2 – Breaking News & Latest Updates 2026
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Environment Archive

Archives for January 2025

Justine Calma
Justine Calma
Honolulu will take fossil fuel companies to court over misinformation.

The US Supreme Court denied petitions from fossil fuel companies seeking to thwart a climate lawsuit filed against them — allowing the case to go to trial.

The city and county of Honolulu filed suit against Sunoco, Shell, and other oil companies accusing them of a “coordinated, multi-front effort to conceal and deny their own knowledge” of threats their products pose through climate change.

Alex Heath
Alex Heath
Snap CEO Evan Spiegel’s childhood home was burned in the Palisades fire.

The LA-based tech company has 150 employees who have been displaced from the wildfires, Spiegel wrote in a letter published on the company’s website. Snap has donated $5 million to local relief efforts and “will do more,” he says.

Side by side photos of Snap’s original office burned in the LA fires.
From Spiegel’s post on Snap’s website.
Snap
Jess Weatherbed
Jess Weatherbed
Don’t be a drone dummy.

Two people have been arrested in California for flying unauthorized drones in areas impacted by the LA wildfires, according to a police report seen by Deadline.

The arrests follow a collision last Thursday between a civilian drone and a “Super Scooper” that was fighting the blazes, grounding the plane. The FAA says it’s investigating the incident. LA airspace restrictions are in place until January 25th.

How Watch Duty’s wildfire tracking app became a crucial lifeline for LA

‘We view what we are doing as a public service,’ says the cofounder of the nonprofit that millions of people are relying on to stay safe.

Abigail Bassett
Thomas Ricker
Thomas Ricker
2024 is officially the hottest year on record.

As expected. Insert smiling cartoon dog sitting at a table, coffee mug in hand, as Los Angeles goes up in flames. This is fine.

Justine Calma
Justine Calma
A wildfire tracking app topped App Store charts.

Watch Duty: Wildfire Maps, a crowdsourced app that tracks nearby fires, evacuation notices, and other key information, was more popular than ChatGPT, Threads, and Temu today as wildfires burn out of control across Southern California.

Top iPhone apps chart showing Watch Duty in the number one slot.
Screenshot: App Store
Justine Calma
Justine Calma
Dangerous infernos surrounding Los Angeles are 0 percent contained.

Hundreds of thousands of people are without power, and tens of thousands are under evacuation orders with blazes out of control in Southern California.

Justine Calma
Justine Calma
Joe Biden bans new offshore drilling across broad swaths of US coastline.

More than 625 million acres of the US oceans are now protected after Biden prohibited all future oil and gas leasing.

President-elect Donald Trump has already said he plans to undo the move. But that likely depends on Congress taking action, CNN reports.