are synonymous with sizzling temperatures, longer nights and … wildfire smoke?

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Earlier this month, the agency said it would work to re-host information from a federal website that went dark. Now it says it will no longer do so.

By Finya Swai

WASHINGTON—NASA this week reversed its commitment to host congressionally mandated climate change reports after the federal government’s Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) website, which was responsible for releasing the reports, unexpectedly went offline earlier this month. The reports, which consolidated findings from the nation’s top-tier climate science research, helped communities plan for wildfires, floods and extreme heat.

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Wetlands provide freshwater, food, storm protection and climate regulation. Yet over the last 50 years, humans have destroyed one-fifth of them. 

By Katie Surma

A landmark report for the global agreement on wetlands paints a dire picture of the state of the world’s water bodies that underpin all life on Earth.

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Hundreds of thousands of residents are served by the affected systems. City officials must monitor and mitigate the PFAS in the years ahead.

By Douglas J. Guth

The warnings came in the mail this spring to 47 community water systems serving more than 400,000 Illinois residents: Elevated levels of harmful PFAS, better known as “forever chemicals,” had been found in their drinking water.

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