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global warming
This President From Hell's Destruction Will Last a Very Long Time
The worst that’s happening right now is nothing compared to what could happen in the years to come.
Jul 06, 2026
I know, I know. Recently, Donald Trump has been obsessed with water, at least the algae-green water in the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool that he wants to be a beautiful, pristine blue. But consider that an irony indeed, since when it comes to the planet he now oversees, water is going to be a problem and a half, algae or not.
Phew, in fact, I’m already sweating and I’ve just been reading about the heat in Europe right now, a region which has been warming twice as fast as the global average for quite a while. And mind you, I’m thousands of miles away (although still in a distinctly hot New York City about to soon get hotter still)!
If it were me, the headline during Trump’s recent algal week in the news wouldn’t have been in question anywhere on this planet (of ours?). I’m thinking, of course, about the recent days when the mid-June temperature in Paris, France, hit a wild record of nearly 115 (yes, you read that right!) degrees Fahrenheit and it was in the 106-113 degree range across the European continent. From England to Switzerland and Spain, temperature records of a remarkable sort were being set and then set again (and again!).
No one had ever seen anything quite like it. In the third week of June, it was so hot, in fact, that across Europe at least 40 people drowned just trying to stay wet and cool and four toddlers died trapped in overheated cars. And yet, crisis as it might have been, think of it as just the beginning on this distinctly overheating planet of ours. With at least two and a half more years to go of Donald J. Trump, a fossil-fuel maniac of the first order who has called climate change “the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world,” you can count on this planet becoming ever hotter ever sooner. And count on another thing as well: in the coming years, today’s weather and temperature headlines, however disturbing they might seem right now, are likely to prove all too mild.
In short, we humans—Trump in his wildly pro-fossil fuel views and acts being just the most obviously mad of our leaders—are all too literally hard at work heating this planet of “ours” toward the boiling point. Of course, no one should be surprised that this American president has proven to be an arsonist first class, a fossil-fuelized maniac of the first order. (Or do I mean second class and second order, since this is indeed his second time around?)
Once upon a time, in another age, Donald J. Trump’s return to the presidency would have been just a sign of the descent of a great imperial power. But on this planet of ours at this very moment, he represents so much more than that with his bizarre urge to further fossilize-fuelize our world in every way imaginable. Think of him, in fact, as the eerie personification of the decline not just of the United States, but potentially of everything. Yes, the works!
And keep in mind that, on this ever-changing planet of ours, the keys to imperial power no longer lie in war, as Trump and crew made all too clear recently in Iran, and Vladimir Putin has made even more strikingly clear in his never-ending war with Ukraine, the most devastating conflict in Europe since World War II. And, of course, it continues to pour fossil fuels into the atmosphere (just as Israel recently did in Gaza and Lebanon). It’s estimated that the first four years of that conflict have indeed already put 311 million tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
On Planet Earth today, it’s not complicated. No matter who (if anyone) wins any war, everyone loses. Yes, every last one of us from the almost 82-year-old me to—especially—my grandchildren who, barring a genuine surprise, will inherit what could only be thought of as the planet from—yes!—hell.
And that’s why, for the first time in human history, taking up the keys to global imperial power should no longer mean becoming the greatest military powerhouse around, something that—to give its leaders credit—China has grasped in a significant way. Now, don’t get me wrong, China is indeed arming itself in a traditional (if I can even use that word) fashion, including with the nuclear weapons that are the fastest way we humans have discovered to do ourselves in on this planet. But its leaders have also grasped that, as the heat rises ever more radically, the need for green power will only grow in an astounding fashion.
And so, in its imperial rise on this planet, and despite the way it, too, continues to burn coal, oil, and natural gas in a staggering fashion, it’s become the Earth’s great green power. It’s now selling the equipment to produce solar and wind power in a distinctly record fashion globally. As the Guardian reports, “the manufacture, installation and export of batteries, electric cars, solar, wind and related technologies accounted for more than a third of China’s economic growth” in 2025 and “clean energy industries drove more than 90% of the country’s investment growth last year, making the sectors bigger than all but seven of the world’s economies.”
Donald Trump, on the other hand, has been trying to ensure that, in our future, the United States will indeed be a lost country on this planet. (Fortunately, he’s been unable to stop the remarkable growth and roll-out of green energy here, too.)
In the meantime, all too sadly, the casualties are rising. And make no mistake, this is indeed war (even if of a different kind than anything we’ve been used to). Under the circumstances, don’t you think it strange indeed that Americans would have elected Donald Trump a second time to be our arsonist-in-chief?
And here’s the thing all of us need to try to grasp: the worst that’s happening right now is nothing compared to what could happen in the years to come. And mind you, nothing makes me sadder than imagining the world my grandchildren may find themselves in when they grow up.
Someday, Donald J. Trump will undoubtedly be remembered as the president from—yes, it’s an all too appropriate and accurate word—hell. He will have been our arsonist-in-chief on a planet that, all too sadly, as in Europe recently and despite everything now being done, could be going to hell in a handbasket.
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'We Were Warned,' Says WHO Chief as More Than 1,300+ Dead Across Europe From Climate-Driven Heat Wave
“It’s time to turn the heat on the fossil fuel giants that caused this heatwave but are doing nothing to cover the costs."
Jun 28, 2026
The head of the World Health Organization on Sunday said the deadly heat wave now boiling across Europe—which French authorities say caused more than 1,000 deaths last week alone—is the predicted and horrifying result that climate scientists and human rights advocates have been warning about for decades.
In a social post Sunday, WHO secretary-general Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said, "Driven by climate change and global warming, the phenomenon of the 'once-in-a-generation' heatwave is now occurring nearly annual. We were warned."
Citing over 1,300 excess deaths across Europe in the last week—as temperatures broke records in nation after nation—Tedros added that "heat stress is often called the 'silent killer'—and European homes, workplaces and schools were not built for these temperatures."
"Europe is the fastest-warming continent on Earth, heating at twice the global average," he said. "Right now 150 million people are living under extreme heat, hundreds have died, schools are shut, grids are buckling."
According to the Associated Press:
Germany marked a new record for the third day in a row with 41.7 degrees Celsius (107 degrees Fahrenheit) in Neißemünde, near the border with Poland. The Czech Republic also experienced its hottest day ever with 41.1 C (106.4 F).
A new study from the World Weather Attribution, a Europe-based collaboration of scientists, reported Friday that the record-breaking heat and humidity in Europe this past week would not have been possible without climate change.
The rapid study found that the heat would have been virtually impossible just five decades ago, and is 200 times more likely today than it would have been 20 years ago.
On Sunday, authorities in France said over 1,000 excess deaths attributable to the heat were recorded last week, with at least 100 or more over the previous 24 hours.
The threat of extreme heat related to the climate crisis is not only in Europe.
In 2024, a peer-reviewed study in the Journal of the American Medical Association showed that heat-related deaths in the United States rose 117% between 1999 and 2023.
Last year, a joint analysis by The Guardian and Pro Publica estimated that the industry-friendly policies of US President Donald Trump could result in the otherwise preventable deaths of 1.3 million people worldwide over the next 80 years, most of them among poor people in nations that did very little to cause the planetary crisis driven by the consumption of fossil fuels.
In a comment last week, as the deadly heatwave made international headlines, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) was among those who pointed his finger directly at Trump for his vicious policies related to energy and climate.
"There is a record-breaking heat wave in Europe and hundreds are dying," said Sanders. "There is drought all across America and farmers are going out of business. Yet, Trump thinks climate change is a 'hoax' and cuts funding for sustainable energy. Insane. He is threatening the very future of our planet."
On Friday, the climate group 350.org said the polluting companies, namely those in the coal, oil, and gas industry, should be made to pay for the deaths and damage they have caused and continue to cause.
“It’s time to turn the heat on the fossil fuel giants that caused this heatwave but are doing nothing to cover the costs," said Lisa Rose, a campaigner with the group. "Both science and the law are clear: polluters must answer for climate damage. Now it’s up to our leaders to make them pay."
“Forcing fossil fuel companies to cut emissions and pay their fair share is the only effective lasting response," she added. "Half-measures won’t cool this crisis, only a faster shift to renewables can."
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Authoritarian Trump Has Given Planet Earth a Horrible Year
From the first day, it was clear that this deeply anti-science administration was intent on blatantly furthering a fossil fuel agenda—people’s health and welfare be damned. We knew it would be bad. It was worse.
Jan 17, 2026
As we come up on the one-year mark of the second Trump administration, it’s painful to reflect on all that’s been lost on climate and clean energy progress for our nation and the grave consequences for people and the economy. As families across the nation struggle to pay their rising energy bills, the Trump administration’s efforts to gut clean energy projects and boost volatile, risky, and polluting fossil fuels are a threat to health and pocketbooks. And with the world on the brink of breaching 1.5°C of global warming, this administration’s actions to increase US heat-trapping emissions will have profound implications for years to come.
Fair warning, this blogpost covers some pretty grim ground. But stick with me, please. Documenting the harms and injustices perpetuated by this administration now, as they occur, ensures we bear witness and that the hard work that made prior progress possible is not erased. Let’s make sure we don’t forget the important details as we fight to build a better, brighter future beyond this dark time. A healthier, safer, and more equitable future is ours to create, as UCS President Gretchen Goldman says.
Annus horribilis for people in the United States
From Day One, it was clear that this deeply anti-science administration was intent on blatantly furthering a fossil fuel agenda—people’s health and welfare be damned. President Trump has assembled around him an extremely unqualified, obsequious cabinet and set of advisors, most of whom have no dedication to the public interest and are instead devoted to doing his every bidding.
This increasingly authoritarian regime has operated with impunity to tear up climate and clean energy policies, lie about the scientific realities of climate change and the facts on renewable energy, and ram through measures to boost fossil fuels and the profits of polluters. They have attacked the federal scientific enterprise built up over decades through taxpayer investments, fired or forced out agency experts, and cut funding for critical science. And a compliant Congress has enabled this destructive agenda, including by rubberstamping some of the President’s illegal actions and by failing to exercise its constitutional powers to check his tyrannical power grabs. The passage of the OBBBA, with its multiple provisions directly aimed at undermining clean energy—including wind, solar, batteries, grid infrastructure, and energy efficiency—at the President’s behest was a particularly egregious example of this.
The Sabin Center’s Climate Backtracker shows that, as of January 14, 2026, the Trump administration has taken nearly 300 actions to scale back or halt climate and clean energy progress. UCS’s six-month report on the Trump administration summarized many of the attacks on science and democracy as of July 2025. Many of these actions were previewed in the Project 2025 manifesto, but the magnitude of the harms, and the speed and intensity of the attacks, are shocking, and the impacts have been mounting.
Early destructive actions were taken by DOGE, spearheaded by Elon Musk, taking a hatchet to federal agencies tasked with protecting the public interest and advancing science and innovation. Subsequently, Director of the Office of Management and Budget Russell Vought, an architect of Project 2025, has taken a personal and vicious role in many of these attacks (see here and here, for example).
And unfortunately, the full weight of the impacts on people and our economy are only going to become clearer this year, as words and cuts are translated into lived realities for communities across the country. At the same time, many of the administration’s unlawful actions are being challenged in court, and it has lost many of these cases, putting some brakes on some of its worst excesses.
Before diving further into details, it’s important to note two key themes: The Trump administration’s destructive actions are a direct threat to our health, our economic well-being, and to our nation’s ability to build a thriving, fair, innovative economy. These actions demonstrate an utterly corrupt government hell-bent on prioritizing the interests of polluters and billionaires over the needs of ordinary people.
While far from exhaustive, here are some of the major assaults on climate and clean energy from the Trump administration that we’ve seen in the last year:
1. Attacking agencies and organizations engaged in life-saving climate science research, data collection and monitoring
This has included threats to dismantle NOAA and NSF-NCAR; disbanding the author team for the sixth National Climate Assessment; taking down the US Global Change Research Program’s website, which includes all previous National Climate Assessments; and halting US federal scientists’ engagement with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). NOAA, the nation’s foremost climate science agency, has faced reckless firing of staff, budget cuts, and slashed resources for climate research, satellite programs, data, and modeling.
Under Department of Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick’s watch, the agency’s weather forecasting and climate monitoring capabilities are being undermined and many National Weather Service offices have been dangerously understaffed—undercutting critical resources that communities, first responders, farmers, mariners, businesses, and local decisionmakers rely on to protect lives, infrastructure, and economic activity. It’s crucial that the forthcoming Congressional appropriations process rejects the Trump administration’s budget proposals and restores healthy funding levels for federal science agencies.
2. Clawing back renewable energy funding and attacking clean energy projects
The administration has illegally frozen and clawed back billions in funding for climate and cutting-edge clean energy investments, including Department of Energy (DOE) grants and the Environmental Protection Agency’s Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund. These actions have been challenged in court, and just this week a court has ruled that the Trump administration’s cancellation of some grants based on which states grantees are in violates the law.
DOE Secretary Chris Wright has repeatedly attacked clean energy, rolled back energy efficiency standards, overseen mass staff cuts at the agency, and renamed the world-renowned National Renewable Energy Laboratory to strike “renewable energy” from its name.
In addition to the major harms to clean energy inflicted by the OBBBA, the administration has also repeatedly and arbitrarily intervened in the leasing and permitting of a huge range of renewable energy projects, including pausing offshore wind, onshore wind, and solar projects. Wind and solar developers have just sued the Department of the Interior and the Army Corps of Engineers for “pursuing a concerted and illegal strategy to choke the ability of private developers’ ability to build new and much-needed energy generation projects.” Numerous attacks have been lobbed at offshore wind projects—including projects that were nearly completed—most recently by citing bogus “national security” considerations. The administration just suffered a major setback in a case brought by Revolution Wind, a project of Ørsted, a Danish offshore wind developer. These attacks on renewable energy have been accompanied by a raft of disinformation spouted by the President and his administration, contrary to the facts about the tremendous economic and health benefits of renewable energy, including solar and wind.
3. Gutting pollution standards and boosting fossil fuels
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) administrator Lee Zeldin has launched an all-out assault on regulations, guidance, and scientific research aimed at protecting public health and the environment. This has included weakening, rescinding, or delaying EPA regulations to limit heat-trapping pollution from power plants, vehicles and the oil and gas industry, as well as giving exemptions to polluters causing toxic air pollution from coal-fired power plants and other industrial sources.
The agency is also in the final stages of a process to overturn the science-based Endangerment Finding, a bedrock legal determination establishing the health-harming impacts of heat-trapping emissions. And in a major departure from precedent and long-standing best practice, EPA is also moving away from quantifying the public health impacts— including lives lost or saved—associated with agency rulemakings, debuting this egregious practice in a just-released rule for NOx pollution standards for new gas turbines. This alarming action is a complete capitulation to polluter interests and upends the agency’s mission to protect public health and the environment.
They’ve also taken unprecedented steps to cut the public out of the process of weighing in by eliminating the customary notice-and-comment period for regulations they arbitrarily designate ‘unlawful,’ and a sweeping executive order essentially allows agencies to wipe off whatever regulations they want to—as well as enforcement of those regulations in the time between.
The administration has also launched multiple direct attempts to boost coal, oil, and gas use under the guise of a spurious “national energy emergency.” DOE Secretary Chris Wright and Department of Interior Secretary Doug Burgum—both with deep fossil fuel industry ties—have aggressively embraced the president’s fossil fuel agenda. Burgum’s actions have included expanding oil and gas leases on public lands, rescinding requirements for environmental impact statements, and fast-tracking permits for fossil fuel energy, all while repeatedly interfering to stop deployment of renewables. The administration’s latest shocking move in this vein is its imperial and illegal grab for Venezuelan oil.
4. Attacking FEMA’s disaster response capabilities and investments in climate resilience
Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has overseen the firing and forcing out of more than 20 percent of FEMA’s staff already, with further steep cuts to FEMA’s “Cadre of On-Call Response/Recovery Employees” (CORE) expected imminently. At various points last year, Secretary Noem and President Trump went as far as calling for FEMA’s abolition! The agency has faced unending turmoil and dysfunction, with a series of unqualified acting chiefs quitting or being fired only to be replaced by yet another poor choice. This chaos led to major gaps in responding to disasters like the Texas flash flood last year. As the GAO points out, staffing shortages at FEMA have serious consequences for the agency’s ability to do its job to help communities hit by disasters.
The Trump administration also illegally cancelled FEMA’s Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC) program grants for states, which a coalition of twenty states took the administration to court over, and recently won their lawsuit. The Trump administration has taken actions that will leave communities less prepared and more at risk from worsening climate impacts, including rescinding the science-informed federal flood risk management standard, disbanding expert advisory councils, and politicizing and delaying disaster aid for states. My colleague Shana Udvardy has been carefully tracking the attacks on FEMA, including the recent last-minute cancellation of a recent FEMA Review Council meeting where they were supposed to release a report with recommendations, which has been under threat of interference from Secretary Noem.
5. Taking down or altering climate-related websites and datasets
This includes taking down the US Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) website and all the previous National Climate Assessments; taking down climate.gov, a free public portal for essential information on climate science and impacts (some of the information is now being curated at climate.us); removing climate science information from the EPA website; proposing to discontinue the GHG Reporting Program and datasets (like NOAA’s billion-dollar weather and climate-related disasters dataset, and its snow and ice data products); and failing to release the EPA’s Annual GHG Inventory for the United States (which the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) successfully retrieved via a FOIA filing).
6. Lying about the facts on climate science
The most egregious example of this is the sham DOE “climate” report, which weaponized disinformation and uncertainty to downplay the risks of climate change and was invoked by EPA as part of its motivation for proposing to overturn the Endangerment Finding. This mirrors a classic strategy of employing disinformation and deception long practiced by the fossil fuel industry, now dangerously being adopted by the US government.
The Environmental Defense Fund and UCS have filed a lawsuit against the administration citing its violation of the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA) in the secret, illegal preparation of this report by five handpicked climate contrarians forming the Climate Working Group (CWG). The court has held that the CWG was an advisory committee subject to FACA and had ordered the administration to release all records related to its work. Other examples of this strategy include zeroing out the social cost of carbon (widely used as a measure of the monetary costs of climate damages caused by an additional ton of carbon emissions), directly ignoring the steep and mounting costs of climate change driven by fossil fuel emissions.
7. Withdrawing from international climate agreements and organizations
The most notable examples include withdrawing the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the Paris Agreement. The administration also single-handedly prevented the adoption of a major global agreement on reducing emissions from shipping, negotiated in the International Maritime Organization (IMO). Over 100 nations were on the verge of signing, but using bullying tactics—including direct threats to other nations—the administration succeeded in blocking and delaying this agreement.
Together, these actions underscore that this authoritarian, anti-science administration is determined to sacrifice people’s well-being and destabilize global cooperation. But forward-looking US states and the rest of the world recognize that devastating and costly climate impacts are mounting rapidly, and collective global action remains the only viable path to secure a livable future for our children and grandchildren. Withdrawal from global climate agreements and venues will only serve to further isolate the United States and diminish its standing in the world following a spate of deplorable actions that have already sent our nation’s credibility plummeting, jeopardized ties with some of our closest historical allies, and made the world far more unsafe.
As important as these individual attacks are, it’s crucial to also see the administration’s destructive strategy: They are trying to bury the evidence on climate change to advance a pro-fossil fuel agenda that delivers huge profits for a select few while the rest of us suffer the health and economic costs. And we can’t let them because the stakes are too high, for people today and for future generations. The stakes are especially dire for communities that have long been marginalized and discriminated against, those that bear the brunt of health-harming pollution and climate impacts and lack access to affordable clean energy and climate-resilient homes, here in the United States and around the world.
Looking back and fighting for a brighter future
Why look back on such a painful year? Because it’s a way to acknowledge and honor the people who were directly and harshly affected by the actions of this administration, including federal government scientists and frontline communities. Because remembering our shared history is how we build solidarity for the inevitable fights ahead. Because adversity teaches lessons. Because I believe the seeds of the destruction of this administration’s ill-conceived policies lie in their cruel overreach. Because we can take courage and inspiration from all the ways people across the nation showed up for our democracy, for science, for their communities.
This year has also brought extraordinary efforts to expose and fight back against the worst excesses of this unhinged administration. UCS has fought alongside many others by taking the Trump administration to court; advocating with members of Congress to stand up to the administration; filing technical comments with agencies; shining a light on the latest climate science and facts about clean energy; galvanizing the scientific community to get organized, join sign-on letters and call their elected representatives; uplifting the work of environmental justice experts; securing wins in states; joining nationwide demonstrations; and using our voice loudly in every venue we can to speak truth to power.
And as we face down another tough year under the anti-science, authoritarian Trump administration, we’re fired up to keep up the fight for science and for our democracy. We hope you’ll join us—because despite it all, that future is ours to build.
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Economic Self-Interest Will Draw Millions To Solar Energy
A good investment never did so much good. Eventually, more and more people will realize it.
Dec 15, 2025
Many Americans who don’t believe in global warming will opt to invest in solar energy simply because it will save them lots of money.
Unfortunately, not everyone can install solar panels on their roofs. People in apartments or renting will not have that opportunity, though some might cash in through community solar organizations or plug-in solar --- portable panels that can be placed on balconies or in yards.
Even some single-family homes may have roofs aimed the wrong direction or too shaded. But for those with suitable houses, solar panels are increasingly a no-brainer.
In 2019 we installed 32 panels on our home roof at a cost of about $18,000--- about $22,000 in 2025 dollars. However a 30% federal tax credit reduced our out of pocket cost to about $12,600.
Donald Trump’s “Big, Beautiful Bill” repeals the federal tax credit starting in January, but solar panels remain an excellent investment.
In seven years, our panels have generated more than 72,500 kilowatt-hours of electricity. This would have cost us more than $7,250 at the local price of ten cents per kilowatt-hour. Thus, in less than seven years our panels have saved us more than half of what we paid for them. And they should be good for 25 years, or more.
They have generated more than half of the electricity we have used in our all-electric household, including charging up the battery in our electric car, a Chevrolet Bolt EV. To indicate how much energy 72,500 kilowatt-hours represents, that would be enough to drive our electric car about 280,000 miles!
The cost of installing solar panels may come down further. The panels themselves are getting cheaper. And for various reasons, including local building regulations, installation costs in the U.S. are much higher than in some other countries. Many cities are exploring how to make local laws more receptive to solar.
Maximum benefit from solar panels will come if you pay cash for them rather than borrowing the money and paying interest on it. Assuming you have money that you might otherwise invest in a CD, bonds, or stocks, just compare what such investments would earn compared to what the solar panels would save you.
Assuming panels would cost you $20,000, investing that amount instead in a 3% CD would bring in $600 a year in taxable income, so maybe you would have $450 after taxes. In 7 years, after tax interest would come to $3150, less than half of what we have saved during that same period with our solar panels. Of course, with stocks and bonds you very likely have something left at the end of solar panels' lives.
Bond funds currently earn about the same 3% interest, and of course with stocks you never know what they will earn and also face the danger that they will suffer from a Wall Street crash.
And taking taxes into consideration, the money solar panels save you provides the equivalent of tax-free income, so a $7,250 saving over 7 years would leave as much in your pocket as $9600 in taxable income would have, assuming you are in a 25% marginal tax bracket.
Furthermore, remember that the price of electricity will undoubtedly go up. The savings from having solar panels will therefore also increase, making them an even better investment.
I don’t recommend borrowing to pay for solar panels. But if you are considering this, be sure to subtract the interest you would be paying on the loan from the benefits the panels will produce before you sign anything. It may not pencil out.
Check out your solar installer – most are reputable, but perhaps not all. The installer can tell you how well your local utility treats customers with solar panels, which can vary greatly.
And be ultra cautious about anybody offering to install solar panels for “free.” They will retain a property right in the panels until you pay them off, which could scare off buyers if you need to sell the property.
There truly is no free lunch! But solar panels can be the next best thing.
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'Alarming' Report Shows Billions at Risk From Historically Low Snow Melt in Himalayas
"The steadily declining persistence of seasonal snow is a warning bell for an emerging water crisis," according to the report.
Apr 21, 2025
A report released Monday found that snow persistence in the Hindu Kush Himalaya region, sometimes called the "third pole" because of its water resources, was at its lowest level in 23 years during the 2024-2025 winter, or 23.6% below normal—a concerning water security development for nearly two billion people who rely on river basins that are fed by the region's snowmelt.
All told, snowmelt from the Hindu Kush Himalaya (HKH) region contributes about a fourth of the total runoff of twelve major river basins in the region, on average. Snow persistence has been below normal across all twelve major river basins, per the report.
These findings come from the Hindu Kush Himalaya Snow Update, an annual report put out by the International Center for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD), which provides yearly analysis of snow persistence in the region—the snow that usually stays on the ground between November and March.
"The steadily declining persistence of seasonal snow is a warning bell for an emerging water crisis," according to the author of the report. "Continuous deficit of meltwater from snow would mean lesser river runoff in dry months and early melt season, highlighting the urgent need for adaptive water resource management strategies in mitigating forthcoming impacts of water shortage, especially for downstream communities facing intensifying summer extremes."
The HKH region stretches multiple thousands of miles long across eight countries—Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, China, India, Nepal, Myanmar and Pakistan—according GRID-Arendal, an environmental nonprofit based in Norway that works closely with the United Nations. It is the biggest volume of ice and snow outside of the Arctic and Antartica.
"While below-normal snow persistence has occurred before in this region—between 2003 and 2025 the region experienced thirteen below-normal snow years—the increasing frequency and intensity of such occurrences in recent times is a growing concern," according to the report. The 2024-2025 winter was the third consecutive year of below-normal snow persistence.
Sher Muhammad, a remote sensing specialist at ICIMOD who was the lead expert for the report, said in a statement published Monday that the deficit situations occurring in continuous succession is an "alarming trend."
ICIMOD's director general Pema Gyamtsho highlighted the need for policy solutions to address the problem over the long term in a statement published on Monday. "Carbon emissions have already locked in an irreversible course of recurrent snow anomalies in the HKH," said Gyamtsho.
Rising temperatures and water scarcity in the region has already created climate refugees.
Research from ICIMOD published in 2023 found that glaciers in the HKH region are melting at an accelerated rate and could lose up to 80% of their volume by century's end absent ambitious action to slash planet-warming emissions.
In March, a United Nations agency found that, worldwide, 2022-2024 saw the largest three-year loss of glaciers on record.
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'Scrub Sad Facts Away': The Yes Men Target LNG Greenwashing With New Satirical Ad
"We are hoping Maritime Executive's readership are reminded that investing in a fuel that will expedite the rapid decline of life on the planet is not a good look (or a good investment)," one spokesperson said.
Feb 28, 2025
When readers of The Maritime Executive peruse the magazine's latest issue on Friday, they will be in for a surprise.
Page 15 of the magazine displays an ad for GreenCurrent Group, which bills itself as a "full service communications and marketing agency specializing in supporting commercial maritime operators and energy providers investing in LNG [liquefied natural gas]—the most exciting and misunderstood marine fuel."
But when curious maritime or energy executives follow the QR code at the bottom-right corner of the ad, they will discover that no such company exists. Instead, they will be directed to a satirical video commercial for "Scrubby Greenwash," a giant anthropomorphic green sponge that promises to "scrub, scrub, scrub sad facts away."
The false ad and video are the latest hijinks from underground activist collective The Yes Men, who have used humor and pranks to target corporate wrong-doing since 1996.
"We are hoping Maritime Executive's readership are reminded that investing in a fuel that will expedite the rapid decline of life on the planet is not a good look (or a good investment)," The Yes Men's Natalie Whiteman told Common Dreams.
The Yes Men first made waves more than three decades ago with a mock World Trade Organization website that got taken seriously enough to win them an invitation to a real-world conference. Since then, they have used creative deceptions to call attention to various social, economic, and political issues from high drug prices to lack of accountability for the Bhopal disaster.
"We need industry leaders, energy producers, and all players across the supply chain to reject LNG as a climate solution."
Many of their past actions have targeted fossil fuel companies and raised awareness about environmental issues such as the climate emergency and corporate greenwashing. Over the past year, they have begun campaigning around LNG specifically.
"We've always been in favor of generally keeping living things still alive, and methane is going to make all of that not happen much faster," Whiteman said. "We thought hey, that's not cool at all."
"LNG is a massive issue," Whiteman continued. "and the industry is pouring enormous resources into convincing the public that LNG is a green fuel when in fact LNG is methane, with a warming capacity 80 times more powerful than CO2, that leaks across practically every step of the supply chain."
To tackle this issue, the group has taken Scrubby Greenwash on tour to major cities around the world.
How did they come up with the character?
"Greenwashing is the process of scrubbing inconvenient facts and science away to protect the reputation of a company," Whiteman explained. "It's a process of sanitizing their image with marketing, and so a delirious looking slimy sponge seems like the sensible choice."
Whiteman said that Scrubby was "building up a rabid fanbase all over the world" while "targeted companies don't seem nearly grateful enough for the services he provides in protecting their image."
The group also crashed the World LNG Summit in Berlin in December under the guise of a Royal Caribbean executive. They managed to hold a few one-on-one meetings and earn a panel invitation before being found out, in an adventure that will be fully shared in a documentary to be released next year.
Their focus on LNG parallels the work of more traditional climate activists, who have been sounding the alarm about its planet-warming potential and urging governments to curb the buildout of new LNG infrastructure.
However, following the election of U.S. President Donald Trump, there has been backsliding on the regulatory end, with Trump declaring an energy emergency to stimulate more fossil fuel extraction and lifting a Biden-era pause on new LNG export approvals. On Wednesday, the European Union also announced a plan to fund new LNG exports, which was interpreted by some as a concession to Trump's pro-fossil fuel agenda.
The Yes Men's latest fake ad targets not governments, but shipping and LNG companies directly.
The false ad placed by The Yes Men in The Maritime Executive.
In the video ad, a table of men in suits sit around a table in "liquefied natural gas headquarters" as a news item announces, "A new investigation has revealed that cruise liners powered by liquefied natural gas produce more global warming than those powered by regular marine fuel. That's because methane leaks at every point in the supply chain, and gas traps 80 times more heat in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide."
The newscaster continues, "That's bad news for everyone, but especially for the luxury cruise lines, like Royal Caribbean, which have been marketing themselves as green," at which point the camera pans over to a Royal Caribbean representative in a captain's uniform. "If the industry doesn't act fast, this information could hurt their bottom line."
It's at this point that the executives pick up the phone to call in the assistance of Scrubby, who comes bursting through a brick wall Kool-Aid style.
Whiteman said The Yes Men chose to target Maritime Executive and Royal Caribbean in particular because "the trade media is complicit in propagating the greenwashing that protects LNG's false reputation as a clean fuel. And the fact that Royal Caribbean is marketing their LNG-powered mega ships as sustainable is a criminal untruth, when they could be investing in zero-emissions alternatives or other efficiency measures.'
Ultimately, Whiteman told Common Dreams, "We need industry leaders, energy producers, and all players across the supply chain to reject LNG as a climate solution. It has proven to be anything but."
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Vermont Sued for New Law Requiring Big Oil to Pay for Climate Damage
'For too long, giant fossil fuel companies have knowingly lit the match of climate disruption'
Jan 05, 2025
The US Chamber of Commerce and the American Petroleum Institute - representing the biggest fossil fuel companies in the world - are suing the State of Vermont over its new law requiring fossil fuel companies to pay a share of the state's damage caused by climate change.
The lawsuit, filed last Monday in the US District Court for the District of Vermont, asks a state court to prevent Vermont from enforcing the law passed last year. Vermont became the first state in the country to enact the law after it suffered over $1 billion in damages from catastrophic summer flooding and other extreme weather.
Vermont’s Attorney General’s Office said as of Friday, Jan. 3, they had not been served with the lawsuit.
The lawsuit argues that the U.S. Constitution precludes the act and that the federal Clean Air Act preempts state law. It also claims that the law violates domestic and foreign commerce clauses by discriminating “against the important interest of other states by targeting large energy companies located outside of Vermont.”
The Chamber and the American Petroleum Institute argue that the federal government is already addressing climate change. Because greenhouse gases come from billions of individual sources, they claim it has been impossible to measure “accurately and fairly” the impact of emissions from a particular entity in a specific location over decades.
“For too long, giant fossil fuel companies have knowingly lit the match of climate disruption without being required to do a thing to put out the fire,” Paul Burns, executive director of the Vermont Public Interest Research Group, said in a statement. “Finally, maybe for the first time anywhere, Vermont is going to hold the companies most responsible for climate-driven floods, fires and heat waves financially accountable for a fair share of the damages they’ve caused.”
The complaint is an essential legal test as more states consider holding fossil fuels liable for expensive global warming-intensified events like floods, fires, and more. Maryland and Massachusetts are among the states expected to pursue similar legislation, modeled after the federal law known as Superfund, in 2025.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) signed a similar climate bill into law - the Climate Change Superfund Act- on Dec. 26, pointing to the need to fund climate adaptation projects.
Downtown Montpelier, Vermont was under water on Monday, July 10, 2023 caused by the flooding of the Winooski River.
(Photo: John Tully for The Washington Post via Getty Images)
Heavy Rains Cause Catastrophic Flooding In Southern Vermont
(Photo by Scott Eisen/Getty Images)
Flooding is seen in downtown Montpelier, Vermont
(Photo: John Tully for The Washington Post via Getty Images)
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Look Up: The Scariest Part When We See the Big, Big, Big Picture
As a new study once more makes clear, raising the temperature is by far the biggest thing humans have ever done; our effort to limit that rise must be just as large.
Oct 23, 2024
This is “Climate week” in New York City, and my inbox has been awash recently in the latest press releases about start-ups and noble initiatives and venal greenwashing. Much of it’s important, and I’ll get to some of it later, but there’s a big new study that came out last week in Science that sets our crucial moment in true perspective. Let’s step back for a moment.
This new study—a decade in the making and involving, in the words of veteran climate scientist Gavin Schmidt “biological proxies from extinct species, plate tectonic movement, disappearance in subduction zones of vast amounts of ocean sediment, and interpolating sparse data in space and time”—offers at its end the most detailed timeline yet of the earth’s climate history over the last half-billion years. That’s the period scientists call the Phanerozoic—the latest of the earth’s four geological eons (we’re still in it), and the one marked by the true profusion of plant and animal life. It’s a lovely piece of science, and it’s lovely too because it reminds us of all we’re heir to in this tiny brief moment that marks the human time on earth. So staggeringly much—strange and extreme and fecund—has come before us.
But it’s also scary as can be, for two big reasons.
The first is that it shows the earth has gotten very very warm in the past. As the Washington Post explained in an excellent analysis yesterday, “the study suggests that at its hottest the Earth’s average temperature reached 96.8 degrees Fahrenheit (36 degrees Celsius).” Our current average temperature—already elevated by global warming to the highest value ever recorded—is about 60 degrees Fahrenheit, or 15 degrees Celsius. For most of the 500 million years the study covers, the earth has been in a hothouse state, with an average temperature of 71.6 Fahrenheit, or 22 Celsius, much higher than now. Only about an eighth of the time has the earth been in its current “coldhouse” state—but of course that includes all the time that humans have been around. It is the world we know and we’re adapted to.
In every era, it’s increases in carbon dioxide that drive the increases and decreases in temperature. “Carbon dioxide is really that master dial,” Jess Tierney, a climate scientist at the University of Arizona and co-author of the study, said. And so the study makes clear that the mercury could go very high indeed as humans pour carbon into the sky. We won’t burn enough coal and oil and gas to reach the very highest temperatures seen in the geological record—that required periods of incredible volcanism—but we may well double the amount of carbon in the atmosphere, and this study implies that the fast and slow feedbacks from that could eventually drive temperatures as much as eight degrees Celsius higher, which is more than most current estimates. Over shorter time frames the numbers are just as dramatic
Without rapid action to curb greenhouse gas emissions, scientists say, global temperatures could reach nearly 62.6 F (17 C) by the end of the century — a level not seen in the timeline since the Miocene epoch, more than 5 million years ago.
Now, you could look at those numbers and say: well, the earth has been hotter before, so life won’t be wiped out. And that’s true—there’s probably no way to wipe out life, though on a planet with huge numbers of nuclear weapons who knows. But these temperatures are much higher than anything humans have experienced, and they guarantee a world with radically different regimes of drought and deluge, radically different ocean levels and fire seasons. They imply a world fundamentally strange to us, with entirely different seasons and moods—and if that doesn’t challenge bare survival, it certainly challenges the survival of our civilizations. Unlike all the species that came before us, we have built a physical shell for that civilization, a geography of cities and ports and farms that we can’t easily move as the temperature rises. And of course the poorest people, who have done the least to cause the trouble, will suffer out of all proportion as that shift starts to happen.
But that’s not the really scary part. The really scary part is how fast it’s moving.
In fact, nowhere in that long record have the scientists been able to find a time when it’s warming as fast as it is right now. “We’re changing Earth’s temperature at a rate that exceeds anything we know about,” Tierney said.
Much much much faster than, say, during the worst extinction event we know about, at the end of the Permian about 250 million years ago, when the endless eruption of the so-called Siberian traps drove the temperature 10 Celsius higher and killed off 95 percent of the species on the planet. But that catastrophe took fifty thousand years—our three degree Celsius increase—driven by the collective volcano of our powerplants, factories, furnaces and Fords—will be measured in decades.
Our only hope of avoiding utter ruin—our only hope that our western world, in the blink of an eye, won’t produce catastrophe on this geologic scale—is to turn off those volcanoes immediately. And that, of course, requires replacing coal and gas and oil with something else. The only something else on offer right now, scalable in the few years we still have to work with, is the rays of the sun, and the wind that sun produces, and the batteries that can store its power for use at night.
Another new analysis this week, this one from the energy thinktank Ember, shows that 2024 is seeing another year of surging solar installations—when the year ends there will be 30% more solar power on this planet than when it began. Numbers like that, if we can keep that acceleration going for a few more years, give us a fighting chance.
That’s what all those seminars and cocktail parties and protests in New York over this week will ultimately be about—the desperate attempt to keep this rift in our geological history from getting any bigger than it must. As this new study once more makes clear, raising the temperature is by far the biggest thing humans have ever done; our effort to limit that rise must be just as large.
We need to stand in awe for a moment before the scope of earth’s long history. And then we need to get the hell to work.
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Helene and Milton Prove It's Time to Make Polluters Pay for Climate Disasters
Recent polling shows that 70% of US voters support making oil and gas companies pay their fair share for these fossil fuel-driven catastrophes. What are we waiting for?
Oct 10, 2024
“There would be much more violent weather – more storms, more droughts, more deluges.”
That prophecy isn’t from the Book of Revelation, but from a confidential 1989 Shell Oil memo the company commissioned to better understand what global warming could mean for their business in the decades to come.
Today, the sentence reads like a daily weather report. In the last few weeks, we’ve seen the devastation wrought by Hurricane Helene, a “deluge” that wiped out entire towns and sent homes and semi-trucks spiraling down rivers of mud, and now Hurricane Milton, one of the strongest hurricanes ever recorded. In Nepal, extreme flooding there has claimed over more than 200 lives and left parts of the capitol underwater. Meanwhile, the Amazon is facing its “worst drought on record,” further endangering what scientists have referred to as the “lungs of the world.”
“Civilisation could prove a fragile thing,” wrote the authors of the 1989 Shell memo. Indeed. As we’ve seen over the last few months, even supposed climate havens, like Asheville, NC, have been undone by extreme weather. We’ve entered an age where our civilization, no matter where we live, will likely be in need of constant upkeep and repair in the face of ever worsening climate disasters. Rebuilding our communities, and strengthening them for the challenges ahead, will be an ongoing struggle for generations to come.
For more than 70 years the fossil fuel industry has continued to rake in profits without paying a single dollar for the damage they knew their product was causing to our climate and communities.
Which raises the question: how are we going to pay for all of this? Early estimates put the damage of Hurricane Helene at over $200 billion and Hurricane Milton at $175 billion, astronomical figures that still can’t begin to calculate the cost of the lives lost and communities upended. That’s on top of the more than $150 billion a year the US government estimates Americans are already paying for extreme weather events. And that’s a low end estimate. According to a study released earlier this year in Nature concluded that the cost of climate damages to the global economy could reach $38 trillion a year by 2050.
Right now, those costs are coming out of one place in particular: our pockets. Even if your home hasn’t been washed away by a flood, you’re likely paying more for your home insurance due to others that have. Even if your farm hasn’t been wrecked by drought, you’re now paying more for your groceries at the supermarket. The dollars your town had set aside for a new school? They’re now being spent to rebuild roads or repair a bridge that got wiped out by yet another “100-year” flood.
Faced with these ever mounting costs, some local leaders are turning to a different solution: making polluters pay their fair share for the damage they’ve done. After all, that 1989 Shell memo isn’t the only example that fossil fuel companies knew exactly the consequences of the ongoing use of their product. As early as the 1950s, oil and gas companies knew about the dangers of global warming, but instead of warning the public and moving to clean energy, they went on to spread lies and disinformation to protect their profits.
Put another way, for more than 70 years the fossil fuel industry has continued to rake in profits without paying a single dollar for the damage they knew their product was causing to our climate and communities. Instead, they’ve very intentionally “externalized” those costs onto the rest of us, not only in the form of climate impacts, but in terms of our health, local environments, and more.
Now the bill is coming due. This May, Vermont became the first state in the country to pass a Climate Superfund Act that will make oil and gas companies pay into a fund that can be used for climate adaptation and disaster response. Five other states are debating similar legislation, including in New York, where legislators passed a climate superfund bill in June and are now waiting on Governor Kathy Hochul’s signature (last week, activists delivered more than 127,000 signatures to the Governor’s office demanding she stop dragging her feet and sign the bill into law). In September, Senator Van Hollen and Representative Jerry Nadler introduced a federal Climate Superfund bill that would collect $1 trillion from oil and gas companies to be used for relief and resiliency efforts nationwide.
The push for state and federal climate superfund bills is running in parallel to the now dozens of city, state, county, and Tribal governments who have filed lawsuits against the fossil fuel industry for climate lies and damages. These lawsuits could recoup even more money from oil and gas companies for damages, as well as uncover yet more evidence of their ongoing fraud and deception. In addition to these civil cases, some experts and attorneys are now proposing bringing criminal charges against oil companies for the “wrongful deaths” associated with extreme weather events (expect to hear more about climate homicide in the months ahead).
The devastation caused by Hurricanes Helene and Milton, and similar climate disasters around the world, demands more of a response than the “thoughts and prayers” offered by politicians still in the pocket of Big Oil. Recent polling shows that 70% of US voters support making oil and gas companies pay their fair share for climate damages. It’s time for our leaders to answer that call and make polluters pay.
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Sleepless and Fearful When Hurricane Milton Made Landfall
There are important moments when fear is a crucial resource. And the fear of a planet where the old rules no longer hold is the ultimate fear—because then how do you even think about the future?
Oct 10, 2024
Since I couldn’t sleep, I figured I might as well write. I couldn’t sleep because of the picture in my mind—that tightly coiled ball of physics we’re calling Hurricane Milton as it tracks mercilessly across the Gulf of Mexico, headed toward a landfall tonight along the west coast of Florida. It scares me, for two reasons.
The first is the unrivaled speed with which it spun up, from tropical storm to Category 5 monster inside a day. This “rapid intensification” has become an increasingly common feature of hurricanes, because the heat content in the ocean is so high that the old models no longer suffice. We live, more and more, in a world of instant chaos: where wildfires can “blow up” in a matter of minutes because the fuels that feed them are so desiccated, where “flash” floods can, in minutes, turn a record rain into a street clogged with bobbing cars. These things have always been possible, but now they are common: we have in our minds the idea that the world changes at a geologic pace, moving in stately fashion through epochs and eras. But right now—as carbon dioxide accumulates more quickly in the atmosphere than at any point in the last 500 million years—”geologic pace” is measured in months. Hell, glaciers—our metaphor for moving slowly—disappear from one winter to the next.
And the second reason is: this speeded-up physics is increasingly crashing into the heart of the civilizations that we’ve built. Given the size of the planet, it’s more likely than not that a disaster will happen in somewhere sparsely populated—the boreal forests of Canada burned last summer, displacing Indigenous people of the north but mostly avoiding cities. Even Hurricane Helene last week came ashore in the Big Bend country north of Cedar Key, where people are thin on the ground. But just as California’s wildfires eventually and inevitably started taking out whole towns, Milton is aimed at one of the most built-up and vulnerable landscapes on earth. I think—from this morning’s bearings—that the very worst outcome may be dodged: if the hurricane comes in just south of Tampa Bay, its counterclockwise winds will work to drive the storm surge off that body of water. But if so it will mean sheer agony for somewhere further south, somewhere almost as overbuilt. Sarasota? Port Charlotte? And in very short order that will mean deep trouble for the insurance industry, already tottering in Florida
(It’s worth noting, if only in passing, that the two places Americans of my age thought of as refuges, idylls, dreams of the easy life were California and Florida. No longer).
We’ve spent some time in recent years worrying that there was too much fear-mongering and doom-saying in the way we talked about climate change—that it was wearing people out. And indeed there’s truth there—if we’re going to do what we must, the story in the years ahead needs to be as much about the adventure of turning our planet solar as the dread that we’ll turn our planet Venus.
But there are important moments when fear is a crucial resource. A week ago, in the wake of Helene, the veteran climate activist and North Carolina native Anna Jane Joyner wrote this dispatch from New York’s “Climate Week”
There were fancy parties, cheerful sun imagery and giant signs reading “HOPE.” The dominant theme was: We can solve this! We need to tell hopeful climate stories! But there’s no “solving” a hurricane wiping out western North Carolina, hundreds of miles from the sea. Only focusing on optimism is like telling a cancer patient that everything will be OK if they just stay positive. At best, it comes across as out of touch; at worst, it feels callous. Yes, we can still prevent the worst impacts and must demand our governments scale solutions and act urgently, but we cannot minimize the horrors unfolding now, or that it will get worse in the coming years.
And yesterday, on air, the veteran Florida weatherman John Morales let his fear show through. As Cara Buckley recounted in the Times,
“It’s just an incredible, incredible, incredible hurricane,” Mr. Morales said of Milton, closing his eyes and slightly shaking his head. “It has dropped. …”
His voice faltered. He looked down, drew a shaky breath and continued, “… it has dropped 50 millibars in 10 hours.” For viewers who didn’t understand the staggering implications of this barometric plunge, Mr. Morales’s choked delivery said enough. “I apologize,” he said in a quavering voice. “This is just horrific.”
This kind of fear is entirely useful—there are, I have no doubt, people who left their homes and drove north towards Georgia after hearing the break in Morales’ voice. He saved lives. And he did it entirely honestly. “You know what’s driving that,” he said to viewers. “I don’t need to tell you. Global warming. Climate change.” It’s honest fear, driven by deep understanding. As Morales wrote in an essay in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists last year
“As the temperature of the planet increases, my confidence in forecasting storm intensity is decreasing… Today I am no longer as comfortable in putting everyone at ease in regard to the strength of a storm. I am afraid of rapid intensification cycles happening at the drop of a hat.”
The fear of a planet where the old rules no longer hold is the ultimate fear—because then how do you even think about the future? And that’s as true as politics as it is in meteorology. The deep fear that wakes me up at night has only partly to do with the weather weather; it’s the political fronts moving through America that scare me just as much. In the wake of Helene, absurd lies about FEMA spread across social media, fueled of course by the GOP nominee. Josh Marshall, one of the finest trackers of political craziness in this country, reports this morning that the news currently circulating on the right is that Milton and Helene were the result of “weather manipulation” by Democrats designed to…something.
That, of course, is dishonest fear, driven by dishonest people. And those dishonest people may well end up in control of our country. We have 26 days left, and every one of them counts. We need to hold our nerve, do the work, and see if we can bring America safely through Hurricane Trump. That won’t deliver us to safety, but it’s a start.
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