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Earlier this month, scientists announced that humanity has kicked off the first major “tipping point” — in which an Earth system dramatically transforms, often permanently — as warm-water corals die en masse due to relentlessly rising temperatures. Think of such events like driving off a cliff: There’s no reversing back up to the edge, and the impact will be terrible.

For all the attention these disastrous milestones get from scientists and the media — and rightfully so — less discussed is the fact that they also work the other direction. Positive tipping points can unfold on a wide range of scales, from a community garden helping a neighborhood eat healthier, all the way up to the global energy system switching from fossil fuels to renewables. An individual person can even reach one, like if they decide to do more and more walking instead of driving. 

People can influence communities, communities can influence cities, and cities can influence nations. These critical junctures, then, can spread like a contagion — in a good way. “It’s rather a mirror opposite of the damaging Earth system tipping points that we want to desperately prevent,” said Steve Smith, a researcher at the University of Exeter’s Global Systems Institute, who studies how to encourage the phenomenon. “Because the positive tipping points are changes that we really need to promote.”

What makes environmental tipping points so insidious is that they self-perpetuate as threats amplify other threats — in the case of corals, high temperatures combining with ocean acidification and marine pollution. Luckily, their happier counterparts also accelerate under their own momentum and feedback loops, as benefits beget other benefits. There are many ways that cities, for instance, can encourage the adoption of green technologies like electric vehicles, according to a new report from C40, a global network of mayors tackling the climate crisis. “It is possible to move pretty quickly, at the moment, because of the wide availability of these technologies,” said Cassie Sutherland, managing director of climate solutions and networks at C40. “You can actually get — with a kind of dedicated intervention — quite a significant and ramped-up change.”

By wielding both carrots and sticks, policymakers can juice these social and technological systems to get things rolling. In the parlance, a “pull” policy makes a sustainable technology more affordable, accessible, or attractive using incentives like tax rebates, drawing people toward it. It’s carrots made of money, basically, that can create unstoppable market momentum. The stick, by contrast, is the “push” policy that, say, makes fossil fuel technologies more expensive, less convenient, or unavailable, like banning new natural gas hookups in buildings. Push and pull policies are not mutually exclusive, and indeed policymakers can use them in concert for maximum effect.

Cities are uniquely positioned to do this kind of work, Sutherland says. Globally, they’re home to more than half the human population — and rapidly growing — yet are responsible for 70 percent of carbon emissions. But they’re also much more nimble than national governments because they set building energy efficiency codes, manage public transportation systems, and pursue their own targets for reducing emissions overall. By contrast, the U.S. government is now actively hostile to climate action, so it’s up to cities to increase their ambition. “They’re the crucibles, the test beds, the ones that have the ability to go further, faster, and particularly go first,” Sutherland said.

Municipalities, for example, have the power to embrace — and ideally push to a tipping point — one of the more powerful climate solutions: the e-bike. Pedaling instead of driving slashes greenhouse gas emissions, alleviates urban congestion, and improves public health, both because of the additional exercise and reduced air pollution. (E-bikes also require less exertion for people who might struggle on a traditional two-wheeler.) In a given city, a vocal group of dedicated bicyclists might start out advocating for basic infrastructure, like dedicated lanes. “Bike commuting has a big positive feedback effect,” said Cameron Roberts, a social scientist at Carleton University in Canada, who studies active mobility. “Once they start winning victories, this leads to better road regulations, better infrastructure, which brings out more cyclists, which then snowballs.” The data backs this up: Bike commuting in Washington, D.C., and New York City doubled in four years, in part because of improved infrastructure.

Which is not to say that cities can’t also encourage the switch from gas to electric vehicles, like Oslo, Norway, has done with extraordinary speed: In just the past decade, the market share there for new EV sales grew from 13.6 percent to 95.8 percent, C40’s report notes. (Ironically, Norway is one of the world’s biggest exporters of fossil fuels.) That was thanks to the government providing financial incentives, thus making EVs more affordable, then mandating that all new car sales be zero-emission by 2025. (Cities can do this with public transportation, too: Mexico City, for instance, gave operators of gas-powered buses an eight-year heads up that starting in 2025, it would only procure electric versions.) Oslo then layered on top of that sweetener by expanding charging infrastructure, thus making it more convenient to own an EV. “It’s cities that have a lot of the control over the bits that make it accessible and attractive,” Sutherland said.

Oslo did much the same for heat pumps, which are now in 63 percent of Norwegian households. Instead of burning fossil fuels, these electric appliances extract heat from even frigid air and pump it indoors, then reverse in the summer to cool a space by expelling indoor heat to the outside. To encourage their adoption, Norway slapped a carbon tax on heating fuel, making it increasingly expensive not to go fully electric, and provided financial incentives to make the switch. Oslo, once again, layered on its own subsidies, streamlined the permitting process for installing the devices, and implemented stricter energy efficiency standards for buildings. (In the U.S., market share has been growing too, as heat pumps now outsell gas furnaces. States have also formed a coalition to accelerate adoption.) 

Read Next Heat pumps are expensive. What if billionaires bought them for everyone? Matt Simon

Policymakers can push emerging technologies to tipping points, too. For instance, last year in Framingham, Massachusetts, Eversource Energy commissioned the nation’s first networked geothermal neighborhood operated by a utility. This technology also exploits heat pumps, which use liquid coursing through a network of underground pipes to cool and heat homes. Other states and cities could encourage more projects like this with the stick approach, like by banning natural gas in new buildings and continuing to pressure utilities to switch from fossil fuels to cleaner technologies. With the carrot, they could provide financial incentives for communities to transition to networked geothermal, which remains expensive. 

Thinking bigger, the various parts of the global energy system must tip from fossil fuels to renewables. Whereas oil and gas are a stagnant technology, renewables benefit from “economies of scale” and “learning by doing,” meaning the more you make something, the cheaper and better it gets. Accordingly, the price of solar panels has plunged more than 99 percent since the 1970s. The explosion of wind power, too, enabled the United Kingdom to pass a tipping point as it rapidly retreated from coal, helped along by the country putting a price on carbon. “The price of coal just became quite quickly uncompetitive and uneconomical, to the point where last year the final coal-fired electricity generator was shut down,” Smith said.

The rapid development and adoption of renewables, Smith added, is due in large part to a “positive tipping cascade” made possible by batteries, which get better and cheaper year after year. That’s created a domino effect that is boosting all kinds of sectors: electric vehicles and trains, home energy storage, and the grid, which uses huge packs to store solar and wind power for when the sun isn’t shining and wind isn’t blowing. Utilities are also experimenting with “vehicle-to-grid” technology, in which EVs both draw power and send it back to the system, providing a vast network of backup energy to further accelerate decarbonization. These intertwining market forces behind renewables and batteries are so powerful that the Trump administration can only hope to slow the green energy revolution in the U.S., not stop it. 

But cities and nations can’t just encourage positive tipping points and call it a day — that needs to happen alongside the urgent mitigation of the pollutants that are causing warming in the first place, said Kiff Gallagher, a climate strategist and founding executive director of the Global Heat Reduction Initiative. Carbon dioxide gets all the attention, but humanity can dramatically and quickly reduce warming by tackling “superpollutants,” greenhouse gases that are dozens, hundreds, even thousands of times more powerful than CO2. 

Food waste rotting in landfills, for instance, as well as fossil fuel infrastructure, produce clouds of methane, which is 80 times more potent, yet disappears much faster from the atmosphere. (Agricultural waste, like corn stalks, is often left to rot too, so increasingly farmers are turning it into biochar, which instead captures carbon from the atmosphere and improves yields when applied to fields.) Ironically enough, heat pumps are essential for weaning off of fossil fuels, yet a common refrigerant that lets them work their magic is 2,000 times more powerful than CO2. So the industry is transitioning to more sustainable alternatives, even using CO2 itself as a refrigerant because it doesn’t cause as much harm in the unlikely event of a leak. “These short-lived climate pollutants cause almost 50 percent of the warming, but they’re only receiving 5 percent of climate finance right now going to directly address them,” Gallagher said. “So that could be an amazing high leverage point for the world.”

Tipping points, then, are both an environmental curse that we desperately need to avoid, and an essential phenomenon we need to exploit to keep more of Earth’s systems from tipping. Individual sectors can positively tip, and in turn influence other aspects of the clean energy economy — momentum building upon momentum. “Once those tipping points have then been reached,” Sutherland said, “and there’s the positive feedback loop, you’ll start to see the other elements of the solutions of the system clicking into place a bit more easily.”

toolTips('.classtoolTips3','Carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and other gases that prevent heat from escaping Earth’s atmosphere. Together, they act as a blanket to keep the planet at a liveable temperature in what is known as the “greenhouse effect.” Too many of these gases, however, can cause excessive warming, disrupting fragile climates and ecosystems.'); toolTips('.classtoolTips4','The process of reducing the emission of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases that drive climate change, most often by deprioritizing the use of fossil fuels like oil and gas in favor of renewable sources of energy.'); toolTips('.classtoolTips6','A powerful greenhouse gas that accounts for about 11% of global emissions, methane is the primary component of natural gas and is emitted into the atmosphere by landfills, oil and natural gas systems, agricultural activities, coal mining, and wastewater treatment, among other pathways. Over a 20-year period, it is roughly 84 times more potent than carbon dioxide at trapping heat in the atmosphere.');

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Good news! These ‘positive tipping points’ will help save the world. on Oct 31, 2025.

Food security is food justice (and a climate solution) Emily Pinckney Thu, 10/30/2025 - 2:00 pm

Today, the U.S. Senate voted to overturn environmental protections in the Western Arctic, clearing the way for oil and gas companies to greatly increase drilling activities in the area’s public lands.

In a 52-45 vote, the Senate invoked the Congressional Review Act to reverse a 2022 decision that protected millions of acres in the Western Arctic from oil and gas development. The Senate resolution was introduced by Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-AK). Rep. Nick Begich (R-AK) has introduced a companion resolution in the House.

The Act allows Congress to overturn administrative rules enacted by executive agencies. After years of little use, the Act has become a key part of Donald Trump’s agenda to revoke protections for public lands and waters and enable extractive industries to drill, mine, and log fragile landscapes and ecosystems.

This is the second time Trump has reversed previously established environmental protections for the Western Arctic, the single-largest contiguous area of public lands in the United States. In his first term, Trump approved a plan that would have allowed drilling in more than 80% of the area Western Arctic, removing Obama-era protections for about half of the area. Expanded drilling on these landscapes would threaten critical habitat for birds and other wildlife, and food security for Alaska Native communities.

In response, Athan Manuel, Director of Sierra Club’s Lands Protection Program, released the following statement:

“Donald Trump’s government shutdown has dragged on for nearly five weeks, and what is the top priority for Congressional Republicans? Opening up the western Arctic to oil and gas drilling, not funding services or making sure our military is paid? Donald Trump and his allies in Congress have gotten us into a crisis, and now they’re exploiting it to hand over our public lands and wild places to corporate polluters – it’s shameful.”

ABOUT RAN

For more than 40 years, Rainforest Action Network (RAN) has campaigned to preserve forests, protect the climate, and uphold human rights by challenging corporate power and systemic injustice through research, education, partnerships, peaceful direct action, grassroots organizing, strategic campaigns, and communications. We are committed to working with Indigenous and frontline communities directly impacted by profit-driven systems of injustice. In partnership with allies from around the world, RAN challenges corporations to stop their destructive operations, respect human rights, and adopt policies that reduce their contributions to climate change. With a budget of approximately $13 million and an international staff of approximately 65 (based in San Francisco to New York to London to Asia), RAN works toward a world where the rights and dignity of all communities are respected and where healthy forests, a stable climate, and wild biodiversity are protected and celebrated.

RACIAL JUSTICE

RAN strives to integrate values of equity and fairness into our work, which includes bringing an intentional racial justice analysis to our programmatic work and organizational structure. We are seeking candidates who have a commitment to engage in this ongoing process and work with us to create a just and inclusive work environment and world.

RAN values diversity in race, class, gender, culture, and religion, and implements programs internally to ensure that staff, board, and activists understand and adopt anti-oppression principles. For more information about RAN’s history, culture, and philosophy, please visit RAN’s website.

THE POSITION

RAN’s Forest Program is focused on protecting tropical biodiversity from corporate expansion and supporting the rights of Indigenous and traditional peoples to control and manage their territories. This position plays a critical leadership role within the Forest team, reporting directly to the Forest Program Director, and shares responsibility for the strategic direction, management, and daily maintenance of the Forest Program. Specifically, the Deputy Forest Program Director manages the campaigns and research work for the program, including the Keep Forests Standing campaign and Forests & Finance Coalition, and shares responsibility for the overall project management and coordination of the Forest Program.  The role requires forest and corporate campaigning expertise and strong management skills.

RESPONSIBILITIES

• Acts as a management lead for teams within the Forest Program
• Works with Directors and teams to create and implement strategies for brands campaigning, forest finance campaigning, and cross-programmatic research, and ensures strategies are aligned with RAN’s mission, vision and strategic plan
• Oversees project management and annual work planning for the Forest Program.
• Works with the Finance Team and Directors to develop the Forest Program budget, approves invoices, and is responsible for closing out the Forest Program budget month over month.
• Supervises campaign and research leads in the Forest Program
• Provides support across the team as needed, ensuring that pace and capacity are healthy, and delegating responsibilities as necessary
• Partners with the Public Engagement Departments on digital, organizing and communications strategies for the Forest Program
• Supports corporate negotiations with financial institutions, brands, and forest-risk companies
• Serves as a public and media spokesperson for RAN
• Maintain relationships with coalition partners
• Supports fundraising efforts and partners with the development team on funder cultivation, proposal development and reporting
• Manages external contractors
• Other duties as assigned by Director

REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS

• Minimum of 10 years of experience working on forest issues
• Minimum of 10 years of experience in campaigning, with strong experience in developing successful advocacy campaigns
• Minimum of 5 years of experience with managing staff and teams in advocacy or nonprofit sectors
• Experience in leading and/or directing financial, supply chain, and/or investigative research
• Proven leadership ability, including project managing and directing complex projects across multiple teams and geographies
• Detail-oriented and able to work with a team, across multiple teams and time zones, as well as work independently
• Demonstrated flexibility and problem solving skills
• Excellent oral and written communication skills
• Minimum of 5 years of budget management experience
• Ability to travel up to 30% of the time including international trips

PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS

• Experience working in, or with partners, Indigenous and frontline communities, in tropical forest regions, particularly Indonesia and Brazil
• Language skills from regions in which we work are a plus, including but not limited to Indonesian, Portuguese, and Japanese
• Previous experience working with a cross-cultural team across global time zones
• Demonstrated experience in leading corporate negotiations

COMPENSATION

This is a full-time position with an anticipated salary range equivalent to $115,000-$125,000 USD commensurate with experience and location. The position is remote and open to candidates based in the US, UK or Europe who are able to work across time zones. RAN has staff and partners in time zones across the world, and staff are expected to work flexibly in order to connect with colleagues.

For staff in the US, benefits include RAN-paid health, dental and vision insurance for the staff person and their partner/family, a retirement plan with a 3% employer match, and a slate of RAN-paid additional coverages. For staff outside the US, reimbursements for healthcare and pension/retirement are available. All staff, regardless of location, are eligible for four weeks PTO (increases to five weeks after two years) as well as a paid winter break, a 12-week paid sabbatical after every 5 years of service.

EQUAL OPPORTUNITY AND ACCESS

RAN is an equal opportunity employer and is committed to providing all people with equal access to employment and volunteer opportunities. If you need assistance with accommodations during our interview or employment process, please contact HR@ran.org. We encourage applicants of color and from other historically excluded identities to apply for this position.

BARGAINING UNIT STATUS

RAN is a union workplace; our staff are represented by RAN Alliance for Workers’ Rights (RAWR) via CWA 9415. This position is excluded from the bargaining unit.

TO APPLY

For optimal consideration, please apply by November 30, 2025 using the link below to submit a resume, cover letter, and writing sample (preferably one that is published).

APPLICATION LINK:

https://rainforest-action-network.breezy.hr/p/66cd278be13a-deputy-forest-program-director

The post Deputy Forest Program Director appeared first on Rainforest Action Network.

Community organizing gets the goods!! When a corporate property owner tried to remove important bus stops, more than 1500 riders spoke up to demand better – and won!

Besides Downtown Pittsburgh and Oakland, two of the busiest bus stops in our system are out front of the Giant Eagle and Target in Homestead. It was announced late-Summer that the corporation that owns the Waterfront (M&J Wilkow) wanted to remove those stops because of unsubstantiated claims about “safety”. When the announcement came, transit riders in the Mon Valley snapped into action. Within a week we had collected 1,500 signatures on a petition, we’d gotten the County Executive and Congressperson involved, and a solution was reached that maintained access for transit riders (and may even improve it in the future)!

On Monday, October 20th, PPT membrers and elected officials celebrated our win in style. We showed that this decision doesn’t just impact riders, but employees, transit workers, neighbors with disabilities, children, people who live in City of Pittsburgh and the Boroughs throughout the Mon Valley.

The issue of bus stop access is particularly important in the Mon Valley region because it is an area that has experienced disinvestment. Many communities in the Mon Valley face food and healthcare apartheid, and pedestrian infrastructure is often nonexistent or inaccessible. In this region, bus lines serve as crucial lifelines, connecting residents to jobs and essential needs.These problems would have been obvious if the people actually impacted had been involved in these talks and decisions from the very beginning.

While the decision to not remove the stops is a win, riders will not be pushed to the margins. We will not stand for our basic needs being cut due to deep prejudice. We want to recognize once again the incredible power of Black Women who have demonstrated longstand leadership and stood at the forefront of mobilizing (and spreading the riders petition) retail workers, neighbors, operators, elected officials, and so many to take action. We thank Rep. Summer Lee, Homestead Borough Vice President Mary Nesby, Homestead Resident Kristen Greene, Hazelwood Resident Tameeka Jones-Cuff, and Community Organizing Manager Cheryl Stephens.

See the news coverage:

• From Ed Blazina at the Pittsburgh Union Progress: Transit riders celebrate keeping bus stops at The Waterfront
• From WPXI: PRT riders celebrate decision to keep bus stops on Waterfront

Stay tuned as PPT continues to insist the Waterfront developers do right by transit riders. We belong here!

The post PPT Celebrates the Waterfront Bus Stop Restoration – Riders Belong Here! appeared first on Pittsburghers for Public Transit.

View the press conference (in Spanish only) here: https://webtv.un.org/en/asset/k1l/k1lcstmvcx Wilmer Lucitante Criollo of the A’i kofan Nationality of the Ecuadorian Amazon spoke out against jaguar offsets and explained his nation’s ancestral sacred relationship with the king of the rainforest in a joint IEN-GJEP press conference at the United Nations CBD meeting in Panama.

The following is a statement from Nancy Altman, President of Social Security Works:

“This week, Fiserv’s stock price plunged by over 40 percent. The current CEO said that the decline happened because of exaggerated projections made by the previous CEO, Frank Bisignano.

That’s the same Frank Bisignano that Donald Trump put in charge of both Social Security and the IRS. Bisignano is now facing a lawsuit from investors, including a police pension fund that lost $1.67 million. He is being sued for ‘artificially inflating [Fiserv’s] growth numbers.’

When Bisignano joined the Trump administration, he sold all of his Fiserv stock, getting a big tax break in the process. That sale saved him $300 million (and counting) in stock value. Did Bisignano know that Fiserv’s stock was about to tank, and ask his friend Donald Trump for a life raft?

Bisignano is in charge of the American people’s hard-earned Social Security benefits, as well as the collection of our taxes — despite his total lack of expertise, or even basic knowledge, of either. He infamously admitted that he had to google ‘Social Security’ when Trump offered him the job. If he engaged in wrongdoing, the people need to know.

How can we trust any claims Bisignano makes about Social Security, such as his insistence that phone service is improving even as media reports show otherwise?

The Justice Department should launch an immediate investigation. So should Congress. Unfortunately, neither body has shown any willingness to hold Donald Trump or his nominees accountable. Bisignano should resign or be fired. Unfortunately, that won’t happen either.

The only recourse is for Democrats to win control of Congress and make investigating Bisignano a top priority.”

India’s maritime sector is beginning a major shift toward cleaner operations. The Ministry of Ports, Shipping and Waterways (MoPSW) has launched the Harit Sagar Green Port Guidelines, which set a goal for 50 percent of all port equipment and vehicles to be electric by 2030. This goal provides an opportunity to modernize logistics, reduce costs and emissions, and make India’s ports more competitive and cleaner in a changing global market.

RMI’s latest report lays the foundation for large-scale electric truck deployment at ports, improving air quality in port regions, reducing operating costs for fleet operators, and positioning India as a global leader in sustainable port logistics.

Early ZET deployments show promise, but costs remain a hurdle

Today, about 24,000 diesel trucks operate within and around India’s 12 government owned Major Ports. These trucks are essential for moving goods but also add to local air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions. Replacing them with zero-emission trucks (ZETs), such as battery-electric or fuel-cell trucks, is an important step toward meeting the Harit Sagar goals.

Some ports have already begun this journey. Pilot projects at Jawaharlal Nehru Port, Kamarajar Port, and Visakhapatnam Port have tested ZETs across various use cases. Early results indicate that ZETs can match diesel trucks in performance and payload, offering comparable range and operational efficiency. Drivers also report smoother, more comfortable and quieter operations. However, when considering economics, ZETs currently show a 4–20 percent higher total cost of ownership (TCO) compared than diesel trucks (Exhibit 1). This is driven largely by high up-front vehicle costs, elevated electricity tariffs (INR 9.7–16/kWh), and the cost of battery-swapping infrastructure.

Exhibit 1

Total cost of ownership of ZETs vs. diesel trucks for differing ports and use cases

Note: The results are inclusive of PM E-DRIVE E-truck incentives. Daily distance traveled (km) for Jawaharlal Nehru, Kamarajar, and Visakhapatnam ports is 125 km, 120 km, and 150 km, respectively.
Source: RMI Analysis

Despite the TCO gap, major ports are demonstrating a strong intent towards ZET adoption by indicating demand for approximately 800 ZETs to be deployed by 2030. While this represents only about 3 percent of the total truck fleet at ports, it marks a promising start that can build confidence, operational experience, and economies of scale.

The need for a policy framework

To move from small pilots to large-scale deployment, bridge the TCO gap, and align adoption with Harit Sagar targets, there is an urgent need for a dedicated policy framework specifically for ZETs at Major Ports. Such a framework (Exhibit 2), including strategic planning, fiscal and non-fiscal measures, infrastructure development and capacity building, would help align efforts across ports and provide consistent direction to both public and private stakeholders.

Exhibit 2

Policy framework for ZET adoption at ports

Source: Policy Framework for Zero-Emission Truck Adoption at Major Ports in India, RMI, 2025, https://rmi.org/insight/ policy-framework-for-zero-emission-trucks-adoption-at-major-ports-in-india.

It’s critical to prioritize the implementation of these solutions in a phased manner. In the near term (0–1 years), the focus should be on ensuring that each port develops a ZET transition plan to signal its intent to decarbonize logistics and build industry confidence. This can be complemented by aggregating demand across ports through a nodal agency to reduce costs for early adoption.

Additionally, fiscal measures such as up-front incentives can help lower the TCO and spur short-term adoption. These can be accompanied with nonfiscal measures, including the creation of green entry and exit channels for ZETs and the introduction of longer-term logistics service contracts favoring ZET operations. Finally, ports can also explore leveraging state EV tariffs and PM E-Drive charging infrastructure incentives to reduce charging-related costs. Capacity-building and workforce training programs should be prioritized to ensure drivers are equipped to operate ZETs efficiently.

In the medium term (beyond 1 year), more binding measures can be introduced. These may include embedding ZET adoption requirements for terminal operators in new or renewed concession agreements and imposing additional surcharges on the operation of diesel fleets at ports. At the same time, it is important to strengthen upstream infrastructure to accommodate higher charging demand, and to institutionalize continuous documentation, data collection, and monitoring of deployments and key learnings.

Overall, this represents a significant opportunity for India’s major ports to demonstrate leadership in ZET adoption on the global stage. With coordinated action between the public and private sector, and a dedicated policy framework, India can anchor a more sustainable, resilient, and competitive maritime future.

 

 

 

The post Driving the Adoption of Zero-Emissions Trucks at Major Ports in India appeared first on RMI.

This coverage is made possible through a partnership between Grist and WABE, Atlanta’s NPR station.

Georgians are currently voting in rare off-year elections for two seats on the Public Service Commission, or PSC — the only statewide races on the ballot this year. More Democrats are expected to turn out to vote because Democratic strongholds like Atlanta are electing a mayor and city council members. In June, about twice as many Democrats as Republicans turned out for the party primaries. 

Republicans see a risk of losing seats they’ve held for two decades and opening the door to further losses. Both parties are looking ahead to next year, when the governor’s office and a U.S. Senate seat are on the ballot, and see the PSC race as something of a bellwether. That all has Republicans showing some nerves.

Recently, some of Georgia’s top Republicans gathered in Forsyth County, about 40 minutes outside Atlanta, for a show of party unity and patriotism. Local and state officials stood on risers behind the podium while longtime Public Service Commissioner Bubba McDonald led the small crowd in a rendition of “God Bless the USA.” 

McDonald and his fellow members of the commission charged with regulating Georgia’s largest electric utility, Georgia Power, are all Republicans. Standing behind a sign reading “Don’t DEM the lights in Georgia,” the evening’s speakers urged the crowd to keep it that way.

“We are all united in one goal, and that is to send the message that Georgia is closed to the Democratic party,” said state party chair Josh McKoon.

Georgia Governor Brian Kemp speaks at an event rallying Republican support for the Public Service Committee election. Directly behind Kemp are incumbent commissioners Fitz Johnson and Tim Echols. Emily Jones / Grist

Focused as they were on the broader party politics, the Republicans rallying their base in Forsyth County also shone a spotlight on the PSC’s role in determining the cost and sources of energy in Georgia — critical positions that traditionally operate in relative obscurity. 

“You hear everybody talk about how important it is that our state continue to be the number one state to do business, raise a family, have a job,” McKoon said. “The backbone of that is reliable energy.”

For the Republican incumbent commissioners, reliable energy means fossil fuels. Last year, they greenlit new gas-fired turbines and earlier this year, they voted to approve a Georgia Power plan that would keep coal plants open past their previously approved retirement dates, both to meet rising demand that comes mostly from data centers.

“If these two Democrats get elected, they are going to be at war with our fossil plants, and we have a lot of them,” Commissioner Tim Echols told the rally crowd. “These fossil plants are absolutely critical to our reliability, and we can’t allow anyone to take the helm of the Public Service Commission and shut these things down.”

Read Next A quick guide to Georgia’s 2025 Public Service Commission elections Lyndsey Gilpin & Emily Jones

Echols has championed solar, nuclear, and other alternative energy sources since joining the commission in 2010, but sees natural gas in particular as an important part of the state’s overall energy mix.

Fellow Commissioner Fitz Johnson had similarly dire warnings about the potential consequences of Democrats joining the commission.

“We are not gonna let them California our Georgia,” Johnson said after pointing to large rate hikes in states like California and New York.

But Johnson and Echols have voted to raise rates in Georgia, too. Georgia Power bills have gone up six times in the last three years: three times as part of an overall rate hike, twice to pay for new nuclear reactors at Plant Vogtle, and once to cover high natural gas prices. Earlier this year, the commission voted unanimously to freeze base power rates for the next three years — though bills will still be adjusted next year for fuel prices and hurricane cleanup costs, which could mean a further increase.

The state Democratic Party is focused largely on these rate hikes in its bid to unseat Echols and Johnson.

“These two Republicans that are running right now never once said, ‘No’ — not one time — to a rate hike request,” said state party chair Charlie Bailey. “We view that as frankly not even a partisan thing. That is — those folks ought not to be in office.”

The Democratic National Committee made the unusual move of sending a top official and fundraising for the Georgia PSC elections, which the party sees as a rare chance at statewide victory. Kevin Dietsch / Getty Images

Both Democratic candidates view expanding renewable energy and exploring alternatives like better management of energy demand, installing rooftop and community solar, and working with neighboring utilities as keys to both meeting rising demand and stemming skyrocketing costs. 

Those options, said Democratic candidate Peter Hubbard, are “woefully underrepresented in the current planning process.” 

“What fills that gap is gas-fired capacity, extensions of coal plants, and generally things that are less affordable and less reliable,” he said.

Democrat Alicia Johnson favors similar solutions as both affordable and reliable — and as a protection against climate-fueled weather disasters like last year’s Hurricane Helene, which took down major parts of Georgia’s grid and left some areas without power for weeks.

“We need to invest in a smarter, more resilient grid that’s capable of handling the extreme weather that Georgia experiences while also expanding that access to clean energy,” she said. “I believe that we could be promoting the use of micro grids and energy storage in vulnerable and rural communities to protect against outages.”

To spread those messages and try to capitalize on the calendar quirk that could boost their party’s turnout, the Democrats are also investing in these races in a way they haven’t before.

“The state party’s never spent any money on a PSC race. Period,” said Bailey.

This year, they’re running phone banks, sending out thousands of mailers, and knocking on doors. The Democratic National Committee has gotten involved too, fundraising and deploying vice chair Jane Kleeb to campaign in Georgia.

While the political stakes of the PSC races have overshadowed the climate stakes, the outcomes are no less consequential for Georgia’s future, and perhaps the nation’s. For Bailey, the fight over these obscure seats is a sign Georgia is still in battleground territory. The state narrowly voted for Biden in 2020 and for President Trump last year by 50.7 percent.

“A close election is yet another piece of evidence that this is a battleground,” he said. “A battleground by its very definition can be won, and it can be lost.”

And both parties have decided they’re out to win — this year and next.

More resources for understanding Georgia’s PSC

• A quick guide to Georgia’s 2025 Public Service Commission elections

• Decoding a Georgia Power bill

• Want clean energy? These are the overlooked elected officials who get to decide.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline This obscure Georgia election is about so much more than your power bill on Oct 30, 2025.

As our decrepit despot traipsed across Asia, he was fêted by leaders anxious to dodge his peevish trade wars by assiduously plying him, as one would for any dangerous, demented child, with adoration and treats: burgers, golf clubs, trinkets, ketchup and, in South Korea, even a crown for the wounded boy who would be king. Still, he couldn't keep up. In Japan, he wandered off mid-glitzy-ceremony like a nursing-home gramps looking for pudding, to be steered back in place. Nothing to see here.

The decline, of course, is ongoing. Monday, Trump told reporters he'd gone to Walter Reed Medical Center and gotten an MRI as part of a "routine yearly checkup,” except he'd just had one six months ago and an MRI is decisively not part of a routine test, but not to worry: He said it was "perfect," except that doesn't exist. For those inexplicably wondering about his cognitive state, he said he also aced a "very hard" sort of "aptitude test," except it's a very basic dementia screening that requires the patient to solve elementary-school level problems like remembering five words, identifying a giraffe or lion, and drawing a clock; he added that the test "took a while" and "was difficult,” two key factors doctors consider when assessing cognitive skills

Then, days before the expiration of federal food benefits that could leave tens of millions of Americans facing hunger along with soaring health insurance costs, and as the House GOP remains MIA during what could be the longest shutdown in history, he left for a six-day, gold-plated tour of Asia, because fuck you all. In Malaysia, he cringe "danced" with "zero class"; in Japan, he got a red carpet, golf clubs, and lost. On Wednesday, heading to fraught trade talks with both South Korean President Lee Jae Myung and then Chinese President Xi Jinping, he landed in South Korea to a hero's welcome: a brass band playing YMCA - gay hookups! - a red carpet adorned with multi-hued flags - "That was a very good red carpet" - and President Lee in a custom-made gold tie.

Leaning into the theme of peace to honor Trump's famed, fictional role as a "global peacemaker" - and clearly eager to get Trump's vengeful, randomly spiked 25% tariffs back down to a manageable 15% - Lee was just getting started on his campaign for Sycophant of the Week Award. An official lunch, bedecked with peace lilies, featured “mini beef patties with ketchup” and Thousand Island Dressing in a nod to Trump’s “success story in his hometown of New York." The menu also included a "Korean Platter of Sincerity" - U.S. beef and local rice - grilled fish with a glaze of ketchup and gochujang chili paste, and a "Peacemaker’s Dessert” of a brownie adorned with gold. After the ketchup and gold brownie came the shiny, kingly baubles

Days after almost eight million furious Americans protested Trump's abuses under the mantra No Kings, in a lavish ceremony at Gyeongju National Museum, Lee presented Trump with...a crown. Specifically, a replica of one of several 1,000-year-old crowns excavated from the ancient, golden Silla Kingdom that ruled much of the Korean Peninsula until the 10th century, and fell due to corruption and oppression. Hmm. The crown represents a time of peace and unity, an official said, as the first dynasty to unify the Peninsula's three kingdoms; it "symbolizes the divine connection between the authority of the heavens and the sovereignty on Earth," as well as the authority of a strong leader. Trump, wooed and dazzled, stared raptly, a kid at a humongous candy store.

Lee also awarded him the Grand Order of Mugunghwa, their highest civil honor, a medal hung from a golden collar. Trump happily burbled over his swag; then they talked trade. Ultimately, they "pretty much finalized" a deal for South Korea to pump $350 billion into the U.S.economy in exchange for returning tariffs to 15%, including on cars; Trump also said they'd cooperate on shipbuilding, with the Koreans allegedly building a nuclear sub at a former Philly shipyard experts say will be equipped to do it, like, never. But he got a crown! Other details on the deal's "structure" are unresolved - like the Gaza "truce?" - nor are tensions on security costs. Polls show most South Koreans don't trust Trump, but feel they need the U.S. economically to fend off China, a bigger threat, so good luck on that.

Like everywhere else, the talks were met by protests that echoed ours; signs read, “No Kings," "Trump Not Welcome," "This Is Robbery Not Negotiation." Said one protester, “It seems the U.S. (is) treating South Korea as its cash cow." Before leaving, Trump also met with China's Xi Jinping in Busan. Trump later called the meeting "amazing" and "12 out of 10," with agreements on "many important points," including soybeans, rare earths and much lower tariffs than the 100% Trump at some point wildly threatened in one of his hissy fits. He also said, “Ukraine came up very strongly," because he never learned to speak English. There have been no statements about the meeting from the Chinese, so God knows what actually, really happened there.

As a befuddled, newly crowned king returns to his fractured country, he may be mulling where to put his new bling in a space packed with Tim Apple's plaque, his Olympic medals, the World Cup he stole and other ill-begotten gains. Others are wondering what happened to the Constitution's Foreign Emoluments Clause that bars officeholders from accepting personal gifts "from any king, prince or foreign state" worth more than about $480. Asked about the issue, a White House spokesperson asserted that Trump is "working night and day on behalf of the American people." He could be. Or maybe, amidst the fog and lies and phantasms he inhabits, he's trying to remember what just happened during his recent "Weekend at Donnie's territory."

Whatever he may have accomplished by way of reversing the catastrophic effects of his own economic idiocy, for many the enduring image of his trip will be viewed through the twisted prism of his Tuesday misadventures in Japan, when, Monty Python-style, he lost the thread during a welcoming ceremony in Tokyo. Now-viral videos show Japan's new Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi gently guiding Trump as they somberly walk through a palatial room filled with dignitaries; a stunned Trump abruptly halts, stares at an Honor Guard, shuffles past US/Japanese flags where he should stop, aimlessly lumbers on, randomly salutes, lurches ahead and gapes at the band as, behind him, an aghast Takaichi bows as expected before rushing to drag him back to earth.

The spectacle of a U.S.president with mush for brains stumbling around a palace like a toddler lost at the mall before marching up to shake hands with his own entourage was too much for many. "Bro has no idea what is going on," said one. Also, "Is this real life? This guy has control of our nukes." It was noted, if it's any consolation, he probably has no idea how to launch them; it was also noted Stephen Miller would happily do it for him. It was suggested "this is that 'high energy' we always hear about," that "his handlers should put a shock-collar on him (so) when he wanders off they can just zap him back to coherence," that "it's great, totally cool knowing this guy gets to do whatever he wants these days." One thing to look forward to: "Can't wait for this guy to ask what happened to the East Wing." What a time to be alive, for now.

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Press Conference: “Indigenous Peoples Defend the CBD’s de facto 2007 moratoria on genetically engineered trees” organized by Global Justice Ecology Project (SB8J) 28 Oct 2025 Full Speaker Statements Statement by Valentina Tereshkova, Gender Justice and Forests Campaign Coordinator, Global Forest Coalition “Today we are sounding the alarm on a growing threat: the use of genetically […]

A fossil-fueled surge in U.S. data center growth to serve the artificial intelligence boom threatens to sabotage the country’s already faltering climate goals, according to Data Crunch, a report released today by the Center for Biological Diversity.

A massive expansion of data centers, set to be powered primarily by fracked gas, could account for 10% of the economy-wide emissions and 44% of the power sector emissions allowable to meet the U.S. 2035 climate target, known as the nationally determined contribution, or NDC. Data centers are projected to account for more than 12% of U.S. electricity consumption by 2030.

To meet the NDC — set by President Biden and still in effect under Paris Agreement’s terms — all other electricity-consuming sectors would need to increase their carbon-emissions cuts by 60% to account for data centers’ massive fossil-fueled pollution.

The report comes ahead of next month’s COP30 climate talks in Brazil as countries’ plans to address climate change are falling far short of what’s needed. The Trump administration is attacking climate progress and pushing for a fast-tracked AI data center boom fed by gas and coal.

“Trump is determined to feed the voracious AI vortex with more dirty fossil fuels that harm the whole world,” said Jean Su, energy justice director at the Center and co-author of the report. “This report shows how the U.S. is about to set off an explosion of dirty data center emissions, entrenching more fossil fuels when we need their rapid phaseout. We need meaningful guardrails at every level to ward off this huge threat to our air, water and climate — and guard against energy price spikes for consumers.”

The report spotlights the U.S. role as the biggest AI climate polluter, with the planet’s highest concentration of data centers.

If the projected AI surge was instead powered fully by renewables, it would account for only 4% of the power sector emissions and a negligible amount of the economy-wide emissions allowable to meet the United States’ 2035 climate target.

Powering data center development with gas and coal risks entrenching dirty energy and its attendant harms, from air pollution to heatwaves and superstorms. It retreats from the 2023 Dubai climate summit agreement to transition away from fossil fuels and is completely incompatible with the 2035 U.S. climate goal.

“Feeding data centers with fossil fuels is taking the climate crisis we have now and blowing it up like the Incredible Hulk,” said John Fleming, Ph.D., a scientist at the Center’s Climate Law Institute and co-author of the report. “A gas-fed AI boom is going to hurdle us past any chance of keeping to our climate goal or maintaining a safe and healthy future for our planet. To the extent that data center buildout is needed at all, it should be powered only by clean, renewable energy.”

The report finds that guardrails are needed at global and national levels to curb data centers’ immense climate emissions, including adoption of a public-interest framework on permitting decisions and requiring on-site and distributed renewable energy and storage for power generation on a U.S. domestic level.

The United Nations recently launched two bodies addressing AI’s global governance, but neither explicitly deal with the industry’s potential climate and environmental harms. The report urges the UNFCCC to incorporate AI’s climate emissions into NDC reporting and consider other mechanisms for zeroing out its climate impacts.

As the end of 2025 approaches, regular folk take stock of the past year, and maybe ponder their New Year’s resolutions. Climate scientists, on the other hand, have been busy parsing mountains of data from the last 10 months, ranging from global temperatures to measurements of polar ice to the costs of extreme weather. Accordingly, their goal for 2026 might be to somehow make world leaders understand that humanity is running out of time to avert catastrophe.

A sobering tally of what the year’s data reveals about the state of the planet makes one thing clear: “We are hurtling toward climate chaos,” writes an international team of researchers. They add that recent climatic developments “emphasize the extreme insufficiency of global efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and mark the beginning of a grim new chapter for life on Earth.” 

Language from scientists doesn’t get much more alarming than that — and they’ve got good reason to be frightened. In 2023, for instance, the ability of the land to absorb our carbon emissions dropped significantly. The report confirms that last year was the hottest on record, and was likely the hottest in at least 125,000 years. This year, Greenland’s and Antarctica’s ice mass hit record lows, and extreme heat in the oceans drove the largest coral bleaching event on record, with over 80 percent of the world’s reef area affected. Accordingly, earlier this month another team of researchers announced that the world has reached its first major tipping point — in which an Earth system dramatically changes, often irreversibly — as many coral ecosystems pass a point of no return. And in September, still more scientists declared that we’ve hit the seventh of nine planetary boundaries — thresholds that keep our world hospitable to life — as ocean acidification continues to worsen. Taken together, the developments show that humanity is pushing critical Earth systems toward collapse. 

Which is not to say that there’s nothing we can do to stop the runaway deterioration of Earth’s systems. The prices of renewable energy and batteries, for instance, have fallen so precipitously that it’s even taken experts by surprise, meaning ditching fossil fuels makes excellent economic sense. We just need politicians to get serious about decarbonization: Next month at the COP30 climate conference in Brazil, nations will have to redouble their efforts to reduce emissions. “It’s really serious, but it’s not game over,” said R. Max Holmes, president and CEO of the Woodwell Climate Research Center, which wasn’t involved in the report. “There’s still hope. There’s still stuff that we can do, and that’s what we need to lean into.”

Still, the report makes it clear that the severe consequences of climate change, which scientists have long warned about, are here. “The main message is that the planet’s vital signs are flashing red,” said William J. Ripple, a professor at Oregon State University and co-lead author of the report, in an email to Grist. “Twenty-two of 34 tracked indicators are now at record extremes, from ocean heat content to global wildfire extent and Antarctic ice loss. We’re witnessing accelerating warming and a worsening of almost every key Earth system trend.”

Driving this is humanity’s failure to dramatically reduce its greenhouse gas emissions. In fact, energy-related emissions rose 1.3 percent last year, the report notes. That’s due primarily to a lack of ambition from governments to switch to renewables, but may also reflect a feedback loop: The hotter it gets, the more people need to run energy-hungry air conditioners to stay healthy, which results in more emissions and more AC use. 

At the same time, Earth’s systems are struggling to save us from ourselves. Normally, oceans and forests absorb CO2, as marine phytoplankton and terrestrial plants sequester the gas as they grow. But scientists have found a significant loss of phytoplankton in many parts of the sea in recent decades. And in 2024, the planet lost the second highest amount of forest on record. That’s due to deforestation and ever-fiercer wildfires that obliterate ecosystems — warmer temperatures and worsening droughts prime vegetation to burn catastrophically — instead of smaller, less intense blazes naturally resetting them for new growth. 

All told, loss of primary forest last year produced the equivalent of 8 percent of humanity’s emissions. And 2025 hasn’t brought any relief. Canada is suffering through a historic wildfire season, with the second largest area burned on record. That’s been consistently pouring smoke — likely infused with toxic metals from mining operations — across the country and into the United States, leading to extremely unhealthy air quality. 

This smoke initiates another feedback loop, as more carbon spews into the atmosphere, which causes more warming, which in turn worsens wildfires and produces more carbon. Those extra emissions could be helping push other systems to points of no return, further accelerating warming. That, in turn, could set the stage for a “hothouse Earth” scenario, in which the planet keeps warming even if emissions fall. “We’re edging closer to a chain reaction of feedback loops and tipping points including melting ice sheets, thawing permafrost, and forest dieback that could push Earth into a self-sustaining warming path,” said Ripple, who is also the director of the Alliance of World Scientists, which focuses on the climate crisis. “The risk now is that even if emissions fall later, the climate system may keep heating on its own. We might be dangerously close to triggering climate feedbacks that humanity can’t simply switch off.”

Indeed, the report notes that global warming may be speeding up. That could be partly due to an environmental victory, ironically enough: Air quality regulations have been reducing the emission of aerosols, which improves public health. But those aerosols normally reflect some of the sun’s energy back into space — and help brighten clouds to bounce still more energy — so losing them leads to more heating. “We’re seeing the planet heat up faster than expected,” Ripple said. “Surface temperatures are increasing more steeply than past trends would suggest.”

The cascading effects of this warming are getting worse by the year, because each bit of warming, disasters grow deadlier and more expensive. The hotter the ocean gets, for instance, the more fuel for monster tropical cyclones: Last year, Hurricane Helene killed 251 people and caused $79 billion in damages, and early indications are that Hurricane Melissa caused catastrophic destruction as it rolled across Jamaica on Tuesday. In January, the Los Angeles wildfires caused at least $250 billion in damages. And according to one group of researchers, the fires didn’t kill 30 people, as the official tally states, but more like 440 when you factor in those who may have died from the effects of smoke. Separately, last month researchers calculated that wildfire smoke already kills 40,000 Americans each year, which could jump to 71,000 by 2050 if greenhouse emissions remain high. 

All of these findings point to one conclusion: Without a drastic course correction, we’re on track to reach as much as 3.1 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels — miles above the Paris Agreement’s goal of keeping it below 2 degrees, and even more ideally, 1.5 degrees — by 2100. The costs of climate change will be astronomically greater than preventing that warming by investing in renewables, fighting overconsumption, and protecting the ecosystems that naturally sequester carbon. “Our message is clear,” Ripple said. “We need to act boldly and act now. Every fraction of a degree matters. Delays only magnify suffering and costs.”

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This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Scientists have a dire new warning about the state of the planet on Oct 29, 2025.

Just four Global North countries, the United States, Canada, Australia, and Norway, are overwhelmingly responsible for blocking global progress on phasing out oil and gas production, according to new analysis from Oil Change International titled Planet Wreckers: Global North Countries Fueling the Fire Since the Paris Agreement.

While the rest of the world reduced oil and gas production between 2015 and 2024, massive expansion in these “Planet Wrecker” countries caused total global output to rise since the Paris Agreement. On top of this, all Global North countries as a whole have failed to pay the climate finance they owe, slowing climate action in the rest of the world while protecting the profits of key drivers of the climate crisis: polluters and the super-rich.

Between 2015 and 2024, the U.S., Canada, Australia, and Norway, collectively increased their oil and gas production by nearly 40 percent, adding over 14 million barrels of oil equivalent per day (boe/d). In the same period, extraction in the rest of the world fell by 2 percent, cumulatively.

This contrast is striking and critically important as nations prepare to converge at COP30 to negotiate the next phase of the global climate agenda.

The U.S. alone accounts for over 90 percent of the net global increase in extraction through 2024, driving up its production by nearly 11 million boe/d - more than five times as much as any other country.

Time is running out. If fossil fuel-driven carbon pollution continues at today’s pace, the world will burn through its remaining carbon budget in just three years. The science is clear: keeping the 1.5°C limit in reach requires ending fossil fuel expansion and rapidly phasing out oil, gas, and coal production and use. The legal case for this has also been recently bolstered by international courts, including the International Court of Justice.

Unsurprisingly, the four countries with an outsized responsibility for driving up oil and gas since the Paris Agreement are also collectively planning to expand the most over the next decade. Previous Oil Change International analysis also warns that these four Global North producers are the same “Planet Wrecker” countries driving the majority of the world’s planned oil and gas expansion through to 2035, in terms of production dependent on new fields and fracking wells.

Just as predictably, all Global North governments as a whole have shirked paying the finance they owe to enable climate action in the Global South, instead pursuing policy agendas that further entrench the power and profits of fossil fuel companies and the super-rich. Since the Paris Agreement, Global North governments have provided just $280 billion in climate finance on grant-equivalent terms, a fraction of the $1 to $5 trillion annual need. Meanwhile, they have enabled the oil and gas companies headquartered in their countries to make at least $1.3 trillion in profits – around 5 times as much as Global North countries paid in climate finance.

Romain Ioualalen, Global Policy lead at Oil Change International, said:

“Ten years ago in Paris, countries promised to limit warming to 1.5°C, which is impossible without putting an end to fossil fuel expansion and production. The rich countries most responsible for the climate crisis have not kept that promise. Instead, they’ve poured more fuel on the fire and withheld the funds needed to put it out.

“The fact that a handful of rich Global North countries, led by the United States, have massively driven up their oil and gas production while people around the world suffer the consequences is a blatant mockery of justice and equity. These countries have a moral and legal obligation to move first to phase out fossil fuels, and deliver the trillions needed in climate finance on fair terms to the Global South. Anything less is a betrayal of science and abdication of responsibility.

“But all is not lost. More and more countries are pushing to end the era of fossil fuels, as demonstrated by the first global conference on fossil fuel phase-out that the government of Colombia will convene in 2026. The first step will be for governments meeting at COP30 in Belém to deliver a collective roadmap for equitable, differentiated fossil fuel phase-out dates, and address the systemic barriers preventing Global South countries from transitioning to renewable energy, including finance.”

Ahead of the major international climate conference COP30 in Belem, Brazil, new Oxfam research finds that the high-carbon lifestyles of the super-rich are blowing through the world’s remaining carbon budget - the amount of CO2 that can be emitted while avoiding climate disaster. The research also details how billionaires are using their political and economic influence to keep humanity hooked on fossil fuels to maximize their private profit.

The report, "Climate Plunder: How a powerful few are locking the world into disaster", presents extensive new updated data and analysis which finds that a person from the richest 0.1% produces more carbon pollution in a day than the poorest 50% emit all year. If everyone emitted like the richest 0.1%, the carbon budget would be used up in less than 3 weeks.

The super-rich are not just overconsuming carbon, but also actively investing in and profiting from the most polluting corporations. Oxfam’s research finds that the average billionaire produces 1.9 million tonnes of CO2e a year through their investments. These billionaires would have to circumnavigate the world almost 10,000 times in their private jets to emit this much. Almost 60% of billionaire investments are classified as being in high climate impact sectors such as oil or mining, meaning their investments emit two and a half times more than an average investment in the S&P Global 1,200. The emissions of the investment portfolios of just 308 billionaires total more than the combined emissions of 118 countries.

“The climate crisis is an inequality crisis. The very richest individuals in the world are funding and profiting from climate destruction, leaving the global majority to bear the fatal consequences of their unchecked power,” said Amitabh Behar, Executive Director of Oxfam International.

The power and wealth of super-rich individuals and corporations have also allowed them to wield unjust influence over policymaking and water down climate negotiations. At COP29, 1,773 coal, oil, and gas lobbyists were granted badges, more than the 10 most climate-vulnerable nations combined. Multiple rich and high-emitting countries including the US, UK, France and Germany have watered down climate laws after large donations from anti-climate lobbyists.

“It is a travesty that power and wealth have been allowed to accumulate in the hands of a few, who are only using it to further entrench their influence and lock us all into a path to planetary destruction. The super-rich and the corporations they run have a deadly track record of bankrolling lobbyists, spreading climate disinformation, and suing NGOs and governments that try to stand in their way. We must break the chokehold of the super-rich over climate policy by taxing their extreme wealth, banning their lobbying and instead put those most affected by the climate crisis in the front seat of climate decision-making,” said Behar.

The emissions of the richest 1% are enough to cause an estimated 1.3 million heat-related deaths by the end of the century, as well as $44 trillion of economic damage to low- and lower-middle-income countries by 2050. The impacts of these climate damages will disproportionately impact those who have done the least to cause the climate crisis, particularly people living in the Global South, women, girls and Indigenous groups.

COP30 marks ten years since the Paris Agreement in 2015. During this period, the world’s richest 1% have burnt through more than twice as much of the carbon budget than the poorest half of humanity combined

Ahead of COP30, Oxfam calls on governments to cut the emissions and dismantle the political and economic power of the super-rich through:

• Slashing the emissions of the super-rich and make the richest polluters pay, through taxation on extreme wealth, excess profits taxes on fossil fuel corporations, and supporting the UN Convention on International Tax Cooperation. A 60% tax on the total incomes of the richest 1% globally could cut carbon emissions equivalent to the total emissions of the UK and generate in the region of $6.4 trillion.
• Curbing the economic and political influence of the richest by banning fossil fuel corporations from climate negotiations such as COP, implementing sustainability regulations for corporations and financial institutions, and rejecting trade and investment agreements like investor-state dispute settlements (ISDS) that put the interests of the super-wealthy above public good.
• Strengthening the participation of civil society and Indigenous groups in climate negotiations and address the unequal impacts of climate change.
• Adopting a fair-share approach to the remaining climate budget by committing to nationally determined contributions (NDCs) that reflect historical responsibility and capacity to act, and ensuring rich countries deliver ambitious climate finance.
• Building an equal economic system that puts people and planet first by rejecting dominant neoliberal economics and moving towards an economy based on sustainability and equality.

In January 2020, Danny Ray started a complicated job with the Oklahoma agency that regulates oil and gas. The petroleum engineer who’d spent more than 40 years in the oil fields had been hired to help address a spreading problem, one that state regulators did not fully understand. 

The year prior, toxic water had poured out of the ground — thousands of gallons per day — for months near the small town of Kingfisher, spreading across acres of farmland, killing crops and trees. 

Such pollution events were not new, but they were occurring with increasing frequency across the state. By the time Ray joined the Oklahoma Corporation Commission, the incidents had grown common enough to earn a nickname — purges. 

When oil and gas are pumped from the ground, they come up with briny fluid called “produced water,” many times saltier than the sea and laden with chemicals, including some that cause cancer. Most of this toxic water is shot back underground using what are known as injection wells.

Wastewater injection had been happening in Oklahoma for 80 years, but something was driving the growing number of purges. Ray and his colleagues in the oil division set out to find the cause. As they scoured well records and years of data, they zeroed in on a significant clue: The purges were occurring near wells where companies were injecting oil field wastewater at excessively high pressure, high enough to crack rock deep underground and allow the waste to travel uncontrolled for miles. 

Purges are caused when injection wells shoot oil field wastewater back underground at high pressure. This can fracture a hard layer of rock meant to contain the fluid. It can also push wastewater up through Oklahoma’s large number of inactive wells that have not been properly plugged with cement. Haisam Hussein for ProPublica

By November 2020, at least 10 sites were expelling polluted water, according to internal agency emails obtained through public records requests.

The number of purges has grown steadily since. A Frontier and ProPublica analysis of pollution complaints submitted to the agency found more than 150 reports of purges in the past five years. Throughout that time, state officials were aware of the environmental and public health crisis as Ray and others at the agency investigated the proliferating purges and uncovered a complex stew of causes. 

Ray often likens his home state, where oil has been drilled for more than a century and is a major industry, to a block of Swiss cheese, punctured with the nation’s second-highest number of “orphan” wells — inactive wells whose owners have abandoned them without properly plugging them with cement. The state has catalogued about 20,000 orphan wells, but federal researchers believe the true number may be over 300,000, based on historic industry data and airborne imaging techniques that identify old wells underground. These old wells provide easy pathways for the injected wastewater to zoom up thousands of feet to the surface, contaminating drinking water sources along the way. 

Ray particularly worried about the volume of wastewater being crammed underground by high-pressure injection — tens of billions of gallons each year, enough to fill the Empire State Building over 300 times. Oklahoma’s vast landscape of unplugged holes combined with its large number of injection wells operating at high pressures creates conditions ripe for purges.

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margin-top: 10px !important; } } Number of injection wells in top oil-producing states

Oklahoma has the third-largest number of injection wells in the country, much more than other prolific oil states, because of its long history of oil and gas extraction and distinct geology.

State Injection wells Oil production rank

Sources: Environmental Protection Agency / Energy Information Administration

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But Ray would come to learn that at the commission, identifying the causes of the purges was one thing. Stopping them — and preventing new ones — was a very different matter. 

“I don’t know if we’re ever going to fix it or not,” said Ray, 72, who resigned in frustration three years later. “They don’t want to listen.”

A yearlong investigation by The Frontier and ProPublica reveals that the Oklahoma Corporation Commission did not mandate that responsible companies clean up the pollution belowground, as state law requires “when feasible.” Regulators say that once tainted by oil field brine, polluted groundwater is virtually impossible to treat. That makes preventing purges all the more critical — something the commission also failed to do, according to current and former employees. At times, records show, agency leadership sidelined employees who criticized the agency’s response. 

Field reports from agency staff referred to individual incidents as “a threat to the environment and the safety of persons” or “a hazard to the ground water.” These notes describe orphan wells spewing toxic water near homes or into streams, leaving scars of salt residue. A homeowner reported that his grandchildren often play near a purging well. Ranchers have lost calves, which, drawn to the salty water, died after drinking it. But the full scale of Oklahoma’s purge problem — and state regulators’ awareness of it — has never previously been reported.

Purges often occur at abandoned, unplugged oil wells as a result of high-pressure injection. Obtained by ProPublica and The Frontier

Officials with the agency’s oil division acknowledged in an interview with The Frontier and ProPublica that overpressurized wells are contributing to the purges. They say some of these incidents are a result of historic pollution in a state where oil and gas was extracted long before modern regulations, beginning in the 1960s, required companies to protect the environment and plug inactive wells with cement. They noted that the state has taken steps to reduce injection pressures on new wells in recent years and is committed to “doing the right thing, holding operators accountable, protecting Oklahoma and its resources, and providing fair and balanced regulation.”

“I am also confident that every employee and every view is heard and considered,” said Brandy Wreath, who as director of administration for the commission is responsible for the agency’s operations, in a follow-up statement. “We will continue to be committed to protecting Oklahoma and supporting the state’s largest industry to perform its role in a safe and economic manner. These goals are not mutually exclusive.”

To Ray, those efforts were not enough in the face of a much bigger problem. If thousands of gallons of water was reaching the surface, he reasoned, that meant an incalculably greater amount was dispersing below ground. The thought scared him. Oklahoma relies on groundwater for over half of its annual water use. 

“We have so much damage underground that we don’t even know about,” Ray said.

State regulators have direct authority over the pressure at which companies inject oil field wastewater.

But while investigating purges over the last five years, oil division employees have found hundreds of wells that were injecting more fluid than their permits allowed or at pressures above the legal limit, as indicated by the pressure gauge on each well and regular reports from companies to the state. During his tenure, Ray and others also discovered purges caused by wells operating within the pressure boundaries noted on the well permits. Oklahoma’s rules, they concluded, were part of the problem. 

In a November 2020 email to a handful of employees, Mike McGinnis, deputy director of the oil division, described an abundance of overpressurized wells near a purge as “self-inflicted.” 

“It looks like some of the approved injection pressures were set high in the permit,” he wrote. “May be hard to put that genie back in the bottle.” 

Reducing permitted injection pressures was exactly the solution Ray felt was necessary.

The state approves the pressure at which companies can inject oil field wastewater based on whether injection would fracture a hard layer of rock meant to contain the fluid. Ray believed purges could be prevented by lowering pressure limits to the point where injection would not crack the softer sandy layers where most oil and gas is found.

Soon after starting his job, Ray began distributing long memos and dizzying equations calculating the pressure at which different rock formations break. 

Ray’s efforts helped yield some short-term success. As new purges emerged and existing ones continued to flow, oil division officials in 2020 lowered injection pressures on a case-by-case basis. Regulators added layers of scrutiny for proposed injection wells and more frequently asked for maps showing wells that the pressurized water might collide with as well as data on the pressure at which rocks crack, according to agency officials.

But lowering injection pressures across the state proved impossible. In meetings, oil and gas industry representatives pushed back on proposed rule changes that Ray considered incremental. That same year, he had proposed a rule that would significantly reduce injection pressures statewide to Robyn Strickland, the oil division director at the time. Ray said Strickland cut him out of subsequent rule meetings.

“I never got an invitation to go back,” he said. 

Strickland did not respond to requests for comment.

Oil field wastewater flows up from the ground on a farm near Enid, Oklahoma. Abigail Harrison

As 2020 came to a close, several purges in oil fields roughly 2 miles outside the small town of Velma in southwestern Oklahoma made the pressure problem impossible to ignore. Old wells were regularly expelling toxic salt water, one at a rate of 12,600 gallons per day, roughly enough to fill a backyard swimming pool.

Ray and other members of the oil division discovered that some nearby wells had been injecting at pressures that were too high or were shooting more wastewater into the earth than legally allowed,according to agency emails. 

The owner of the injection wells, Citation Oil and Gas Corp., one of the largest operators in Oklahoma, agreed to plug some of the purging wells. Ray likened this approach to “Whac-A-Mole”: With so much injected water underground, plugging a few old wells wouldn’t reduce the likelihood of purges; the water would simply find a new outlet.

Citation did not answer questions about the Velma purge. 

The agency reduced injection pressures for some of Citation’s wells and temporarily shut down others, but Ray believed that to permanently stop the purge, all injection near Velma needed to be halted indefinitely so the amount of fluid and pressure that had built up underground could be lowered over time. But he said his bosses didn’t agree and, in the Velma case and subsequent purges, allowed companies to continue injecting — or to restart after a short pause — at times near active purges.

“They would say things in our meetings, like, ‘Well, the operators might not go for that,’” Ray said. 

“Hell, you’re supposed to be regulators.” 

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Wreath denied that the agency was overly lenient with oil companies and said that Ray advocated for changes that the oil division could not implement on its own.

“Danny may not have gotten things as fast as he wanted to, but he was heard,” Wreath said. “People were working on it and doing what they needed to do to do it properly and legally. We just don’t have the big stick of government to walk out and say, ‘Boom, you’ve got to start doing this.’”

Charles Teacle III, regulatory affairs chairman for the Oklahoma Energy Producers Alliance, an industry group, said most purges “tend to occur in areas that have a very long history of historical practices that do not represent how the industry operates today.” He did not specify which practices companies no longer engage in. Teacle said that when purges can be connected to a particular company, regulators work with the company to “develop a plan to address it and allow the operator to resume operations if possible.” 

Several of the recent purges threatened to violate federal clean water laws, according to Environmental Protection Agency reports, so federal officials began conducting field inspections alongside state oil division employees. The EPA regional office in Dallas noted in a 2020 review of Oklahoma’s injection regulations that “inappropriate” injection appeared to add “pressure to an already over-pressurized system.”

The following year, Ray took his complaints about his agency’s injection pressure regulations to the EPA.

“I have been trying for more than a year to convince everyone that this is a major problem in Oklahoma,” he wrote in a memo to the head of the EPA’s regional office.

The EPA did not respond to questions.

In August 2022, the Velma purge exploded to the surface again, more than a year after the agency’s initial investigation began. Thousands of gallons of oil field wastewater poured down a forested hillside, forming a “field” of water and flowing into a creek, according to an email from an agency employee. The agency discovered the fluid was 56 times more concentrated with salts and chemicals than the EPA’s standard for drinking water. 

Contaminated water erupts from the ground during a purge in Velma, Oklahoma, in 2022. Oklahoma Corporation Commission, obtained by ProPublica and The Frontier

This time, oil division officials shut down all nearby injection. But a week later, wastewater flowed out of the ground at an even faster rate, a result of the pressure that had built up over time. A week after that, a mile away, another purge began. 

As before, Ray chafed at what he saw as the agency’s reactive stance. 

If an across-the-board pressure reduction was impossible, Ray hoped that the oil division would wield one of its available tools: legal action against companies creating the pollution. The oil division could take companies to the Oklahoma Corporation Commission’s administrative law courts, where judges could issue rulings that fine companies or enforce cleanups, as long as the three elected commissioners approved.

Agency leadership appeared to support this strategy. In an October 2022 email, field operations manager Brad Ice wrote that if pollution were found, the agency would order the company to halt injection and take steps to clean the area. And if the company disagreed or pollution continued, the agency would “file contempt for failure to prevent pollution” against the company. 

But no contempt cases have been filed for purges in the last five years, according to commission spokesperson Trey Davis. Nor has the agency fined any companies for purges during that time, he said. 

Davis identified two cases in administrative law court during that time in which the agency formally ordered companies to stop injection after a purge and to clean up the pollution — though he said the commission prefers “to lead with a handshake instead of a hammer.” 

Despite creating purges, companies did not face punishment if they subsequently complied with agency requests to shut down injection wells, pump wastewater off the surface and restore the landscape, Davis and other agency officials said. 

“We’re not a fine-driven agency,” said Wreath, adding that extended injection well shutdowns cut into oil company profits, making additional fines unnecessary. He noted that pursuing enforcement can take longer and cost taxpayers more than getting companies to cooperate voluntarily. 

That cooperation, however, almost never involves cleanup of water resources tainted by purges. Oil division officials were able to identify just one time since 2020 that their agency approved a plan to clean up groundwater pollution caused by a purge. Removing pollution from underground water sources is incredibly difficult and very expensive, McGinnis, the agency’s deputy director, said.

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By the fall of 2022, other agency staff had begun voicing frustration at what they perceived as the commission’s lack of action. 

“I believe it is unconscionably reckless on our part as a regulatory agency not to act swiftly, while knowingly and willingly allowing the continued operation of activities under our jurisdictional control that are contaminating groundwater and presenting a potential endangerment to the health and safety of persons and the environment,” wrote Everett Plummer, at the time a supervisor at the agency’s oil division, in an October 2022 email to another supervisor that was forwarded to Ray and agency leaders, including Strickland.

“We are not addressing the root cause of the problem,” Plummer went on in the same email. “That root cause is overpressure.”

Less than a year later, Plummer sent another email, this time to Ray and another colleague, lamenting that Strickland and other agency leaders “won’t offer any help or technical input or solutions.” 

Neither Strickland nor an agency spokesperson responded to requests for comment on Plummer’s email. Plummer declined to be interviewed for this story.

Some oil and gas companies know when their injection wells are operating at excess pressure and fracturing rock, allowing toxic water to disperse below ground, in violation of state standards, according to a hydrogeologist who worked in saltwater disposal for a large Oklahoma oil company. He pointed to wells he had worked on that were injecting 10,000 barrels of wastewater a day — more than the rock layer should be able to absorb. “You’re thinking, ‘Damn, where is it all going?’” he said. 

The hydrogeologist, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he still works in the industry and fears repercussions, said he worries the result is pollution the state doesn’t know about — until it breaks the surface. 

“It was so disheartening to me,” he said, “because you should be able to go to OCC to actually address this stuff.” 

As Ray pushed his agency to respond more urgently to the purges, oil field wastewater was seeping into aquifers and drinking water sources scattered across the state.

In 2021, John Roberts, who works as an oil field pump truck driver, and his wife, Misty, asked the state to test their water. They live near the 500-person town of Cement in southwestern Oklahoma, where a series of purges encircled the town for nearly four years. One gushed a few hundred feet from the high school, just beyond the softball diamond. 

For residents whose private water wells pulled from the local groundwater, these purges posed severe health risks in addition to killing grass and other vegetation on their land. When the state tested water from the Roberts’ well, samples showed levels of salts well above the EPA’s recommended maximum. Their well water also contained benzene, a notorious carcinogen linked to leukemia and other blood cell cancers, at six times the EPA’s limit for drinking water. 

In these images taken by staff of the Oklahoma Corporation Commission, salt residue covers the ground after a purge. Oklahoma Corporation Commission, obtained by ProPublica and The Frontier

 

Subsequent agency investigations near Cement found a tangle of problems. Several wells were injecting at pressures far beyond the fracture point of the rock. A study commissioned by the state found that, within a few square miles, 22 of 28 injection wells were operating at pressures outside legal limits, were injecting into the wrong geologic formation and potentially causing cracks, or had an incomplete permit. 

These wells were also injecting near more than 100 old wells that had been plugged with mud. Unlike a proper cement plug, mud is not strong enough to prevent the pressurized fluid from bursting out of the well. 

Many of the injection wells were again owned by Citation, whose high-pressure injection had been shut down by the agency near the Velma purge about 60 miles away. Company representatives downplayed the number of purges, referring to them as “alleged” in emails to the agency. They maintained that the pollution was a remnant of historic oil and gas activity. But agency engineers pulled well records and field staff tracked oil field wastewater flowing less than a half mile from a church and a Dollar General on the edge of town. The state report analyzed water samples and injection data and found that the cause was overpressurized injection.

In 2023, the Robertses sued Citation in federal district court, alleging that the company’s injection was causing “new pollution and contamination on a daily basis.” Citation denied the allegations and argued that the case ought to first be decided by the commission’s administrative law court. The federal lawsuit is on hold until the administrative case with the Oklahoma Corporation Commission concludes.

Misty Roberts told The Frontier and ProPublica that the couple has installed filtration systems, which require upkeep to keep toxic chemicals out of their drinking water. “It’s a headache just knowing that if our filters get bad, it could come through if we don’t get them changed in time,” she said. 

She said that Citation recommended that they pay to hook up to city water, but their neighbor refused to offer them an easement to dig a water line. 

The company did not answer questions about the lawsuit. 

“Citation Oil & Gas Corp. continues to work cooperatively with the OCC to further investigate the sources and causes of these alleged purges,” Bob Redweik, the company’s vice president of environmental health and safety and regulatory affairs, said in a statement.

The oil and gas industry’s toxic legacy can endure long after production has ceased. 

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For rancher Tim Ramsey, the pastures where he runs cattle in northeastern Oklahoma are littered with orphan oil and gas wells. Hiding in the tall grass or shaded by stands of oak and elm, many of the wells are leaking oil. Others regularly purged oil field brine. One, according to Ramsey, periodically blasted salt water and oil 40 feet into the air with a loud “SHHHH” sound. Ramsey has been submitting cleanup requests to the state for years. The state plugged the purging well last winter, but many more unplugged wells remain, according to state data. 

The 67-year-old spent decades as a coal miner. The oil industry’s pollution angers him. Regulators’ failure to prevent that pollution angers him even more. He described the state as “so slow at doing anything.” 

“My biggest beef,” he said, “is why did you let them get away with it to begin with?”

Tim Ramsey’s ranch land is littered with orphan oil and gas wells. September Dawn Bottoms for ProPublica

Tim Ramsey’s ranch land is littered with orphan oil and gas wells. September Dawn Bottoms for ProPublica

Tim Ramsey’s ranch land is littered with orphan oil and gas wells. September Dawn Bottoms for ProPublica

Tim Ramsey’s ranch land is littered with orphan oil and gas wells. September Dawn Bottoms for ProPublica

Similar disappointment ate at Ray in his final months at the Oklahoma Corporation Commission. Despite his urging, the oil division did not pursue court cases against companies, even as the crisis seemed to be worsening. In spring 2023, he said he reviewed an internal spreadsheet identifying 42 purges, most of which were still actively flowing. 

By August 2023, Ray had had enough and resigned. 

Around the time of Ray’s departure from the agency, the oil division hired a prominent environmental consulting firm, Halff, to help settle disputes among its employees on how the state should respond to the purges. 

The Frontier and ProPublica reviewed reports prepared by the firm about major purges. In each one, they had drawn the same conclusion as Ray: Overpressurized injection wells were causing purges, a dynamic intensified by the number of orphan wells and years of lax regulation, according to the reports. 

But tensions remained. Shawn Coslett, manager of the pollution abatement division, became increasingly vocal about what he called a “culture problem” within the commission when it came to holding companies accountable for pollution, according to emails he sent to his managers and other colleagues. 

Since 2023, Coslett had been pushing the agency to pursue Citation in court for its role in a major purge outside Ardmore that gushed wastewater on and off for years. In May 2024, Citation’s vice president of environmental health and safety emailed his team to let them know that Ice, the agency’s field operations director, agreed to hold a meeting between the company and the agency’s oil division with “limited attendance.” 

“Shawn Coslett and his team would not be invited,” Redweik wrote. 

The role of Coslett’s team in the purge investigation was subsequently reduced, according to internal documents. The agency marked the purge as “resolved” in April 2025.

Coslett declined to be interviewed for this story. Neither Ice nor Redweik responded to questions about Coslett’s work on the Ardmore purge.

Last December, Coslett also urged the agency in several emails to take action on a purge expelling 1,300 gallons of salt water daily on Choctaw Nation land in southeastern Oklahoma. It had been flowing intermittently for four years.

Coslett wanted the agency to create a sampling plan for barium, which had been found in the purging water at high levels, as well as other metals. In a December email to an oil division manager, he wrote that runoff from the site could eventually make its way into the headwaters of Lake Wister, a public water supply that serves tens of thousands of people. 

The oil division did attempt to make some changes. In closed meetings with industry representatives last year, agency officials suggested requiring companies to test the fracture point for each injection well — exactly what Ray had recommended years before. But industry groups vigorously opposed the idea, agency officials told The Frontier and ProPublica, and it was not included in the formal proposal to change state rules for injection pressure that the agency submitted to the commissioners last September.

Wastewater from an orphan well shoots into the air. Obtained by ProPublica and The Frontier


In January, the commission ultimately approved a revised formula to calculate maximum injection pressures. But the new rules, effective this month, only apply to new wells. Retroactively reducing pressures would require action by the state Legislature. The higher pressures for Oklahoma’s more than 10,400 existing injection wells remain unchanged, allowing the problem that Ray identified to persist. 

Coslett left the agency in March. Two weeks later, a new director arrived to lead the oil division: Jeremy Hodges, a former financial analyst and project manager for Continental Resources, the Oklahoma City-based oil and gas giant. He replaced Strickland, who recently took a job as chief projects officer for the Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission, a quasi-governmental organization that often advocates for industry interests.

In the weeks immediately before and after Hodges took over the oil division, the agency marked nearly 20 purge cases as “resolved,” including some of the most damaging and persistent pollution events, according to the agency’s database of pollution complaints. 

In a September public meeting, Hodges sought to reassure the agency’s commissioners: Purges were under control, he said.

But interviews with current and former agency staff and oil and gas officials suggest that Oklahoma is still dealing with dozens of purges. One of these incidents killed about two dozen cattle in September after toxic salt water filled a creek leading to Fort Cobb Lake, a public water supply. That month, the state increased testing at the lake and said the public supply has not been impacted. Nevertheless, in October Gov. Kevin Stitt declared a state of emergency and called it “a serious threat to public health and safety” as thousands of gallons of wastewater continued to flow each day.

Agency officials said field staff periodically check for signs of new activity at purge sites that they considered resolved. They did not comment on the purges near Lake Wister or Fort Cobb Lake. Hodges, who participated in an interview with The Frontier and ProPublica, did not provide comment beyond what other agency officials said. 

In late August, Ray, who has returned to consulting for oil and gas companies, took a reporter to visit a purge site on a ranch in southern Oklahoma where the agency had closed a pollution complaint around the time Hodges took office. 

That afternoon, in an otherwise dry streambed flanked by steep red-dirt walls, puddles sat baking in the sun, though it hadn’t rained in weeks. A film of oil shone on the water’s surface, bands of green mixed with purple and bright blue. On the banks, white salt scars showed the outline of old wastewater spills. 

“It is hard to believe that anyone would turn their back on this problem and just pretend it simply does not exist,” Ray said as he surveyed the scene.

Farther up the gulch, the water formed a pool, which gave off a rank chemical smell. The oily surface appeared calm at first glance. But on closer inspection, bubbles were breaking the surface in several places. The water was coming up from beneath the ground. 

Oil field wastewater bubbles into Wildhorse Creek in February 2025. Abigail Harrison

To report this story, the Frontier and ProPublica reviewed thousands of documents, obtained through public records requests, that include communications about the purges from the regulatory agency’s oil division leadership, elected commissioners, state legislators and the Environmental Protection Agency. The news organizations interviewed more than 30 people, including current and former state employees, Oklahoma oil and gas industry employees, and citizens whose water and land was damaged by injected oil field waste.

Reporting grants from the Fund for Investigative Journalism and the Institute for Journalism & Natural Resources helped fund this reporting. This work was supported by pro bono legal assistance from the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. 

Mark Olalde of ProPublica contributed reporting.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Toxic wastewater from oil fields keeps pouring out of the ground. Oklahoma regulators failed to stop it. on Oct 29, 2025.

As the Trump administration deletes climate data and shutters resources that track the impacts of a warming world, nonprofits, state-level governments, and independent scientists are rushing to preserve the information. 

Last week, Climate Central resurrected one of the most prominent of those lost records: the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s billion-dollar disaster database. The tool allowed policymakers, insurers, and regular people to track how hurricanes, floods, and other catastrophes are growing more expensive — until the agency said in May that it would no longer update the database “in alignment with evolving priorities, statutory mandates, and staffing changes.” The move was part of the administration’s broader effort to roll back climate action and push more of the cost of disaster monitoring and response on to states.

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Climate Central, which analyzes climate and extreme weather data and explains its impacts to the public, unveiled the updated database on Wednesday. In the first six months of 2025, the nation recorded 14 billion-dollar weather and climate disasters costing $101.4 billion. That’s already far above the annual average of nine. Four of the five costliest years on record have occurred since 2020. 

“We know climate change is increasing the frequency and severity of some types of extreme events,” said climatologist Adam Smith, who led the database under NOAA and is doing so again at Climate Central. “And we know more infrastructure in harm’s way to those extremes results in higher damages. Data and information products like this help us understand how to build a more robust, resilient future.” 

In September, a group of Senate Democrats led by Peter Welch of Vermont introduced a bill to restore the dataset under NOAA, arguing that the information is too vital to be subjected to political whim. His bill, however, hasn’t gone anywhere, and in the meantime, Climate Central hired Smith. He has 20 years’ experience working in climate and extreme weather data analysis and was happy to see the data, which combines and analyzes information gleaned from 16 public and private sources. When the Department of Government Efficiency came to NOAA determined to slash spending, “it seemed pretty clear where they were headed,” Smith said. He resigned “in line with tens of thousands of other federal workers” and looked for a place to continue his work. Climate Central allowed him to “make an apples to apples comparison” with the work he did at NOAA — even the interface looks similar. 

According to the Environmental Data Governance Initiative, Trump’s second term is outpacing his first in terms of how much climate data is being deleted. Nonprofits like Climate Central — joined by the likes of Public Environmental Data Partners, The Data Center, and the Climate Data Collaborative — are, in Smith’s words, “triaging, and trying to re-establish a baseline moving forward of what can be done scientifically and what can be maintained.”

Data deletion is not just a problem for researchers and insurers, but for local and state authorities who rely on resources like the billion-dollar disaster database to make the case for building resilient infrastructure. Officials in Asheville, North Carolina, for example, depended upon the tool when deciding to rebuild the dam at North Fork Reservoir. That work is believed to have kept the structure from breaching during Hurricane Helene. 

When Carly Fabian, a policy advocate at Public Citizen, talks to policymakers about climate disaster, “the statistics and data from the billion-dollar disaster database were one of my go-to statistics,” she said. “It’s been really strange not to have that go-to figure.” Policymakers tend to be motivated by specific dollar amounts, not vague predictions of future crises, she said. “That number will only go up, regardless of whether we’re tracking it or not,” she said. “Tracking it just makes it easier to understand the problem.” 

Some states are working to build their own databases of climate and weather hazards they face: California, for example, moved to build a public wildfire catastrophe model in early October. And as more states follow their lead, nonprofit efforts like the reborn billion-dollar disaster dataset are “just one piece of the puzzle,” Fabian said. 

“In the long run, it really should be the government collecting this data,” she said. “But at the same time, right now, it’s so important not to lose that information and not to have a lag there.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Trump killed a crucial disaster database. This nonprofit just saved it. on Oct 29, 2025.

Lock the Gate Alliance condemns in the strongest terms possible NSW Chris Minns’ threats to grant coal seam gas company Santos permission to compulsorily acquire properties owned by landholders who oppose the company’s Hunter Gas Pipeline.

As Jamaicans endure Hurricane Melissa, Revolving Door Project Executive Director Jeff Hauser released the following statement:

“Hurricane Melissa is poised to unleash unspeakable harm on Jamaica and other parts of the Caribbean, a tragedy which will be deepened by Donald Trump and Russell Vought’s lawlessly unilateral cessation of USAID funding. Flooding risks are projected to be elevated in the U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico, both U.S. territories. By further expanding planet-heating fossil fuel pollution, the Trump administration and its Republican allies in Congress are condemning people around the world to more frequent and severe extreme weather, including rapidly intensifying monster hurricanes.

People in the continental United States are not immune from such lethal devastation. The U.S. mainland has so far lucked out this hurricane season, as storm after storm has turned away before making landfall. However, Melissa serves as a reminder that Americans will face huge—and largely avoidable—risks if and when the game of dice comes up against us.

The Trump administration has spent the past nine months suppressing climate science, attacking NOAA’s world-class weather forecasting infrastructure, and undermining the capacity of FEMA and state emergency managers. This ongoing assault means that ensuing climate disasters hitting the United States will have the Trump administration’s bloody fingerprints on them.”

For more, see our report, Trump’s Homicidal Hurricane Policy, and our tracker on Trump’s Disastrous Disaster Policy.

The latter includes an interactive timeline on Trump’s attacks on disaster mitigation, preparedness, response, and recovery as well as an interactive map on Trump’s disaster aid delays and denials.

Thermal expansion and melting glaciers endanger some of the world's largest urban centers

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