GREENING
- A first-of-its-kind global summit of 57 countries on shifting from fossil fuels ended Wednesday on an optimistic note, with the launch of new “workstreams” to help countries phase out oil, gas and coal and plans for a second meeting next year. “This may be the first multilateral meeting that I find not frustrating,” Colombian Environment Minister Irene Vélez Torres said in the final plenary, to laughter from the audience. “It has been very inspiring.” China, Russia, India and the US – the world’s top polluters – did not attend. One of the first orders of business was to launch a panel of scientists that will advise willing countries to shift to clean energy. A separate group of researchers released a report listing 12 high-level actions that nations can take to support a fossil-fuel phaseout. Unlike the UN COP meetings fossil fuel lobbyists were not allowed to participate.
- When a court struck down Berkeley, California’s pioneering gas ban in 2023, it was a big blow to local governments looking to decarbonize. But three years later, it seems that decision was the exception, not the rule: Judge after judge is siding with building electrification policies in similar lawsuits across the U.S., Alison F. Takemura reports.
- Last month, Dominion Energy’s Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind started generating electricity for the mid-Atlantic grid just days after Orsted’s Revolution Wind entered into service off the coast of Rhode Island. Now a third U.S. offshore wind project is fully up and running. On Monday, Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey announced that Vineyard Wind had activated its electricity contracts with utilities, setting fixed prices for the 800-megawatt project 15 miles south of Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket over the next 20 years. In a press release, Healey said the power purchase agreements will save Massachusetts ratepayers roughly $1.4 billion in electricity costs throughout these next two decades.
- The largest renewable energy project ever built in the United States
has begun generating electricity, putting a two-decade push to deliver
wind power generated in New Mexico to consumers in California on the
cusp of completion. SunZia Wind has begun testing its 916 turbines as it nears the start
of commercial operations later this quarter, according to a person
familiar with the project. The impact is already evident: California
broke its record for wind generation eight times in the last four weeks,
according to Grid Status, a website that tracks power flows. The 3.5-gigawatt wind development, which will deliver power over a
550-mile transmission line to California, is nearing the finish line at a
time when the wind industry is under attack in Washington.
CLIMATE DESPOLIATION
- A new study found that nearly 4.4 million New York City residents live in areas that are at risk of “extreme” flood damage, Adam Kovac reports for Scientific American. While the city has the largest flood-vulnerable population in the U.S., the researchers found that New Orleans has the greatest proportion, with nearly every resident at risk of some kind of flooding. Both cities share a common theme: The populations most under threat are part of marginalized communities and living below the poverty line.
- New data released today on WRI’s Global Forest Watch platform shows tropical primary forest loss fell 36% in 2025 after a record-breaking 2024. Yet these forests, some of Earth’s most important ecosystems, still shrank by 4.3 million hectares last year. That’s equivalent to losing 11 football (soccer) fields of forest every minute. Over 140 countries pledged to halt and reverse forest loss by 2030 under the Glasgow Leaders’ Declaration. But the world remains far off track. Current levels of loss are about 70% higher than what’s needed to meet that goal.
DARK AGE CLIMATE POLITICS
- The Trump administration has convinced one of California’s offshore wind developers to call it quits long before it even began producing power reports POLITICO’s Kelsey Tamborrino. One lease, held by Golden State Wind, was in Morro Bay, off California’s Central Coast. It was one of just five offshore wind leases in the federal waters off the California coast, according to the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management. The decision is a massive blow to California’s energy leaders, who have been planning to plug in the series of offshore wind developments to help the state reach its goal of being completely powered by renewable energy by 2045.
- The San Francisco Standard reports, “Pacific
Gas & Electric has injected close to $10 million into an
anti-Steyer PAC called ‘Californians for Resilient and Affordable
Energy,’ according to new campaign finance disclosures. If he becomes
governor, Steyer plans to introduce electricity reforms that could end
up being a threat to the company and other investor-owned utilities.” See Rebecca Solnit’s write up and endorsement of Steyer here. - Since the start of his second term last year, President Donald Trump
has sought to weaken the federal foundations underpinning American
science, slashing or stalling research funding, firing or pushing out thousands of scientists, canceling grants for ideological reasons and shuttering research facilities across the country. But even against that bleak backdrop, the administration’s firing of all 22 current members of the National Science Board last week stands
out as “one of the darkest moments” of the past year and a half, said
Jacquelyn Gill, a paleoecologist and biogeographer at the University of
Maine. - Virginia’s new law blocks counties from banning solar. Two-thirds of the state’s counties ban or heavily limit solar. Now, those blanket restrictions are going away, though counties can still bar
individual projects. Elizabeth Ouzts - Eric Niiler reports that 57 research stations in 31 states that study forest fires are set to close in the next few months, part of a shake-up of the U.S. Forest Service by the Trump administration. At the same time that the administration is reorganizing the Forest Service, Trump is proposing to eliminate its entire $309 million research and development budget and to cut all of the agency’s 1,215 scientific positions. Forest experts fear that Trump is planning to “break” the Forest Service in order to sell off the 193 million acres it manages.
- Trump used taxpayer money to buy off two more offshore wind developers earlier this week to kill proposed projects. We looked into which companies could be next.
- On Earth Day last week, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed a new law blocking local governments from adopting any rules or setting policies that would in any way take into account climate change or emissions impact, including transitioning municipal fleets to EVs, requiring low-emission construction materials, and tracking local emissions.
Take Action!
AB 2494 by our Assemblymember Chris Rogers would convert California’s demonstration forests from intensive logging to conservation and research.
Sign a petition at: https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/help-pass-the-state-demonstration-forest-legislation-ab-2494/
If you want to do more, check out the actions on this webpage.