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Tag: Climate change

  • Spain Marks Deadly Valencia Floods Anniversary With State Funeral, Solemn Marches

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    MADRID (Reuters) – Spain’s King Felipe will attend a state funeral in the eastern region of Valencia as part of a number of events on Wednesday to mark one year since deadly floods killed 237 people.

    Authorities were still finding victims buried in the mud as recently as last week, as the country comes to terms with the most catastrophic flooding in Europe in more than five decades.

    Flash floods caused by torrential rains swept away bridges, cars and people and swamped homes and underground car parks on October 29, 2024. Some 229 people died in the Valencia region and a further eight in other parts of Spain.

    Local residents plan to lay out 229 emergency foil blankets representing the victims in a Valencia square.

    Two silent, torch-carrying marches will join together in Benetusser, one of the suburbs of Valencia city that was most affected by the floods.

    Anger over the handling of the catastrophe continues to rage a year later, with tens of thousands of people calling for conservative regional leader Carlos Mazon to resign at a demonstration in Valencia on Saturday.

    Protesters accused the regional government of failing to warn citizens early enough during the emergency, sending a text message alert when many buildings were already under water.

    A court is investigating Mazon’s handling of the emergency and his whereabouts on the day, after a local journalist said she had a nearly four-hour lunch with him when he was meant to be at an emergency services meeting. Mazon has refused to provide details of the lunch or show the restaurant bill but says he was kept informed at all times over the phone.

    The government on Tuesday approved 5 billion euros ($5.8 billion) of loan guarantees to help businesses and homes affected by the floods. The government has so far handed out more than 8 billion euros to clear up devastated areas.

    The heavy rains and subsequent flash floods were caused by a high-altitude isolated depression – referred to locally as a DANA – a highly destructive weather system created when cold and warm air meet to produce powerful rain clouds.

    It typically happens after a hot summer, and scientists believe the phenomenon is occurring more frequently due to climate change.

    (Reporting by Charlie Devereux, David Latona and Ana Cantero; Writing by Charlie Devereux; Editing by Sonali Paul)

    Copyright 2025 Thomson Reuters.

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  • Climate Inaction is Leading to Millions of Deaths Each Year

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    Global failure to adapt to climate change is taking a toll on people’s lives and is responsible for millions of deaths every year, according to a new report from The Lancet. 

    The Lancet today published its 9th annual “Countdown on Health and Climate Change” report, led by University College London and produced in collaboration with the World Health Organization. It aims to provide a comprehensive breakdown of the connections between climate change and health.

    “This year’s health stocktake paints a bleak and undeniable picture of the devastating health harms reaching all corners of the world—with record-breaking threats to health from heat, extreme weather events, and wildfire smoke killing millions. The destruction to lives and livelihoods will continue to escalate until we end our fossil fuel addiction and dramatically up our game to adapt,” Marina Romanello, executive director of the Lancet Countdown at University College London, warned in a press release.  

    Twelve of the 20 indicators for the health risks and impacts of climate change in the report set concerning new records—showing that the health impacts caused by our changing climate have reached unprecedented levels that cannot be ignored. The indicators studied include extreme heat, weather events, food security, and pollution.

    Weather events, like extreme heat and wildfires, are becoming more common due to climate change and are having a deadly impact on the lives of thousands. The number of heat-related deaths have surged 23% since the 1990s, now reaching 546,000 a year, according to the report. In 2024, the hottest year on record, the average person was exposed to a record 16 additional health-threatening hot days, the report found. Air pollution from wildfire smoke was also linked to a record 154,000 deaths last year.

    Delays in the adoption of clean energy are also taking a toll on our health. Each year, 2.5 million deaths are attributable to the air pollution that comes from continued burning of fossil fuels. Many of these deaths could be prevented by the transition to clean energy—air pollution resulting from the household use of dirty fuels and technologies across 65 countries resulted in 2.3 million deaths in 2022, according to the report. Energy related emissions have reached new highs, the report says, with the world’s largest fossil fuel giants having increased their projected production to a scale three times greater than a liveable planet can support. According to the Paris Agreement, the world must peak global emissions before this year at the latest and decline 43% by 2030 in order to limit global warming by 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.

    The report calls on leaders to focus on green solutions that can also improve health outcomes, and warns that political backsliding on climate commitments will only cause more harm. “Scarce financial support for adaptation remains a key barrier, and data in this report shows it is still grossly insufficient to cover the financial needs disclosed by countries,” said Romanello. “A political shift towards reduced foreign aid support from some of the world’s wealthiest countries, further restricts financial support for climate change action, leaving all populations increasingly unprotected.”  

    In spite of the rollbacks on climate action in the U.S., many governments and communities are taking action globaly—and reaping the health benefits that come along with it. According to the most recent data the study analyzed, an increased shift away from coal, particularly in wealthy countries, prevented an estimated 160,000 premature deaths annually between 2010 and 2022, and renewable energy generation also reached record-highs in 2022.

    It’s just one example of how combating climate change can improve health outcomes for people around the globe, the report’s contributors say.

    “Climate change action remains one of the greatest health opportunities of the 21st century, also driving development, spurring innovation, creating jobs, and reducing energy poverty,” Tafadzwa Mahbhaudi, director of the Lancet Countdown Africa said in a statement. “Realizing the myriad benefits of a health-centered response requires unlocking so-far untapped opportunities to mitigate climate change and build resilience to the impacts already being felt.”

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    Simmone Shah

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  • Melissa Is a Beast Among a String of Monster Atlantic Storms. Scientists Explain

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    Hurricane Melissa, which struck Jamaica with record-tying 185 mph winds Tuesday, was a beast that stood out as extreme even in a record number of monster storms spawned over the last decade in a superheated Atlantic Ocean.

    Melissa somehow shook off at least three different meteorological conditions that normally weaken major hurricanes and was still gaining power as it hit, scientists said, a bit amazed.

    And while more storms these days are undergoing rapid intensification — gaining 35 mph in wind speed over 24 hours — Melissa did a lot more than that. It achieved what’s called extreme rapid intensification — gaining at least 58 mph over 24 hours. In fact, Melissa turbocharged by about 70 mph during a 24-hour period last week, and had an unusual second round of rapid intensification that spun it up to 175 mph, scientists said.

    “It’s been a remarkable, just a beast of a storm,” Colorado State University hurricane researcher Phil Klotzbach said.

    When Melissa came ashore it tied strength records for Atlantic hurricanes making landfall, both in wind speed and barometric pressure, which is a key measurement that meteorologists use, said Klotzbach and University of Miami hurricane researcher Brian McNoldy. The pressure measurement tied the deadly 1935 Labor Day storm in Florida, while the 185 mph wind speed equaled marks set that year and during 2019’s Hurricane Dorian. Hurricane Allen reached 190 mph winds in 1980, but not at landfall.

    Usually when major hurricanes brew they get so strong that the wind twirling in the center of the storm gets so intense and warm in places that the eyewall needs to grow, so a small one collapses and a bigger one forms. That’s called an eyewall replacement cycle, McNoldy said, and it usually weakens the storm at least temporarily.

    Melissa showed some signs of being ready to do this, but it never did, McNoldy and Klotzbach said.

    Another weird thing is that Melissa sat offshore of mountainous Jamaica for awhile before coming inland. Usually mountains, even on islands, tear up storms, but not Melissa.

    “It was next to a big mountainous island and it doesn’t even notice it’s there,” McNoldy said in amazement.

    Warm water is the fuel for hurricanes. The hotter and deeper the water, the more a storm can power up. But when storms sit over one area for awhile — which Melissa did for days on end — it usually brings cold water up from the depths, choking off the fuel a bit. But that didn’t happen to Melissa, said Bernadette Woods Placky, chief meteorologist for Climate Central, a combination of scientists and journalists who study climate change.

    “It’s wild how almost easily this was allowed to just keep venting,” Woods Placky said. “This had enough warm water at such high levels and it just kept going.”

    Melissa rapidly intensified during five six-hour periods as it hit the extreme rapid intensification level, McNoldy said. And then it jumped another 35 mph and “that’s extraordinary,” he said.

    For meteorologists following it “just your stomach would sink as you’d see these updates coming in,” Woods Placky said.

    “We were sitting at work on Monday morning with our team and you just saw the numbers just start jumping again, 175. And then again this morning (Tuesday), 185,” Woods Placky said.

    “It’s an explosion,” she said.

    One key factor is warm water. McNoldy said some parts of the ocean under Melissa were 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than the long-term average for this time of year.

    Climate Central, using scientifically accepted techniques of comparing what’s happening now to a fictional world with no human-caused climate change, estimated the role of global warming in Melissa. It said the water was 500 to 700 times more likely to be warmer than normal because of climate change.

    A rapid Associated Press analysis of Category 5 hurricanes that brewed, not just hit, in the Atlantic over the past 125 years showed a large recent increase in those top-of-the-scale storms. There have been 13 Category 5 storms from 2016 to 2025, including three this year. Until last year, no other 10-year period even reached double digits. About 29% of the Category 5 hurricanes in the past 125 years have happened since 2016.

    McNoldy, Klotzbach and Woods Placky said hurricane records before the modern satellite era are not as reliable because some storms out at sea could have been missed. Measuring systems for strength have also improved and changed, which could be a factor. And there was a period between 2008 and 2015 with no Atlantic Category 5 storms, Klotzbach said.

    Still, climate science generally predicts that a warmer world will have more strong storms, even if there aren’t necessarily more storms overall, the scientists said.

    “We’re seeing a direct connection in attribution science with the temperature in the water and a climate change connection, Woods Placky said. ”And when we see these storms go over this extremely warm water, it is more fuel for these storms to intensify rapidly and push to new levels.”

    Science Writer Seth Borenstein has covered hurricanes for more than 35 years and has co-authored two books on them. Data journalist M.K. Wildeman contributed from Hartford, Connecticut.

    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.

    Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

    Photos You Should See – Oct. 2025

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  • Hurricane Melissa Has Meteorologists Terrified

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    Meteorologists who have spent the past few days monitoring the rapid development of Hurricane Melissa in the Atlantic Ocean are sounding the alarm about the storm, which is set to make landfall in Jamaica today as a Category 5 hurricane. The sustained—and growing—intensity of the storm is remarkable, experts say, and has the makings of a historic hurricane.

    “When I look at the cloud pattern, I will tell you as a meteorologist and professional—and a person—it is beautiful, but it is terrifying,” says Sean Sublette, a meteorologist based in Virginia. “I know what is underneath those clouds.”

    There are a few different ways to measure the strength of hurricanes. One is by air pressure: the lower the pressure, the stronger the storm. Early Tuesday morning, as it approached Jamaica, Melissa was measuring a minimum pressure of 901 millibars (mb)—lower than Hurricane Katrina’s peak low pressure of 902 mb, and the lowest pressure ever recorded in a hurricane this late in the year, according to CSU meteorologist Philip Klotzbach.

    Incredibly, as of Tuesday morning, Melissa wasn’t done intensifying. At 10 am, the National Weather Service posted an update measuring the storm’s pressure at 892 mb. If it makes landfall at this pressure, it would be tied with the catastrophic 1935 Labor Day hurricane, which hit Florida, as the most intense hurricane by pressure to make landfall.

    “That record’s been in place for 90 years now,” says Brian McNoldy, a senior research associate at the University of Miami’s Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric, and Earth Science. “It would be a pretty big deal if that fell.”

    The pressure dropping so much as a hurricane approaches land—especially around elevated ground—is “really remarkable,” McNoldy says. “Normally it would start to feel a mountainous island, like Jamaica, and it would kind of interrupt it a little and start to weaken it. But it’s actually still intensifying right now.”

    A second way of measuring hurricanes is by wind speed; Melissa has also startled meteorologists with its strength here, as well as the speed at which it intensified. Wind speeds inside Melissa measured just 70 mph on Saturday as the storm formed in the Atlantic basin, lower than the 74 mph of the mildest Category 1 storms. However, they had quickly jumped to 140 mph—Category 4 strength—just 24 hours later. Melissa’s winds kept on intensifying through Monday and Tuesday. As of 10am Tuesday, it had maximum sustained winds of 185 mph.

    “It’s extremely rare to have a storm rapidly intensify when it’s already really intense,” says McNoldy. “You usually see rapid intensification happen when it’s a tropical storm or a Category 1, 2 hurricane. That’s when it is very common to happen. But not when it’s already at the upper end of intensity.”

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    Molly Taft

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  • Bill Gates calls for climate fight to shift focus from curbing emissions to reducing human suffering

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    NEW YORK — Bill Gates thinks climate change is a serious problem but it won’t be the end of civilization. He thinks scientific innovation will curb it, and it’s instead time for a “strategic pivot” in the global climate fight: from focusing on limiting rising temperatures to fighting poverty and preventing disease.

    A doomsday outlook has led the climate community to focus too much on near-term goals to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases that cause warming, diverting resources from the most effective things that can be done to improve life in a warming world, Gates said. In a memo released Tuesday, Gates said the world’s primary goal should instead be to prevent suffering, particularly for those in the toughest conditions in the world’s poorest countries.

    If given a choice between eradicating malaria and a tenth of a degree increase in warming, Gates told reporters, “I’ll let the temperature go up 0.1 degree to get rid of malaria. People don’t understand the suffering that exists today.”

    The Microsoft co-founder spends most of his time now on the goals of the Gates Foundation, which has poured tens of billions of dollars into health care, education and development initiatives worldwide, including combating HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria. He started Breakthrough Energy in 2015 to speed up innovation in clean energy.

    He wrote his 17-page memo hoping to have an impact on next month’s United Nations climate change conference in Brazil. He’s urging world leaders to ask whether the little money designated for climate is being spent on the right things.

    Gates, whose foundation provides financial support for Associated Press coverage of health and development in Africa, is influential in the climate change conversation. He expects his “tough truths about climate” memo will be controversial.

    “If you think climate is not important, you won’t agree with the memo. If you think climate is the only cause and apocalyptic, you won’t agree with the memo,” Gates said during a roundtable discussion with reporters ahead of the release. “It’s kind of this pragmatic view of somebody who’s, you know, trying to maximize the money and the innovation that goes to help in these poor countries.”

    Every bit of additional warming correlates to more extreme weather, risks species extinction and brings the world closer to crossing tipping points where changes become irreversible, scientists say.

    University of Washington public health and climate scientist Kristie Ebi said she thoroughly agrees with Gates that the U.N. negotiations should focus on improving human health and well-being. But, she said, Gates assumes the world stays static and only one variable changes — faster deployment of green technologies — to curb climate change. She called that unlikely.

    Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University, called the memo “pointless, vague, unhelpful and confusing.”

    “There is no reason to pit poverty reduction versus climate transformation. Both are utterly feasible, and readily so, if the Big Oil lobby is brought under control,” he wrote in an email.

    Stanford University climate scientist Chris Field said there is room for a healthy discussion about whether the current framing of the climate crisis is typically too pessimistic.

    “But we should also invest for both the long term and the short term,” he wrote in an email. “A vibrant long-term future depends on both tackling climate change and supporting human development.”

    Princeton University climate scientist Michael Oppenheimer said he doesn’t dispute the principle of making human well-being the primary objective of policy, but what about the natural world?

    “Climate change is already wreaking havoc there,” he wrote in an email. “Can we truly live in a technological bubble? Do we want to?”

    Gates is clear in his memo that every tenth of a degree of warming matters: “A stable climate makes it easier to improve people’s lives.”

    A decade ago, the world agreed in a historic pact known as the Paris agreement to try to limit human-caused warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) since pre-industrial times. The goal: to stave off nastier heat waves, wildfires, storms and droughts.

    In a 2021 book, Gates laid out a plan for reducing emissions to avoid a climate disaster. But humans are on track to release so much greenhouse gas by early 2028 that scientists say crossing that 1.5-degree threshold is now nearly unavoidable.

    Breakthrough Energy focuses on areas where the cost of doing something cleanly is much higher than the polluting way, such as making clean steel and cement. Gates concluded his memo by saying governments should work toward driving this difference to zero, and be rigorous about measuring the impact of every effort in the world’s climate agenda.

    Gates said the pace of innovation in clean energy has been faster than he expected, allowing cheap solar and wind energy to replace coal, oil and natural gas plants for electricity and averting worst-case warming scenarios. Artificial intelligence is helping accelerate advances in clean energy technologies, he added.

    At the same time, money to help developing countries adapt to climate change is shrinking. Led by the United States, rich countries are cutting their foreign aid budgets. President Donald Trump has called climate change a hoax.

    Gates criticized the aid cuts. He said Gavi, a public-private partnership started by his philanthropic foundation that buys vaccines, will have 25% less money for the next five years compared to the past five years. Gavi can save a life for a little more than $1,000, he added.

    Vaccines become even more important in a warming world because children who aren’t dying of measles or whooping cough will be more likely to survive when a heat wave hits or a drought threatens the local food supply, he wrote.

    Health and prosperity are the best defense against climate change, Gates said, citing research from the University of Chicago Climate Impact Lab that found projected deaths from climate change fall by more than 50% when accounting for the expected economic growth over the rest of this century.

    Under these circumstances, he thinks the bar must be “very high” for what’s funded with aid money.

    “If you have something that gets rid of 10,000 tons of emissions, that you’re spending several million dollars on,” he said, “that just doesn’t make the cut.”

    ___

    AP Writer Seth Borenstein in Washington contributed to this report.

    ___

    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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  • The Odd Symmetry Between Earth’s Northern and Southern Hemispheres Is Breaking Down

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    Although Earth’s two hemispheres lie on opposite sides of the planet and differ in many ways, they share a peculiar commonality—or at least they used to. The Northern and Southern Hemispheres reflected nearly the same amount of sunlight back into space. This balance, though long considered odd, is now coming undone, as new data reveals that one side of Earth is darkening faster than the other.

    Using 24 years’ worth of data from NASA’s Clouds and the Earth’s Radiant Energy System (CERES) mission, a team of scientists discovered that the Northern Hemisphere is absorbing more sunlight than the Southern Hemisphere. This shift in Earth’s energy balance could have lasting impacts on weather patterns, rainfall, and the overall climate in the coming decades, a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggests.

    A delicate balance

    Earth receives energy from the Sun and reflects part of it back to space. This reflectivity is known as albedo, a measure of the percentage of sunlight reflected by a surface. Throughout the year, the Southern and Northern hemispheres receive the same amount of energy from the Sun, with each one receiving more sunlight at different times of the year.

    The Southern Hemisphere is dominated by oceans, which absorb more sunlight, while the Northern Hemisphere has more land and less sea ice, which absorbs heat faster and reflects less sunlight. In the early 2000s, satellite data revealed that the two hemispheres reflect the same amount of solar energy back into space. Scientists had expected the hemispheres to differ, but data showed that clouds in the Southern Hemisphere were slightly thicker and more reflective, therefore balancing out the darker land surfaces in the Northern Hemisphere.

    The new study, however, suggests this once-balanced system is coming to an end. NASA’s CERES, launched in 1997, measures the amount of sunlight absorbed by Earth and the amount of infrared energy emitted to space. The team behind the study analyzed CERES data from 2001 to 2024 and found that the Northern Hemisphere is absorbing around 0.34 watt more solar energy per square meter per decade than the Southern Hemisphere.

    The team’s analysis pointed to three main driving factors behind the emerging imbalance: melting snow and ice, declining air pollution, and rising water vapor.

    “It made a lot of sense,” Norman Loeb, a climate scientist at NASA’s Langley Research Center and lead author of the new study, told Eos. “The Northern Hemisphere’s surface is getting darker because snow and ice are melting. That exposes the land and ocean underneath. And pollution has gone down in places like China, the U.S., and Europe. It means there are fewer aerosols in the air to reflect sunlight. In the Southern Hemisphere, it’s the opposite.”

    Additionally, the Northern Hemisphere is warming faster and therefore holds more water vapor, which tends to absorb sunlight rather than reflect it. “That’s another reason the Northern Hemisphere is taking in more heat,” Loeb added.

    The study notes that clouds naturally compensate for hemispheric asymmetry. As a result, there should be more cloud reflection in the Northern Hemisphere than the Southern Hemisphere. The data, however, shows no change in cloud cover thus far. “How clouds respond to this hemispheric imbalance has important implications for future climate,” the study reads.

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    Passant Rabie

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  • China’s Heatwaves Threaten to Dry up Supply of Delicious ‘Hairy Crabs’

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    By Brenda Goh and Nicoco Chan

    YANGCHENG LAKE, China (Reuters) -The last three years have been the toughest for Xie Dandan and her family during more than a decade cultivating one of China’s most esteemed culinary delicacies, the “hairy crab”, named for its furry claws.

    “From 2022, it feels like the weather has been getting worse every year,” said the 34-year-old, standing amid tanks filled with the crabs, coveted for their sweet flesh and golden roe, while she wrapped some in straw to prepare them for customers.

    “We’ve come to mentally prepare for these losses.”

    Xie is among the farmers at Yangcheng lake in the eastern province of Jiangsu being forced to devise new ways to keep the crustaceans alive as unusually high temperatures and longer-than-expected summers have disrupted breeding cycles since 2022.

    The Chinese mitten crabs, as they are also known, can sell for hundreds of dollars when exported in sets of four to countries such as Singapore and Japan.

    “Those who work in agriculture are at the mercy of the sky,” said Xie, whose community reeled last year from losses caused by the strongest typhoon to hit the east coast since 1949, ripping out nets and shutting down oxygenation systems.

    Higher temperatures than usual spell a triple theat for the crabs by slowing their growth, reducing the amount of oxygen in the water and boosting growth of bacteria, said Kenneth Leung, a marine environment expert at the City University of Hong Kong.

    Hopes for a bumper harvest this year were crushed by summer temperatures around the lake in Suzhou city famed for some of the tastiest crabs, which stayed above 30 degrees C (86 degrees F) until late October, delaying their maturity.

    The labour-intensive cultivation of the crabs begins with farmers growing their larvae in ponds for about a year before they are moved to fenced farms within the lake for the creatures to molt, or shed their outer shells, as they grow.

    Molting happens about five times between March and the traditional end-September start of the harvest, Xie said.

    But stronger heat can kill crabs as they shed their shells, in addition to the delay in maturity caused by longer summers. In 2022, farmers dumped blocks of ice into the water to cool it, Xie said.

    Some of eastern China’s hottest and longest summers in the last three years have brought temperatures of 40 degrees C (104 degrees F), or higher, on consecutive days as early as July.

    In September, weather officials said this year’s summer was China’s hottest since 1961, while northern rains were the longest in the same period, bringing disruptions that scientists have linked to climate change.

    Leung suggested selective breeding as a possible solution, by choosing crabs with a greater tolerance of higher temperatures for breeding.

    Authorities expect the lake to yield a harvest of 10,350 metric tons this year, roughly in line with previous years’ figures, except for 9,900 tons last year, when the typhoon hit.

    While crab farmers may pray for better weather next year, they know they ultimately have little control, Xie added.

    “We only can see whether the hairy crabs will be able to adapt, and if they can’t, then maybe this industry will just be eliminated. We can’t do anything about it.”

    (Reporting by Brenda Goh and Nicoco Chan; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)

    Copyright 2025 Thomson Reuters.

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  • Teachers unions leverage contracts to fight climate change

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    This story first appeared in Hechinger’s climate and education newsletter. Sign up here. 

    In Illinois, the Chicago Teachers Union won a contract with the city’s schools to add solar panels on some buildings and clean energy career pathways for students, among other actions. In Minnesota, the Minneapolis Federation of Educators demanded that the district create a task force on environmental issues and provide free metro passes for students. And in California, the Los Angeles teachers union’s demands include electrifying the district’s bus fleet and providing electric vehicle charging stations at all schools. 

    Those are among the examples in a new report on how unionized teachers are pushing their school districts to take action on the climate crisis, which is damaging school buildings and disrupting learning. The report — produced by the nonprofit Building Power Resource Center, which supports local governments and leaders, and the Labor Network for Sustainability, a nonprofit that seeks to unite labor and climate groups — describes how educators can raise demands for climate action when they negotiate labor contracts with their districts. By emphasizing the financial case for switching to renewable energy, educators can simultaneously act on climate change, improve conditions in schools and save districts money, it says. 

    As federal support and financial incentives for climate action wither, this sort of local action is becoming more difficult — but also more urgent, advocates say. Chicago Public Schools has relied on funding for electric buses that has been sunsetted by the Trump administration, said Jackson Potter, vice president of the Chicago Teachers Union. But the district is also seeking other local and state funding and nonprofit support.

    Bradley Marianno, an associate professor in the College of Education at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, said that educator unions embracing climate action is part of a move started about 15 years ago in which more progressive unions — like those in Chicago, Los Angeles and elsewhere — focus on “collective good bargaining,” or advocating for changes that are good for their members but also the broader community. But this approach is unlikely to catch on everywhere: “The risk lies in members feeling that core issues like wages and working conditions are being overlooked in favor of more global causes,” he wrote in an email. 

    I recently caught up with Potter, the CTU vice president, about the report and his union’s approach to bargaining for climate action. Collaborating with local environmental and community groups, the Chicago Teachers Union ultimately succeeded in winning a contract that calls for identifying schools for solar panels and electrification, expanding indoor air quality monitoring, helping educators integrate climate change into their curriculum, and establishing training for students in clean energy jobs, among other steps. 

    This interview has been edited for length and clarity. 

    The report talks about contract negotiations being an underused — and effective — lever for demanding climate action. Why do you see that process as such an opportunity for climate action?

    On the local level, our schools are 84, 83 years old on average. There is lead paint, lead pipes, mold, asbestos, PCBs, all kinds of contamination in the HVAC system and the walls that require upgrades. By our estimate, the district needs $30 billion worth of upgrades, and right now I think they spend $500 million a year to just do patch-up work. We’re at a point where it’s a system fail of epic proportions if we can’t figure out a way to transition and make things healthier. And so if you’re going to do a roof repair, put solar on it, have independence from fossil fuels, clean air in areas that have faced environmental racism and contamination. 

    We’re also dealing with a legacy of discrimination and harm, and that is true of the nation. So how do we get out of this and also save the planet and also prevent greater climate events that further destabilize vulnerable communities and put people at risk? It made sense for us to use our contract as a path to do both things — deal with this local crisis that was screaming for new solutions and ideas, in a moment when the climate is on fire, literally.  

    How challenging was it to get educators to view climate issues as a priority? There are so many other things, around pay and other issues, on the table. 

    When we started, it almost felt like people in the membership, in the community, viewed it as a niche issue. Like, ‘Oh, isn’t that cute, you care about green technology.’ As we figured out how to think about it and talk about it and probe where people were having issues in their schools, it became really obvious that when you started talking about asbestos, lead and mold remediation — and helping communities that have been hit the hardest with cumulative impacts and carcinogens and how those things are present in schools — that became much more tangible. Or even quality food and lunch and breakfast for students who are low-income. It went from bottom of the list to top of the list, instantaneously. 

    Your contract calls for a number of climate-related actions, including green pathways for students and agreements with building trade unions to create good jobs for students. Tell me about that. 

    We’re trying to use the transformation of our facilities as another opportunity for families and students in these communities that have been harmed the most to get the greatest benefit from the transformation. So if we can install solar, we want our students to be part of that project on the ground in their schools, gaining the skills and apprenticeship credentials to become the electricians of the future. And using that as a project labor agreement [which establishes the terms of work on a certain project] with the trades to open doors and opportunities. The same goes for all the other improvements — whether it’s heat pumps, HVAC systems, geothermal. And for EV — we have outdated auto shop programming that’s exclusively based on the combustible engine reliant on fossil fuels, whereas in [the nearby city of] Belvidere they are building electric cars per the United Auto Workers’ new contract. Could we gain a career path on electric vehicles that allows students to gain that mechanical knowledge and insight and prepares them for the vehicles of the future? 

    The report talks about the Batesville School District in Arkansas that was able to increase teacher salaries because of savings from solar. Have you tried to make the case for higher teacher salaries because of these climate steps?  

    The $500 million our district allocates for facility upgrades annually comes out of the general fund, so we haven’t at all thought about it in terms of salary. We’ve thought about it in terms of having a school nurse, social worker, mental health interventions at a moment when there is so much trauma. We see this as a win-win: The fewer dollars the district has to spend on facility needs means the more dollars they can spend on instructional and social-emotional needs for students. In terms of the Arkansas model, it’s pretty basic. If you get off the fossil fuel pipelines and electric lines and you become self-sufficient, essentially, powering your own electric and heat, there is going to be a boon, particularly if there are up-front subsidies. 

    Math and climate change 

    When temperatures rise in classrooms, students have more trouble concentrating and their learning suffers — in math, in particular. That’s according to a new report from NWEA, an education research and testing company.

    The report, part of a growing body of evidence of the harms of extreme heat on student performance, found that math scores declined when outdoor temperatures on test days rose above 80 degrees Fahrenheit. Students in high-poverty schools, which are less likely to have air conditioning, saw declines up to twice as large as those in wealthier schools. 

    The learning losses grew as temperatures rose. Students who took tests on 101-degree days scored roughly 0.06 standard deviations below students who tested when temperatures were 60 degrees, the equivalent of about 10 percent of the learning a fifth grader typically gains in a school year. 

    It’s not entirely clear why student math scores suffer more than reading when temperatures rise. But Sofia Postell, an NWEA research analyst, said that on math tests, students must problem-solve and rely on their memories, and that kind of thinking is particularly difficult when students are hot and tired. Anxiety could be a factor too, she wrote in an email: “Research has also shown that heat increases anxiety, and some students may experience more testing anxiety around math exams.”

    The study was based on data from roughly 3 million scores on NWEA’s signature MAP Growth test for third to eighth graders in six states. 

    The report urged school, district and state officials to take several steps to reduce the effects of high heat on student learning and testing. Ideally, tests would be scheduled during times of the year when it wasn’t so hot, it said, and also during mornings, when temperatures are cooler. Leaders also need to invest in updating HVAC systems to keep kids cool. 

    “Extreme heat has already detrimentally impacted student learning and these effects will only intensify without action,” wrote Postell. 

    Mea culpa: A quick note to say I got two things wrong in my last newsletter — the name of the Natural Resources Defense Council was incorrect, as was the number of hours of learning California students have missed so far this year. It’s more than 54,000. 

    Contact editor Caroline Preston at 212-870-8965, via Signal at CarolineP.83 or on email at preston@hechingerreport.org.

    This story about teachers unions was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter on climate and education.

    The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.

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  • ExxonMobil sues California over climate disclosure laws

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    Exxon Mobil Corporation is suing the state of California over a pair of 2023 climate disclosure laws that the company says infringe upon its free speech rights, namely by forcing it to embrace the message that large companies are uniquely to blame for climate change.

    The oil and gas corporation based in Texas filed its complaint Friday in the U.S. Eastern District Court for California. It asks the court to prevent the laws from going into effect next year.

    In its complaint, ExxonMobil says it has for years publicly disclosed its greenhouse gas emissions and climate-related business risks, but it fundamentally disagrees with the state’s new reporting requirements.

    The company would have to use “frameworks that place disproportionate blame on large companies like ExxonMobil” for the purpose of shaming such companies, the complaint states.

    Under Senate Bill 253, large businesses will have to disclose a wide range of planet-warming emissions, including both direct and indirect emissions such as the costs of employee business travel and product transport.

    ExxonMobil takes issue with the methodology required by the state, which would focus on a company’s emissions worldwide and therefore fault businesses just for being large as opposed to being efficient, the complaint states.

    The second law, Senate Bill 261, requires companies making more than $500 million annually to disclose the financial risks that climate change poses to their businesses and how they plan to address them.

    The company said in its complaint that the law would require it to speculate “about unknowable future developments” and post such speculations on its website.

    A spokesperson for the office of California Gov. Gavin Newsom said in an email that it was “truly shocking that one of the biggest polluters on the planet would be opposed to transparency.”

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  • Exxon Sues California Over Climate Disclosure Laws

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    (Reuters) -Exxon Mobil sued California on Friday, challenging two state laws that require large companies to publicly disclose their greenhouse gas emissions and climate-related financial risks.

    In a complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California, Exxon argued that Senate Bills 253 and 261 violate its First Amendment rights by compelling Exxon to “serve as a mouthpiece for ideas with which it disagrees,” and asked the court to block the state of California from enforcing the laws.

    Exxon said the laws force it to adopt California’s preferred frameworks for climate reporting, which it views as misleading and counterproductive. The oil giant said it already reports emissions and climate risks voluntarily, and objects to California’s frameworks.

    Democrat-ruled California has long had some of the strictest environmental rules in areas like vehicle fuel efficiency standards and planning policy, after passing a climate change law in 2006.

    California passed two laws in 2023 that would require companies to publicly report their greenhouse gas emissions and climate-related financial risks.

    The California laws were supported by several big companies including Apple, Ikea and Microsoft, but opposed by several major groups such as the American Farm Bureau Federation and Chamber of Commerce, which called them “onerous.”

    SB 253 requires public and private companies that are active in the state and generate revenue of more than $1 billion annually to publish an extensive account of their carbon emissions starting in 2026. The law requires the disclosure of both the companies’ own emissions and indirect emissions by their suppliers and customers.

    SB 261 requires companies that operate in the state with over $500 million in revenue to disclose climate-related financial risks and strategies to mitigate risk. Exxon also argued that SB 261 conflicts with existing federal securities laws, which already regulate what publicly traded companies must disclose regarding financial and environmental risks.

    The California Department of Justice and the California Air Resources Board did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

    (Reporting by Chandni Shah in Bengaluru and Mike Scarcella in Washington, editing by Deepa Babington)

    Copyright 2025 Thomson Reuters.

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  • In a California farming region, researchers are mapping rural heat to protect farmworkers

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    In the summers, the sky is jet black when Raul Cruz arrives at this Imperial Valley sugarcane field to start his day. He chops, cleans and bundles the crop, taking heed as the sun rises. It’s hard work, but so is starting at 4 a.m., even though he knows it’s the safest thing when temperatures in this California desert frequently soar into the triple digits.

    “We just have to because we need to beat the heat,” said Cruz, who’s worked here for 15 years. They finish work by 9 or 10 a.m. to avoid the risk of heat stroke, he added, but when heat starts creeping up around 8 a.m., “mentally, it’s stressful.”

    The hot climate that makes this Southern California region a farming powerhouse is also what makes it dangerous for farmworkers, who are increasingly vulnerable to rising temperatures due to greenhouse gas emissions from burning coal, oil and natural gas. Researchers from San Diego State University are working to understand the health consequences of heat stress on farmworkers and where heat is most extreme in this rural landscape. They hope their findings can lead to a better understanding of rural heat islands, identify gaps in research and help develop interventions that better protect them in the face of climate change.

    “Workers could potentially be dying or having some serious issues,” said project leader Nicolas Lopez-Galvez, assistant professor in the School of Public Health at SDSU. “It’s better to start acting sooner.”

    Since the start of the 20th century, California temperatures have increased almost 3 F (about 1.7 C), according to state and federal data. Warming has accelerated, and seven of the state’s last eight years through 2024 were the warmest on record. While all areas of the state have warmed, Southern California is heating up about twice as fast as Northern California.

    Ana Solorio, an organizer with the farmworker advocacy group Líderes Campesinas that is working with researchers, remembered feeling “suffocated” in the Coachella Valley summer heat when she was a farmworker. “With the humidity, it felt awful,” said Solorio, who’s lived in the Imperial Valley for more than 30 years. The heat was so intense she didn’t return for another season, preferring instead the cooler winter harvesting months of lettuce in the Imperial Valley.

    “This (heat) can cause a lot of harm to their health,” she said.

    Researchers are trying to understand how farmworkers’ heat stress might vary depending on the crops, the season and the number of breaks they take.

    Over the past two years, they’ve collected year-round data from some 300 farmworkers. Body sensors measure things like core body temperature and heart rate while they work. Elsewhere in the fields, environmental monitors measure the day’s temperature, humidity, wind speed, sun angle and cloud cover, also known as the wet-bulb globe temperature, considered the best metric to understanding heat stress. Using satellite imagery along with historical and current wet-bulb globe temperature data, researchers are mapping areas of extreme heat, particularly in the Imperial and Coachella valleys.

    Researchers are learning that ground level crops can expose workers to higher heat levels compared to tree crops, for example, but it also depends on their harvesting months. In the summers, farmworkers who prepare fields for planting or help maintain irrigation systems are also more exposed.

    Rural heat can vary based on things like tree cover, proximity to a body of water and empty fields, which may be hotter. “It creates this island where people might be living or working that are higher in terms of heat stress compared to other places,” said Lopez-Galvez.

    Bordered by the Colorado River to the east, the Salton Sea to the northwest and Mexico to the south, the Imperial Valley is home to hundreds of thousands of acres of farmland and produces billions of dollars in agricultural production. It grows two-thirds of winter vegetables consumed nationally and provides thousands of jobs. From 2023 to 2024 alone, about 17,579 migrant and seasonal farmworkers were employed in Imperial County, according to the state.

    It’s also extremely hot. In a given year, there are about 123 days with temperatures over 95 F (35 C), often exceeding 110 F (43 C) in August and early September, according to calculations by Sagar Parajuli, research scientist and adjunct faculty with SDSU’s geography department. The county has one of the largest Latino populations and the highest number of heat-related illnesses among workers than anywhere else in the state.

    Some of their data analysis has already been published.

    One study found that irrigating crop fields in the Imperial Valley reduced the wet-bulb globe temperature on summer days, thanks to the cooling effect of evaporating water. But on summer nights, the opposite occurred: irrigation increased the wet-bulb globe temperature as humidity spiked. Irrigation also heightened heat in nearby urban and fallow areas adjacent to crop fields due to moisture transport.

    “It is a concern because an elevated nighttime temperature restricts the ability of farmworkers to cool down,” said Parajuli, the study’s lead author. “So they can’t recover from the heat stress they could be accumulating from the daytime.”

    Through this research, the authors were able to recommend how frequently farmworkers should take rest breaks to protect themselves from heat stress, based on how often wet-bulb globe temperatures exceed safety thresholds across seasons and work shifts. While California has heat rules, they’re not strictly enforced, he added.

    “We realized that farmworkers are not getting enough rest breaks, and also there are no clear policy guidelines in terms of heat-related rest breaks,” he said.

    Lopez-Galvez said they plan to continue their research in California’s Central Valley and hope to expand it into Yuma, Ariz. and other parts of the Southwest.

    ___

    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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  • Climate change and wildfires divide California gubernatorial candidates at forum

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    STOCKTON — Four of California’s gubernatorial candidates tangled over climate change and wildfire preparedness at an economic forum Thursday in Stockton, though they all acknowledged the stark problems facing the state.

    Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, a Republican, stood apart from the three other candidates — all Democrats — at the California Economic Summit by challenging whether the spate of devastating wildfires in California is linked to climate change, and labeling some environmental activists “terrorists.”

    After a few audience members shouted at Bianco over his “terrorists” comment, the Democratic candidates seized on the moment to reaffirm their own beliefs about the warming planet.

    “The impacts of climate change are proven and undeniable,” said Tony Thurmond, a Democrat and California superintendent of public instruction. “You can call them what you want. That’s our new normal.”

    The fires “do have a relationship with climate change,” said former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.

    Besides environmental issues, the hour-and-a-half forum at the business-centric California Forward’s Economic Summit focused primarily on “checkbook” topics as the candidates, which also included former state Controller Betty Yee, offered gloomy statistics about poverty and homelessness in California.

    Given the forum’s location in the Central Valley, the agricultural industry and rural issues were front and center.

    Bianco harped on the state and the Democratic leaders for California’s handling of water management and gasoline prices. At one point, he told the audience that he felt like he was in the “Twilight Zone” after the Democrats on stage pitched ways to raise revenue.

    Other candidates in California‘s 2026 governor’s race, including former Secretary of Health and Human Services Xavier Becerra and former Rep. Katie Porter, were not present at Thursday’s debate. Former Assembly Majority Leader Ian Calderon planned to come, but his flight from Los Angeles was delayed, audience members were told.

    All are vying to lead a state facing ongoing budget deficits caused by overspending. A state Legislative Analyst’s Office report released this month cited projected annual operating deficits ranging from roughly $15 billion to $25 billion through 2029. At the same time, federal cutbacks by the Trump administration to programs for needy Californians, including the state’s Medi-Cal healthcare program, will put more pressure on the state’s resources.

    All of the candidates had different pitches during the afternoon event. Asked by moderator Jeanne Kuang, a CalMatters reporter, about ways to help rural communities, Thurmond cited his plan to build housing on surplus property owned by the state. He also repeatedly talked about extending tax credits or other subsidies to groups, including day-care providers.

    Yee, discussing the wildfires, spoke on hardening homes and creating an industry around fire-proofing the state. Yee received applause when she questioned why there wasn’t more discussion about education in the governor’s race.

    Villaraigosa cited his work finding federal funds to build rail and subway lines across Los Angeles and suggested that he would focus on growing the state’s power grid and transportation infrastructure.

    Both the former mayor and Yee at points sided with Bianco when they complained about the “over-regulation” by the state, including restrictions on developers, builders and small businesses.

    Few voters are probably paying much attention to the contest, with the battle over Proposition 50 dominating headlines and campaign spending.

    Voters on Nov. 4 will decide whether to support the proposition, which is a Democratic-led effort to gerrymander California’s congressional districts to try and blunt President Trump’s attempt to rig districts in GOP-led states to retain control of the House of Representatives.

    “Frankly, nobody’s focused on the governor’s race right now,” Yee said at an event last week.

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  • One Year On, Victim of Valencia Floods Found Buried in Mud

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    MADRID (Reuters) -The body of a 56-year-old man has been found buried in mud a year after he was swept away in deadly flash floods in southeastern Spain, authorities said on Thursday.

    Nearly 240 people died when floodwaters swamped homes, underground car parks and vehicles on the outskirts of Valencia, Spain’s third-largest city, on October 29 last year.

    The man was one of three people still unaccounted for and had already been officially declared dead, said a local court in Catarroja – one of the towns most affected by the floods.

    He was discovered on Tuesday during earth-moving operations in the town of Manises, about 40 km (25 miles) downstream from Pedralba, where he went missing, it added.

    Under Spanish procedure, judges are called in when bodies are discovered.

    The same court, overseen by Judge Nuria Ruiz, is carrying out a judicial investigation into the delayed emergency response to the floods, which rank among Spain’s worst natural catastrophes in modern history.

    A text alert sent by Valencia’s regional government warning people to take shelter arrived when buildings were already under water and many people were drowning.

    On Thursday, the court summoned a local journalist who had lunch with Valencia’s conservative regional leader, Carlos Mazon, on the day of the floods.

    (Reporting by Emma Pinedo; Editing by David Latona and Andrew Heavens)

    Copyright 2025 Thomson Reuters.

    Photos You Should See – Oct. 2025

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  • UN chief defends science and weather forecasting as Trump threatens both

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    GENEVA (AP) — The United Nations chief delivered a strong defense of science and meteorology on Wednesday, praising the U.N. weather agency for helping save lives by keeping watch for climate disasters around the world.

    Secretary-General Antonio Guterres spoke to the World Meteorological Organization as science faces an assault in the United States: President Donald Trump’s administration has led an anti-science push, and Trump has called climate change “ a con job.”

    A longtime advocate for the fight against global warming, Guterres spoke at a special WMO meeting aimed to promote early-warning systems that help countries rich and poor brace for floods, storms, forest fires and heat waves.

    “Without your long-term monitoring, we wouldn’t benefit from the warnings and guidance that protect communities and save millions of lives and billions of dollars each year,” he said, alluding to “the dangerous and existential threat of climate change.”

    Last week, the weather agency reported that heat-trapping carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere jumped by the highest amount on record last year, soaring to a level not seen in human civilization and causing more extreme weather.

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  • New Report Finds Efforts to Slow Climate Change Are Working—Just Not Fast Enough

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    In the 10 years since the signing of the Paris Agreement, the backbone of international climate action, humanity has made impressive progress. Renewable energy is increasingly cheap and reliable, while electric vehicles are becoming better every year.

    By virtually every key metric used to measure progress, though, we are still lagging behind where we would need to be to avert the worst effects of climate change, according to a report released Wednesday by a coalition of climate groups—and we’re running out of time to right the ship.

    “All systems are flashing red,” Clea Shumer, a researcher at the World Resources Institute, one of the organizations involved in the report, said last week on a call with reporters. “There’s no doubt we are largely doing the right things—we are just not moving fast enough.”

    The Paris Agreement aims to keep the world from warming more than 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels by the end of this century. To measure progress toward this goal, the report looks at emissions from 45 different sectors of the global economy and environment, measuring everything from building electrification to use of coal in the power sector to global meat consumption.

    Grimly, none of the indicators the report measures are where they need to be to keep the world on track to meet the goal of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees. Six of the 45 indicators are “off track”—progress is being made, but not fast enough—while almost 30 are “well off track,” meaning progress is much too slow. Five, meanwhile, are headed in the “wrong direction,” meaning the situation is getting worse, not better, and needs an urgent U-turn. (There’s not enough data, the report says, to measure the remaining five indicators, which include peatland degradation and restoration, food waste, and the share of new buildings that are zero-carbon.)

    One of the most consistently off-track markers, experts said, was the global effort to phase out coal, one of the largest contributors of greenhouse gas emissions. While coal’s share in global electricity generation did go down slightly in 2024, total coal use actually hit a record high last year thanks to growing electricity demand, especially from China and India. A dirty power grid, Shumer said, has “huge knock-on effects” for other progress indicators like decarbonizing buildings and transportation.

    To get on track, the world needs to increase its pace of coal phaseout tenfold, Shumer said. That, she continued, would entail shutting down more than 360 medium-sized coal plants each year and canceling every coal-fired power plant currently in the global development pipeline.

    “We simply will not limit warming to 1.5 degrees if coal use keeps breaking records,” Shumer said.’

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  • Three Portland-Area Counties Release New Health Dashboards Tracking Climate Impacts – KXL

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    Acquired Through MGN Online on 08/20/2025

    PORTLAND, Ore. — Health officials from Multnomah, Clackamas and Washington counties have launched a new set of online dashboards showing how climate change is affecting the region’s health, and who’s most at risk.

    The dashboards track 14 years of data on heat, cold, air quality, infectious disease and mental health. Officials say the tools will help local governments monitor trends, guide emergency response and better target resources toward vulnerable communities.

    According to county health leaders, climate change is not affecting everyone equally. In Multnomah County, the most impacted groups include people with lower incomes, communities of color and unhoused residents. In Clackamas County, farmworkers, rural residents and non-English speakers face the greatest risks. Washington County officials highlighted older adults and those with chronic illnesses as particularly vulnerable.

    The data show that heat-related illness, poor air quality and stress from extreme weather have all increased since 2021. Officials say the dashboards provide a clearer picture of how climate change is reshaping public health across the Portland metro region.

    More about:

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  • What Resolution’s Investor Strategy Tells Us About Corporate Climate Action

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    Two veteran investors with experience in the climate technology and clean energy sectors have launched a new firm and their investment strategy sheds light on some important trends during a volatile period for corporate climate action.

    David Lowish and Akhil Monappa are the driving forces behind Resolution Investors, which aims to “capture the opportunities created by the climate transition.” Both were formerly with Generation Investment Management, the pioneering sustainable investment management firm founded by former Vice President Al Gore a little more than 20 years ago.

    With Resolution, Lowish explained, he and his partners will concentrate on a portfolio of 30 companies across a range of sectors, all benchmarked against rigorous climate action measures.

    “What we’re looking to do is to select those businesses that are quality companies in their own right but also have their eyes firmly on a net zero future,” Lowish told Newsweek.

    That includes companies that are directly involved in reducing emissions and developing adaptations to the impacts of climate change. But the main focus is on what Lowish called transition leaders.

    “That transition leader group of companies is one which has really been ignored by mainstream investors,” he said.

    Resolution is interested in legacy companies that are strongly aligned with meeting international climate targets, addressing emissions across their operations and supply chains, and limiting exposures to climate risks.

    “Our lens on climate is broad,” Monappa said, adding that they are focused on companies with “concrete plans of delivering on that commitment” and those offering products and services that help move the world toward cleaner energy and climate adaptation.

    That often means looking beyond companies just within the clean energy sector.

    “In renewables, it’s just been harder for us to find high-quality companies that meet our criteria for business quality and people and leadership quality,” Monappa said.

    Instead of just looking at solar and wind power manufacturers, Resolution is tracking companies that help to electrify more of the economy, thus allowing for wider reach of clean power and the displacement of fossil fuels.

    As one example, Lowish said Resolution is tracking the French electronics equipment company Legrand.

    “They make a lot of cables, wirings, breakers and the infrastructure, which goes into all kinds of buildings and helps to facilitate more efficient energy use in those buildings, connecting to batteries and connecting to renewable energy sources,” he said. “We tend to focus on those types of enablers.”

    Resolution’s strategy reflects a broader recent trend in corporate sustainability as many company leaders move from making high profile public commitments on emissions reductions and toward the more operational requirements to integrate sustainability goals into core business practices.   

    Companies in the clean tech sector have been through a volatile period with inflationary pressure on supply chains (and, more recently, the impact of tariffs), changes in interest rates and an unprecedented shift in U.S. federal policy on climate and energy.

    “It’s been a really rough ride,” Lowish said. “But the technologies are still here, especially the more mature ones, there’s still a role for them.”

    Resolution is betting that the role for the clean tech sector will grow as demand for power grows with the boom in AI data centers and more industrial activity in the U.S.

    Lowish said the uncertainty hanging over the industry during the early months of the Trump administration is beginning to wane as people adjust to the political reality and the impacts of legislation that stripped away federal support for clean energy.

    “The political moves have been made, the regimes have been fixed,” he said. “When all is said and done, people are still turning to renewables as a way to plug the energy gap.”

    Despite the Trump administration’s crackdown on clean energy, the bulk of new electricity generation capacity added to the grid this year has been in the form of solar, wind and batteries, which are often the fastest and cheapest sources of new power.  

    Lowish said the continued strength of renewable energy will allow also improve the position of the transition leader companies Resolution tracks. And they’re not the only ones making that bet.

    Bloomberg recently reported that the S&P Global Clean Energy Transition Index has outperformed the S&P 500 even in the face of policy changes hostile to clean energy.

    The same week that Resolution announced its arrival, Brookfield Asset Management announced that it had raised $20 billion for what it called the world’s biggest private fund dedicated to the clean energy transition.

    Despite political headwinds and some negative headlines about sustainable investing, Lowish said, many companies continue to adapt to the reality of climate change.  

    “There’s a drumbeat of modifying your business footprint to make it more future-proof for the climate transition,” he said. “We think that’s what’s happening below the surface.”

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  • Investors Managing $3 Trillion in Assets Urge Countries to Stop Deforestation

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    LONDON (Reuters) -Global investors managing over $3 trillion in assets called on governments on Monday to stop and reverse deforestation and ecosystem degradation by 2030, in a statement signed ahead of a U.N. climate conference in Brazil next month.

    Around 30 institutional investors including Swiss private bank Pictet Group and Nordic investor DNB Asset Management have so far signed up to the Belém Investor Statement on Rainforests, which is open until November 1.

    A report last week found the world is falling far short of the goal of stopping deforestation, with losses of 8.1 million hectares (20 million acres) of forest – an area about the size of England – in 2024 alone, largely driven by agricultural expansion and forest fires.

    “As investors, we are increasingly concerned about the material financial risks that tropical deforestation and nature loss pose to our portfolios,” the statement said.

    The investors emphasised the need for policies that deliver legal, regulatory, and financial certainty to help protect the forests and safeguard economic stability, said Jan Erik Saugestad, CEO at Nordic firm Storebrand Asset Management. 

    “Deforestation undermines the natural systems that global markets rely on – from climate regulation to food and water security.” 

    Earlier this year, the European Union delayed launching its anti-deforestation law by a year after facing opposition from industry and trade partners such as Brazil, Indonesia and the United States, who say complying with the rules would be costly and hurt their exports to Europe.

    The role of climate sceptic U.S. President Donald Trump in rolling back support for global environmental efforts was also hampering action, said Ingrid Tungen, head of deforestation-free markets at Rainforest Foundation Norway. 

    “I think Trump has made it more difficult for investors and managers to take climate and biodiversity into account in such a volatile market,” she said.

    “All the investors that we are talking to think there is a huge risk for us not taking diversification and climate change into consideration in the long-term, and not just for their own morals, but because that will harm the markets directly and their profits directly.”

    (Reporting by Sharon Kimathi; Editing by Nia Williams)

    Copyright 2025 Thomson Reuters.

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  • AGs sue Trump EPA over solar energy program

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    BOSTON — Attorney General Andrea Campbell has joined about two dozen other Democrats in suing the Trump administration over its decision to pull the plug on a $7 billion solar energy program for low-income households.

    The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Washington, alleges that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency violated federal law and the Administrative Procedures Act when it terminated the Solar for All program, approved by Congress in 2023 as part of the Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act.


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    Christian M. Wade covers the Massachusetts Statehouse for North of Boston Media Group’s newspapers and websites. Email him at cwade@cnhinews.com.

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    By Christian M. Wade | Statehouse Reporter

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  • Letters: Trump succeeds in Mideast where diplomats have failed

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    Trump succeeds
    where diplomats failed

    Re: “Trump must be a disrupter in the Middle East” (Page A7, Oct. 16):

    The writer seems to think that Donald Trump isn’t up to the task of dealing with the problems in the Middle East because he went to business school, not the School of Foreign Service. Well, all of those people who went to the right schools don’t seem to have done very well in the Middle East.

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