Climate change is already shaping what the future will look like and plunging the world into crisis. Cities are adapting to more frequent and intense extreme weather events, like superstorms and heatwaves. People are already battling more destructive wildfires, salvaging flooded homes, or migrating to escape sea level rise. Policies and economies are also changing as world leaders and businesses try to cut down global greenhouse gas emissions. How energy is produced is shifting, too — from fossil fuels to carbon-free renewable alternatives like solar and wind power. New technologies, from next-generation nuclear energy to devices that capture carbon from the atmosphere, are in development as potential solutions. The Verge is following it all as the world reckons with the climate crisis.
How you feel about AI’s energy use might change how you feel about computers entirely.
The “heat dome” covering the US from the Midwest to the East Coast interrupted the Trump Administration’s Freedom 250 event at the National Mall, which shut down for about four hours, citing the temperatures, and said it would reopen at 5PM ET.
The National Weather Service said more than 110 million people nationwide were under extreme heat risk.
That’s according to data from energy think tank Ember, which says solar supplied a record 12.8 percent of US electricity in May 2026, compared to 12.2 percent for coal. That’s the fourth-lowest monthly share ever for the fossil fuel, despite the Trump administration’s efforts to boost coal industries.
The NAACP is suing xAI to block Elon Musk’s Colossus 2 data center project outside of Memphis, TN, claiming that the project is operating 27 gas turbines without an air permit and in violation of the Clean Air Act.
“By looking to evade clear air laws to operate dirty turbines that emit pollution and known carcinogens, these companies are following a shameful, familiar pattern: asking Black and frontline communities to bear the toxic brunt of ‘innovation,” said Abre’ Conner, NAACP Director of Environmental and Climate Justice.
Search-and-rescue operations lacked access to pinpoint data on where tornadoes touched down, because Kristi Noem’s DHS spending policies are holding up approval of a $200k contract, reports CNN:
As the storms spread, officials from several states started contacting FEMA, asking why they couldn’t access the tornado tracking data… As of earlier this week, the tornado mapping contract still had not been renewed, the two sources said.
It’s a $100 million project meant to limit methane and other pollutants that are even more powerful greenhouse gases than carbon dioxide. But any company serious about climate change still needs to address their carbon emissions, the most abundant planet-heating pollutant. Both companies’ carbon footprints have grown as they expand data centers for AI.
[https://www.axios.com/2026/03/05/google-amazon-climate-superpollutants]
The Supreme Court is poised to make a decision that could determine whether states and local governments attempting to hold fossil fuel companies accountable for climate disasters will need to fight their battles in federal rather than state courts.
California regulators killed a proposal that would have imposed fees on gas-burning furnaces and water heaters that release smog-forming pollutants. More than 20,000 comments they received opposing the proposal were generated by a single AI platform, some addressed from people with no idea their names had been used.
A coalition including the American Public Health Association, American Lung Association, and Sierra Club have filed suit against the Trump administration for repealing the landmark ‘endangerment finding.’ The repeal — if successful — could strip away the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to to regulate planet-heating pollution.
The Trump administration ordered five major offshore wind projects to pause construction in December, suddenly citing national security risks even though developers had previously secured approvals to start building. After the companies filed suit, federal courts have now allowed all five projects to start construction again.
Every time it gets really cold, the climate change deniers come out of the woodwork with their best “I am very intelligent” grins to sputter some version of “whither global warming?” Fortunately, The Verge’s senior science reporter Justine Calma knew to anticipate these inane inquiries in her story today about the approaching winter storm:
“People say, ‘Oh, well, it’s really cold or we’re getting a lot of snow — how is the world warming?’ Climate change is an increase in the baseline temperatures, but it’s also an increase in extremes from both ways,” says Kaitlyn Trudeau, a senior research associate at the nonprofit Climate Central. “It can make more extreme cold outcomes; it can make more extreme warm outcomes … judging climate change by a cold storm is like judging a baseball season by a single inning.”
Fighting fires before they ever start, developers and homeowners in California are on the offense.
Planet-heating carbon and methane pollution had actually fallen by around 20 percent over the past decade, but ticked back up again in 2025 as the Trump administration slashed environmental regulations.
The US Environmental Protection Agency also announced this week that it plans to stop calculating the economic benefits of improved health from cleaning up air pollution.
New US dietary guidelines promote more protein and beef tallow, potentially moving Americans further away from a low-carbon diet.
At least 25 were canceled last year in the US, according to an analysis by Heatmap Pro. It’s a significant increase from 2024 as local opposition to energy and water-intensive data centers grows across the nation.
Trump wants Venezuela’s oil, Greenland’s minerals, and above all — control.
That includes the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and other initiatives tackling environmental and human rights issues.
“As the only country in the world not a part of the UNFCCC treaty, the Trump administration is throwing away decades of US climate change leadership and global collaboration,” Gina McCarthy, former White House National Climate Advisor, responded in a press release.
Since his administration attacked Caracas and arrested President Nicolás Maduro, Trump’s been clear that he wants US companies to “go in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken [oil] infrastructure” in Venezuela. That’s easier said than done with massive logistical challenges and political instability still weighing on the oil industry in the region.
Scientists have had to contend with a spate of misinformation this year about efforts to purportedly resurrect long-lost species like the woolly mammoth.
It’s far more impactful to help endangered species now — especially as the US rolls back protections and climate change makes the world a more inhospitable place for already threatened creatures.
Following mounting pressure, European officials have recommended the bloc drop its 2035 ban on new gas cars, instead aiming for a 90 percent reduction in emissions from new vehicles, leaving room for a few hybrids to still hit the market. The change will still have to pass the EU parliament.
The solar industry is pivoting to survive Donald Trump’s attacks on clean energy.
The Trump administration has taken down content about the human causes of global warming — greenhouse gases from fossil fuels — from the Environmental Protection Agency website, part of a larger purge of science-backed information on federal websites.
“It’s clearly a deliberate effort to misinform,” UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain tells the Washington Post.
They used 30 times more electricity on average than other models according to research by the AI Energy Score project that included responses to 1,000 written prompts. “We should be smarter about the way that we use AI ... Choosing the right model for the right task is important,” Hugging Face research scientist Sasha Luccioni tells Bloomberg.
Negotiators are deadlocked in a tumultuous close to United Nations climate talks. A proposed roadmap for transitioning away from coal, oil, and gas has become a flashpoint. “We’re facing the reality of a no-deal scenario” EU climate commissioner Wopke Hoekstra said earlier today.
A blaze broke out in the conference venue Thursday, just ahead of negotiations scheduled to come to a close today in Brazil.
More than 1,600 lobbyists for oil, coal, and gas have crowded into pivotal international climate negotiations going down in Brazil. They outnumber delegations from every country in attendance except for Brazil, according to an analysis by the Kick Big Polluters Out coalition.
