Today's Climate

Countries have called California's cap-and-trade program the answer to climate change. But it is just as vulnerable to lobbying as any other legislation. The result: The state's biggest oil and gas companies have actually polluted more since it started.

In a world that has failed to address climate change, children will face increased risk of developing asthma, greater exposure to vector-borne disease, and anxiety as their communities are threatened by ever more extreme weather. A new report from the prestigious medical journal Lancet lays out the risks, from womb to adolescence. 

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (R-N.Y.) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) on Thursday unveiled the next step to their Green New Deal plan with a bill focused on reimagining public housing. The proposal calls for $180 billion over 10 years to retrofit and repair public housing units to eliminate their carbon emissions.

The European Investment Bank said on Thursday it would stop funding fossil fuel projects at the end of 2021, a landmark decision that potentially deals a blow to billions of dollars of gas projects in the pipeline.

Veneto regional council, located on Venice's Grand Canal, was flooded for the first time in its history on Tuesday night—just after it rejected measures to combat climate change. The historic Italian city has been brought to its knees this week by the worst flooding there in more than 50 years.

Two decades ago, a Florida utility company—now called NextEra Energy—took a big, early gamble on renewable energy by investing in an Oregon wind farm. This year, the company became the world's first utility with a market capitalization of more than $100 billion, thanks largely to its clean-power business.

Attorneys general from Minnesota, Wisconsin and California have filed a brief supporting Michigan's effort to shut down of aging Enbridge Line 5 pipeline, which runs under the Straits of Mackinac in the Great Lakes. The brief argues that state law, not federal, controls the routing of pipelines.

The top Democrat on the House committee that oversees the Interior Department is demanding answers on the reasoning behind the forthcoming relocation of nearly 250 federal employees who work for the Bureau of Land Management.

German lawmakers approved on Friday a major climate protection package which aims to cut Germany's greenhouse gas emissions to 55 percent of its 1990 level by 2030. The package includes a domestic carbon pricing scheme, bigger incentives for buying electric cars and higher road tolls for trucks from 2023, among other measures.

As cities and states work to reduce their carbon emissions, more transit agencies are replacing their dirtier diesel buses with electric ones, creating hundreds of backlogged orders. Nearly every state now owns—or will soon own—an e-bus, a recent report found.

Worried that an existential threat may be on the horizon as California races toward a future without fossil fuels, a major utility has started encouraging cities across the state to reject electrification. It's arguing that mixing biogas with its fossil fuel natural gas is a better solution. But is it really?

In another instance of mounting friction between the state of California and the White House, a state board voted to enact tougher energy efficiency standards for light bulbs, pushing back against a rollback from the Trump administration. Read more from ICN about the Trump administration's recent attacks on California.

Extreme floods in Venice, fires in Australia and even an outbreak of plague in China have been attributed to climate change this week, while researchers have warned that global warming could saddle future generations with life-long illness, Reuters reports.

Even as its coal use falls,  China's emissions of carbon dioxide from its energy sector are expected to increase this year and next by more than 200 million tons, driven by rising oil and gas consumption, a team of industry experts warned on Thursday. 

Growing demand for SUVs in the US, China, Europe and elsewhere could negate all the environmental benefits of the increased use of electric cars, the International Energy Agency warned in its annual World Energy Outlook this week.

As public pressure to address climate change grows, cities around the world are rethinking their relationship with cars, The New York Times reports, dangling both carrots and sticks to persuade their residents to get out of their cars—or at least into cleaner ones.

An export war has been playing out between Western coal-producing states trying to push their coal into new markets and Pacific Coast states rejecting the product because of its climate consequences. On Tuesday, that fight played out in a federal appeals court over land near the Port of Oakland, California.

Carbon emissions are set to rise until 2040 even if governments meet their existing environmental targets, the International Energy Agency warned in its World Energy Outlook on Wednesday. It provides a stark reminder of the drastic changes needed to alleviate the world's climate crisis.

The FBI has begun a corruption investigation into how Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf's administration came to issue permits for construction on a multibillion-dollar pipeline project to carry highly volatile natural gas liquids across the state, the Associated Press reports.

Venice's mayor called the city a disaster zone on Wednesday after the second highest tide ever recorded swept through it overnight, flooding its historic basilica and leaving many squares and alleyways deep under water.

Extreme temperatures that helped drive the historic 2018 bushfires in north Queensland, Australia, were four times more likely to have happened because of human-caused climate change, according to a study to be published next month.

A bipartisan group backed by a number of environmental groups and fossil fuel companies, including ConocoPhillips and Exxon, is launching a six-figure digital ad campaign Wednesday aimed at selling to Congress a carbon tax plan that the group sees as a moderate alternative to the Green New Deal.

Along with warmer water eating away at West Antarctica's ice shelves from below, new research shows that atmospheric rivers are causing trouble from above. Since 2000, those rivers have been swirling toward the coast more frequently, bringing more rain and surface melting.

U.S. troops, already sweating through dangerous summer heat at military bases across the country, could face an extra month of life-threatening heat every year by mid-century, on average, as the planet warms, a new report from the Union of Concerned Scientists warns.

The Trump administration is preparing to significantly limit the scientific and medical research that the government can use to determine public health regulations, despite protests from scientists and physicians who say the new rule would undermine the scientific underpinnings of government policymaking.

Big, destructive hurricanes are hitting the U.S. three times more frequently than they did a century ago, according to a new study.

Anglo American Plc, one of the world's largest mining companies, dropped another hint that its days of mining coal are limited. The company is on a trajectory away from thermal coal, and will do so responsibly, an Anglo spokesman told Bloomberg.

The Bureau of Land Management may be increasing the number of employees sent from Washington, D.C., to its new agency headquarters in Grand Junction, Colorado, acting Director William Perry Pendley told The Daily Sentinel. Read more from ICN about the BLM moves, which could give Western states more influence over federal land use.

About 60 percent of federal oil and gas drilling leases offered since 2017 are located in areas that are at risk of shortages and droughts, according to a report released on Tuesday by the Center for American Progress.

Australia is enduring a bushfire crisis that has left three people dead, razed more than 150 homes, and prompted warnings of "catastrophic" danger, and the nation's political leaders are facing a backlash for batting away questions on the subject.