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Eat-Lancet report recommended shift to more plant-based, climate-friendly diet but was extensively attacked online

A leaked document shows that vested interests may have been behind a “mud-slinging” PR campaign to discredit a landmark environment study, according to an investigation.

The Eat-Lancet Commission study, published in 2019, set out to answer the question: how can we feed the world’s growing population without causing catastrophic climate breakdown?

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There has been little talk about how Australia’s economy will get to net zero. That’s a terrible reflection on the state of our politics

The Coalition has been forced to reassert its commitment to the Paris climate agreement after its energy spokesperson, Ted O’Brien, appeared to waver on the pledge on Thursday.

O’Brien faced off against the climate change and energy minister, Chris Bowen, at a debate in Canberra, weeks out from a federal election in which energy policy is emerging as a hot-button issue.

Labor, the Coalition, nobody in this country will be able to achieve the emission target set by Chris Bowen and Anthony Albanese. The difference between Peter Dutton and Anthony Albanese is that Peter Dutton has been honest and upfront about that.

… go against the spirit, if not the letter, of the Paris Agreement, and – in some circumstances – could constitute a breach of those obligations.

Tony Wood is the energy and climate change program director at the Grattan Institute. This article was originally published in the Conversation

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Officials are moving to eliminate requirements that most big polluters disclose how much carbon dioxide and other planet-warming gases they emit.

I’ve had too many close calls with increased tornado activity here in Louisville, KY, and the summer heat seems more unbearable each year. After a winter that brought terrible storms, I’m bracing for “Danger Season,”—the period between May and October when North America experiences its worst climate impacts. It seems to be starting earlier and lasting longer.

Danger Season 2025 may bring even more extreme impacts as the climate crisis intensifies—this information makes me fear for the safety of my family and my loved ones. I allow myself to feel fear and grieve for what is lost. I think of the words in Frank Herbert’s Dune:

“Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me.”

This helps me remember that I won’t allow fear to keep me from finding courage and fighting for a safer world—for my son, for my community, for all of us.

When climate change comes knocking at our door, we need to be prepared. That is why we must tackle the climate crisis and the affordable housing crisis at the same time.

Home looks different for all of us, and because of that we must pursue equitable solutions to make people safer where they live.

From flooded trailers in KY

People clear out a trailer neighboring the Perez home at Ramsey Mobile Home Park following rain storms that caused flooding on February 17, 2025 in Pikeville, Kentucky. Jon Cherry/Getty Images

…to fallen trees in South Carolina when Hurricane Helene cut an 800 mile path across the southeast…

Photo provided by the author of her cousin’s home after Hurricane Helene.

and mobile homes destroyed by hurricanes.

FEMA search and rescue efforts in N. Carolina after Hurricane Helene. Sept. 2024. FEMA

When the lack of air conditioning behind prison doors makes extreme heat a death sentence,

Create Image/Getty Images

and when people who are experiencing homelessness must find relief where they can when a heat dome encompasses Portland.

A man who asked to not be named tries to stay cool near a misting station in Lents Park during an extreme heat wave August 13, 2021 in Portland, Oregon. Nathan Howard/Getty Images

When the sea has forced its way right through the doors of Summer Haven homes,

Drone view of homes in Summer Haven, Florida. Aerial_Views/Getty Images

and when fire consumes everything that a family has worked for.

Sisters Emilee and Natalee De Santiago sit together on the front porch of what remains of their home on January 19, 2025 in Altadena, California. Brandon Bell/Getty Images

When families must pack up what they can and evacuate,

People walk down a flooded street as they evacuate their homes after it the area was inundated with flooding from Hurricane Harvey on August 27, 2017 in Houston, Texas. Joe Raedle/Getty Images

and renters and public housing are hit particularly hard…

Diamond Dillahunt, 2-year-old Ta-Layah Koonce and Shkoel Collins survey the flooding at the Trent Court public housing apartments after the Neuse River topped its banks during Hurricane Florence September 13, 2018 in New Bern, N. Carolina. Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

even if we’re safe in our doorway, we won’t thrive if our community is not prepared

A person walks past downed power lines as people deal with the aftermath of Hurricane Helene on October 05, 2024 in Greenwood, South Carolina. Joe Raedle/Getty Images

…because we can’t do this alone.

Volunteer rescuer workers help a woman from her home that was inundated with the flooding of Hurricane Harvey on August 30, 2017 in Port Arthur, Texas. Joe Raedle/Getty Images

“The measure of whether or not a community is resilient is how it protects people from the inevitable.” –Andreanecia Morris, Executive Director for Housing NOLA

Climate-driven risk will make the ongoing housing crisis worse and would have disproportionate impacts on low-income families and communities of color, including people who are incarcerated or experiencing homelessness.

Right now, we need elected officials and government agencies from the local to the federal level doing everything possible to ensure people have safe, affordable, climate-resilient housing and resources to recover from disasters. The US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) is an essential agency for meeting our housing needs, yet Elon Musk is attempting to cut staff and render HUD inoperable in his illegal grab for power.

Thankfully, he’s facing pushback. The Government Accountability Office has committed to investigating the impact on fair housing enforcement in response to a petition led by Senator Elizabeth Warren, Ranking Member of the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee. We’ll need sustained action to keep Elon’s hands off HUD and to invest in affordable, climate-safe housing nationwide.

Call your Senators today and tell them to keep Elon’s hands off HUD and to invest in affordable, climate-safe housing.

For talking points, refer to this national letter signed by UCS and housing justice organizations.

Kathleen Sgamma abruptly withdrew from consideration days after a memo surfaced in which she sharply criticized President Trump.

New warnings from financial firms and insurers point to a future defined by profound risks to the global economy from heat, storms and other disasters.

White House claims university’s work exposed students to ‘climate anxiety’ and ‘exaggerated climate threats’

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Almost $4m in federal funding has been stripped from an Ivy League university’s prestigious climate research department because the Trump administration has determined it exposed students and other young people to “climate anxiety”.

The government research grants to Princeton University have been cut off because the White House considers its work on topics including sea level rise, coastal flooding and global warming to be promoting “exaggerated and implausible climate threats”, according to the New York Times.

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The butterflies’ resilience shows that some species are capable of adapting to dramatic changes in climate, food availability and urban development.

Dutch group Follow This says it will not file any resolutions against oil and gas companies this AGM season

A green shareholder activist group has decided to “pause” its work pushing oil companies to reduce their emissions amid a growing investor backlash against climate action.

Follow This has confirmed that it will not file any climate resolutions against oil and gas companies during the forthcoming AGM season for the first time since 2016.

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Climate denialism should not blind investors and governments to the very real opportunities to be found in financing solutions

Among the many shocks currently facing the international development community is the new direction of the US administration on climate, and the implications worldwide for mitigation and adaptation efforts.

This is not uncharted territory. While a withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement is undoubtedly a setback, it no longer carries the same level of disruption as it did. The global community has become more resilient and will continue to advance climate action.

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Scientists say a complex mix of factors are making seasonal allergies worse for longer in many parts of the world – but why is it happening and is it here to stay?

The first time it happened, László Makra thought he had flu. The symptoms appeared from nowhere at the end of summer in 1989: his eyes started streaming, his throat was tight and he could not stop sneezing. Makra was 37 and otherwise fit and healthy, a mid-career climate scientist in Szeged, Hungary. Winter eventually came and he thought little of it. Then, it happened the next year. And the next.

“I had never had these symptoms before. It was high summer: it was impossible to have the flu three consecutive years in a row,” he says.

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For decades, US meteorologists were forbidden from uttering the word ‘tornado.’ Now, US officials have banned the term ‘climate change’

For more than 60 years, US meteorologists were not allowed to use the word “tornado” in their forecasts. No tornado warnings were issued in this period at the end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th – even when danger was imminent.

Sergeant John Park Finley, of the US Army Signal Corps’ Weather Bureau, was one of the first to work on tornado prediction. By 1884, Finley had trained almost a thousand “spotters” to identify the conditions associated with tornado formation and send reports by the new telegraph system. The resulting trial predictions were not always accurate, but the warnings saved lives by giving people time to get into storm cellars.

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The IEA forecast indicates a sharp rise in the requirements of AI, but said threat to the climate was ‘overstated’

The global rush to AI technology will require almost as much energy by the end of this decade as Japan uses today, but only about half of the demand is likely to be met from renewable sources.

Processing data, mainly for AI, will consume more electricity in the US alone by 2030 than manufacturing steel, cement, chemicals and all other energy-intensive goods combined, according to a report from the International Energy Agency (IEA).

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Advocacy group contends the firm is using 35 methane gas burning turbines, but has permission for only 15

KeShaun Pearson took a seat in front of the Shelby county board of commissioners in Memphis, Tennessee, on Wednesday morning. In the gallery behind him, a small group of people held up signs that said “Our air = our lives” and “Our water, Our future.” With a manner-of-fact demeanor, Pearson addressed the commissioners.

“I’m here because today we’ve learned that xAI is using 35 methane gas burning turbines,” said Pearson, who is the director of the advocacy group Memphis Community Against Pollution. “They have submitted a permit to our Shelby county health department for 15, yet they are using double that amount with no permit.”

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The move raises concerns among scientists that the assessment, which is required by Congress, is now in jeopardy.

After halting federal attempts to combat global warming, President Trump is now targeting efforts by states to reduce greenhouse gases, setting up a legal clash.

Nasa cuts contract that convened USGCRP, which released assessments impacting environmental decision-making

The White House is ending funding for the body that produces the federal government’s pre-eminent climate report, which summarizes the impacts of rising global temperatures on the United States.

Every four years, the US Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) is required by Congress to release a new national climate assessment to ensure leaders understand the drivers of – and threats posed by – global warming. It is the most comprehensive, far-reaching and up-to-date analysis of the climate crisis, playing a key role in local and national decision making about agriculture, energy production, and land and water use.

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The cuts to a Princeton University program come as the Trump administration has been reviewing an array of research grants related to global warming.

President orders justice department to stop enforcement of critical policies holding fossil fuel companies accountable

Donald Trump is taking aim and city- and state-led fossil fuel accountability efforts, which have been hailed as a last source of hope for the climate amid the president’s ferociously anti-environment agenda.

In a Tuesday executive order, Trump instructed the Department of Justice to “stop the enforcement” of state climate laws, which his administration has suggested are unconstitutional or otherwise unenforceable.

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In a blitz of destructive actions announced by EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin last month, he specifically called for a reconsideration of the 2009 Endangerment Finding. A formal proposal for reconsideration of the Finding (and all the agency regulations and actions that depend on it) is expected this month. The science underpinning the Endangerment Finding is airtight, but that won’t stop the Trump administration from setting up a rigged process to try to undo it and give a blank check to polluters. The Union of Concerned Scientists will fight back to defend climate science and protect public health safeguards.

In an earlier post, I laid out some of the history and context for the 2009 science-backed Endangerment Finding and the Cause or Contribute Finding. These findings followed from the landmark 2007 Mass v. EPA Supreme Court ruling which held that greenhouse gas emissions are unambiguously air pollutants covered by the Clean Air Act. Together, these establish the clear basis for EPA’s authority and responsibility to set pollutions limits for heat-trapping emissions from vehicles, power plants and other sources of these pollutants, under the Clean Air Act.   

Attacks on the Endangerment Finding and EPA’s Clean Air Act authority from industry interests are nothing new. Importantly, courts have repeatedly upheld both, including in a resounding 2012 decision from the U.S. Court of Appeals–D.C. Circuit in Citizens for Responsible Regulation v. EPA. But those who have long sought to overturn or weaken regulations to limit heat-trapping emissions now have Administrator Zeldin in their corner. And he has shown himself to be an unbridled purveyor of disinformation and proponent of harmful attacks on bedrock public health protections, as my colleague Julie McNamara highlights.

The details of what will be included in the reconsideration proposal are unclear at this point. But we do know some of the trumped-up lines of attack the Zeldin EPA could advance to try to invalidate these Findings because many of these tired arguments are outlined in EPA’s reconsideration announcement.

Here are the facts:

Fact #1: The science backing the Endangerment Finding is beyond dispute

Every major scientific society endorses the scientific consensus on human-caused climate change driven by GHG emissions. The Fifth National Climate Assessment and the IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report are two major recent authoritative summaries of peer-reviewed climate science, which show that the science on climate change has only become more dire and compelling since 2009.

The impacts of climate change on human health are also starkly clear and backed by overwhelming evidence. Here’s the main finding from the NCA5 chapter on public health, for instance:

Climate change is harming physical, mental, spiritual, and community health through the increasing frequency and intensity of extreme events, higher incidences of infectious and vector-borne diseases, and declines in food and water security. These impacts worsen social inequities. Emissions reductions, effective adaptation measures, and climate-resilient health systems can protect human health and improve health equity.

As just one example, climate change is contributing to worsening extreme heat which exerts a punishing toll on people’s health, including that of outdoor workers. Heat is already the leading cause of extreme weather-related deaths in the United States and studies show that heat-related mortality is on the rise.

Looking around the nation, with communities reeling from extreme heatwaves, intensified hurricanes, catastrophic wildfires and record flooding, climate impacts are the lived reality of all too many people. To deny that or obfuscate about the underlying causes is not only disingenuous, but actively harmful and outright cruel.

Fact #2: The law requires an independent scientific determination of endangerment, unhindered by cost considerations

A Finding of Endangerment under the Clean Air Act is specifically focused on a threshold scientific determination of whether the pollutant under consideration harms public health or welfare. Costs to industry of meeting any subsequent regulations are not relevant per the statute.

The original Endangerment Finding was reached in the context of the vehicle emissions, per section 202(a) of the Clean Air Act, partially excerpted below:  

The Administrator shall by regulation prescribe (and from time to time revise) in accordance with the provisions of this section, standards applicable to the emission of any air pollutant from any class or classes of new motor vehicles or new motor vehicle engines, which in his judgment cause, or contribute to, air pollution which may reasonably be anticipated to endanger public health or welfare.

In its 2012 decision, the DC Circuit was also clear is noting that “By employing the verb “shall,” Congress vested a non-discretionary duty in EPA.” That duty is not circumscribed by cost considerations.

Of course, the impacts of climate change are themselves incredibly costly and those costs are mounting as heat-trapping emissions rise. Unsurprisingly, the social cost of greenhouse gases, a science-based estimate of those costs, is another metric that the Trump EPA is seeking to undermine in yet another blatant attempt to put a thumb on the scale in favor of polluting industries.

Fact #3: EPA used well-established methodologies in its assessment of six GHGs

As noted in the 2009 endangerment finding, the EPA defined the pollutant contributing to climate change as “the aggregate group of the well-mixed greenhouse gases” with similar attributes. The attributes include that they are sufficiently long-lived, directly emitted, contribute to climate warming and are a focus of science and policy.

The EPA used a very well-established scientific methodology to combine emissions of GHGs on the basis of their heat-trapping potential, measured in CO2 equivalents. In the case of passenger cars, light- and heavy-duty trucks, buses, and motorcycles—the transportation sources EPA considered for the original endangerment finding—they emitted four key greenhouse gases: carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and hydrofluorocarbons.

False, glib claims in the reconsideration announcement baselessly accuse the 2009 Endangerment Finding of making “creative leaps” and “mysterious” choices. There is nothing mysterious about the heat-trapping attributes of greenhouse gases, nor their impact on public health. It’s called science. Once again, relying on the mountain of evidence in the peer-reviewed scientific literature would make that readily apparent.

Fact #4: EPA has the responsibility and authority to regulate major sources of GHGs

The Cause or Contribute Finding—which specifically established that greenhouse gas emissions from new vehicles contribute to the pollution that harms public health—may   also come under attack. This finding has been extended to other major sources of GHGs, including power plants and oil and gas operations. However, the Trump administration could attempt to use accounting tricks to avoid regulating emissions—as it has tried before.

In its first term, the administration attempted multiple underhanded maneuvers along these lines, including in the context of methane and VOC regulations in the oil and gas sector . For these regulations, the administration split up segments of the source category, designated them as separate source categories, used that manipulation to claim inability to regulate certain segments, and asserted that methane emissions from the remaining segments were too small and regulating them would not provide additional benefits, so those too could not be regulated. Separately, in the final days of the administration, EPA released an absurd framework attempting to set thresholds for determining “significance,” trialed in the context of power plants.

This irrational approach could be used to artificially segment components of power plants or the power system, for example, and then claim no regulations are required. This kind of rigged math wouldn’t fool a kindergarten child but there’s no telling where this administration might go in its desperate attempt to undo or weaken regulations on greenhouse gas emissions.

Zeldin’s relentless subversion of EPA’s mission

Under Administrator Zeldin, EPA’s mission to protect public health and the environment has been completely subverted. His shocking rhetoric lays bare how far he will go to protect polluters at the expense of the public. Here he is, for instance, crowing about going after 31+ EPA regulations and guidance, as well as the enforcement of pollution standards meant to protect all of us:

“Today is the greatest day of deregulation our nation has seen. We are driving a dagger straight into the heart of the climate change religion…”

EPA even set up an email address for polluters to send an email to get a presidential exemption from complying with regulations on toxic pollution, such as mercury emissions, regulated under the Clean Air Act!

Zeldin is fervently committed to dismantling public health protections and rolling back enforcement of existing laws passed by Congress. Going after the Endangerment Finding is an integral part of this all-out assault because, in the Trump administration’s harmful calculation, revoking the Finding is a potential means to rolling back all the regulations that depend on it.  

Ironically, some utilities and oil and gas companies have spoken out in favor of keeping the Finding intact, as they fear a greater risk of climate damages lawsuits in the absence of EPA authority to regulate greenhouse gases. Of course, this just exposes that they know their products are causing damage. What they seek is the weakest possible exercise of EPA authority so they can continue to reap profits while evading accountability for those harms.

We can fight back with science

But none of this is a foregone conclusion. The legal and scientific basis for the Endangerment Finding is incredibly strong. The false claims Zeldin and other opponents have trotted out are full of bombast but weak on substance.

The science on climate change is so indisputably well-established, that it’s hard to see how any court would uphold a challenge to it. That’s not to say Zeldin won’t try to find a cabal of fringe “scientists” to try to attack it, but they’re unlikely to succeed on the merits.

Public comments on the proposal to reconsider the Endangerment Finding can help set the record straight on facts. And if the Zeldin EPA ignores them and finalizes a sham Finding or revokes the Finding with a faulty rationale, that will be challenged in court.

UCS will be closely following the details of EPA’s proposal to reconsider the Endangerment Finding when it is released. And we will let you know how you can add your voice to bolster this crucial science-based Finding, and the public health protections that flow from it. So, stay tuned!