Climate

The golden jackal has expanded its range as far as Norway and Spain, seemingly driven by climate breakdown

The golden jackal, Canis aureus, may seem an exotic creature from a far-off country but the species has suddenly expanded its range into western Europe. Much smaller than a wolf but larger than a fox, the jackal will compete with both species for food and territory. The animals have been found as far north as Finland and Norway and have also reached Spain.

Genetic research shows the individual jackals studied had travelled at least 745 miles (1,200km) from their original homes, and sometimes twice as far. This is comparable with wolves looking for new territories.

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As Hurricane Helene made climate change an early focus of the vice-presidential debate, the running mates quickly demonstrated the stark differences between the parties on the issue.

Excessive heat warnings bring elevated wildfire risk, potential for power outages and rising death toll

San Francisco recorded its hottest day of the year on Tuesday, and Phoenix set a record for the hottest 1 October on record, as the National Weather Service predicted record-high fall temperatures across the south-western US.

With temperatures hitting 100F (38C) or higher in many places, officials and local media outlets issued warnings that the heat posed “a significant threat to property or life”. Excessive heat warnings were in place across the region, bringing with it warnings about elevated wildfire risk, the potential for sweeping power outages in California and a rising toll of heat-related deaths, a particularly deadly risk for unhoused people and the elderly.

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Damage went beyond downed power lines. Hundreds of substations went out after the storm. Getting them back online is difficult.

Searchers using helicopters to get past washed-out bridges and hike through wilderness to reach isolated homes

Hurricane Helene’s death toll has surpassed 150 as searchers use helicopters to get past washed-out bridges and hike through wilderness to reach isolated homes.

Crews were still trudging through knee-deep muck and debris in the wake of the deadly category 4 storm that dumped more than 40tn gallons of rain on the southern US after it crashed ashore in Florida on Thursday.

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The worst damage from Hurricane Helene came in areas that were expected to be relatively immune to the effects of climate change.

US public sector workers’ retirement savings invested in projects that pump out a billion tonnes of emissions a year

Private equity firms are using US public sector workers’ retirement savings to fund fossil fuel projects pumping more than a billion tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere every year, according to an analysis.

They have ploughed more than $1tn (£750bn) into the energy sector since 2010, often buying into old and new fossil fuel projects and, thanks to exemptions from many financial disclosures, operating them outside the public eye, the researchers say.

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Los huracanes suelen debilitarse en tierra. Pero si el suelo ya está húmedo por lluvias anteriores, los ciclones pueden recibir un impulso adicional.

Workers struggle with dehydration, fatigue dizziness and headaches – but state laws have stripped their protections

Every day, Raquel Atlahua begins her work as a roofer bracing for the blistering sun.

On the roof, there is no escape from the direct light and heat, and the temperatures in Florida quickly climb as the day progresses. The high humidity and lack of shade make it feel even hotter, and even more difficult to cool down.

This is the first of three stories about the US workers who are struggling to survive a summer of extreme heat that shattered records from coast to coast. Parts two and three coming soon.

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Why do the mass killers of the fossil fuel industry walk free while the heroes trying to stop them are imprisoned?

The sentences were handed down just as Hurricane Helene hit North Carolina. As homes were smashed, trucks swept down roads that had turned into rivers and residents were killed, in the placid setting of Southwark crown court two young women from Just Stop Oil, Phoebe Plummer and Anna Holland, were sentenced to two years and 20 months, respectively, for throwing tomato soup at the glass protecting Van Gogh’s Sunflowers. No prison terms have been handed to the people whose companies deliver climate breakdown, causing the deaths of many thousands and destruction valued not at the £10,000 estimated by the court in damage to the painting’s frame but trillions.

Everywhere we see a farcical disproportion. The same judge, Christopher Hehir, presided over the trial of the two sons of one of the richest men in Britain, George and Costas Panayiotou. On a night out, they viciously beat up two off-duty police officers, apparently for the hell of it. One of the officers required major surgery, including the insertion of titanium plates in his cheek and eye socket. One of the brothers, Costas, already had three similar assault convictions. But Hehir gave them both suspended sentences. He also decided that a police officer who had sex in his car with a drunk woman he had “offered to take home” should receive only a suspended sentence. Hehir said he wanted “to bring this sad and sorry tale to its end with a final act of mercy”. The solicitor general referred the case to the court of appeal for being unduly lenient, and the sentence was raised to 11 months in jail.

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Timed to coincide with the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA), last week’s Climate Week in New York City s spotlighted the urgent need for ambitious worldwide climate action. The death toll and devastation of Hurricane Helene has underscored that urgency. UNGA and the upcoming international climate negotiations in Baku, Azerbaijan (known as COP29), are crucial because governments bear primary responsibility for adopting and implementing policies that will sharply reduce global warming emissions, increasing international climate finance, and defending people and policy-making processes against fossil fuel industry misconduct. Climate Week events highlighted commitments and actions needed from the financial sector and other corporations to support and spur government ambition. As usual, it was a mixed bag. While at least one event provided a platform for oil and gas industry greenwashing, others centered people directly affected by fossil fuel-driven climate change who are holding bad actors accountable.

I had the honor of moderating one of the latter events, Scientists & Activists vs. Fossil Fuel Finance. It featured a stellar panel of scientists, organizers, and frontline leaders reporting out from the Summer of Heat on Wall Street campaign and sharing their insights on why banks must stop financing fossil fuel expansion:

• Rose Z. Abramoff, PhD, Wintergreen Earth Science; Board President, Climate Emergency Fund 
• Michael Johnson, New York Communities for Change 
• Sandra Steingraber, PhD, Senior Scientist, Science and Environmental Health Network; Co-founder, Concerned Health Professionals of New York 
• Jenny Xie, Organizing Manager, Stop the Money Pipeline 

You can watch the recording of the event here.

Summer of Heat on Wall Street

According to the 2024 Banking on Climate Chaos report, Citi is the second-largest financier of fossil fuels and the largest financier of fossil fuel expansion since the Paris climate agreement, having poured $396 billion into the industry since 2016. That’s why activists with the Summer of Heat on Wall Street organized a campaign of sustained nonviolent direct action targeting Citi and other major players in the financial sector for their role in fueling the climate crisis.

In June, more than 750 scientists sent an open letter organized by UCS to Citi, calling on the bank to stop financing fossil fuel expansion, respect human rights, and redirect finance to renewable energy. Citi’s Chief Sustainability Officer, Val Smith, responded to the scientists’ letter in July, outlining the bank’s support for the transition to a low-carbon economy and sharing its 2023 Climate Report. Unfortunately, Citi’s response confirmed that the bank’s actions are not fully aligned with what science shows is necessary to limit the worst impacts of climate change and protect people, ecosystems, and economies from worsening climate disasters. 

And Citi’s response to the scientists’ letter came in the context of an escalating crackdown, as Citi and the New York Police Department attempted to suppress nonviolent protests and inhibit freedom of speech and free assembly at the bank’s headquarters.

Here are some key points emerging from last week’s event and UCS’s analysis, demonstrating why we must keep up the pressure on Citi and other Big Banks to do better when it comes to climate change and environmental justice:

Citi continues to finance more fossil fuels than low-carbon energy projects and companies

In 2021, Dr. Fatih Birol, head of the International Energy Agency, stated, “If governments are serious about the climate crisis, there can be no new investments in oil, gas and coal, from now—from this year.” The science is clear that a rapid and fair phaseout of fossil fuels is necessary to limit the worst climate impacts and secure a livable future. Citi’s place as the biggest financier of fossil fuel expansion is taking us in the wrong direction.

While Citi touts its $1 trillion Sustainable Finance by 2030 Goal, that figure includes the bank’s full range of environmental, social, and governance investments. A 2023 report by BloombergNEF suggests the finance industry’s ratio for low-carbon to fossil-fuel supply investment needs to be at least 4:1 by 2030 to remain aligned with scenarios under which the average global temperature rises by no more than 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. BloombergNEF calculated Citi’s 2022 Energy Supply Banking Ratio (that is, financing for low-carbon projects and companies compared to financing for fossil fuel activities) at 0.6:1.

This year, in response to pressure from shareholders, Citi committed to regularly disclose its ratio of clean energy supply financing to fossil fuel extraction financing. These disclosures should allow shareholders and advocates to monitor the bank’s future progress on this metric.

Citi’s energy sector clients are not leading the low-carbon transition

No major oil and gas corporation has a business plan that would put it on track to meet the goals of the Paris climate agreement. A 2022 peer-reviewed study found that BP, Chevron, ExxonMobil and Shell continue to depend almost entirely on fossil fuels, with insignificant and opaque spending on clean energy—and that accusations of greenwashing appear well-founded. Indeed, a multiyear bicameral US congressional investigation found that the fossil fuel industry’s long-running campaign of climate deception and delay continues to this day.

Citi’s 2023 Climate Report reveals that, under Citi’s own criteria, 42% of its clients in the energy sector don’t have a substantive plan to reach net-zero, and an additional 29% don’t have a clear strategy to execute their high-level plans. Only 28% of energy clients have what Citi termed a medium-strong or strong transition plan.

Citi parrots fossil fuel industry talking points about energy needs in developing countries

The truth is low-income countries—which have done the least to cause climate change—are being hit the first and hardest by devastating climate impacts. Small Island Developing States and other Global South nations have been at the forefront of pushing for greater climate ambition and climate accountability.

The solution to meeting the world’s energy needs is not to further expand polluting, ecosystem-destroying, and climate-warming fossil fuel operations. Instead, low-income, climate-vulnerable countries urgently need and deserve rapidly scaled-up and steady funding from the wealthy nations that have caused the climate crisis, to help cut heat-trapping emissions, invest in clean energy and climate resilience, and address climate losses and damage (the negative impacts of climate change that are not being avoided or cannot be avoided through mitigation and adaptation).

Citi ignores negative health and human rights impacts on local communities from fossil fuel extraction

Fossil fuel pollution disproportionately harms BIPOC and low-income communities in the US. We urge Citi leadership to read this new report on environmental racism and health harms linked to Citi’s financing of LNG and petrochemical projects in the Gulf South, and to respond to ongoing requests from community leaders in Louisiana and Texas for a meeting to discuss these issues.

The impacts of Citi’s financing are global—Citi is also a top financier of oil and gas extraction in the Amazon. While Citi recently responded to years of pressure from Amazonian Indigenous organizations and environmental groups by saying it will no longer provide project-related financing of oil and gas expansion in the Amazon, its new policy leaves significant loopholes and fails to fully meet the demands of local Indigenous communities. While the new policy is a step forward, project-related deals are estimated to be only 18% of Citibank’s overall direct financing for Amazon oil and gas.

Citi lobbies against meaningful climate-related public policies

Citi is a member and funder of the US Chamber of Commerce, which continues to oppose climate-related legislation and regulation in its lobbying efforts. For example, the Chamber recently sued the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), aiming to stop the SEC from implementing a rule that would compel companies to disclose more details about how they manage climate-related risks. 

As noted by Alec Connon, director of the Stop the Money Pipeline coalition, Citi’s CEO, Jane Fraser, is Vice Chair of the Financial Services Forum and a board member of the Bank Policy Institute, both of which receive negative rankings from LobbyMap for their lobbying on sustainable finance policy, including corporate climate disclosure and climate-related risk management.

Science—and scientists—call on Citi to stop fueling the climate crisis

As part of the Summer of Heat on Wall Street campaign, scientists have engaged in civil disobedience and been arrested outside of Citi’s doors on multiple occasions, alongside elders, youth, frontline leaders, and other activists. It was a “summer of heat” in multiple senses, with an unprecedented number of heat records being broken across the globe and dangerous extreme weather causing economic damage and death.

Scientists are joining this powerful and growing movement to hold Big Banks accountable on climate because we know that the science is clear. The world will face increasingly catastrophic climate impacts if we do not swiftly phase out fossil fuels, cut heat-trapping emissions, and make a just transition to a clean energy economy, and every sector must play its part.

That’s why Citi and other major financial institutions must stop prolonging the fossil fuel era—and the fossil fuel industry’s exorbitant profits—at the expense of people and ecosystems around the world. You can help increase the pressure on Citi by sharing the event recording and the new report Citi: Funding Fossil-Fueled Environmental Racism in the Gulf South on social media. To stay tuned with what’s coming next for the Summer of Heat campaign, sign up for updates here.

Thanks to Campaign Organizer Hannah Poor for her assistance with this blogpost and for her leadership in organizing UCS’s Climate Week events.

The historic North Carolina city was touted as a climate ‘haven’ – a reputation deadly Hurricane Helene left in ruins

Nestled in the bucolic Blue Ridge mountains of western North Carolina and far from any coast, Asheville was touted as a climate “haven” from extreme weather. Now the historic city has been devastated and cut off by Hurricane Helene’s catastrophic floodwaters, in a stunning display of the climate crisis’s unlimited reach in the United States.

Helene, which crunched into the western Florida coast as a category 4 hurricane on Thursday, brought darkly familiar carnage to a stretch of that state that has experienced three such storms in the past 13 months, flattening coastal homes and tossing boats inland.

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It’s difficult to overstate how rapidly Australians have embraced solar power – there’s now more rooftop solar than coal-fired power. The key question is what policymakers can learn from its success

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Australia was a different place in 2011. Julia Gillard’s Labor government, the Greens and a couple of country independents were rewriting the country’s climate policies, including introducing a world-leading carbon pricing system and creating three agencies to back it up.

Those organisations – the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, the Australian Renewable Energy Agency and the Climate Change Authority – have survived and help shape the investment and policy landscape. The carbon pricing system – falsely described as a tax – famously didn’t.

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Hurricanes typically weaken over land. But if the ground is already wet from earlier rains, storms can receive an extra jolt that keeps them churning.

Biden says he plans to visit affected areas after devastating storm destroys entire communities

As the south-east US continues recovery efforts after Hurricane Helene’s devastation, the storm’s death toll keeps climbing, with more than 100 killed across several states, Joe Biden said Monday.

The president said that he was planning to visit the areas affected by Helene on Wednesday or Thursday, as long as it does not disrupt rescue and recovery operations.

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Some leaders insist that the global clean energy transition will happen with or without the United States.

Labor government has undermined case to co-host 2026 UN climate summit with island nations, Dr Maina Talia declares

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Tuvalu’s climate minister says Australia’s decision to approve three coalmine expansions calls into question its claim to be a “member of the Pacific family”, and undermines the Australian case to co-host the 2026 UN climate summit with island nations.

Dr Maina Talia said last week’s mine approvals that analysts say could generate more than 1.3bn tonnes of carbon dioxide across their lifetime once the coal is shipped and burned overseas was “a direct threat to our collective future”.

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No one has ever restarted an American nuclear reactor that was seemingly closed for good. But with electricity demand spiking, interest is growing.

The Ratcliffe-on-Soar plant was the last surviving coal-burning power station in a country that birthed the Industrial Revolution and fed it with coal.

At least 30 stranded or missing and hundreds injured after heaviest monsoon rains in two decades

More than 200 people were killed in Nepal over the weekend in what experts described as some of the worst flash flooding to have hit the capital, Kathmandu, and the surrounding valleys.

Swathes of Kathmandu were left underwater after the heaviest monsoon rains in two decades fell on Friday and Saturday, washing away entire neighbourhoods, bridges and roads. The heavy rains caused the Bagmati River, which runs through the city, to swell more than 2 metres higher than deemed safe.

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