Climate Apocalypse

Republican lawmakers in multiple states and Congress are advancing proposals to shield polluters from climate accountability and prevent any type of liability for climate change harms—even as these harms and their associated costs continue to mount.

The last two times the Olympics came to Los Angeles, the city launched major tree planting programs. L.A. planted tens of thousands of palm trees in the run up to 1932. An L.A. non-profit led the charge to plant one million trees ahead of the 1984 Games.

Planners are taking a different approach ahead of this Olympics, focusing on shade structures more broadly rather than specifically on planting trees... That means canopies, pop-up structures and infrastructure to create shade, with or without tree cover.

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But many of the specifics are still to come. That's also true of LA28, which has promised to create a "Heat Mitigation Plan." A spokesperson told LAist that it was expected to be finished by mid-2027.

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Still, L.A. has a long way to go. In L.A. County, urban areas have just 21% shade cover at noon on average, according to data from the UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation – less than the national average of 27%. And it's only getting hotter. By 2050, average temperatures in the county are expected to rise by almost four degrees.

The Olympic imperative that every Games has to be newer, bigger and better than the one before makes the claim that this is a “sustainable Games” an insult to everyone playing and watching.

Assuming a linear relationship and a ~ 0.34% increase rate per year, the calculated trendline in Fig. 2A predicts that the healthy maximum HCO3− level of 30mEq/L will be reached in the year 2076.

Chronic ocean heating is fuelling a “staggering and deeply concerning” loss of marine life, a study has found, with fish levels falling by 7.2% from as little as 0.1C of warming per decade.

Researchers examined the year-to-year change of 33,000 populations in the northern hemisphere between 1993 and 2021, and isolated the effect of the decadal rate of seabed warming from short shifts such as marine heatwaves. They found the drop in biomass from chronic heating to be as high as 19.8% in a single year.

“To put it simply, the faster the ocean floor warms, the faster we lose fish,” said Shahar Chaikin, a marine ecologist at the National Museum of Natural Sciences in Spain and the study’s lead author.

“A 7.2% decline for every tenth of a degree per decade might sound small,” he added. “But compounded over time, across entire ocean basins, it represents a staggering and deeply concerning loss of marine life.”

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The winter smog is driven by a perfect storm of factors. Falling temperatures and weaker winds coincide with a spike in seasonal crop burning by farmers — compounded by already high vehicle and factory emissions, Diwali-season fireworks and construction dust. Trapped by the capital’s bowl-like geography, the pollution lingers for months.

The health impacts are severe. High concentrations of PM 2.5 raise the risk of heart attacks, cancer, respiratory diseases, strokes and dementia, local and international studies show. Almost 1.7 million deaths were attributable to air pollution in India in 2019, according to the Lancet journal. Children are particularly vulnerable, which is why the Nov. 9 protest at India Gate was organized by an advocacy group called Warrior Moms. An informal survey the group conducted across more than a dozen pharmacies recorded a substantial rise in demand for inhalers and respiratory medications in recent years, with a third of all nebulizers typically purchased for children.

The visit suggests a possible FBI probe into Extinction Rebellion NYC as the Trump administration increases surveillance of activist groups.

Continued global heating could set irreversible course by triggering climate tipping points, but most people unaware

Some may still hope that markets or innovation will quietly resolve the problem, and extraterrestrial data centres may yet do something to help. But water does not behave like other commodities. It is local, finite, and political: unlike rare earths or hydrocarbons, water cannot be stockpiled at scale, substituted or shipped across oceans to smooth out shortages; it must be consumed where it falls or flows. So when water is scarce, there is no global market to arbitrate supply — only hard decisions, made locally, about who goes without. In a century defined by ecological pressure, then, water sits near the top of the hierarchy of risks. This is not because it is unsolvable, but because it is foundational.

This is not just a slight warming; it is a fundamental change in how people will have to survive on the continent. Once regions in Africa enter a state of almost continuous heatwaves, the human body will have no window of time to recover.

A powerful book reveals the corrupt deals and human exploitation behind the global scramble for strategic metals.

Enforcement against polluters in the United States plunged in the first year of President Donald Trump’s second term, a far bigger drop than in the same period of his first term, according to a new report from a watchdog group.

By analyzing a range of federal court and administrative data, the nonprofit Environmental Integrity Project found that civil lawsuits filed by the US Department of Justice in cases referred by the Environmental Protection Agency dropped to just 16 in the first 12 months after Trump’s inauguration on Jan. 20, 2025. That is 76 percent less than [the 66] in the first year of the Biden administration.

Trump’s first administration filed 86 such cases in its first year, which was in turn a drop from the Obama administration’s 127 four years earlier.

As climate change intensifies the global food system is being stretched to its limits. Can real‑time data and rapid response strategies help manufacturers stay ahead?

The world is now using so much fresh water amid the consequences of climate change that it has entered an era of water bankruptcy, with many regions no longer able to bounce back from frequent water shortages.

About 4 billion people – nearly half the global population – live with severe water scarcity for at least one month a year, without access to sufficient water to meet all of their needs. Many more people are seeing the consequences of water deficit: dry reservoirs, sinking cities, crop failures, water rationing and more frequent wildfires and dust storms in drying regions.

Water bankruptcy signs are everywhere, from Tehran, where droughts and unsustainable water use have depleted reservoirs the Iranian capital relies on, adding fuel to political tensions, to the U.S., where water demand has outstripped the supply in the Colorado River, a crucial source of drinking water and irrigation for seven states. A woman fills containers with water from a well. cows are behind her on a dry landscape.

Water bankruptcy is not just a metaphor for water deficit. It is a chronic condition that develops when a place uses more water than nature can reliably replace, and when the damage to the natural assets that store and filter that water, such as aquifers and wetlands, becomes hard to reverse.

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In a major assault on human health, the Trump administration is changing the policy of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regarding the control of air pollution. A review of internal EPA emails conducted by the New York Times found that consideration of the impacts of fine particulate matter (PM2.5) and ozone, two of the most prominent components of air pollution, would no longer be included as part of the evaluation of the effects of industrial air pollution on humans. A draft of the new regulation was released, signed by the EPA Administrator, Lee Zeldin, on January 9, 2026.

The consequences of our planet’s changing climate extend far beyond warming temperatures, rising sea levels, and extreme weather events. Human displacement as a result of the climate crisis is now one of the world’s most pressing issues, as estimates predict that there could be more than 1 billion climate refugees by 2050.

The plight of these people is neglected and forgotten as they remain unprotected by the law and are excluded from international aid programs.

Climate refugees are forced to flee their homes as the environment degrades and climate-related disasters take hold. Climate change is now one of the leading causes of mass forced displacement.

Climate change is also increasing rates of poverty, instability, and violence—further drivers of migration.

Those on the front lines of climate change are often in countries that contributed the least to it. The vast majority of climate migration is internal, which puts an unsustainable strain on the already limited resources of these nations.

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Without urgent action, we are all at risk of becoming climate refugees.

While working to address immediate needs, climate discussions should continue to focus on preventive measures. Climate mitigation, adaptation, and a just energy transition are essential.

Countries must begin cooperating on this global issue and ensure the fair treatment of all refugees. We must demand a new comprehensive legal framework for climate refugees to safeguard vulnerable populations and protect those who may be at risk in the future.

Supporting climate refugees is our moral obligation.

At present, the Middle East is entering an age where sovereignty will be measured not by flags or fighters, but by reservoirs and reliability. Those who ignore this will continue to be surprised by the instability they claim came out of nowhere. Those who understand it are already building the future—quietly, methodically, and without asking permission.

History is moving through pipes and dams. The question is who is paying attention.

Thousands of flying foxes have perished in the heatwave that scorched south-east Australia last week, the largest mass mortality event for flying foxes since black summer.

For decades, section 401 has granted states and tribes the authority to approve, impose conditions on, or reject, federal permits for projects that they determine will pollute or damage local waterways. Now, the Trump administration aims to scale back that authority in order to expedite projects and “unleash energy dominance,”...