Climate

Millionaire points to Broken Hill’s blackout to attack the energy transition but experts say he should look at South Australia and Europe

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For 15 minutes on Sunday morning, ABC local radio listeners were treated to a rant from Dick Smith as the millionaire attacked Australia’s transition away from fossil fuels, claiming renewables would make electricity unaffordable and cause sweeping blackouts.

“It seems we have been sold a pup and we are not getting the full truth all the time,” responded Ian McNamara, the host of Australia All Over. “There are lots of people who will back you up.”

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Today, it has become clear that former President Donald Trump will return to office for a second term, after a close and hard-fought election.

There’s no denying it: this is a very difficult outcome for us and for everyone who cares about a safe and sustainable future. There’s every reason to expect that a second Trump administration will pose a risk to our values and priorities at least as severe as the first term, if not more.

President-elect Trump’s path to the White House has been an unprecedented campaign of disinformation, threats, divisive language, and dangerous policy promises. It’s understandable to look ahead to the next four years with serious worry—but while we shouldn’t underestimate the risk, we can’t afford to despair. The challenges the planet faces are too urgent for complacency or cynicism.

Here at the Union of Concerned Scientists, we knew a second Trump term was a real possibility, and we’ve prepared for the challenges ahead. There’s hope in our unique approach: by combining science-backed analysis with grassroots advocacy, UCS has a 50-plus year track record of success, regardless of who’s in the White House.  

We—and our supporters across the country—have a vital role to play in defending the progress we’ve made at the federal level, advancing our goals at the state level, and exposing and pushing back against the abuses that are likely to come. We’re clear about the threats we face but we must move forward with hope and determination. 

Our priorities for the next year and beyond include:

•  Launching a new national campaign to defend science in government decision-making from day one. When science is sidelined, people get hurt. With your help we will work to limit political attacks on government scientists and experts, stop suppression of scientific research, fight unqualified science agency nominations, and defend against other anti-science action in the Project 2025 agenda.
• Protecting democracy, state by state. This election was marred by efforts to undermine the right to vote—through voter-roll purges, restrictive laws, and rampant disinformation. We will continue to work and expand our Election Science Task Force and push to improve free and fair elections at the state level through science-based best practices, including fair representation, better ballot design, and more transparent election data.
• Safeguarding and advancing clean energy and climate-safe infrastructure. The investments made in the Inflation Reduction Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law are having an impact—creating jobs and changing the trajectory of the energy economy in red, blue, and purple states. We have an opportunity to work across the partisan divide in Congress and the states to defend those vital investments and make sure the path toward a cleaner, safer future stays in place. And we are already set up and working in states across the country to forge more ambitious policies to cut pollution, advance equity, and build a thriving future—we can and will press on.
• Holding corporate bad actors accountable. Through our Science Hub for Climate Litigation, we’re providing research and expertise to inform legal cases in the United States and around the world that seek to hold Chevron, ExxonMobil, and other powerful fossil fuel companies and their allied organizations accountable for fraud and for climate damages.
• Relentlessly pushing for long-term solutions that protect science. Wewill work to advance federal legislation that permanently establishes scientific integrity principles and practices across the federal government, prevents excessive and undue influence of corporate special interests, and undoes the damage caused by recent Supreme Court decisions that undermine the ability of federal agencies to implement equitable science-based policies.

To learn more, you can read this series of blog posts from our team laying out the challenges ahead and the strategies we’re putting in place to confront them.

• A Second Trump Administration Threatens an Assault on Climate, Energy, and Justice Priorities by Chitra Kumar, managing director of the Climate and Energy program.

• A Path Forward for Science and Democracy by Jennifer Jones, program director of the Center for Science & Democracy.
• It’s an Unpleasant Déjà Vu for Clean Transportation Advocates by Don Anair, deputy director and research director of the Clean Transportation program.
• What a Second Trump Administration Means for Food and Farms by Karen Perry Stillerman, deputy director of the Food and Environment program.
• Can Advocates Reduce Nuclear Dangers and Advance Nuclear Justice Under a Trump Administration? by Tara Drozdenko, director of the Global Security program.
• States Must Step Up by Juliet Christian-Smith, Western States regional director.

In the remaining months of the Biden administration, we’ll keep fighting for progress—and after the inauguration we’ll prioritize defending the investments and policies we’ve worked so hard to implement.

We’ll defend USDA’s efforts to fund conservation and fulfill their commitment to end discrimination in the agriculture sector. We’ll fight to protect investments in clean transportation infrastructure, support state efforts to fill in the gaps that will emerge at the federal level, and keep the spotlight on industry actors trying to prevent the transformation of our transportation system. And we’ll pass the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act at home and work across civil society and national borders to block the resumption of nuclear testing and reduce the risk of nuclear war.

We know that it will be difficult. The Trump agenda is a threat to democracy, to equity and justice, to public health and the climate. We must work tirelessly to counter these threats—and side by side with a broad coalition of allies. We will look beyond this election cycle to build power in the long term. And with your support, we will.

Read what UCS experts expect from the second Trump administration on climate and energy, food and agriculture, global security, science and democracy, and transportation.

Associate Justice of the Supreme Court Louis Brandeis was the first to call states the laboratories of democracy. States have unique power in our federalist system to advance change. Indeed, UCS’ state-based strategies have focused on advancing some of the most innovative policies at the state scale, including cap and trade and zero-emission vehicle standards. Both have subsequently been adopted widely. 

For the past four years, states like California have benefited from federal leadership that has made historic investments in climate action, clean energy, water, and clean transportation. We knew we could rely on the federal government to grant California regulators the ability to pass forward-looking policies necessary to make our air breathable. 

Contrast that with what we experienced in President Trump’s first term: more than 200 documented attacks on science by the administration, total disregard for the need for climate action, the sidelining of science during the pandemic that resulted in people being hurt, prioritizing the interests of polluters, and doors previously open to ambitious state regulations slammed shut. 

It’s about to get tough again for state leaders focused on the forward-looking climate, energy, water, transportation, food, and security policies that President-elect Trump and Project 2025 are seeking to dismantle and defund. But there is still progress to be made. As my UCS colleague in California, Don Anair, notes: even during the first Trump administration, there were successes in California for climate, clean energy, and clean transportation.

States must go all in on offense

Fortunately, California continues to have a governor and legislative leadership who understand the importance of driving down emissions, protecting frontline communities, and transitioning away from fossil fuels as quickly and equitably as possible.

While our colleagues and partners in Washington, DC, will be playing tough defense on the issues we care about—like fighting attacks on federal science and scientists, opposing anti-science federal nominees, defending regulations that protect health and safety for people across the US—states like California will have to go all in on offense. 

Here in California, advocacy organizations like UCS will need to look for new funding sources for the investments our climate and communities desperately need. We will need to find creative solutions to transition away from combustion vehicles without the certainty of our vehicle regulations. We will have to develop clean energy, ensure communities have access to safe and affordable drinking water, build out electric vehicle charging infrastructure, transition irrigated land to more sustainable uses, and much more—all with an oppositional force in the White House. 

Across the Western states, UCS has worked hard for years to have a robust presence and partnerships with many allied stakeholders who will help us pass policies. I am confident we can show the country and the world that a way forward on the issues we care the most about is still imminently possible.   

Now, more than ever, states must step up.

California can continue to lead

UCS will continue to prioritize work in California. The state continues to be the fifth largest economy in the world and an international leader on climate change. During the Biden-Harris administration, UCS was able to drive important change in the Western States, and we will continue to do so. 

• At the California Air Resources Board (CARB), we will continue to push for the most health protective transportation regulations possible, proving to the nation that a zero-emission vehicle transition is possible. 
• At the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) we will continue to ensure that utilities are planning for 100% clean energy by 2045. 
• At the California Energy Commission (CEC), we will work to plan for an integrated clean energy and transportation future that includes bidirectional electric vehicles. 
• And at the State Water Board we will ensure that groundwater is protected and water rights are appropriately tracked and enforced.
• At the legislature, with the help of Governor Newsom, we will pass legislation to remove barriers to clean energy deployment, protect scientists from political interference, transition away from fossil fuels in the transportation and energy sectors, and give all Californians access to safe and affordable drinking water. 

While we expect the second Trump administration will do its best to put up roadblocks and barriers all along the way to California’s efforts, UCS will continue to advance science-based solutions at the state scale for a safer and healthier world.

Read what UCS experts expect from the second Trump administration on food and agriculture, global security, science and democracy, transportation, and engaging with states.

After a hard-fought close election fueled by an active campaign of disinformation, Donald Trump has won the presidency.

As advocates for solving the climate crisis, it is daunting to take stock of the new hurdles we see to progress, especially at a time when the deadly and costly impacts of climate change are so clear across the nation.

While the Union of Concerned Scientists and our supporters have deep concerns about what will come next, we know there are no sides in science. Facts do not bow to politics. The next hurricane doesn’t care if you are conservative or liberal or what political party you belong to. The science is clear: the climate crisis is real and worsening. People need real solutions and that’s what we’ll be fighting for.

Trust they will do what they said in the campaign 

We expect the new administration to attempt a long list of harmful actions to undermine climate progress, many of them outlined in the Project 2025 manifesto. UCS is primed to resist and fight back; not all of these actions are foregone conclusions—science, statutes, and public engagement will all serve to limit the worst. How much damage is done at the federal level to the progress we have made will also depend on the election outcomes in the House of Representatives and the role it will play. The Supreme Court—which has been increasingly hostile to federal agencies—could also be a deciding factor in key instances.

At the same time, enormous clean energy momentum is already underway in states and localities all across the country, supported by shifts in governing agendas to include climate action as a priority, strengthened climate- and health-harming pollution standards, and forward-looking investment policies at the local, state, and federal levels. That commitment to the future can remain as a bulwark against repeated attacks on climate progress from the executive branch—but much is still at risk of being lost, precisely when the world requires a redoubling of action, not a slip.

All-out attacks on climate action

The fact remains that when it comes to critical climate and public health protections, federal action is key, which is what makes the threats from a Trump administration so concerning. Based on the actions of the first Trump administration, how he campaigned, and what Project 2025 has laid out, these are some of the actions we are expecting and will respond to:

• Giveaways to the fossil fuel industry, paid for by people and the environment. Donald Trump’s campaign promises included supporting unfettered expansion of oil and gas production while reversing pivotal new clean energy provisions that facilitated the transition away from fossil fuels. This represents an outright pendulum swing from the Biden administration’s whole-of-government approach to tackling climate change. It indicates a shift in prioritization of interests, underscored by new findings that Trump’s PACs received more than $75 million from oil interests to continue receiving sweet deals from federal taxpayer subsidies while evading accountability.
• Attacks on science-informed standards and agendas. The new administration’s dramatic shift in agenda will be underpinned by actions that undermine trust in science and the capacity of administrative agencies to undertake good decision-making. We will be watching out for attempts to defund federal agencies and target career staff who have institutional knowledge and scientific expertise; rolling back or undermining agencies’ scientific integrity policies; manipulating the data and analyses used to justify public health and environmental protections; stopping essential scientific studies that advance our understanding of public health pollution harms as well as climate science, impacts, and solutions; and nominating egregious, unqualified cabinet appointees who care about power and profits, not the public interest or the mission of their agencies (such as Rex Tillerson and Scott Pruitt) 
• Regulatory rollbacks. Critical climate and public health standards that hold polluters to account—such as standards limiting climate and health-harming pollution from coal- and gas-fired power plants and fossil fuel extraction and transport—are at extreme risk of attempted weakening or outright abandonment. While the previous Trump administration ultimately saw many of its efforts fail in the courts due to neglect of statutory obligation and basic facts, even failed attempts still result in lengthy delays, which translate into significant, widespread, life-shortening, and climate-exacerbating impacts.
• Legislative rollbacks. Polluting industries have already pushed Congress to roll back provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act. However, this law is benefiting people and forward-looking companies all across the nation, meaning complete roll backs are unlikely—but we expect targeted efforts to continue, especially to undo those provisions posing the greatest threat to fossil fuel industry interests.
• Threats to environmental justice and equity. The Biden administration took several historic steps to advance environmental justice priorities but many of them are likely to be in danger under a Trump administration—including efforts under the Justice40 Initiative to help ensure targeted funding and resources for disadvantaged communities, EPA grant programs to help clean up pollution in overburdened communities, and a whole-of-government approach to embed environmental justice in the work of all agencies.  
• Undermining of climate diplomacy. Trump has promised to again exit the Paris Agreement —the international agreement to try to limit the worst impacts of climate change, thus undermining global climate progress. As a rich nation and a major carbon emitter, the United States has an outsize responsibility and is key to achieving the goals of the agreement. Stepping away from it would affect US credibility and could potentially impact its ability to secure cooperation on other geopolitical, trade, and security issues that are in the national interest.

Indeed, this is a tough moment for desperately needed climate and energy progress, but we will not give up—and we want you to fight with us.

We will fight back. Join us!

We will work to defend against rollbacks to public health safeguards and climate policies that are grounded in science and delivering tremendous benefits to people. We will highlight the importance of the work of agency scientific experts including on climate and clean energy issues, and we will call out the manipulation of science and analysis undertaken to justify polluter handouts. We will relentlessly oppose anti-science Cabinet nominees who prioritize the interests of polluters and special interests over the health and safety of people and communities, and we will support legal challenges to rollbacks of pollution standards.

UCS will continue helping to inform the science that helps underpin climate litigation, which continues to proliferate and evolve. Across the United States and its territories, dozens of communities, states, and tribes are suing the fossil fuel industry over climate deception and damages. Since the adoption of the Paris climate agreement in 2015, 86 climate lawsuits have been filed worldwide against major oil, gas, and coal corporations. Some of these cases seek compensation for climate damages, others aim to force these companies to reduce global warming emissions, still others seek to end false climate- and environment-related claims. These kinds of actions will likely gather force under a Trump administration.

UCS is mobilizing immediately with the 17,000 scientists in our network and with partners to launch an emergency campaign to fight attacks on federal science and scientists, and stop the Trump administration from politicizing science and firing the experts who help protect our communities, families, and the planet. But we will need everyone—not just scientists—to stand up for the critical role of science for climate, for health, for the well-being of all.

We will share more about these and other efforts in the weeks ahead.

The rightwing regional authorities ignored the climate-crisis science and dismissed the weather forecast – the consequences are their responsibility

• Juan Bordera is a climate journalist and an independent MP for Compromís in the Valencian parliament

It’s almost impossible to describe what we have experienced in the flooded villages and towns around the city of Valencia. Many of those villages and towns are in ruins, with at least 217 dead and others to be pulled out of the mud. There are many areas that still need urgent help. There are towns without water or electricity that have not been able to clean up. There are still flooded garages, buildings on the verge of collapse, and health problems that may result from the accumulated water.

But what also defies belief is the regional Valencian government’s sheer negligence in its pre- and post-disaster management. Let me try to summarise some of the most serious shortcomings.

Juan Bordera is a climate journalist and an independent MP for Compromís in the Valencian parliament. He has donated his fee for this article to a fundraiser for those affected by the storm

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Mount Fuji, the country’s tallest summit, is revered for its snowy peak. A snowfall reported on Wednesday ended its longest snowless period in 130 years.

More than 150 million people and 318m acres of crops are affected by droughts after summer of record heat

Every US state except Alaska and Kentucky is facing drought, an unprecedented number, according to the US Drought Monitor.

A little more than 45% of the US and Puerto Rico is in drought this week, according to the tracker. About 54% of land in the 48 contiguous US states is affected by droughts.

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As the nation heads to the polls, here’s a guide to understanding the biggest climate and environmental issues at stake.

Front yards transformed to tiny crop farms in Los Angeles provide vegetables to dozens of families and use a fraction of the water needed by grass.

Days ahead of the U.N.’s global negotiations on climate change, China and other developing countries said trade restrictions should be part of the talks.

Former post office operator tells Commons committee that Keir Starmer has not responded to requests for help with settling claims for Horizon scandal

Tom Tugendhat is one of two Conservative leadership candidates not in the shadow cabinet. The other is James Cleverly, who said publicly last week he did not want a frontbench post. The other four candidates (Priti Patel, Mel Stride, Robert Jenrick and Kemi Badenoch herself, obviously) are all in the shadow cabinet.

But Tugendhat was not snubbed, Badenoch’s team are saying. He was offered a job, but turned it down.

Full shadow Cabinet has just dropped. Interesting that Tom Tugendhat has NOT taken up a role in Kemi Badenoch’s Shadow Cabinet. Appointments Chris Philp (Home), James Cartlidge (Defence), Kevin Hollinrake (Housing), Vicky Atkins (Environment), Andrew Griffith (Business) and Claire Coutinho (Net Zero).

No room for Suella Braverman in the shadow Cabinet either ...

Looking at the names who are not there - James Cleverly, Oliver Dowden, Jeremy Hunt, Steve Barclay, Tom Tugedhat, Suella Braverman - it looks to me more like a shallow Cabinet rather than a shadow Cabinet. But it is four years until the next general election, and the Tory party is undergoing a shift to a new generation of frontbenchers, and all of these Conservatives have a chance to impress the electorate.

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A week on from deluge that devastated the town of Chiva, morale is low and there is anger as politicians play familiar blame game

Everyone in Chiva has their own memories of what happened here a week ago. For some it is the frantic phone calls to loved ones; for others, the disbelief as this small Valencian town, like so many others, was swallowed up by flood waters that bore away cars and trees as if they were paper boats.

For Lourdes Vallés, it is the sound of a car horn sounding through the sodden darkness of last Tuesday night.

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Scientists in Japan constructed the first satellite made of wood by blending age-old woodworking techniques with rocket science.

Christian Åslund was shocked at the difference between what he saw in 2002 and what confronted him this summer

Standing in blinding sunlight on an archipelago above the Arctic Circle, the photographer Christian Åslund looked in shock at a glacier he had last visited in 2002. It had almost completely disappeared.

Two decades ago Greenpeace asked Åslund to use photographs taken in the early 20th century, and photograph the same views in order to document how glaciers in Svalbard were melting due to global heating. The difference in ice density in those pictures, taken almost a century apart, was staggering.

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It takes dedication, solar panels and lots of vegetables. And it probably means putting dating on hold.

Lawyer for police argues business should be allowed to continue as Rising Tide threatens to halt exports for 30 hours

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Protesters have scaled back their plan to block the Port of Newcastle to 30 hours, down from an initial 50 hours, amid a legal challenge by New South Wales police to stop the action going ahead.

On Tuesday, police and the protest organiser – Rising Tide – appeared in the supreme court for a second day. Police are challenging the protest, which would involve activists paddling into the harbour on kayaks and rafts to stop coal exports leaving the port.

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Little rain has fallen since Hurricane Helene dropped huge amounts across the Southeast.

The Trudeau government has focused on the oil and gas production industries because the large amounts of energy they use make them the country’s largest source of greenhouse gases.

Residents warned of ‘potentially life-threatening conditions’ including tornadoes and severe thunderstorms

A day after tornadoes injured at least 11 people while downing trees, power lines and gas lines, communities in Oklahoma on Monday were navigating fresh warnings of destructive weather.

Six or more tornadoes hit the state overnight into Sunday – and more “tornadoes (some strong), large hail, and severe thunderstorm gusts, are expected today into tonight from the Southern Plains into the Ozarks and mid Mississippi Valley”, the US’s National Weather Service (NWS) said on Monday.

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Today’s teenagers were born into the global-warming crisis, but already it’s upending their adolescence — and will define their future.