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.
Plastic production, and the mountains of waste that creates, are still growing exponentially, Grist shows us in helpful, albeit eye-watering, charts. Whether things start to turn around depends on on thousands of delegates meeting in Geneva this week to try to negotiate an international plastics treaty.
A small city in Kentucky is ground zero for plans to bring uranium enrichment back to the US so nuclear energy can power AI.
The Trump administration proposed tossing out the landmark 2009 “endangerment finding” that allows the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate greenhouse gas pollution under the Clean Air Act.
Greenhouse gases including carbon dioxide and methane cause climate change, of course. Climate change is projected to lead to roughly 250,000 additional deaths each year from malnutrition, malaria, diarrhea and heat illness between 2030 and 2050, according to the World Health Organization.
The Trump administration wants to build data center projects on Superfund sites, and with as little oversight as possible.
Plans are in place to revive a shuttered plant in Kentucky. The Trump administration and Big Tech are trying to revitalize the nuclear energy industry to meet growing electricity demand from AI data centers.
It’s part of the company’s new push to support the development of technologies that can store renewable energy for longer periods of time than lithium-ion batteries. It’s the kind of thing that might be able to help Google meet growing data center energy demands and maybe even stop its fossil fuel emissions from continuing to rise.
Google is partnering with the company Energy Dome that uses carbon dioxide to store renewable energy in the form of pressure and heat.
[energy-storage.news]
NASA and the Indian Space Research Organisation plan to launch the satellite on July 30th. The NISAR (NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar) mission is supposed to track ice melt and land deformation, helping scientists better understand the impacts of flooding, earthquakes, and more.
[science.nasa.gov]
The announcement over the weekend follows flash floods that inundated subways. The app notifies users of nearby emergencies and crimes. Now, New York City is adding public safety warnings for floods, extreme heat, fires, and more.
An actually good flash flood alert system involves a lot more than sharing weather updates, experts tell The Verge. Officials also have to avoid causing “alert fatigue” if they’re sending out crime and weather alerts through the same platform.
It takes an ‘all of the above’ approach.
It saw a 6 percent rise in planet-heating pollution last year, according to the company’s latest sustainability report. As it expands data centers for AI, Amazon is moving further away from a goal it set in 2019 to reach net zero carbon emissions.
“One of the biggest challenges with scaling AI is increased energy demands for data centers,” Amazon’s sustainability report says.
The bill quickly sunsets incentives that Congress approved in 2022 as part of the Inflation Reduction Act that was expected to cut US greenhouse gas emissions by roughly 40 percent from peak levels by 2030. On top of more pollution, wholesale electricity prices could also increase by 25 percent by 2030 as a result of the bill, according to one initial analysis
The bill now heads to President Donald Trump to sign into law.
It pulled down the federal website that houses national climate assessments, reports that show how climate change affects every region of the US and that have been published every four years or so since 2000. Researchers working on the next national assessment were dismissed in April.
Farmers have successfully sued the Trump administration, however, to restore other climate resources they rely on to federal websites.
Publishing giant Springer Nature is losing millions as a result, Axios reports.
President Trump is also working to slash funding for research institutions in the US, while hundreds of scientists and engineers have accused his administration of censorship.
Tech companies are making bold bets on reaching the “Holy Grail” of energy, nuclear fusion. It’s a dream scientists have been chasing for decades, and that many believe is still decades away at best. Nevertheless, the energy needs of AI and an arms race with China are pumping billions of dollars into efforts to make fusion power a reality.
[washingtonpost.com]
The Senate parliamentarian — a nonpartisan congressional advisor — says Republicans are violating a budget reconciliation rule in their attempt to fast-track some parts of President Trump’s agenda.
That includes measures to undo Biden-era tailpipe pollution standards and repeal funding authorizations for climate programs under the Inflation Reduction Act. Republicans have been getting creative lately, however, with ways to get around the parliamentarian’s objections.
Senate Republicans’ version of President Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” — similar to the bill the House passed last month — would slash tax incentives for electric vehicles, wind, and solar power.
Industry leaders warn that it could be a killer blow to new energy projects and factories in the US. “This bill will end any hope of onshoring domestic manufacturing,” Mike Carr, executive director of the Solar Energy Manufacturers for America Coalition, said in a press statement today.
Ten more states joined the suit filed today against President Trump and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Congress recently voted to revoke EPA waivers that allow California to set tougher air pollution standards for vehicles than the nation as a whole, in what the plaintiffs allege was an unlawful use of the Congressional Review Act.
This saga has spanned several administrations since President Obama first tried to enact limits on greenhouse gas emissions causing climate change. Donald Trump tried to replace those rules with his own, weaker standards, only to be stymied by Joe Biden changing course.
“We are proposing to repeal Obama and Biden rules that have been criticized as regulating coal, oil, and gas out of existence,” EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin announced today.
[politico.com]
Climate.gov will soon stop publishing new content after most of the people maintaining the website saw their contacts terminated, the Guardian reports. We don’t know yet if the website will continue to be accessible to the public.
The Trump administration has already faced — and lost — legal battles forcing it to restore other climate and health resources to federal websites. It has also removed climate information from FEMA’s website. The Federal Environmental Web Tracker is documenting these kinds of changes.
