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Tag: Climate and environment

  • A year after LA wildfires destroyed thousands of homes, fewer than a dozen rebuilt

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    LOS ANGELES — On the first anniversary of the most destructive wildfires in the L.A. area, the scant home construction projects stand out among the still mostly flattened landscapes.

    Fewer than a dozen homes have been rebuilt in Los Angeles County since Jan. 7, 2025, when the Palisades and Eaton fires erupted, killing 31 people and destroying about 13,000 homes and other residential properties.

    For those who had insurance, it’s often not enough to cover the costs of construction. Relief organizations are stepping in to help, but progress is slow.

    Among the exceptions is Ted Koerner, whose Altadena home was reduced to ash and two chimneys. With his insurance payout tied up, the 67-year-old liquidated about 80% of his retirement holdings, secured contractors quickly, and moved decisively through the rebuilding process.

    Shortly before Thanksgiving, Koerner was among the first to finish a rebuild in the aftermath of the fires, which were fueled by drought and hurricane-force winds.

    But most do not have options like Koerner.

    The streets of the coastal community of Pacific Palisades and Altadena, a community in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains, remain lined with dirt lots. In the seaside city of Malibu, foundations and concrete piles rising out of the sand are all that’s left of beachfront homes that once butted against crashing ocean waves.

    Neighborhoods are pitch black at night, with few streetlamps replaced. Even many homes that survived are not inhabited as families struggle to clear them of the fire’s toxic contaminants.

    Koerner was driven in part by fear that his beloved golden retriever, Daisy Mae, now 13 years old, might not live long enough to move into a new home, given the many months it can take to build even under the best circumstances.

    He also did not have to wait for his insurance payout to start construction.

    “That’s the only way we were going to get it done before all of a sudden my dog starts having labored breathing or something else happens,” Koerner said.

    Once construction began, his home was completed in just over four months.

    Daisy Mae is back lying in her favorite spot in the yard under a 175-year-old Heritage Oak. Koerner said he enjoys his morning coffee while watching her and it brings tears to his eyes.

    “We made it,” he said.

    About 900 homes are under construction, potentially on pace to be completed later this year.

    Still, many homeowners are stuck as they figure out whether they can pay for the rebuilding process.

    Scores of residents have left their communities for good. More than 600 properties where a single-family home was destroyed in the wildfires have been sold, according to real estate data tracker Cotality.

    “We’re seeing huge gaps between the money insurance is paying out, to the extent we have insurance, and what it will actually cost to rebuild and/or remediate our homes,” said Joy Chen, executive director of the Eaton Fire Survivors Network, a group of 10,000 fire survivors mostly from Altadena.

    By December, less than 20% of people who experienced total home loss had closed out their insurance claims, according to a survey by the nonprofit Department of Angels.

    About one-third of insured respondents had policies with State Farm, the state’s largest private insurer, or the California FAIR plan, the insurer of last resort. They reported high rates of dissatisfaction with both, citing burdensome requirements, lowball estimates, and dealing with multiple adjusters.

    In November, Los Angeles County opened a civil investigation into State Farm’s practices and potential violations of the state’s Unfair Competition law. Chen said the group has seen a flurry of substantial payouts since then.

    Without answers from insurance, households can’t commit to rebuilding projects that can easily exceed $1 million.

    “They’re worried about getting started and running out of money,” Chen said.

    Jessica Rogers discovered only after the Palisades fire destroyed her home that her coverage had been canceled.

    The mother of two’s fallback was a low-interest loan from the Small Business Administration, but the application process was grueling. After losing her job because of the fire and then having her identity stolen, her approval for $550,000 came through last month.

    She is still weighing how she’ll cover the remaining costs and says she wonders: “Do I empty out my 401(k) and start counting every penny in a penny jar around the apartment?”

    Rogers — now executive director of the Pacific Palisades Long Term Recovery Group — estimates there are hundreds like her in Pacific Palisades who are “stuck dealing with FEMA and SBA and figuring out if we could piecemeal something together to build our homes.”

    Also struggling to return home are the community’s renters, condo owners, and mobile homeowners. Meanwhile, many are also dealing with their trauma.

    “It’s not what people talk about, but it is incredibly apparent and very real,” said Rogers, who still finds herself crying at unexpected moments.

    That so few homes have been rebuilt a year after the wildfires echoes the recovery pattern of a December 2021 blaze that erupted south of Boulder, Colorado, destroying more than 1,000 homes.

    “At the one-year mark, many lots had been cleared of debris and many residents had applied for building permits, said Andrew Rumbach, co-lead of the Climate and Communities Program at Urban Institute. “Around the 18-month mark is when you start to see really significant progress in terms of going from handfuls to hundreds” of homes rebuilt.

    Time will bring the scope of problems into focus.

    “You’re going to start to see some real inequality start to emerge where certain neighborhoods, certain types of people, certain types of properties are just lagging way far behind, and that becomes the really important question in the second year of a recovery: Who’s doing well and who is really struggling and why?” Rumbach said.

    That’s a key concern in Altadena, which for decades drew aspiring Black homeowners who otherwise faced redlining and other forms of racial discrimination when they sought to buy a home in other L.A.-area communities. In 2024, 81% of Black households in Altadena owned their homes, nearly twice the national Black homeownership rate.

    But recent research by UCLA’s Latino Policy & Politics Institute found that, as of August, 7 in 10 Altadena homeowners whose property was severely damaged in last year’s wildfire had not begun taking steps to rebuild or sell their home. Among these, Black homeowners were 73% more likely than others to have taken no action.

    Al and Charlotte Bailey have been living in an RV parked on the empty lot where their home once stood.

    The Baileys are paying for their rebuild with funds from their insurance payout and a loan. They’re also hoping to receive money from Southern California Edison. Several lawsuits claim its equipmentsparked the wildfire in Altadena.

    “We had been here for 41 years and raised our family here, and in one night it was all gone,” said Al Bailey, 77. “We decided that, whatever it’s going to cost, this is our community.”

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  • These numbers tell the story of the Los Angeles wildfires, one year later

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    LOS ANGELES — A year after twin infernos tore across opposite ends of Los Angeles County, the scars are still visible. Thousands of homes were reduced to rubble, with rebuilding slow, and the death toll showed how a wildfire under extreme weather conditions can turn catastrophic.

    The Palisades and Eaton fires ignited within hours of each other on Jan. 6, 2024. These figures show how fast the disaster unfolded and the toll it left behind:

    The speed of predicted wind gusts in mountain areas, equivalent to 145 kilometers per hour. Red Flag warnings were issued Jan. 6 for severe wildfire danger as Southern California was buffeted by the region’s notorious Santa Ana winds. Grass and brush were tinder dry after months with little or no rain. The National Weather Service warned it could be a life-threatening wind event. Firefighting assets were pre-positioned in areas deemed to be at especially high risk for fires.

    How long it took for a small wildfire to explode in size. At 10:30 a.m. reports began coming in about a small blaze on a ridge in LA’s upscale Pacific Palisades neighborhood, in the same area where crews had responded to a previous fire on New Year’s Day. Before long, a large plume of dark smoke was visible from miles away. Shortly after 11 a.m., the fire was reported to be about 10 acres (4 hectares), located near Palisades Drive on the coastal neighborhood’s western edge.

    Over the next two hours, roads were jammed with motorists trying to flee as flames roared down streets and decimated homes. Officials issued an evacuation order for the Palisades while warning residents of surrounding areas that they should also get ready to leave. Within hours, the blaze had rapidly grown.

    As firefighting resources were focused on the Palisades, another blaze was sparked about 30 miles (48 kilometers) to the east in Altadena, on the other end of Los Angeles County. The Eaton Fire started at 6:17 p.m. and all firefighting aircraft in the county were soon grounded because of high winds. By 8 p.m. it had doubled in size.

    The amount of land charred by the two infernos, equivalent to 155 square kilometers. That’s roughly the size of the entire city of San Francisco.

    The number of people who died — 19 in the Eaton Fire and 12 in the Palisades Fire.

    How long the Palisades Fire burned before it was extinguished. Investigators determined the 37-square-mile (95-square-kilometer) blaze had actually grown out of the earlier fire that started on Jan. 1.

    The number of days it took for the Eaton Fire to be extinguished. It burned 22 square miles (57 square kilometers).

    The amount of federal disaster aid requested by Gov. Gavin Newsom. The Trump administration and Congress have yet to approve it.

    The maximum sentence faced by a 29-year-old man charged with sparking the Palisades Fire. He has pleaded not guilty. The cause of the Eaton Fire remains under investigation.

    How many structures were destroyed in both blazes. In Altadena, 9,418 homes and other buildings were flattened. In Pacific Palisades and neighboring areas including Malibu, 6,837 buildings, mostly homes, were gone.

    The number of homes rebuilt so far, according to city and county data. Most are in the Altadena area, with one in Pasadena and two in Pacific Palisades. None are finished in Malibu. Hundreds more are under construction across the region.

    The total charitable commitments to LA fire relief is between at least $860 million to $970 million, according to a study by the Milken Institute. Most was raised in the first month after the fires, and individual donations through GoFundMe brought in $265 million.

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  • Record $9.6M fine for Third Coast after substantial oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico

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    Pipeline safety regulators on Monday assessed their largest fine ever against the company responsible for leaking 1.1 million gallons of oil into the Gulf off the coast of Louisiana in 2023. But the $9.6 million fine isn’t likely to be a major burden for Third Coast to pay.

    This single fine is close to the normal total of $8 million to $10 million in all fines that the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration hands out each year. But Third Coast has a stake in some 1,900 miles of pipelines, and in September, the Houston-based company announced that it had secured a nearly $1 billion loan.

    Pipeline Safety Trust Executive Director Bill Caram said this spill “resulted from a company-wide systemic failure, indicating the operator’s fundamental inability to implement pipeline safety regulations,” so the record fine is appropriate and welcome.

    “However, even record fines often fail to be financially meaningful to pipeline operators. The proposed fine represents less than 3% of Third Coast Midstream’s estimated annual earnings,” Caram said. “True deterrence requires penalties that make noncompliance more expensive than compliance.”

    The agency said Third Coast didn’t establish proper emergency procedures, which is part of why the National Transportation Safety Board found that operators failed to shut down the pipeline for nearly 13 hours after their gauges first hinted at a problem. PHMSA also said the company didn’t adequately assess the risks or properly maintain the 18-inch Main Pass Oil Gathering pipeline.

    The agency said the company “failed to perform new integrity analyses or evaluations following changes in circumstances that identified new and elevated risk factors” for the pipeline.

    That echoed what the NTSB said in its final report in June, that “Third Coast missed several opportunities to evaluate how geohazards may threaten the integrity of their pipeline. Information widely available within the industry suggested that land movement related to hurricane activity was a threat to pipelines.”

    The NTSB said the leak off the coast of Louisiana was the result of underwater landslides, caused by hazards such as hurricanes, that Third Coast, the pipeline owner, failed to address despite the threats being well known in the industry.

    A Third Coast spokesperson said the allegations were a shock because the company “consistently meets or exceeds regulatory requirements across our operations.”

    “After constructive engagement with PHMSA over the last two years, we were surprised to see aspects of the recent allegations that we believe are inaccurate and exceed established precedent. We will address these concerns with the agency moving forward,” the company spokesperson said.

    The amount of oil spilled in this incident was far less than the 2010 BP oil disaster, when 134 million gallons were released in the weeks following an oil rig explosion, but it could have been much smaller if workers in the Third Coast control room had acted more quickly, the NTSB said.

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  • This Vietnamese town boomed as factories left China. Now it’s asking what’s next?

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    BAC NINH, Vietnam — The transformation of Vietnam’s Bac Ninh is evident in the signs above its shops and the spicy Chinese and Korean dishes on its tables.

    Once known for its rice fields and the love duets of its centuries-old Quan Ho folk songs, the city just north of Hanoi has become one of Vietnam’s busiest factory zones, reflecting a surge of investment, hastened by President Donald Trump’s tariff hikes, that are reshaping the region.

    The economy has profited from friction between Washington and Beijing as factories shifted out of China, joining earlier waves of foreign investment by the Japanese and South Koreans that have made Vietnam a global manufacturing hub. But rising labor costs, worker shortages and inadequate infrastructure are exposing the limits to its rapid rise.

    With rivals like Indonesia and the Philippines competing hard for new projects, Vietnam is trying to climb into higher-value manufacturing and expand export markets to maintain that momentum. That effort is evident in Bac Ninh.

    Traditionally a center for artisans, Bac Ninh’s first boom began around 2008 when Samsung built its first phone factory there, turning Vietnam into its largest offshore manufacturing base.

    Now, Chinese companies are pouring in as they diversify their factory locations to skirt U.S. tariffs and other trade restrictions. After Hanoi and Beijing normalized ties in the 1990s, inflows of Chinese investment began to pick up as Chinese firms in places like Bac Ninh tapped Vietnam’s electronics supply chain, labor force and supportive local governments, often aided by Chinese-speaking intermediaries who smooth paperwork and logistics.

    But Vietnam is too small to replace China, whose economy is 40 times larger, as the world’s factory floor. To try to keep up, its leaders are building new infrastructure, including a highway to the Chinese border that has cut travel time by more than an hour. A railway will connect Hanoi to Haiphong — Vietnam’s largest seaport — and then the border town of Lao Cai.

    On Dec. 19, Bac Ninh broke ground on the expansion of an industrial zone for high-tech manufacturing, including electronics, pharmaceuticals and clean energy. It’s part of a synchronized nationwide push in which Vietnam launched 234 major projects worth more than $129 billion just weeks before a pivotal National Party Congress in January, when leaders will decide the country’s political leadership and economic direction.

    In Bac Ninh’s downtown, a convenience store bears the name Tmall, after Alibaba’s flagship online marketplace. Signs in Chinese advertise services for investors. Chinese–Vietnamese language schools have opened to help locals and Chinese to learn each others’ languages.

    But as Chinese companies compete for the best labor and other resources, costs are rising for the “China plus one” strategy of moving factories out of China to other locations, for example, Apple’s shift into India.

    “It is becoming difficult to recruit workers,” said Peng, who works at a telecoms equipment company that moved from China’s southern technology hub of Shenzhen. He gave only one name because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

    Labor costs have jumped 10%–15% since 2024, he said, “And we expect them to keep rising.”

    Vietnam still need technology, equipment and expertise from China, which had created “the best manufacturing ecosystem,” said Jacob Rothman, co-founder and CEO of China-based Velong Enterprises, which makes grill tools and kitchen gadgets and has shifted some production to Southeast Asian countries including Cambodia and Vietnam.

    Supply chains and manufacturers in China have benefited from decades of government support, large-scale investment and its huge population, Rothman said. “You can’t recreate that overnight.”

    Brian Bourke, global chief commercial officer at U.S.-based SEKO Logistics, said while factories making footwear, furniture and technology are still relocating to Vietnam, it lags China in infrastructure and logistics capabilities.

    Some of those limits are surfacing in boomtowns like Bac Ninh, where firms are trying to lure workers with higher wages and bonuses, a box of instant noodles on their first day and bus fares if they commute from another city, according to state media.

    Few countries have benefitted more from Trump’s trade war than Vietnam, whose biggest export market is still the U.S. In 2024, Vietnam ran a $123.5 billion surplus with the U.S., the third largest behind China and Mexico. That irked Trump, who threatened a 46% import tax on Vietnamese goods before settling on 20%.

    The two countries are still working toward a deal to keep most tariffs at 20%. Vietnam has offered broad preferential access for U.S. products, the White House said in October. So far, it has largely absorbed the tariffs, running a trade surplus of $121.6 billion in January-November 2025.

    The agreement in October by Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping to a year-long trade truce and lower average tariffs on Chinese exports to the U.S. to about 47% helped ease some concerns. But persisting uncertainty over tariffs and other trade restrictions means companies aren’t just trying to shift factories out of China but to spread them across several countries, said Frederic Neumann, chief Asia economist at HSBC.

    Even with lower U.S. tariffs on China, the calculus still favors moving to Southeast Asia where manufacturing inefficiencies add only about 10% in cost. But while large corporations can shift production easily, smaller firms may struggle to fit a new factory with expensive equipment.

    “(The) race to move outside of China is still happening, and it’s accelerating,” Rothman said.

    Vietnam is still attracting ample foreign investment. Cumulative foreign investment topped $28.5 billion as of September, up 15% from last year. But scrutiny of Vietnam’s role as a hub for tariff-dodging transshipments has some manufacturers hedging their bets.

    One of SEKO Logistics’ customers has shifted some of its furniture making to India, not wanting to “put all their eggs in Vietnam,” Bourke said.

    Countries like Indonesia and the Philippines, which missed the early gains Vietnam captured, are promoting themselves as alternative manufacturing bases. In the Philippines, a new law allows foreign investors to lease private land for up to 99 years to attract long-term commercial and industrial investment.

    Vietnam has a goal of becoming rich by 2045. It aims to become Asia’s next “tiger economy,” following export powerhouses like South Korea and Taiwan by shifting from low-cost assembly work to manufacture higher-value products like electronics and clean energy equipment.

    It’s offering incentives like tax breaks on imported machinery and discounted rents to help factory suppliers upgrade and modernize. About a third still use non-automated equipment and only about 10% use robots on their production lines.

    The country also is trying to reduce its dependence on the U.S. market by expanding exports to the Middle East, Latin America, Africa and India. Overseas trade offices have been asked to share market intelligence and promote products made in Vietnam.

    Vietnam knows that rising costs and tougher competition will test how far it — and places like Bac Ninh — can climb. Announcing hundreds of projects in December, Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh framed the stakes: Vietnam must “reach far into the ocean, delve deep underground and soar high into space.”

    ___

    Chan reported from Hong Kong. Associated Press researcher Yu Bing in Beijing contributed.

    ___

    The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. The AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

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  • LA residents are still battling toxic hazards a year after historic wildfires

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    ALTADENA, Calif. — ALTADENA, Calif. (AP) — “DANGER: Lead Work Area” reads a sign on a front door of an Altadena home. “May damage fertility or the unborn child. Causes damage to the central nervous system.”

    Block after block there are reminders that contaminants still linger.

    House cleaners, hazardous waste workers and homeowners alike come and go wearing masks, respirators, gloves and hazmat suits as they wipe, vacuum and power-wash homes that weren’t burnt to ash.

    It’s been a year of heartbreak and worry since the most destructive wildfires in the Los Angeles area’s history scorched neighborhoods and displaced tens of thousands of people. Two wind-whipped blazes that ignited on Jan. 7, 2025, killed at least 31 people and destroyed nearly 17,000 structures, including homes, schools, businesses and places of worship. Rebuilding will take years.

    The disaster has brought another wave of trauma for people afraid of what still lurks inside their homes.

    Indoor air quality after wildfires remains understudied, and scientists still don’t know the long-term health impacts of exposure to massive urban fires like last year’s in Los Angeles. But some chemicals released are known to be linked to heart disease and lung issues, and exposure to minerals like magnetite has been associated with Alzheimer’s disease.

    Ash in the area is a toxic soup of incinerated cars, electronics, paints, furniture and every other kind of personal belonging. It can contain pesticides, asbestos, plastics, lead or other heavy metals.

    Many with homes still standing are now living with the hazards left by the fires.

    Nina and Billy Malone considered their home of 20 years a safe haven before smoke, ash and soot seeped inside, leaving behind harmful levels of lead even after professional cleaning. Recent testing found the toxin is still on the wooden floors of their living room and bedroom.

    They were forced to move back home in August anyway, after insurance cut off their rental assistance.

    Since then, Nina wakes up almost daily with a sore throat and headaches. Billy had to get an inhaler for his worsening wheezing and congestion. And their bedroom, Nina said, smells “like an ashtray has been sitting around for a long time.” She worries most about exposure to unregulated contaminants that insurance companies aren’t required to test.

    “I don’t feel comfortable in the space,” said Nina, whose neighbors’ homes burned down across the street.

    They’re not alone.

    According to a report released in November by the Eaton Fire Residents United, a volunteer group formed by residents, six out of 10 homes damaged from smoke from the Eaton Fire still have dangerous levels of cancer-causing asbestos, brain-damaging lead or both. That’s based on self-submitted data from 50 homeowners who have cleaned their homes, with 78% hiring professional cleaners.

    Of the 50 homes, 63% have lead levels above the Environmental Protection Agency’s standard, according to the report. The average lead levels were almost 60 times higher than the EPA’s rule.

    Even after fires were extinguished, volatile organic compounds from smoke, some known to cause cancer, lingered inside of people’s homes, according to a recent study. To mitigate these risks, residents returning home should ventilate and filter indoor air by opening windows or running high-efficiency particulate air (HEPA) purifiers with charcoal filters.

    Zoe Gonzalez Izquierdo said she can’t get her insurance company to pay for an adequate cleanup of her family’s Altadena home, which tested positive for dangerous levels of lead and other toxic compounds.

    “They can’t just send a company that’s not certified to just wipe things down so that then we can go back to a still contaminated home,” Gonzalez said, who has children ages 2 and 4.

    Experts believe the lead, which can linger in dust on floors and windowsills, comes from burned lead paint. The University of Southern California reported that more than 70% of homes within the Eaton Fire were built before 1979, when lead paint was common.

    “For individuals that are pregnant, for young children, it’s particularly important that we do everything we can to eliminate exposure to lead,” said pediatrician Dr. Lisa Patel, executive director for the Medical Society Consortium on Climate and Health and a member of the climate group Science Moms.

    The same goes for asbestos, she added, because there is no safe level of exposure.

    People who lived in the Pacific Palisades, which was also scorched, face similar challenges.

    Residents are at the mercy of their insurance companies, who decide on what they cover and how much. It’s a grueling, constant battle for many. The state’s insurer of last resort, known as the California Fair Access to Insurance Requirements Plan, has been scrutinized for years over its handling of fire damage claims.

    Homeowners want state agencies to enforce a requirement that insurance companies return a property to pre-fire condition.

    Julie Lawson won’t take any risks. Her family paid about $7,000 out of pocket to test the soil in their Altadena home, even though their insurance company had already agreed to pay to replace the grass in their front yard. They planned to test for contaminants again once they finished remediating the inside, the process of making a home contaminant-free after a fire. If insurance won’t cover it, they’ll pay for it themselves.

    Even if their home is livable again, they still face other losses — including equity and the community they once had.

    “We have to live in the scar,” she said. “We’re all still really struggling.”

    They will be living in a construction zone for years. “This isn’t over for us.”

    Annie Barbour with the nonprofit United Policyholders has been helping people navigate the challenges, which include insurance companies resisting to pay for contamination testing and industrial hygienists disagreeing on what to test for.

    She sees the mental health toll it’s having on people — and as a survivor herself of the 2017 Tubbs Fire in Northern California, she understands it.

    Many were at first joyful to see their houses still standing.

    “But they’ve been in their own special kind of hell ever since,” Barbour said.

    Now residents like the Malones are inspecting their belongings, one by one, fearing they may have absorbed toxins.

    Boxes, bags and bins stuffed with clothes, chinaware and everything in between fill the couple’s car, basement, garage and home.

    They have been painstakingly going through their things, assessing what they think can be adequately cleaned. In the process, Nina is cleaning cabinets, drawers, floors and still finding soot and ash. She wears gloves and a respirator, or sometimes just an N-95 mask.

    Their insurance won’t pay to retest their home, Billy said, so they’re considering paying the $10,000 themselves. And if results show there’s still contamination, their insurance company told them they will only pay to clean up toxins that are federally regulated, like lead and asbestos.

    “I don’t know how you fight that,” said Nina, who is considering therapy to cope with her anxiety. “How do you find that argument to compel an insurance company to pay for something to make yourself safe?”

    ———

    AP staff writer Alex Veiga contributed to this report.

    ———

    The Associated Press receives support from the Walton Family Foundation for coverage of water and environmental policy. The AP is solely responsible for all content. For all of AP’s environmental coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/climate-and-environment.

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  • Rain soaks Rose Parade in California and snow squalls hit Midwest and Northeast on first day of 2026

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    Rain poured down on the iconic Rose Parade on Thursday for the first time in 20 years, as flood warnings and evacuation orders in Southern California joined snow squalls and frigid temperatures in the country’s midsection to mark the first day of 2026.

    Marching bands, floats and throngs of spectators were soaked by one to two inches (2.5 to 5 centimeters) of New Year’s Day rain at the 137th Rose Parade in Pasadena. The mercury stood at a chilly 58 degrees Fahrenheit (14.4 degrees Celsius) at the 8 a.m. start of the parade.

    Across the country, in New York City, hats and gloves were as necessary as noisemakers at the city’s New Year’s Eve ball drop, where temperatures near freezing appeared to be the coldest in 10 years.

    Hundreds of thousands of people gather along the nearly six-mile (10-kilometer) route in Pasadena, where the two-hour parade kicked off. Millions more watch on national television. Organizers at the Pasadena Tournament of Roses, the group that organizes the parade ahead of the Rose Bowl college football game, said they made only small changes to accommodate the weather, such as the tops being up on convertibles carrying grand marshal Earvin “Magic” Johnson and other VIPs.

    Rain forecasts for the Rose Parade, which had been dry for 20 years, grew all week. On Thursday, the National Weather Service issued a flood watch for all California counties and a coastal flood advisory through Sunday afternoon along much of the Pacific Coast near San Francisco.

    Meanwhile, residents in the areas hit hardest by last year’s devastating Los Angeles-area wildfires were under evacuation warnings.

    In New York City, the sun came out ahead of Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s inaugural celebration, but other areas of the Northeast and Midwest were hit by an Alberta clipper storm and trailing Arctic front that brought snow squalls and high winds.

    Conditions varied widely — from snow showers to heavier squalls — from Wisconsin through northern Illinois and Michigan and into northern New Jersey, southeastern New York and New England.

    About a quarter of flights were delayed out of both San Diego International Airport and Boston Logan, according to the flight tracking website FlightAware.

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  • Rain soaks Rose Parade in California and snow squalls hit Midwest and Northeast on first day of 2026

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    Rain poured down on the iconic Rose Parade on Thursday for the first time in 20 years, as flood warnings and evacuation orders in Southern California joined snow squalls and frigid temperatures in the country’s midsection to mark the first day of 2026.

    Marching bands, floats and throngs of spectators were soaked by one to two inches (2.5 to 5 centimeters) of New Year’s Day rain at the 137th Rose Parade in Pasadena. The mercury stood at a chilly 58 degrees Fahrenheit (14.4 degrees Celsius) at the 8 a.m. start of the parade.

    Across the country, in New York City, hats and gloves were as necessary as noisemakers at the city’s New Year’s Eve ball drop, where temperatures near freezing appeared to be the coldest in 10 years.

    Hundreds of thousands of people gather along the nearly six-mile (10-kilometer) route in Pasadena, where the two-hour parade kicked off. Millions more watch on national television. Organizers at the Pasadena Tournament of Roses, the group that organizes the parade ahead of the Rose Bowl college football game, said they made only small changes to accommodate the weather, such as the tops being up on convertibles carrying grand marshal Earvin “Magic” Johnson and other VIPs.

    Rain forecasts for the Rose Parade, which had been dry for 20 years, grew all week. On Thursday, the National Weather Service issued a flood watch for all California counties and a coastal flood advisory through Sunday afternoon along much of the Pacific Coast near San Francisco.

    Meanwhile, residents in the areas hit hardest by last year’s devastating Los Angeles-area wildfires were under evacuation warnings.

    In New York City, the sun came out ahead of Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s inaugural celebration, but other areas of the Northeast and Midwest were hit by an Alberta clipper storm and trailing Arctic front that brought snow squalls and high winds.

    Conditions varied widely — from snow showers to heavier squalls — from Wisconsin through northern Illinois and Michigan and into northern New Jersey, southeastern New York and New England.

    About a quarter of flights were delayed out of both San Diego International Airport and Boston Logan, according to the flight tracking website FlightAware.

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  • Trump administration orders a Colorado coal-fired power generator to stay open

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    FORT COLLINS, Colo. — The Trump administration has told another coal-fired power facility to remain open, this time ordering the owners of a Colorado electricity generating unit to keep it running beyond its Wednesday retirement date.

    Compliance will cost Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association and the other owners of the Craig Station power plant in northwestern Colorado. The plant owners will need to fix a broken valve that put the power plant’s 446-megawatt Unit 1 out of operation on Dec. 19, Tri-State said in a statement.

    The order from Energy Secretary Chris Wright follows recent Department of Energy moves to keep coal-fired power stations open in Indiana, Washington state and Michigan despite efforts by their owners to close them.

    It’s part of President Donald Trump’s push to revive the U.S. coal industry at a time when many utilities are shifting to cheaper, less-polluting energy sources such as natural gas and renewables. The administration, meanwhile, has blocked renewable energy, including wind power.

    The 45-year-old generator in Colorado, one of three at Craig Station, had been scheduled to close at the end of 2025.

    “As a not-for-profit cooperative, our membership will bear the costs of compliance with this order unless we can identify a method to share costs with those in the region,” Tri-State CEO Duane Highley said in the statement.

    The power plant’s owners had been planning since 2016 to shut down Unit 1 for economic reasons and to comply with “numerous state and federal requirements.”

    Asked how much returning the unit to operation would cost and how long that would take, Tri-State spokesperson Amy Robertson said by email that the utility had no further information to share.

    The generator must remain operational to address a shortage of electricity and electrical generation in the northwestern U.S., Wright wrote in Tuesday’s emergency order keeping the unit operational.

    “The Trump Administration is committed to lowering energy costs and keeping American families safe,” Wright said in a release.

    Wade Gerber, who works at the power plant, said the announcement changes little for Colorado’s coal country, which is undergoing a long-term shift away from the fossil fuel as a pillar of the local economy.

    He sees Craig — a city of about 9,000 people — as caught in the middle of a dizzying political battle.

    “What does this administration get to do? What does the next administration get to do? Is it going to make (coal) any long-term thing? No, probably not,” Gerber said.

    Gerber recently opened a distillery that caters to the cocktail lounge his wife owns next door, with plans to begin distributing more widely in 2026.

    “I already told both my bosses, if that blows up even a little bit, I can tell you: ‘Here’s my two-week notice,’” Gerber said.

    Colorado officials criticized the Trump administration order as a disservice to electricity users.

    “It is unacceptable to burden ratepayers with these unnecessary costs,” Democratic U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet said in a statement.

    The power plant was completed in 1980. Its No. 2 and No. 3 units have been scheduled to be retired in 2028. The plant’s fuel is mined at the nearby Trapper Mine, which is also scheduled to close.

    ____

    Brittany Peterson in Denver contributed to this report.

    ___

    The Associated Press receives support from the Walton Family Foundation for coverage of water and environmental policy. The AP is solely responsible for all content. For all of AP’s environmental coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/climate-and-environment

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  • Nasty weather on tap for New Year fetes at Rose Parade in California and revelers in New York City

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    Two iconic celebrations to ring in the New Year — the Rose Parade in Southern California and the midnight ball drop in New York City — are in for some rough weather.

    Marching bands, floats and throngs of spectators are bracing for a rare dose of New Year’s Day rain and even thunder at the prestigious Rose Parade in Pasadena. Across the country, in New York City, hats and gloves were as necessary as noisemakers Wednesday for what could be the coldest ball drop in many years.

    Rain forecasts for the 137th Rose Parade, which has been dry for 20 years, have grown all week.

    “It’s looking like a wet one,” AccuWeather meteorologist John Feerick said. “It may not be raining the whole time. There could be some pretty good downpours. A rumble of thunder or two is not out of the question.”

    People were allowed to show up Wednesday to secure spots along the nearly 6-mile (10-kilometer) route in Pasadena, but predictions of overnight rain could make the wait miserable. The two-hour parade starts at 8 a.m. Thursday and is typically attended by hundreds of thousands of people, in addition to millions more watching on national television.

    Organizers are making only small changes, said Candy Carlson, communications director for Pasadena Tournament of Roses, the group that organizes the parade ahead of the Rose Bowl college football game.

    The tops will be up on convertibles carrying grand marshal Earvin “Magic” Johnson and other VIPs, she said.

    In New York City, forecasters predict temperatures in the low 30s Fahrenheit (around zero degrees Celsius) amid snow flurries when hundreds of thousands of people witness the ball drop in Times Square on New Year’s Eve.

    The midnight temperature in New York could be “the coldest since the cusp of 2017 and 2018,” AccuWeather meteorologist Jesse Ferrell said.

    Elsewhere, rain is possible in Las Vegas, where several casinos will be shooting fireworks from rooftops. During Nashville’s Big Bash, a New Year’s Eve event at a park, temperatures will be in the low 30s when an illuminated music note drops at midnight in the Tennessee city.

    New Orleans will be in the mid-40s Fahrenheit (around 7 degrees Celsius) for a free concert and fireworks along the Mississippi River.

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  • Florida’s rare and controversial black bear hunt kills 52

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    ORLANDO, Fla. — Fifty-two bears were killed during Florida’s first black bear hunt in a decade, state wildlife officials said Tuesday.

    The bear hunt, which started Dec. 6 and ended on Sunday, had been restricted to 172 permit holders who had won their vouchers through a random lottery involving more than 160,000 applicants.

    At least four dozen of the permits went to opponents of the hunt who never intended to use them, according to the Florida chapter of the Sierra Club, which encouraged critics to apply in the hopes of saving bears. Each permit holder was allowed to kill one bear as part of the state’s wildlife management strategy.

    The Florida black bear population is considered one of the state’s conservation success stories, having grown from just several hundred bears in the 1970s to an estimate over 4,000. Opponents had questioned whether the hunt was necessary, but they were unable to convince the courts to halt it.

    “The 2025 black bear hunt, rooted in sound scientific data, was a success,” Roger Young, executive director of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, said in a statement.

    The kill count may have been lower than expected for a range of reasons, including the possibilities that the state overestimated the population or conservationists managed to take up enough permits to make a difference, said Susannah Randolph, director of the Sierra Club’s Florida chapter.

    The lack of transparency by state officials about the number raised questions about whether it was accurate since there were no check-in stations for hunters like in 2015, and hunters self-reported their kills via the commission’s hunting app, Randolph said.

    Until Tuesday, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission had refused to divulge any details on the number of bears killed, despite multiple media requests.

    “They have designed it so that they don’t actually know the numbers, and they have been dodging the media,” Randolph said. “So that is super fishy right off the bat.”

    This year’s hunting plan had more stringent rules than the 2015 hunt, in which permits were provided to anyone who could pay for them, resulting in more than 3,700 permits issued. That led to a chaotic event that was shut down days early. Of the 304 bears killed, at least 38 were females with cubs, meaning the young bears may have died too.

    ___

    Follow Mike Schneider on the social platform Bluesky: @mikeysid.bsky.social

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  • Roses in the rain? New Year’s Day parade in Pasadena gets wet forecast

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    For the first time in 20 years, rain is expected to intrude on the Rose Parade in Southern California, a venerable New Year’s Day event that attracts thousands of spectators and is watched by millions more on TV.

    Storms caused Christmas week flooding, mudslides and other miseries across the region. Now comes a 100% chance of rain Thursday in Pasadena, the National Weather Service said.

    “We try not to say that word around here,” joked Candy Carlson, a spokesperson for the Pasadena Tournament of Roses, the organization behind the 137th Rose Parade, which precedes the Rose Bowl College Football Playoff game.

    Arctic air is meanwhile expected to blanket much of the eastern two-thirds of the country, the weather service said.

    In New York City, forecasters predict temperatures in the low 30s Fahrenheit (around zero degrees Celsius), which is not unusual, when the ball drops in Times Square on New Year’s Eve. Light rain is possible in Las Vegas, where several casinos will be shooting fireworks from rooftops.

    During Nashville’s Big Bash, a New Year’s Eve event at a park, temperatures will be in the low 30s when an illuminated music note drops at midnight in the Tennessee city. New Orleans will be in the mid-40s Fahrenheit (around 7 degrees Celsius) for a free concert and fireworks along the Mississippi River.

    At the Rose Parade, it has rained only 10 times in the parade’s history — and not since 2006, Carlson said.

    Rare wet weather is unlikely to keep floats, marching bands, entertainers and others from participating. Carlson said people riding on floats will have rain gear if necessary, and tow trucks will be standing by in case of mechanical problems.

    Spectators will need to prepare, too. Umbrellas are not allowed in parade seating areas that require tickets, though the ban doesn’t cover people who simply line up along the nearly 6-mile (10-kilometer) route. Curbside camping — no tents — begins at noon Wednesday. Rain also is predicted that day.

    “Last year’s parade theme was ‘Best Day Ever!’ and six days later it was the worst,” said Lisa Derderian, spokesperson for the city of Pasadena, referring to the devastating Eaton wildfire in Los Angeles County. “We want to start the new year on a high note. Hopefully Mother Nature cooperates with the weather.”

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  • Scientists obtain first 3D images inside Mexico’s Popocatépetl volcano

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    POPOCATÉPETL VOLCANO, Mexico — In the predawn darkness, a team of scientists climbs the slope of Mexico’s Popocatépetl volcano, one of the world’s most active and whose eruption could affect millions of people. Its mission: figure out what is happening under the crater.

    For five years, the group from Mexico’s National Autonomous University has climbed the volcano with kilos of equipment, risked data loss due to bad weather or a volcanic explosion and used artificial intelligence to analyze the seismic data. Now, the team has created the first three-dimensional image of the 17,883-foot (5,452-meter) volcano’s interior, which tells them where the magma accumulates and will help them better understand its activity, and, eventually, help authorities better react to eruptions.

    Marco Calò, professor in the UNAM’s Geophysics Institute’s vulcanology department and the project leader, invited The Associated Press to accompany the team on its most recent expedition, the last before its research on the volcano will be published.

    Inside an active volcano, everything is moving: the rocks, magma, gas and aquifers. It all generates seismic signals.

    Most of the world’s volcanoes that pose a risk to humans already have detailed maps of their interiors, but not Popocatépetl, despite the fact that some 25 million people live within a 62-mile (100 kilometers) radius and houses, schools, hospitals and five airports could be affected by an eruption.

    Other scientists took some early images 15 years ago, but they showed contradictory results and did not have sufficient resolution to see “how the volcanic edifice was being built,” and above all, where the magma gathered, Calò said.

    His team increased the number of seismographs from the 12 provided by Mexico’s National Disaster Prevention Center to 22 to cover the entire perimeter of the volcano. Even though just three can alert to an emergency, many more are needed to understand what is behind those emergencies.

    The devices measure vibrations in the ground 100 times per second and generate data that Karina Bernal, 33, a doctoral student and researcher on the project, processed by using artificial intelligence to adapt algorithms developed for other volcanoes.

    “I taught the machine about the different types of tremors there are in El Popo” and with that they were able to catalog the different kinds of seismic signals, she said.

    Little by little the scientists began to infer what kinds of material were where, in what state, at what temperature and at what depth. Later they were able to map it.

    The result is far more complex than the drawings of volcanoes most saw in school, with a main vent connecting a chamber of magma with the surface.

    This first three-dimensional cross-sectional image goes 11 miles (18 kilometers) below the crater and shows what appear to be various pools of magma at different depths, with rock or other material between them and more numerous toward the southeast of the crater.

    Popocatépetl emerged in the crater of other volcanoes in its current form more than 20,000 years ago and has been active since 1994, spewing plumes of smoke, gas and ash more or less daily. The activity periodically forms a dome over the main vent, which eventually collapses, causing an eruption. The last was in 2023.

    Calò, a 46-year-old Sicilian, speaks passionately about El Popo, as Mexicans call the volcano, rattling off trivia.

    He explains that its height can change because of eruptions and recounts how Popocatépetl, in the first century, had its own “little Pompeii” when a village on its flanks, Tetimpa, was buried in ash. In the early 20th century, it was human actions — using dynamite to extract sulfur from the crater — that provoked an eruption. And even though El Popo emanates more greenhouse gases than almost any other volcano, its emissions are still a small fraction of what humans generate in nearby Mexico City.

    For years Calò studied volcanic activity from his computer, but trying to “understand how something works without touching it” spurred a feeling of disappointment, he said.

    That changed with Popocatépetl, a volcano he describes as “majestic.”

    After hours of walking up the volcano’s flank, Calò’s team sets up camp in a pine grove at about 12,500 feet of elevation, an apparent safe spot from pyroclastic explosions, since the trees have managed to grow to significant height.

    A short distance higher on the mountain, the trees and scrub give way to ash and sediment.

    They must cross a lahar, a mixture of rock and ash that during the rainy season becomes a dangerous mudflow carrying away everything in its path. Now, the dry clearing provides a spectacular view: to the east the Pico de Orizaba — Mexico’s tallest volcano and mountain — and the inactive volcano La Malinche; to the north, Iztaccíhuatl, a dormant volcanic peak known as “the sleeping woman.”

    Popocatépetl’s sounds seem to multiply at night with the echoes. An explosion like a rocket might sound like it’s coming from one direction, but a puff of smoke from the crater belies the real source.

    Karina Rodríguez, a 26-year-old master’s student on the team, said you can also hear small tremors in the earth or even ash falling like rain when the volcano is more active. On dark nights, the rim of the crater glows orange.

    Having direct knowledge of the volcano provides a much more objective sense of the limits of their analysis, Calò said.

    “We have a natural laboratory here,” he said. It’s “very important to be able to understand and give residents detailed, trustworthy information about what is happening inside the volcano.”

    At 13,780 feet (4,200 meters), their backpacks full of computers, equipment to analyze gases, batteries and water begin to weigh more and their pace slows.

    Ash, dark and warm, dominates the landscape here.

    At a seismographic station, the team digs up the equipment and celebrates that it’s still working. They download its data and rebury it.

    A “volcanic bomb,” a rock a yard and a half in diameter and weighing tons, marks the way and gives an idea of what the start of an eruption can mean. That is why the top area of the volcano is restricted, though not everyone pays heed. In 2022, a person died after being hit by a rock about 300 yards (meters) from the crater.

    A bottle of tequila near a rocky hollow, known as El Popo’s belly button, hints at some of the traditions surrounding the volcano, including an annual pilgrimage to what some consider a point of connection to the underworld.

    Digging up one of the last seismic stations, Calò’s face falls. The last registered data are from months earlier. The battery died. Sometimes rats chew the machines’ wires or an explosion causes more serious damage.

    The project has yielded some certainties and if repeated will allow the analysis of changes that eventually will help authorities make better decisions when eruptions occur.

    But Calò says that, as always happens with science, it has also generated new questions that they will have to try to address, like why the tremors are more frequent on the southeast side — where there is more accumulated magma — and what implications that could have.

    This was the last expedition before their years of work to map the volcano’s interior is published. Watching the volcano’s interior move in 3D on a computer screen makes all of the effort worthwhile.

    “It’s what drives you to start another project and keep climbing,” Rodríguez, the master’s student, said.

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  • Winter storm brings blizzard conditions and dangerous wind chills

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    A potent winter storm threatened blizzard-like conditions, treacherous travel and power outages in parts of the Upper Midwest as other areas of the country braced Monday for plunging temperatures, strong winds and a mix of snow, ice, and rain.

    The snow and strengthening winds began spreading Sunday across the northern Plains, where the National Weather Service warned of whiteout conditions and possible blizzard conditions that could make travel impossible in some areas. Snowfall totals were expected to exceed a foot (30 centimeters) across parts of the upper Great Lakes and as much as double that along the south shore of Lake Superior.

    “Part of the storm system is getting heavy snow, other parts of the storm along the cold front are getting higher winds and much colder temperatures as the front passes,” said Bob Oravec, a lead forecaster at the National Weather Service office in College Park, Maryland. “They’re all related to each other — different parts of the country will be receiving different effects from this storm.”

    The weather service warned of “dangerous wind chills” as low as minus 30 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 34.4 degrees Celsius) in North Dakota and into Minnesota from Sunday night into Monday.

    In the South, meteorologists warned severe thunderstorms are likely to signal the arrival of a sharp cold front — bringing a sudden drop in temperatures and strong north winds that will abruptly end days of record warmth throughout that region.

    The high temperature in Atlanta was around 72 F (22 C) on Sunday, continuing a warming trend after climbing to 78 F (about 26 C) to shatter the city’s record high temperature for Christmas Eve, the National Weather Service said. Numerous other record high temperatures were seen across the South and Midwest on the days after Christmas.

    But the incoming cold front was expected to drop rain on much of the South late Sunday night into Monday, and a big drop in temperatures Tuesday. Forecasters said the low temperature in Atlanta to 25 F (minus 3.9 C) by early Tuesday morning. The colder temperatures in the South are expected to persist through New Year’s Day.

    In Dallas, Sunday temperatures in the lower 80s (upper 20s C) could drop down to the mid 40s (single digits Celsius). In Little Rock, high temperatures of around 70 (21 C) on Sunday could drop down to highs in the mid-30s on Monday.

    “We’re definitely going back towards a more winter pattern,” Oravec said.

    The storm is expected to intensify as it moves east, drawing energy from a sharp clash between frigid air plunging south from Canada and unusually warm air that has lingered across the southern United States, according to the National Weather Service.

    ___

    Willingham reported from Concord, New Hampshire. Martin reported from Kennesaw, Georgia.

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  • South Korea’s climate pledge to cut coal, lower emissions clash with US push for LNG purchases

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    SEOUL, South Korea — South Korea is promising to shrink its reliance on coal power as part of its pledge to reduce carbon emissions that contribute to climate change, but that ambition is at odds with the Trump administration’s push for more U.S. natural gas exports.

    At recent United Nations climate talks, South Korea’s new Ministry of Climate, Energy and Environment announced plans to retire most of the country’s coal-fired power plants by 2040 and to at least halve its carbon emissions by 2035.

    Experts say this shows that South Korea, a major coal importer with one of the world’s largest fleets of coal plants, wants to speed up its renewable energy transition, which lags behind its neighbors and global averages.

    But as part of trade deals with President Donald Trump, Seoul is raising imports of U.S. liquefied natural gas, or LNG. Climate activists contend such plans may conflict with the country’s pledges to help curb climate change and could lock South Korea into a fossil fuel-dependent future.

    Talks are underway for South Korea to invest $350 billion in U.S. projects and purchase up to $100 billion worth of U.S. energy products, including LNG, a natural gas cooled to liquid form for easy storage and travel. It burns cleaner than coal, but still causes planet-warming emissions, especially of methane.

    South Korea’s overall LNG imports may not increase if it offsets purchases of more U.S. natural gas by reducing imports from other sources such as Australia and the Middle East.

    Still, it’s unclear how South Korea will “manage and consolidate all this somehow contradictory planning regarding its energy sector,” said Michelle Kim, an energy specialist for the U.S.-based Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis.

    South Korea’s liberal President Lee Jae Myung, who won a snap election in June, campaigned for stronger climate commitments. They had softened under his conservative predecessor Yoon Suk Yeol, who was ousted after a short-lived martial law declaration.

    “As the global temperature rises, we all need to responsibly take climate action and Korea will have a stronger sense of responsibility in tackling the climate crisis,” Kim Sung-hwan, the inaugural Minister of Climate, Energy and Environment, said in an interview with The Associated Press.

    South Korea’s goal to cut carbon emissions by 53% to 61% of its 2018 level, fell short of climate activists’ expectations. Business lobbies representing major manufacturers had proposed a 48% emissions reduction target.

    “This range presents an effort by the government to accommodate two very different ways of thinking about the economic and climate future of the nation,” said Joojin Kim of the Seoul-based advocacy group, Solutions for Our Climate.

    The South Korean government made the ambitious commitment to increase its clean energy use even after Trump’s sweeping ‘America First’ tariffs spurred energy negotiations between Seoul and Washington.

    As part of its broader efforts to avoid higher tariffs, South Korea offered to import more LNG from the U.S., but the final trade deal has not been announced.

    The agreement still under negotiation could last between three to 10 years, according to industry analysis and U.S. federal documents. Depending on the deal’s duration, South Korea may import between 3 million to 9 million tons of American LNG a year.

    LNG made up almost a fifth of South Korea’s total energy supply last year, according to the International Energy Agency, or IEA. The government’s target was to cut that to 10.6% by 2038.

    South Korea risks its climate goals if the pending trade deal increases the total volume of imported LNG, which will likely lead to an oversupply issue and the excess burning of gas to justify the deal, said Insung Lee, with Greenpeace in Seoul.

    “If we just replace coal plants with LNG, that means the coal exit actually doesn’t lead to a green transition and merely shifts Korea’s addiction from coal to gas, which undermines the whole spirit of climate action,” Lee said.

    Renewable energy generated 7% of South Korea’s domestic power in 2022, according to the IEA. South Korean government data show that had increased to 10.5% last year, still one of the lowest levels among leading economies.

    Japan, with an economy more than twice as big, generates 21% of its power from renewable sources. Spain, whose economy is about the same size as South Korea’s, gets 42% of its power from renewable sources.

    Clean energy provided about 30% of global electricity production in 2023.

    Nuclear power produces a major share of South Korea’s domestic energy, with government data showing that nuclear sources accounted for 31% of total electricity generation last year.

    “We will transition into a new energy system that focuses on renewables and nuclear, while phasing out coal,” said Kim, the energy minister. He said South Korea will use LNG as a “complementary or emergency energy source” to make up for irregularities in renewable energy supplies.

    In early December, South Korea set another goal of boosting its offshore wind power capacity to 4 gigawatts, about 10 times the current level.

    South Korean companies that don’t cut back on carbon emissions may find that to be a competitive disadvantage, said Michelle Kim of the IEEFA.

    Many global industries, including shipping and aviation, face pressure to reduce their emissions by providing incentives for low emitters and creating deterrents for high ones, she said.

    “This is a lot of risk,” she said. “South Korea needs to speed up renewable energy deployment and come out from high dependency on the fossil fuel industry.”

    At last month’s climate talks, South Korea joined the Powering Past Coal Alliance, a group of businesses, organizations and governments promoting the green energy transition.

    That’s mainly a symbolic move, said Bruce Douglas, with the Global Renewables Alliance. “But it signifies very clear government intention to move away from fossil fuels and towards clean power.”

    South Korea imports virtually all its coal, largely from Australia, Indonesia and Russia, and the switch to renewables is bound to impact regional markets.

    The pledge to retire 40 of South Korea’s 61 coal sites by 2040 may be “an enforced transition” for coal exporters in the Asia-Pacific region, said James Bowen, with Climate Analytics. “It’s a reality that they’re going to have to face this downturn in the market.”

    “The writing’s on the wall,” Bowen said. “One of the biggest importers in the world, one of the biggest customers, is starting to move away from coal.”

    ___

    The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. The AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

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  • Hungary’s ‘water guardian’ farmers fight back against desertification

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    KISKUNMAJSA, Hungary — Oszkár Nagyapáti climbed to the bottom of a sandy pit on his land on the Great Hungarian Plain and dug into the soil with his hand, looking for a sign of groundwater that in recent years has been in accelerating retreat.

    “It’s much worse, and it’s getting worse year after year,” he said as cloudy liquid slowly seeped into the hole. ”Where did so much water go? It’s unbelievable.”

    Nagyapáti has watched with distress as the region in southern Hungary, once an important site for agriculture, has become increasingly parched and dry. Where a variety of crops and grasses once filled the fields, today there are wide cracks in the soil and growing sand dunes more reminiscent of the Sahara Desert than Central Europe.

    The region, known as the Homokhátság, has been described by some studies as semiarid — a distinction more common in parts of Africa, the American Southwest or Australian Outback — and is characterized by very little rain, dried-out wells and a water table plunging ever deeper underground.

    In a 2017 paper in European Countryside, a scientific journal, researchers cited “the combined effect of climatic changes, improper land use and inappropriate environmental management” as causes for the Homokhátság’s aridification, a phenomenon the paper called unique in this part of the continent.

    Fields that in previous centuries would be regularly flooded by the Danube and Tisza Rivers have, through a combination of climate change-related droughts and poor water retention practices, become nearly unsuitable for crops and wildlife.

    Now a group of farmers and other volunteers, led by Nagyapáti, are trying to save the region and their lands from total desiccation using a resource for which Hungary is famous: thermal water.

    “I was thinking about what could be done, how could we bring the water back or somehow create water in the landscape,” Nagyapáti told The Associated Press. “There was a point when I felt that enough is enough. We really have to put an end to this. And that’s where we started our project to flood some areas to keep the water in the plain.”

    Along with the group of volunteer “water guardians,” Nagyapáti began negotiating with authorities and a local thermal spa last year, hoping to redirect the spa’s overflow water — which would usually pour unused into a canal — onto their lands. The thermal water is drawn from very deep underground.

    According to the water guardians’ plan, the water, cooled and purified, would be used to flood a 2½-hectare (6-acre) low-lying field — a way of mimicking the natural cycle of flooding that channelizing the rivers had ended.

    “When the flooding is complete and the water recedes, there will be 2½ hectares of water surface in this area,” Nagyapáti said. “This will be quite a shocking sight in our dry region.”

    A 2024 study by Hungary’s Eötvös Loránd University showed that unusually dry layers of surface-level air in the region had prevented any arriving storm fronts from producing precipitation. Instead, the fronts would pass through without rain, and result in high winds that dried out the topsoil even further.

    The water guardians hoped that by artificially flooding certain areas, they wouldn’t only raise the groundwater level but also create a microclimate through surface evaporation that could increase humidity, reduce temperatures and dust and have a positive impact on nearby vegetation.

    Tamás Tóth, a meteorologist in Hungary, said that because of the potential impact such wetlands can have on the surrounding climate, water retention “is simply the key issue in the coming years and for generations to come, because climate change does not seem to stop.”

    “The atmosphere continues to warm up, and with it the distribution of precipitation, both seasonal and annual, has become very hectic, and is expected to become even more hectic in the future,” he said.

    Following another hot, dry summer this year, the water guardians blocked a series of sluices along a canal, and the repurposed water from the spa began slowly gathering in the low-lying field.

    After a couple of months, the field had nearly been filled. Standing beside the area in early December, Nagyapáti said that the shallow marsh that had formed “may seem very small to look at it, but it brings us immense happiness here in the desert.”

    He said the added water will have a “huge impact” within a roughly 4-kilometer (2½-mile) radius, “not only on the vegetation, but also on the water balance of the soil. We hope that the groundwater level will also rise.”

    Persistent droughts in the Great Hungarian Plain have threatened desertification, a process where vegetation recedes because of high heat and low rainfall. Weather-damaged crops have dealt significant blows to the country’s overall gross domestic product, prompting Prime Minister Viktor Orbán to announce this year the creation of a “drought task force” to deal with the problem.

    After the water guardians’ first attempt to mitigate the growing problem in their area, they said they experienced noticeable improvements in the groundwater level, as well as an increase of flora and fauna near the flood site.

    The group, which has grown to more than 30 volunteers, would like to expand the project to include another flooded field, and hopes their efforts could inspire similar action by others to conserve the most precious resource.

    “This initiative can serve as an example for everyone, we need more and more efforts like this,” Nagyapáti said. “We retained water from the spa, but retaining any kind of water, whether in a village or a town, is a tremendous opportunity for water replenishment.”

    ___

    The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

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  • California drops lawsuit seeking to reinstate federal funding for the state’s bullet train

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    OAKLAND, Calif. — California this week dropped a lawsuit officials filed against the Trump administration over the federal government’s withdrawing of $4 billion for the state’s long-delayed high-speed rail project.

    The U.S. Transportation Department slashed funds for the bullet train aimed at connecting San Francisco to Los Angeles in July. The Trump administration has said the California High-Speed Rail Authority had “ no viable plan ” to complete a large segment of the project in the farm-rich Central Valley.

    The authority quickly filed a lawsuit, with Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom calling the federal government’s decision “a political stunt to punish California.”

    The authority said this week that it would focus on other funding sources to complete the project, which is estimated to cost more than $100 billion.

    “This action reflects the State’s assessment that the federal government is not a reliable, constructive, or trustworthy partner in advancing high-speed rail in California,” an authority spokesperson said in a statement.

    The Transportation Department did not respond to a request for comment. President Donald Trump and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy have both previously criticized the project as a “train to nowhere.”

    “The Railroad we were promised still does not exist, and never will,” Trump said on his social media platform Truth Social in July. “This project was Severely Overpriced, Overregulated, and NEVER DELIVERED.”

    The authority’s decision to drop the lawsuit comes as the group seeks private investors to support the bullet train. The project recently secured $1 billion in annual funding from the state’s cap-and-trade program through 2045.

    The program sets a declining limit on total planet-warming emissions in the state from major polluters. Companies must reduce their emissions, buy allowances from the state or other businesses, or fund projects aimed at offsetting their emissions. Money the state receives from the sales funds climate-change mitigation, affordable housing and transportation projects, as well as utility bill credits for Californians.

    The rail authority said its shift in focus away from federal funding offers “a new opportunity.”

    “Moving forward without the Trump administration’s involvement allows the Authority to pursue proven global best practices used successfully by modern high-speed rail systems around the world,” a spokesperson said in a statement.

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  • Storms bring heavy rain to the Pacific Northwest, snow and freezing rain to the Upper Midwest

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  • Virginia offshore wind developer sues over Trump administration order halting projects

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    The developers of a Virginia offshore wind project are asking a federal judge to block a Trump administration order that halted construction of their project, along with four others, over national security concerns

    NORFOLK, Va. — The developers of a Virginia offshore wind project are asking a federal judge to block a Trump administration order that halted construction of their project, along with four others, over national security concerns.

    Dominion Energy Virginia said in its lawsuit filed late Tuesday that the government’s order is “arbitrary and capricious” and unconstitutional. The Richmond-based company is developing Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind, a project it says is essential to meet dramatically growing energy needs driven by dozens of new data centers.

    The Interior Department did not detail the security concerns in blocking the five projects on Monday. In a letter to project developers, Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management set a 90-day period — and possibly longer — “to determine whether the national security threats posed by this project can be adequately mitigated.”

    The other projects are the Vineyard Wind project under construction in Massachusetts, Revolution Wind in Rhode Island and Connecticut and two projects in New York: Sunrise Wind and Empire Wind. Democratic governors in those states have vowed to fight the order, the latest action by the Trump administration to hobble offshore wind in its push against renewable energy sources.

    Dominion’s project has been under construction since early 2024 and was scheduled to come online early next year, providing enough energy to power about 660,000 homes. The company said the delay was costing it more than $5 million a day in losses solely for the ships used in round-the-clock construction, and that customers or the company would eventually bear the cost.

    Dominion called this week’s order “the latest in a series of irrational agency actions attacking offshore wind and then doubling down when those actions are found unlawful.”

    The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management didn’t immediately respond to an email seeking comment.

    U.S. District Judge Jamar Walker set a hearing for 2 p.m. Monday on Dominion’s request for a temporary restraining order.

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    The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

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  • Why your holiday gift returns might go to a landfill and what you can do about it

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    The holiday season will soon come to a close, but the busiest time of the year for product returns is just beginning.

    The National Retail Federation estimates 17% of holiday purchases will be sent back this year. More retailers are reporting extended return windows and increased holiday staff to handle the rush this year.

    A major driver for returns is uncertainty. When we buy for other people, finding what they want is a bit of a guessing game. Online purchases have higher return rates because finding the right size and color is tough when you’re just staring at images on screens.

    “Clothing and footwear, as you can imagine, because fit is such an important criteria, they have higher rates of returns,” said Saskia van Gendt, chief sustainability officer at Blue Yonder, which sells software designed to improve companies’ supply chain management.

    Returns come with an environmental cost, but there’s a lot consumers and companies are doing to minimize it.

    If a company sells a thing, it’s probably packaged in plastic. Plastic is made from oil, and oil production releases emissions that warm the planet. If that thing is bought online, it’s put on a plane or a train or a truck that usually uses oil-based fuel.

    If you buy a thing and return it, it goes through most or all of that all over again.

    And once those products are back with the retailer, they may be sent along to a refurbisher, liquidator, recycler or landfill. All these steps require more travel, packaging and energy, ultimately translating to more emissions. Joseph Sarkis, who teaches supply chain management at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, estimates that returning an item increases its impact on the planet by 25% to 30%.

    Roughly a third of the time, those returns don’t make their way to another consumer. Because frequently, it’s not worth reselling.

    If, for example, you get a phone, but you send it back because you don’t like the color, the seller has to pay for the fuel and equipment to get the phone back, and then has to pay for the labor to assess whether it has been damaged since leaving the facility.

    “It can be quite expensive,” said Sarkis. “And if you send it out to a new customer and the phone is bad, imagine the reputational hit you’ll get. You’ll get another return and you’ll lose a customer who’s unhappy with the product or material. So the companies are hesitant to take that chance.”

    Something as expensive as a phone might get sold to a secondary or refurbishment market. But that $6 silicone spatula you got off Amazon? Probably not worth it. Plus, some stuff — think a bathing suit or a bra — is less attractive to customers if there’s a chance it’s been resold. The companies know that.

    And that’s where the costs of returns are more than just environmental — and consumers wind up paying. Even free returns aren’t really free.

    “Refurbishment, inspection, repackaging, all of these things get factored into the retail price,” said Christopher Faires, assistant professor of logistics and supply chain management at Georgia Southern University.

    If you want to reduce the impact of your returns, the first move is to increase their chances of resale. Be careful not to damage it, and reuse the packaging to send it back, said Cardiff University logistics and operations management lecturer Danni Zhang.

    If you have to return something, do it quickly. That ugly Christmas sweater you got at the white elephant office party has a much better chance of selling on Dec. 20 than it does on Jan. 5. Zhang said it’s not worth the cost to the company to store that sweater once it’s gone out of season.

    Another tip: in-person shopping is better than online because purchases get returned less often, and in-person returns are better, too — because those items get resold more often. Zhang said it reduces landfill waste. Sarkis said it reduces emissions because companies with brick-and-mortar locations spread out across the country and closer to consumers thus move restocked goods shorter distances.

    “If I can return in-store, then I definitely will,” Zhang said. “The managers can put that stuff back to the market as soon as possible.”

    Obviously the best thing consumers can do is minimize returns. Many shoppers engage in “bracketing behavior,” or buying multiple sizes of the same item, keeping what fits, and returning the rest.

    “This behavior of bringing the dressing room to our homes is not sustainable,” said Faires.

    If you’re buying for someone else, you can also consider taking the guesswork out of the equation and going for a gift card.

    “I know we do really want to pick up something really nice to express our love for our friends or our family. But if we are more sustainable, probably the gift card will be much better than just purchasing the product,” Zhang said.

    Sarkis wants to see companies provide more information in product descriptions about the environmental impact of returning an item, or how much of the purchase price factors in return costs.

    “But I don’t know if they want to send a negative message,” he said. “If you’re telling someone to stop something because of negative results, that’s not going to sell.”

    Sarkis and Zhang both say charging for returns would help. Already Amazon is requiring customers pay in certain situations.

    On the tech side, Blue Yonder’s recent acquisition of Optoro, a company that provides a return management system for retailers and brands, uses a software to quickly assess the condition of returned products and route them to stores that are most likely to resell them.

    “Having that process be more digitized, you can quickly assess the condition and put it back into inventory,” said van Gendt. “So that’s a big way to just avoid landfill and also all of the carbon emissions that are associated with that.”

    Clothing is returned most often. Many sizes do not reflect specific measurements, like women’s dresses, so they vary a lot between brands. Zhang said better sizing could help reduce the need for returns. On top of that, Sarkis said more 3D imaging and virtual reality programs could help customers be more accurate with their purchases, saving some returns.

    ___

    The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

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  • Storm system threatens more rainfall Christmas Day over waterlogged Southern California

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    LOS ANGELES — Rain from a powerful winter storm that swept across Southern California has begun to taper off, but another storm system was on the horizon for Christmas Day with showers and possible thunderstorms.

    Forecasters said Southern California could see its wettest Christmas in years and warned of flash flooding and mudslides. Areas scorched by wildfires in January saw evacuation warnings as heavy rains and gusty winds brought mudslides and debris flows.

    Many flood areas were in burn scar zones, which were stripped of vegetation by fire and are less able to absorb water.

    San Bernardino County firefighters said they rescued people trapped in cars Wednesday when mud and debris rushed down a road leading into Wrightwood, a resort town in the San Gabriel Mountains about 80 miles (130 kilometers) northeast of Los Angeles. It was not immediately clear how many were rescued.

    Firefighters also went door to door to check homes, and the area was under a shelter-in-place order, officials said. An evacuation order was issued for Lytle Creek, also in the San Gabriel Mountains.

    Travis Guenther and his family were trapped in Lytle Creek after roaring waters washed out the only bridge in or out of their neighborhood. More than a dozen neighbors took shelter at a community center or found hotel rooms.

    “Everybody that left to go to work this morning is stuck,” he said. “Half the families are here, and half the families are on the other side of the creek.”

    Guenther said he had plenty of supplies and was coordinating with other in the community of about 280 people. Two nurses who live on his street offered to help anyone who may need medical attention.

    Janice Quick, president of the Wrightwood Chamber of Commerce and a resident of the mountain town for 45 years, said a wildfire in 2024 left much of the terrain without tree coverage.

    The storm also stranded Dillan Brown, his wife and 14-month-old daughter at a rented cabin in Wrightwood with almost no food and only enough diapers for about another day. Roads leading off the mountain and to a grocery store became blocked by rocks and debris, Brown said.

    A resident learned of his situation and posted a call for help in a Facebook group. In less than an hour, neighbors showed up with more than enough supplies to ride out the storm, including bread, vegetables, milk, diapers and wipes.

    “I think we’re a little sad and upset that we’re not going to be home with our families,” Brown said, but the “kindness shown is definitely an overwhelming feeling.”

    Residents around burn scar zones from the Airport Fire in Orange County were also ordered to evacuate.

    Areas along the coast including Malibu were under flood warnings until Wednesday evening, and wind and flood advisories were issued for much of the Sacramento Valley and the San Francisco Bay Area.

    Several roads including a part of Interstate 5 near the Burbank Airport closed due to flooding.

    The storms were the result of multiple atmospheric rivers carrying massive plumes of moisture from the tropics during one of the busiest travel weeks of the year.

    Southern California typically gets half an inch to 1 inch (1.3 to 2.5 centimeters) of rain this time of year, but this week many areas could see between 4 and 8 inches (10 to 20 centimeters) with even more in the mountains, National Weather Service meteorologist Mike Wofford said.

    Heavy snow and gusts created “near white-out conditions” in parts of the Sierra Nevada and made mountain pass trave treacherous. Officials said there was a “considerable” avalanche risk around Lake Tahoe, and a winter storm warning was in effect until Friday morning.

    Gov. Gavin Newsom declared a state of emergency in six counties to allow state assistance in storm response.

    The state deployed emergency resources and first responders to several coastal and Southern California counties, and the California National Guard was on standby.

    The California Highway Patrol reported a seemingly weather-related crash south of Sacramento in which a Sacramento sheriff’s deputy died. James Caravallo, who was with the agency for 19 years, was apparently traveling at an unsafe speed, lost control on a wet road and crashed into a power pole, CHP Officer Michael Harper said via email.

    ___

    Associated Press writers Sophie Austin in Sacramento, Jessica Hill in Las Vegas and Hannah Schoenbaum in Salt Lake City contributed.

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