23 billion-dollar weather and climate disasters in the US caused an estimated 276 fatalities and cost a total of $115 billion in damage last year, according to Climate Central. 

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The US was hit hard by climate and weather disasters in 2025, many of which cost billions of dollars in damage, as the climate crisis worsened.

23 weather and climate disasters in the US racked up damages of at least $1 billion (inflation-adjusted). Together, they claimed an estimated 276 lives and cost a total of $115 billion. They made for the third-highest year for billion-dollar disasters, after 2023 and 2024.

The data was compiled by Climate Central. The non-profit, which analyzes and reports on climate science, took over the Billion Dollar Weather and Climate Disaster dataset, run for decades by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) before US President Donald Trump abruptly axed it last May. “[T]his dataset was simply too important to stop being updated,” said Adam Smith, Climate Central’s Senior Climate Impacts Scientist.

The database tracks the cost of climate change-fueled weather disasters such as floods, heatwaves, and wildfires, providing critical information to help first responders, the insurance industry, and researchers with their planning, recovery operations, and weather assessments.

The costliest disaster of the year were the LA wildfires in January. Damages exceeded $60 billion, a record-breaking amount for a wildfire and almost twice as much as the previous record. Researchers found that the hot, dry, and windy conditions that fuelled the LA fires were made about 35% more likely due to human-made warming.

The remaining billion-dollar disasters were severe weather such as storms, hail and tornadoes – several of which had impacts produced from flooding – and a drought affecting the western US.

More Frequent and Intense Extreme Weather Events

Global warming, caused primarily from human-induced greenhouse gas emissions, has led to an increase in both the frequency and intensity of some extreme weather events since pre-industrial times, including flooding, extreme rainfall and storms, and droughts. Since records began in 1980, the US has seen 426 billion-dollar disasters, with total costs exceeding $3.1 trillion.

2025 was also one of the costliest years for climate disasters globally. The 10 costliest disasters worldwide, including wildfires, cyclones, extreme rainfall and flooding, and droughts spanning four continents, resulted in economic losses of $120 billion.

Hottest Decade

Coinciding with the relentless rise in greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere, the past 10 years have been the hottest on record. 2024 now tops the ranking, with 2025 set to be the second- or third-warmest on record and 2026 expected to make the top four.

Featured image: CAL FIRE_Official/Flickr.

US President Donald Trump on Wednesday announced the US’s withdrawal from 66 international organizations, including key climate treaties like the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, the primary global treaty for coordinating international climate action.

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The US has hit a “new low” by withdrawing from key international climate bodies and treaties as it advances its “anti-science” agenda, experts have said.

On Wednesday, US President Donald Trump instructed all executive departments and agencies “to take immediate steps” to withdraw the country from 66 international organizations that are “contrary to the interests” of the country. These include the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the world’s most authoritative scientific body on climate change, the International Union for Conservation of Nature, the global authority providing technical and policy advice to drive conservation, and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UFCCC), the primary global treaty for coordinating international climate action.

Experts, government’s leaders, and the scientific community have criticized the decision, saying the US will be left behind as the rest of the world embraces the energy transition, shifting from costly and polluting fossil fuels to cleaner and cheaper renewables like solar and wind.

“While all other nations are stepping forward together, this latest step back from global leadership, climate cooperation and science can only harm the US economy, jobs and living standards, as wildfires, floods, mega-storms and droughts get rapidly worse,” said UNFCCC Executive Secretary Simon Stiell. He added that the move will leave the US “less secure and less prosperous,” with higher energy, food, transport and insurance cost and less manufacturing jobs.

The US, which Stiell says was “instrumental” in creating the UNFCCC and the Paris Agreement, is the first country to leave both.

Rachel Cleetus, Policy Director and Lead Economist for the Climate and Energy Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, described the move as a “new low” for the US and “another sign that this authoritarian, anti-science administration is determined to sacrifice people’s well-being and destabilize global cooperation.” For many, like former US climate envoy John Kerry, the US exit is a “gift to China,” which already dominates the clean energy sector.

Wopke Hoekstra, the European Union’s Climate Commissioner, said Europe will “unequivocally continue to support international climate research [and] work on international climate cooperation,” calling the US’s exit “regrettable and unfortunate.”

The Trump administration is likely to face legal action as experts say it may be illegal to exit the treaty without Congress’s approval. The US was the first industrialized country to join the UNFCCC, after ratification by the Senate.

Featured image: UNclimatechange/Flickr.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio described the organizations as “anti-American, useless, or wasteful,” adding that review of other organizations is still ongoing.

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The US is withdrawing from dozens of international bodies, conventions and treaties, including key climate treaties, that are “contrary to the interests” of the country, President Donald Trump announced on Wednesday.

The list comprises 66 organizations – 35 non-United Nations organizations and 31 United Nations organizations – many of which conduct pivotal work on climate change. These include the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the world’s most authoritative scientific body on climate change, the International Union for Conservation of Nature, the global authority providing technical and policy advice to drive conservation, and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UFCCC), the primary global treaty for coordinating international climate action.

It is the latest effort by the Trump administration to distance the US from international organizations addressing climate change.

Established in 1992, the UNFCCC serves as the international structure for efforts to slow down climate change, providing the foundations for key treaties including the Paris Agreement, from which Trump has twice withdrawn. It is one of the most widely subscribed international treaties, with 197 States and the European Union having ratified it.

Pulling out of the UNFCCC (the US is the first and only nation to ever do so) is “a strategic blunder that gives away American advantage for nothing in return,” David Widawsky, Director of the World Resources Institute US, said in a statement. “The 30-year-old agreement is the foundation of international climate cooperation. Walking away doesn’t just put America on the sidelines – it takes the US out of the arena entirely.”

Trump said “it is contrary to the interests of the United States to remain a member of, participate in, or otherwise provide support to” these organizations, and instructed all executive departments and agencies “to take immediate steps to effectuate the withdrawal … as soon as possible.” He has used the same argument to justified previous withdrawals from international bodies including the World Health Organization, the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, known as UNRWA, the UN Human Rights Council and UNESCO.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio described the organizations as “anti-American, useless, or wasteful,” adding that review of other organizations is still ongoing. “We will stop subsidizing globalist bureaucrats who act against our interests,” he said in a social media post.

‘New Low’

Several international organizations have expressed shock and anger at the move. Rachel Cleetus, Policy Director and Lead Economist for the Climate and Energy Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, called it a “new low” and “another sign that this authoritarian, anti-science administration is determined to sacrifice people’s well-being and destabilize global cooperation.” Gina McCarthy, the White House climate adviser during the Biden administration, described the decision as “shortsighted, embarrassing, and foolish.”

While hurting the US, Widawsky remains optimistic that “global climate diplomacy will not falter.”

“Other nations understand the UNFCCC’s irreplaceable role in driving cooperation and advancing climate solutions the world urgently needs. When countries work together on climate, it saves lives, creates jobs, strengthens economic stability, and builds a more prosperous future,” he said.

Featured image: The White House/Flickr.

Russell Vought, the Director of the White House’s office and management budget, said in a social media post that the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado, is “one of the largest sources of climate alarmism in the country.”

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Colorado officials and scientists have vowed to fight a proposal by the Trump administration to dismantle a key climate research center in the state renowned for advances in the study of weather patterns, including tropical cyclones.

Founded in 1960 the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) is headquartered in Boulder, Colorado. It employs around 830 people across its many laboratories, which provide critical data on air quality and tools to improve aircraft safety and wildfire mitigation as well as forecasts of droughts, extreme precipitation events and tropical cyclones. It is sponsored and funded by the National Science Foundation, an independent federal agency.

In a post on social media X, Director of the White House’s office and management budget Russell Vought called the NCAR “one of the largest sources of climate alarmism in the country” and said a “comprehensive review” is underway. A senior White House official called it a stronghold for left-wing climate activism, according to Bloomberg.

Climate scientists have vowed to fight the proposal. Roger Pielke Jr, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute thinktank, called the facility “a crown jewel of the US scientific enterprise,” adding that it “deserves to be improved not shuttered.”

Tim Raupach, Senior Lecturer at UNSW Sydney, said losing NCAR would be a “tragedy”. “Scientists around the world use science and models developed at [NCAR] to understand the climate, forecast the weather, and protect people from climate/weather extremes. A lot of people are safer because of NCAR,” he said in a LinkedIn post.

State officials have also criticized the plan, with Colorado’s Governor Jared Polis saying it would put “public safety at risk.”

“NCAR delivers data around severe weather events like fires and floods that help our country save lives and property, and prevent devastation for families. If these cuts move forward we will lose our competitive advantage against foreign powers and adversaries in the pursuit of scientific discovery,” Polis wrote on social media.

The decision marks another escalation in the Trump administration’s broader campaign against federal climate science and environmental regulation. Since taking office, President Trump, a climate change denialist, has overturned much of the country’s progress on climate, reviving a decaying coal industry, halting work on the National Climate Assessment, and rolling back dozens of environmental rules, including those regulating pollution from vehicles and power plants, national air quality standards for particulate matter, and wastewater discharges for oil and gas extraction facilities.

Featured image: Wally Gobetz/Flickr.

Following the second withdrawal of the United States from the Paris Agreement by the Trump administration in January, COP30 has been feeling the absence of the world’s highest per-capita greenhouse gas emitter. But the US is not entirely absent from global discussions.

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While the federal government is absent from formal negotiations at this month’s COP30 climate summit in Belém, Brazil, the US is still holding bilateral discussions onsite through an independent association of federally elected officials.

The Sustainable Energy and Environment Coalition (SEEC), which represents more than 180 members of the US House of Representatives, aims to deploy them in their “soft power” role to promote climate action. Although the 17 members of Congress who prepared to go to COP30 were forced to remain home to vote on the US government shutdown, Democratic Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island did attend – the only US federal representative in Belém.

“The US is not a monolith,” Max Frankel, Executive Director of SEEC Institute, told Earth.Org. “We are made up of millions of people and cities and states. Is the US taking climate action? The answer to that question is a resounding yes. There is still a vibrant action from the innovation sector, from the tech sector, from cities and states.”

Meanwhile, individual US states and their leaders – most prominently California governor and likely US presidential contender Gavin Newsom – are participating at a subnational level. The governor of New Mexico, Michelle Lujan Grisham, also participated at the event. 

More on the topic: US Absence at COP30 Exacerbates Financial Challenge to Meet Climate Targets

Just as important as bringing a US voice to COP30 is the role of SEEC and the state representatives in bringing the messages about climate change back to the US.

“[The state representatives] are here to tell their story but also to learn from other organizations and other countries. They always learn great things, hear about initiatives that are happening in other parts of the world that they can also take back home to their jurisdiction and work to implement them,” said Holm.

One state committed to forging ahead on climate action is New Mexico. Andrea Desiree Romero, a member of the New Mexico House of Representatives, told Earth.Org, “States are acting independently of our federal landscape to show we’re still part of the cause. We’re committed to an energy transition where we are a net zero carbon emitter by 2045, with a 50% reduction by 2035. We’re doing a lot on the energy investment side, and we have a huge startup community in the advanced energy space. We have $1 billion in venture capital for new company investments in spaces that help us solve these problems.”

Travis Kellerman, Senior Advisor in the New Mexico Energy Department, said the state is “stepping in.”

“When we see what’s happening at the federal level, which has pulled out of their commitments and their funding, we see that the power of democracy is starting to shift to the states. This includes state policy, financing mechanisms, tax credits and incentives following the loss of the IRA [Inflation Reduction Act]. The idea that the federal government has to lead is not true – New Mexico has a small population but an out-sized impact in global energy,” Kellerman told Earth.Org.

Although the US will no longer abide by its previous formal climate plan, also known as Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), which the Biden administration submitted late last year, individual states have set NDCs.

“Definitive NDCs from the states that match the Obama-era NDC include 26 states, representing 60% of the US GDP and similar amount of emissions. That’s 50% of the US population. It’s a bright spot to be able to show and tell,” Kellerman said.

Featured image: UN Climate Change/Kiara Worth via Flickr.

For the first time in 30 years of UN COPs, the US has no official representation at COP30, a move in line with the Trump administration’s anti-climate stance. 

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By Fred Santana

The official absence of the United States at COP30 formal negotiations was highlighted at a US Climate Action Network press conference held on Monday, on the seventh day of the climate event in Belém, Brazil. Representatives of US organizations stated that, even without a government delegation present, the country “casts a shadow” over the debates and increases the deadlock on core issues such as climate finance and loss and damage.

According to Brandon Wu from ActionAid USA, the historical obstruction of climate finance by the US explains why issues such as adaptation and loss and damage are stalled. “The country is not here, but it is casting a long shadow over these negotiations,” he said, adding that its stance has influenced other developed countries to avoid robust financial commitments.

Wu said that the lack of resources is currently the biggest obstacle to COP30. “Without support, without funding, ambition is impossible in many parts of the world,” he said. He pointed out that the new Loss and Damage Fund announced on the first day of the conference has only $250 million, while the annual needs of countries in the Global South reach hundreds of billions. According to him, “it’s a drop in the ocean,” stressing that rich countries “haven’t delivered historically, aren’t delivering now, and are giving every indication that they won’t deliver.”

The criticism extends to US domestic policy. Wu recalled that “our government unilaterally invented the $100-billion target as well as the rules for how that money would be counted,” pointing out that the US “has repeatedly said that there’s no money, when we know that it’s not true.”

As an example, Brandon cited the $200 billion spent by the country this year on deportation operations, contrasting it with the $17 million allocated to the Loss and Damage Fund. “It’s a cruel joke compared to where our government actually puts money,” he said.

Criticism to US Climate and Political Legacy

Rachel Cleetus, from the Union of Concerned Scientists, stressed that the insufficient commitments by large emitters, including the US, leave the planet close to exceeding the 1.5C limit. “We are here because of the insufficient action of political leaders, including our own,” she explained, arguing that a just energy transition requires the end of fossil fuels.

Gemma Carolina Gutierrez from Youth N’ Power pointed out that the US are still absent not only physically but also morally and politically. “Their absence remains as a political shadow,” she commented, saying that the country avoids acknowledging historical damage and reproduces inequalities that fall on black, indigenous and migrant populations. “Real solutions don’t come from institutions that don’t recognize the damage in the first place,” said Gutierrez, emphasizing that community movements develop concrete responses both inside and outside the US.

Demands for Recognition and Reparation

Activist Cheryl Kwapong from The Chisholm Legacy Project said that African American communities, which have been historically affected by environmental inequalities, must be recognized as a formal constituency within the UN.

“African Americans deserve a seat at the table when we are thinking about this COP,” she said. She recalled that “the American nation was built on slavery and on the backs of enslaved peoples,” demanding a real commitment to reparations and participation from the US government.

Kwapong highlighted that these populations face climate impacts ranging from the Caribbean to the Mississippi Delta, from the Amazon to Nigeria, but also play a leading role in local solutions. “We are resilient by nature; we’ve survived the slave trade, apartheid, and oppression,” he said, stating that they hope to leave COP30 with concrete measures, not just speeches.

Closing the press conference, Brandon Wu summarized the role of the US in today’s crises. “The Paris Agreement is not failing; it’s doing exactly what it was designed to do,” he said. “The governments of the Global North are the ones failing, not fulfilling their obligations while planning new fossil fuel expansions, like the United States.”

Necessary reforms begin “at home, in our governments” and not in the multilateral architecture, WU concluded.

US Absence Increases Uncertainties at COP30

Annual inventories from the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) show that the country has remained among the world’s largest emitters of greenhouse gases for more than three decades, releasing between 5.5 and 6.7 billion tons of CO2 equivalent per year since 1990.

Considering the historical cumulative amount since the Industrial Revolution, international research indicates that the US accounts for about a quarter of the planet’s emissions, making it one of the main contributors to today’s global warming.

This historical weight was one of the reasons that led the US to present its first national contribution under the Paris Agreement in 2015, pledging to reduce emissions by 26%-28% by 2025 over 2005. At the time, the commitment was considered central to global ambition as the country alone emitted more than entire continents.

The scenario changed when the Trump administration announced its formal withdrawal from the Agreement, a measure implemented in 2020 and resumed in 2025 after another electoral victory, again interrupting federal climate policies and blocking international climate finance initiatives.

When the US returned to the agreement in 2021, it presented a more ambitious goal: to reduce emissions by 50%-52% by 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality by 2050, as detailed in the government’s Long-Term Strategy.

Official data show that the US is still far from the path to meeting this target. In 2022, for example, emissions were about 15% below 2005 levels, when they should be close to 30% to be in line with the 1.5C limit.

Featured image: UN Climate Change/Kiara Worth via Flickr.

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This story was originally produced by Revista Cenarium through the Socio-environmental Collaborative Coverage of COP30, and published with edits by Earth.Org. Read the original story here.

Follow our COP30 coverage.

The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) terminated Biden-era grant agreements worth $20 billion in March, on the basis that the program did not align with the agency’s priorities under the new administration.

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A US appeals court has ruled against non-profit environmental groups that had some $16 billion in climate grants frozen by the Trump administration.

The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) terminated grant agreements worth $20 billion back in March, on the basis that the program did not align with the agency’s priorities under the new administration. Since taking office in January, Trump has been delivering on his campaign pledge to “drill, baby drill,” undoing much of his predecessor’s environmental legacy, and steering the US away from international climate commitments.

The grant money was made available through the $27-billion Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund created under former president Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act. It was awarded in April 2024 to eight organizations, which were tasked with financing “tens of thousands” of projects ranging from home energy retrofitting to air pollution reduction.

The three-judge panel at the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit on Thursday overturned a lower court’s injunction temporarily requiring the EPA to resume payments. It ruled that most of the plaintiffs’ claims were contract disputes to be discussed exclusively in the Court of Federal Claims. Should the case move to the Court of Federal Claims, the five organizations that brought the case will lose any chance to reinstate the grants and will only be able to sue for damages. However, they can still appeal Tuesday’s decision, Heatmap reported.

In a statement on Tuesday, Climate United CEO Beth Baffor said she was “disappointed” by the ruling, reiterating the unlawfulness of the EPA’s decision. But he vowed to “continue to press on for communities across the country that stand to benefit from clean, abundant, and affordable energy.”

The EPA celebrated the judges’ decision, saying, “It’s fantastic to see reason prevail in the court system.”

‘Politicized’ Move

The Environmental Protection Network (EPN), a group of more than 600 former EPA employees that was formed in 2017 to protect the agency’s integrity, in March called the freeze “a significant setback” in the US’s fight against climate change and promotion of environmental justice and a deviation from the agency’s “core mission to protect human health and the environment.”

Matthew S. Tejada, EPN volunteer and former Deputy Assistant Administrator for Environmental Justice in EPA’s Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights, said at the time that the grants were meant to make communities “safer, healthier and more prosperous.”

Among the eight non-profits the money was awarded to was Opportunity Finance Network (OFN), an organization that focuses on community development investment. In a statement in March, OFN said the EPA’s decision to freeze the fund impacts the “planned announcement” of over $228 million in initial grants to 26 organizations to fund housing, distributed energy, and transportation infrastructure initiatives across over 30 states.

OFN also said the EPA’s decision is based on “inaccurate and politicized claims” that are “baseless and undermine a critical effort to drive American energy independence, local resilience, and job creation in communities.”

Other grantees included the Coalition for Green Capital, Climate United Fund, Power Forward Communities, Opportunity Finance Network, Inclusiv and the Justice Climate Fund.

“Those who have already paid the highest price for pollution, through their health and their children’s future, are the first to be sacrificed by Trump’s EPA. But, they will not be the last. Every American should be concerned about what this means for our future,” said Tejada.

Featured image: Wikimedia Commons.

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The global music star, whose home town of New Orleans was devastated by the hurricane in 2005, says “people power“ can change the world.

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Twenty years after Hurricane Katrina ravaged his home town of New Orleans, Jon Batiste has released a new song imploring people to take action against climate change “by raising your voice, and insisting, and voting the right people into office”.

“As an artist, you have to make a statement,” the global star said in an interview on Tuesday with the international media collaboration Covering Climate Now. “You got to bring people together. People power is the way that you can change things in the world.

“It’s a warning, set to a dance beat,” Batiste said about the song, Petrichor, which appears on his new album Big Money. The Oscar- and multiple Grammy-winning composer and his band performed Petrichor live during Tuesday’s interview; that performance can be seen below.

The word “petrichor” refers to “the scent of the earth after the rain”, Batiste said, “when there’s been warm, dry soil for a long time, and then things come back into balance. And right now, we’re out of balance … the natural life support systems of the planet are under threat.”

With a refrain that repeatedly declares “they burning the planet down”, Petrichor does not sugarcoat the dangers of climate change, yet Batiste remains optimistic. “When you make a song, you want to inspire people, but you also want to let them know what they can do,” he said. “And the things that we can do [are] really very simple. It’s clean energy technology, right now, that we can switch to. We can make the world be powered by things that don’t destroy the planet.

“There’s a blanket of pollution around the Earth,” Batiste added, referring to the planet-warming gases released by burning fossil fuels such as oil, gas and coal and by cutting down forests. “The summers feel hot, everything is hot, the weather patterns are shifting. Nobody wants that. And we know what the solution is. There’s an overwhelming majority of people that believe in clean energy … and switching to these new technologies.”

The Guardian and other Covering Climate Now partners earlier this year launched the 89 Percent Project, reporting that 80 to 89% of the world’s people want their governments to take stronger climate action, according to numerous scientific studies. Batiste confirmed that he is part of that 89% climate majority – as is his mother, Katherine Batiste, who did environmental work for the US government in Louisiana for most of Jon’s childhood and sat next to him throughout the Covering Climate Now interview.

“We believe in science,” Katherine Batiste said.

“There you go,” Jon said, smiling. “You heard it.”

Many people know that Jon Batiste comes from a storied musical family in New Orleans – his uncle Lionel Batiste was a mainstay of the Treme Brass Band, and his cousin Russell Batiste Jr was a celebrated jazz drummer – but Jon also comes from a family of activists. His mother’s father, David Gauthier, a leader of the Louisiana Postal Workers Union, supported the sanitation workers’ strike in 1968 that drew Martin Luther King Jr to Memphis, where King was assassinated. Among other causes, Jon has been active in the Black Lives Matter protests, a stance his mother saw as a continuation of her father’s legacy. Her dad “believed in standing up for what’s right”, said Katherine Batiste, “and that kind of rolled over on me some, and I passed it on to Jon”.

“I was raised by incredible people,” said Jon, who spent seven years as bandleader on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert up to 2022. “I saw my grandfather, I saw my father, I saw all these people who were in my immediate environment doing the work and not getting down about it. The key is to keep it going, not to look at yourself and pity the situation, but to find a way to do something with what you have and where you are.”

The Petrichor song illustrates the larger themes of his Big Money album, he added, because the pursuit of money at all costs is putting the climate at risk. And not only the climate. “We’re in the wealthiest time in human history,” he said. “There’s no shortage of resources. Yet there are [people] who don’t have clean water, clean food, basic healthcare. And it’s disproportionately affecting those in low-income communities, people of color. [When] the majority of the wealth is in the hands of only a small percentage of people, it will inevitably corrupt the policies that can change these things. That’s who the song is really geared toward. There’s a pollution blanket around the planet, but it’s the result of a pollution blanket around our souls.

“It’s fitting that we’re here in this place of worship,” Batiste said about the setting of the interview – New York’s Middle church, whose double-meaning motto is “Just love” – because “as Pope Francis said, the Earth is our common home, a sacred planet, and [we need to live] up to our responsibility as stewards of the planet.”

When Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans on 29 August 2005, the storm and the breach of protective levees put 80% of the city underwater, killed at least 1,800 people and drove countless others to leave town, never to return. While outsiders experienced the storm on television, as a media event, the Batiste family lived it. Jon, with his mother, father, sister and grandmother, evacuated to Texas before the storm hit. But the family home where Katherine Batiste grew up, in the Carrollton neighborhood of New Orleans, was destroyed, she said. “All my sisters, brothers, my family, their homes were destroyed … They lost everything … It was devastating.”

“New Orleans, to me, is the soul of America,” Jon Batiste said, adding that the city was “a warning” that climate-driven disasters “can happen anywhere, and there’s many places where this has happened”.

The role of the artist in the face of such danger and injustice is to “point people to the solutions with rhythm and poetry”, Batiste said. “It’s like [the jazz drummer] Art Blakey said, ‘music can wash away the dust of everyday life,’ and make somebody’s apathy turn into care into action. As an artist, you can connect right to the person – still also entertaining them, but uplifting them and their voice, so that then they know, ‘Oh, I have something to say, and it’s meaningful and it’s powerful. I’m going to sing it at the concert, and I’m going to leave here and it’s going to be in my heart, and I’m going to go into the voting booth and push it, I’m going to go into my communities and push it, and I’m going to live my life in ways that are aligned with it.’ And that is infectious. It moves to the next person, and the next person, the next person, and soon it’s our reality.”

Although the version of Petrichor on the Big Money album is a sort of talking blues foot-tapper that lasts 2 minutes and 38 seconds, the version Batiste and his band played a week earlier in New York’s Central Park was a raucous 11 minutes that had the standing-room crowd dancing with joy. Batiste, who has just begun a 50-date North American tour, said he planned to release a live album that will feature a similarly up-tempo version of Petrichor drawn from upcoming performances at the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville and the Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Colorado.

“It’s important when you’re changing the world to have a good time while you’re doing it,” he said. “I really want people to keep dancing and stay optimistic – but know that we gotta, we gotta, move.”

Featured image: Wikimedia Commons.

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This article is part of the 89 Percent Project of the international media collaboration Covering Climate Now. It was originally published on The Guardian and is republished here as part of a collaboration with Covering Climate Now.

Researchers looked at data from 2017, the most recent year for which a dataset of emissions is available. Between then and 2023, US oil and gas production has increased by 40% and consumption by 8%.

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Tens of thousands of premature deaths in the US are linked to air pollution from the oil and gas industries, according to a new study that looked at the entire lifecycle of the two fuels.

Published Friday in Science Advances, the paper found that fine particles (PM2.5), nitrogen dioxide, ozone and other hazardous air pollutants are attributable to 91,000 premature deaths, 10,350 preterm births and 216,000 childhood-onset asthma and 1,610 cancer cases every year in the country. The US is the world’s largest producer of both oil and natural gas. Together with coal, the three fossil fuels are the single-largest source of global greenhouse gas emissions, the primary drivers of global warming.

The study is the first to look at the health hazards arising from pollution generated across all stages of the oil and gas lifecycle, from exploration and extraction; storage and transmission; alterations processes like oil refining and gas processing, to end-use activities, including storage, transportation and ultimate consumption.

Researchers looked at data from 2017, the most recent year for which a dataset of emissions is available. Between then and 2023, US oil and gas production has increased by 40% and consumption by 8%, according to the Guardian.

Communities of Color Bear the Brunt

California, Texas, New York, Pennsylvania and New Jersey recorded the highest health burden from air pollution from oil and gas. But the impacts were not felt equally across these states.

Asian, Black, Hispanic, and Native American communities experience the worst exposures and burdens for all lifecycle stages and pollutants. The latter two groups are hotspots for pollution from exploration, extraction, transportation and storage. Meanwhile, Asian and Black population – particularly in infamous hotspots like Louisiana’s “Cancer Alley” and eastern Texas – bear the brunt of emissions from alteration processes, manufacturing, distribution and consumption.

The findings reinforce previous studies that pointed at the disproportionate impact of pollutants on minorities and disadvantaged communities. In 2019, for example, scientists estimated that Hispanics and African-Americans in the US breathe in 63% and 56% more health-harming pollution than they respectively produce. On the other hand, Caucasian communities are exposed to 17% less air pollution than they make.

Global Crisis

Globally, air pollution ranks as the second leading risk factor for death, after high blood pressure and before tobacco.

Last year, only seven countries in the world – Australia, Estonia, New Zealand, Iceland, Grenada, Puerto Rico, and French Polynesia – had air quality levels at or below the healthy annual average recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO). The UN agency estimates that at least nine out of 10 people worldwide live in places with low air quality.

Globally, PM2.5 is associated with approximately 7 million deaths around the world every year and causes the average person to lose approximately 2.3 years of life expectancy – or a combined 17.8 billion years.

PM2.5, the most commonly used unit in air quality measurements, refers to an atmospheric particulate matter that has a diameter of less than 2.5 micrometers, or about 3% the diameter of a human hair, and is said to pose the greatest risk to human health. Studies have linked it to premature mortality, heart or lung diseases, acute and chronic bronchitis, asthma attacks, and other respiratory symptoms. 

WHO issued new, more stringent guidelines on air pollution in September 2021, following new research showing PM2.5 to be more harmful than previously thought. It set the 24-hour PM2.5 safe limit at 15 μg/m3 and the annual threshold at 5 μg/m3.

Featured image: Wikimedia Commons.

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While there was “no evidence” that cuts to weather agencies affected weather warnings ahead of the floods, a well-known US meteorologist said these cuts “will eventually bite us with unneeded loss of life.”

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At least 78 people have died and dozens remain missing after catastrophic floods wrecked havoc in Texas on Independence Day.

28 of the victims were children, Larry Leitha, sheriff of Kerr County in Texas Hill Country – the epicenter of the flooding – confirmed on Sunday.

The disaster unfolded rapidly on Friday, as torrential rain across central Texas increased the water level of the Guadalupe River by 26 feet (8 meters) within 45 minutes, bursting its banks and destroying everything in its path.

As search-and-rescue operations – some of the largest efforts in recent Texas history – continue, questions have surfaced regarding local authorities’ preparedness and the effectiveness of the warning systems in place.

Some Texas elected officials have blamed the National Weather Service (NWS) for issuing inadequate forecasts and warnings ahead of the storm. But meteorologists and former Weather Service officials have defended the forecasts, saying they were as good and accurate as they could be given the storm’s abrupt escalation, the New York Times reported.

Rapidly intensifying rainfall events like this one are inherently difficult to predict, and forecasters often cannot pinpoint exactly where and when high-intensity and heavily localized rainfall will occur, UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain explained. Flash floods, as the name suggests, are also very hard to predict due to their rapid and often sudden onset.

Criticism over the Trump administration’s recent cuts to emergency response and weather forecasting agencies have also mounted over the weekend. Experts have repeatedly warned that these cuts have diminished forecasters’ abilities to predict disasters and provide accurate advance warning. 

Meteorologist John Morales said on Saturday there was no evidence that cuts to weather agencies affected weather warnings ahead of the floods, though he added that these cuts “will eventually bite us with unneeded loss of life.” On Sunday, however, Morales pointed out at current vacancies at local NWS offices in key roles such as Meteorologist in Charge and Warning Coordination Meteorologist.

Some experts have warned that these staff shortages, which have doubled since Donald Trump took office in January, might have complicated forecasters’ ability to coordinate responses with local emergency management officials, the New York Times reported.

Trump was quick to reject the claims, while the White House said in a statement to media outlets that claims that NWS cuts were related to the tragedy were “shameful and disgusting.”

Climate Link

There is consensus among climate experts that events like this are becoming stronger and more frequent in a rapidly warming world.

A warmer atmosphere, heated by fossil fuel emissions, can hold more moisture, resulting in heavier downpours. For every 1C that Earth’s atmospheric temperature rises, the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere can increase by about 7%.

According to Climate Central, the low-level moisture fueling the weather system over Texas came from a warmer-than-average Gulf of Mexico. Sea temperatures here are currently 1-2F above average for this time of year owing to climate change.

“This kind of record-shattering rain (caused by slow-moving torrential thunderstorms) event is *precisely* that which is increasing the fastest in a warming climate,” said Swain. “So it’s not a question of whether climate change played a role–it’s only a question of how much.”

Temperatures have been abnormally high across the US in recent weeks, while much of Europe endured a deadly heatwave that shattered records in Portugal and Spain.