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The US, which has announced plans to withdraw from the global climate treaty – the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) – is more historically responsible for climate change than any other country or group.

Carbon Brief analysis shows that the US has emitted a total of 542bn tonnes of carbon dioxide (GtCO2) since 1850, by burning fossil fuels, cutting down trees and other activities.

This is the largest contribution to the Earth’s warming climate by far, as shown in the figure below, with China’s 336GtCO2 significantly behind in second and Russia in third at 185GtCO2.

Top 10 countries in terms of their cumulative historical CO2 emissions from fossil fuels, cement, land use, land use change and forestry, 1850-2025, billion tonnes. Source: Source: Carbon Brief analysis of figures from Jones et al (2023), Lamboll et al (2023), the Global Carbon Project, CDIAC, Our World in Data, the International Energy Agency and Carbon Monitor.

The US is responsible for more than a fifth of the 2,651GtCO2 that humans have pumped into the atmosphere between 1850 and 2025 as a result of fossil fuels, cement and land-use change.

China is responsible for another 13%, with the 27 nations of the EU making up another 12%.

In total, these cumulative emissions have used up more than 95% of the carbon budget for limiting global warming to 1.5C and are the predominant reason the Earth is already nearly 1.5C hotter than in pre-industrial times.

The US share of global warming is even more disproportionate when considering that its population of around 350 million people makes up just 4% of the global total.

On the basis of current populations, the US’s per-capita cumulative historical emissions are around 7 times higher than those for China, more than double the EU’s and 25 times those for India.

The US’s historical emissions of 542GtCO2 are larger than the combined total of the 133 countries with the lowest cumulative contributions, a list that includes Saudi Arabia, Spain and Nigeria. Collectively, these 133 countries have a population of more than 3 billion people.

See Carbon Brief’s previous detailed analysis of historical responsibility for climate change for more details on the data sources and methodology, as well as consumption-based emissions.

Additionally, in 2023, Carbon Brief published an article that looked at the “radical” impact of reassigning responsibility for historical emissions to colonial rulers in the past.

This approach has a very limited impact on the US, which became independent before the vast majority of its historical emissions had taken place.

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The post Analysis: World’s biggest historic polluter – the US – is pulling out of UN climate treaty appeared first on Carbon Brief.

Rapid and exponential growth in artificial intelligence (AI), defence spending and robotics will lift global copper demand by 50% by 2040, leaving a supply shortfall of more than 10 million tonnes a year without major gains in mining and recycling, according to a new S&P Global study.

Copper demand is rising as these new sectors add to long-standing uses in construction, transportation, technology and electronics, where the metal is prized for its conductivity, corrosion resistance and malleability. 

While electric vehicles drove much of the growth over the past decade, S&P said emerging technologies will become the dominant force over the next 14 years, alongside steady consumer demand for appliances, such as air conditioners.

“AI and data centres really weren’t even on the radar three years ago,” Aurian De La Noue, head of energy transition and critical metals consulting at S&P Global, said. “What this study shows is that the world is tracking toward a supply deficit even before you consider these new growth vectors.”

1. Includes copper demand from construction, cooling, appliances, fossil power generation, machinery and internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles. 2. Includes copper demand from clean energy technologies, transmission and distribution and EVs. (Courtesy of S&P’s Copper in the Age of AI.)

Prices are set to benefit even more than what they have in the past year. The metal has surged to record highs above $13,000 a tonne in London, fuelled by mine outages and stockpiling in the US ahead of potential Trump administration tariffs. 

Copper’s tight supply and tariff risks set for a volatile 2026

While those flows have pushed prices beyond levels suggested by current consumption, S&P said structural demand growth points to an even tighter market over the longer term.

Copper hungry humanoids

S&P Global sees global copper demand rising 50% from current levels to 42 million tonnes a year by 2040, with nearly a quarter of that demand likely to go unmet without new supply. 

AI is a key driver, with more than 100 new data centre projects launched last year worth just under $61 billion, while combined demand from the emerging AI sector and global defence spending is expected to add about 4 million tonnes of annual consumption.

1. Includes copper demand from construction, cooling, appliances, fossil power generation, machinery and ICE vehicles. 2. Includes copper demand from clean technologies, T&D and EVs. (Courtesy of S&P’s Copper in the Age of AI.)

The study also flags another potential source of demand: humanoid robots. Although the technology is in the early stages, S&P says that if 1 billion humanoid robots are in operation by 2040, they would require about 1.6 million tonnes of copper a year, or roughly 6% of current global consumption. 

The report does not include any potential supply from deep-sea mining.

“Hypothetical” problem

Global copper production is expected to peak at about 33 million tonnes in 2030 as ore grades decline and new projects face permitting, financing and construction challenges. Even after accounting for recycled copper, which S&P expects to more than double to 10 million tonnes, the market would still face a gap of about 10 million tonnes a year.

S&P cautions that such a deficit is largely hypothetical, as consumption ultimately adjusts to available supply. Higher prices could push manufacturers to substitute other materials, while tighter markets could make new supply projects more economically viable. Still, the firm said long development timelines, rising costs and a highly concentrated supply chain leave the copper market increasingly exposed to disruptions as demand accelerates.

Note: Machinery and others include motors, generators, and associated industrial wiring (includes demand for a range of machinery-based end uses, including non-vehicle transportation systems as well as agricultural equipment). Courtesy of S&P’s Copper in the Age of AI.

The study was financed by major mining companies including BHP (ASX: BHP) and Rio Tinto (ASX: RIO), as well as traders Trafigura and Gunvor, and Google (NASDAQ: GOOG | GOOGL).

Last year began with the costliest wildfires in American history, as a series of blazes tore across Los Angeles for nearly all of January. A parade of other catastrophes followed: severe storms across the southern and northeastern United States, tornadoes in the central states, drought and heat waves through the western expanse of the country. 

All told, the U.S. notched 23 billion-dollar weather and climate disasters in 2025, which claimed 276 lives and caused $115 billion in damages, according to a new analysis from the research group Climate Central. Only 2023 and 2024 recorded more of these events, and 2025 was the 15th consecutive year with an above-average number. (Since 1980, the annual average has been nine events costing $67.6 billion. In that time, the country tallied 426 total billion-dollar disasters, costing more than $3.1 trillion.) Last year was the ninth most expensive on record for billion-dollar disasters.

The clear signal here is climate change: It’s worsening wildfires, causing heavier rainfall and flooding, and supercharging hurricanes. In the 1980s, billion-dollar disasters happened on average every 82 days, according to the analysis, but over the last decade that window has tightened to just 16 days. In 2025, Americans endured one of these events every 10 days on average — an almost nonstop cavalcade of suffering.

Last May, the Trump administration announced that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration would no longer update the federal government’s own billion-dollar disaster database, to the alarm of experts who call it an essential tool for determining risk and adapting to climate change. 

In October, Climate Central revived that database, hence its release of these figures for 2025. “The continuation of this dataset, like other datasets, is important because it helps demonstrate the economic impact of extreme weather and climate events,” said Adam Smith, senior climate impacts scientist with the organization, who’s leading the program and was formerly the lead scientist for NOAA’s version. That, in turn, can give policymakers and the general public more information for “a more enhanced decision-making process, as we try to learn from these events and rebuild after these extremes that we know will continue into the future.” 

At $61.2 billion in damages, the Los Angeles fires accounted for more than half of the losses from the 23 total events in 2025, according to the analysis. That outbreak brought a public health crisis that’s harder to calculate: Hundreds of people likely died from inhaling smoke, even if they were many miles away from the flames. Wildfire smoke already exacerbates conditions like heart disease and cardiovascular disease, but this smoke was especially toxic because the fires were chewing through houses and cars, melting plastic and metal. 

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For the folks who survived inhaling the smoke but nonetheless experienced complications, medical costs add yet more to that $61.2 billion that Climate Central reported. Add still more when you factor in the trauma of surviving such a disaster, and the associated mental health costs. “Even though we have a very robust, comprehensive estimate based on the data that’s available, it’s still conservative with respect to what is truly lost, but cannot be completely measured,” Smith said.

Elsewhere across the U.S., communities struggled with unruly weather: hail events in Texas and Colorado, and severe storms all across the South and Northeast. (Of the 23 events, 21 were related to tornadoes, hail, or high wind events. When considering only severe storms, 2025 was the second most costly year for billion-dollar disasters, after 2023.) Generally speaking, the warmer the atmosphere, the more moisture it can hold and then dump as rain. In addition, the Gulf of Mexico was extra hot in 2025, which added still more moisture to storms that marched across Southern states. (Scientists are still working out how climate change might be influencing tornadoes, like the six separate billion-dollar outbreaks that struck the U.S. in 2025.)

In addition to climate change making weather and wildfires more catastrophic, human factors are adding to the growing costs of billion-dollar disasters. In the West, for example, communities have been expanding into the “wildland-urban interface,” where structures butt up against forests. So there’s more to burn, while at the same time climate change is amplifying the blazes. “You’re supercharging some of the ingredients that when they’re aligned in a certain way — with the dryness of the fuels and the near hurricane-force winds, and then, of course, some ignition source — it’s literally impossible to stop,” Smith said. 

But if climate change is worsening disasters, why didn’t 2025 see more billion-dollar events than the two years before it? And why was it the ninth most expensive, not the first? That’s largely because for the first time in a decade, no hurricane made landfall in the U.S. last year, thanks to an atmospheric quirk above the Southeastern states that created a sort of force field that bounced storms back out to sea. That was fortunate — both for human lives and economic losses — because hurricanes tend to be the costliest of weather and climate extremes. “If you talk about major hurricanes making landfall, you can easily approach or exceed $100 billion,” Smith said. “The $115 billion could have been $215 billion.”

Although the U.S. got lucky, the hurricane season was still extreme. Only five Atlantic hurricanes spun up, but four of them — or 80 percent — reached major strength, while in a typical year it’s 40 percent. In addition, 2025 was the second year to have produced three or more Category 5 storms, at least in recorded history.

That’s where climate change comes in: It’s boosting hurricanes by warming up the ocean waters the storms use for fuel. And indeed in 2025 those temperatures reached record highs: Hurricane Melissa, which ravaged the Caribbean, fed on waters made hundreds of times more likely by climate change, which increased wind speeds by 11 mph and extreme rainfall by 16 percent. All that oceanic fuel helped the storm undergo “extreme rapid intensification,” its maximum sustained wind speeds jumping from 70 mph to 140 mph in 18 hours. 

So just because no hurricanes made landfall in the U.S. last year doesn’t mean that the storms won’t get more powerful from here. To prepare, Smith said that Climate Central will be improving the billion-dollar disaster database, for example reexamining historic data to dig more deeply into individual events like wildfires. “By this time next year,” Smith said, “if we’re having a conversation, I think that it’ll be even a much more useful and helpful data resource.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline In 2025, the US suffered a billion-dollar disaster every 10 days on Jan 8, 2026.

Animal rights and legal wrongs Channel Comment brendan 8th January 2026 Teaser Media

The middle-of-the-night kidnapping of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro shocked the world on Saturday. Military helicopters bombed Caracas, Venezuela’s capital, as U.S. special forces breached Maduro’s residence, captured him, and flew him to New York to stand trial on unproven charges of narcoterrorism. President Donald Trump has offered several justifications for Maduro’s ouster, including the collapse of Venezuela’s oil industry. But the very conditions Trump has been pointing to were exacerbated by the actions of past U.S. presidents — including Trump himself. If the Venezuelan oil industry is in tatters, it’s at least partially because of U.S. policies dating back at least a decade. 

On Wednesday, Trump’s Department of Energy put out a “fact sheet” stipulating that the U.S. is “selectively rolling back sanctions to enable the transport and sale of Venezuelan crude and oil products to global markets.” This outcome is doubly ironic because U.S. sanctions are one of the reasons the Venezuelan oil industry is diminished in the first place. The announcement also states that the U.S. will market Venezuelan oil, bank the proceeds, and disburse the revenue “for the benefit of the American people and the Venezuelan people at the discretion of the U.S. government.”

Maduro first drew the ire of President Trump in 2017 after the Venezuelan government stripped powers from the opposition-controlled legislature and violently suppressed mass protests. Trump responded by imposing sanctions on Maduro, several senior officials, and Venezuela’s state-owned oil company, significantly broadening the targeted sanctions that the Obama administration first imposed in 2015. Speaking to reporters at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, that August, Trump said he would not rule out a “military option” in Venezuela.

Two years later, after Maduro secured a second term in a contested election, the Trump administration dramatically escalated its pressure campaign, announcing a full oil embargo on the country. Venezuela holds the world’s largest proven oil reserves and produces a kind of heavy crude used to make diesel fuel and petrochemicals. At the time, the United States received roughly 40 percent of Venezuelan oil exports. The embargo severed not only that trade but also exports to European Union countries, India, and other U.S. allies. Suddenly, Venezuela was largely cut off from global markets.

By the time sanctions kicked in, Venezuela’s oil production was already slipping. Low oil prices in the early 2010s caused instability for an industry that had long been plagued by mismanagement, corruption, and underinvestment. But the sanctions delivered a devastating blow. 

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“When they cut off the ability of the government to export their oil and access international finance, it was all downhill from there,” said Mark Weisbrot, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, an economic policy think tank. “It was economic violence to punish Venezuelans.”

Even as global oil prices rose again, the sanctions had limited Venezuelan exports and prevented the country from rebuilding its oil sector. With few buyers and little access to financing or technology, oil output collapsed by nearly 80 percent by the end of the decade, compared to its 2012 peak. Most of those sanctions remained in place under the Biden administration, and experts say the cumulative effect was the near-total collapse of Venezuelan oil production — damage that President Trump is now using as justification for his military strike against the country this week. 

While the Trump administration’s precise motivations are not entirely clear, the president has described Venezuela’s oil industry as a “total bust” in interviews following the U.S. capture of Maduro.

“They were pumping almost nothing by comparison to what they could have been pumping and what could have taken place,” Trump said on Saturday. He added that U.S. oil companies will spend billions of dollars to “fix the badly broken infrastructure, the oil infrastructure, and start making money for the country.”

But there are few signs that oil companies are eager to return. For one, prices are hovering around $60 a barrel, which is roughly the break-even point for many companies. And without political stability, oil majors are unlikely to commit the billions of dollars necessary to restart production in Venezuela’s oil fields. The Trump administration has reportedly scheduled a meeting with oil companies for later this week to discuss a possible reentry. For now, Chevron is the only U.S. company with active operations in the country.

The sanctions reshaped the global flow of oil. When the U.S. banned Venezuelan oil, the U.S. Gulf Coast refiners who specialize in heavy crude turned to new suppliers in Colombia, Mexico, and Argentina. Elsewhere, countries that had depended on Venezuelan oil increasingly turned to Russia. Other oil-producing countries also increased their production to make up for the declining exports from Venezuela.

The sanctions also had ripple effects far beyond the oil sector. By cutting off Venezuela’s ability to access international finance, they dealt a huge blow to an economy highly dependent on imports. Unable to borrow, the country struggled to purchase basic necessities such as food and medicine. At the same time, the oil embargo blocked the export of its most profitable asset. The result was a stranglehold on the country’s economy that drove poverty and deaths. Patients with HIV, diabetes, and hypertension were not able to access life-saving drugs. One study at the time estimated that some 40,000 additional deaths could be attributed to the economic conditions caused by the sanctions.

“When you can’t get the things that you need to produce electricity and clean water, all kinds of diseases get worse,” said Weisbrot.

Even before the latest attacks against Venezuela, the United States’ sanctions against the country were described as “economic warfare” by a former United Nations rapporteur and other international law experts. While it’s unclear how the Trump administration plans to proceed, restoring the semblance of a functional economy in Venezuela and undoing the damage of past U.S. policy may take decades.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Trump invaded Venezuela to restore an oil industry he helped destroy on Jan 8, 2026.

Under the Trump administration, the US – the world’s second-largest emitter – will become the first country to withdraw from the UN climate convention, a key bedrock for international climate diplomacy, in a move the UN climate chief said would leave Americans poorer and less secure.

President Donald Trump’s White House said the US would quit 31 UN bodies, among them the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). It will also leave 35 other international organisations – many of them environmental – including the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the most authoritative global voice on climate science, and the Green Climate Fund (GCF), the world’s largest climate fund.

While the Trump administration already gave notice nearly a year ago that the US would quit the Paris Agreement, under which countries agreed to limit global warming to “well below” 2 degrees Celsius, it did not at that time attempt to leave the UNFCCC. The climate convention, adopted in 1992, is the cornerstone of global efforts to curb climate change and tackle its impacts.

The US has already ceased funding to the UNFCCC, and would be the only nation to formally exit the convention. After officially notifying the UN, the withdrawal will take effect after a year.

UNFCCC Executive Secretary Simon Stiell called the step “a colossal own goal which will leave the US less secure and less prosperous”, but added that the US could re-enter the convention in the future.  

“While all other nations are stepping forward together, this latest step back from global leadership, climate cooperation and science can only harm the US economy, jobs and living standards, as wildfires, floods, mega-storms and droughts get rapidly worse,” Stiell said in a statement.

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The Trump administration has also decided to exit key organisations for nature conservation, including the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), which publishes a “red list” of endangered species, and the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), the scientific advisory body to the UN biodiversity convention.

In addition, the US will leave the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), the International Solar Alliance (ISA) and REN21, all of which promote renewable energy.

“We will stop subsidizing globalist bureaucrats who act against our interests,” said US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, adding membership of other international organisations was also under review.

“The Trump Administration has found these institutions to be redundant in their scope, mismanaged, unnecessary, wasteful, poorly run, captured by the interests of actors advancing their own agendas contrary to our own, or a threat to our nation’s sovereignty, freedoms, and general prosperity,” Rubio added in a statement.

The US Department of the Treasury confirmed it has notified the GCF that the country is withdrawing from the fund and stepping down from its board seat “effective immediately”.

IRENA and REN21, a global network of governments, businesses and academics, said they regretted the US withdrawal but remained open to re-engaging with Washington.

“Renewables are essential in today’s uncertain environment to ensure energy security and strengthen geopolitical position,” IRENA Director-General Francesco La Camera said.

Rejoining possible

The US Senate ratified the UNFCCC in 1992, which experts said raised questions about the legality of Trump’s move to exit through an executive order.

But legal scholars indicated that the Senate would not need to ratify the UN climate convention again if the country wanted to rejoin.

Jake Schmidt, senior strategic director for international climate at the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) wrote that, based on the Senate’s original “advice and consent”, the US could once again become a party to the UNFCCC 90 days after such a decision were formalised.  

Indian law enforcement targets climate activists accused of opposing fossil fuels

Sue Biniaz, the US State Department’s former principal deputy special envoy for climate until January 2025, said she hoped the federal retreat would be “a temporary one”.

“There are multiple future pathways to rejoining the key climate agreements,” she said.

Forfeiting influence

Policy experts said global climate action would forge onwards despite the US move, but some cautioned that it could complicate international negotiations.

EU Climate Commissioner Wopke Hoekstra called the decision “regrettable and unfortunate”, adding that the European Commission will continue to support international climate research, work on multilateral climate cooperation and pursue “our agenda of climate action, competitiveness and independence”.

COP30 CEO Ana Toni said the world’s low carbon transition is “irreversible” and that the COP presidency will continue engaging with American subnational actors, the private sector, and civil society. She said she hopes the US government will rejoin the UNFCCC “in a near future”.

Gina McCarthy, the first White House National Climate Advisor under Joe Biden who now chairs “America Is All In”, a coalition of US cities, states and businesses and institutions working on climate action, called it “a shortsighted, embarrassing, and foolish decision”.

As a result, she said the US would forfeit influence over “trillions of dollars in investments, policies, and decisions that would have advanced our economy and protected us from costly disasters wreaking havoc on our country”.

The NRDC’s Schmidt said, however, that the US absence would “complicate the climate negotiations, as a major economy pulling in the wrong direction always makes forging global progress more difficult”.

Former US climate envoy John Kerry said Trump’s decision was “a gift to China and a get-out-of-jail-free card to countries and polluters who want to avoid responsibility”. He added that “the price is always paid by kids, in lost health, squandered jobs, rising costs, uninsurable infrastructure, and worse consequences.”

Comment: COP presidencies should focus less on climate policy, more on global politics

Delta Merner, associate accountability campaign director for the Climate and Energy Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, said Trump was “deliberately cutting our nation’s formal participation off from the world’s most trusted source of climate science”.

While individual US scientists can still contribute, the country will “no longer be able to help guide the scientific assessments that governments around the world rely on”, she added in a statement.

This article was updated after publication with additional comments from the UN climate chief Simon Stiell, the European climate commissioner, COP30 CEO Ana Toni, IRENA and REN21.

The post Trump to pull US out of UN climate convention and climate science body appeared first on Climate Home News.

Humans are altering the planet on an unthinkable scale, both by converting vast tracts of wilderness into farms and cities and by pouring huge volumes of heat-trapping gas into the atmosphere. The impact of these enormous changes can be seen from space.

Read more on E360 →

Price and emissions savings seen in 2025 could soon be in the rear vision mirror as the Queensland Government commits to expensive, polluting fossil fuels.

The post Record year for renewables eases prices and pollution as coal clunkers go missing in Queensland appeared first on Renew Economy.

In the aftermath of historically severe wildfires in 2020, a study of Cascade Range watersheds found that stream vertebrates are doing surprising well, highlighted by flourishing fish populations.

A new study co-led by the University of Oxford has found that global aviation emissions could be reduced by 50-75% through combining three strategies to boost efficiency: flying only the most fuel-efficient aircraft, switching to all-economy layouts, and increasing passenger loads. Crucially, the study shows that around a 11% reduction in global aviation emissions is achievable immediately, by using the most efficient aircraft that airlines already have more strategically on routes they already fly.

An international team of astronomers led by Canadian researchers has found something the universe wasn’t supposed to have: a galaxy cluster blazing with hot gas just 1.4 billion years after the Big Bang, far earlier and hotter than theory predicts.

As a professional hawk counter, David Brown has seen a lot of raptors—and fantasized about even more. “You’re always dreaming about some of the rare stuff that might show up,” Brown...

National Nurses United, the country’s largest nurses union, today expresses horror, sorrow, and condemnation following the fatal shooting by ICE in Minneapolis, Minnesota, issuing the following statement.

As fires burn the landscape, they spew airborne gases and particles, though their impact on air pollution might be underestimated. 

Climate change, trust in science and health were among the most popular topics covered by UZH media releases and articles in 2025. 

Registered nurses at Northern Maine Medical Center (NMMC) in Fort Kent, Maine, voted tonight to re-certify their union formed in 2024, rejecting an NMMC management-backed attempt to dissolve their union.

Australia’s beloved dolphin populations face growing pressures from environmental changes and human activity, increasing the need for reliable, accessible and non-invasive tools to monitor their health and support conservation and management.

UC Santa Cruz researchers show how vessel-tracking data mirrored tuna roaming beyond their typical territory due to unusually warm ocean temperatures.

Self-described “cowboy lawyer” Karen Budd-Falen, now the third-highest official within the Interior department, faces allegations of corruption linked to fast-tracked permitting of the controversial Thacker Pass lithium mine. While serving in the first Trump administration as the deputy Interior solicitor responsible for wildlife, Budd-Falen’s husband struck a $3.5 million water-rights deal with developers of the mine. 

Without Interior’s approval of the mine, the mine developer could have terminated the deal. In November 2019, Budd-Falen had lunch with the mine’s executives, according to documents obtained by Public Domain. Interior fast-tracked the mine’s approval in 2020, while Budd-Falen was a top-ranking official. Despite this direct connection, Budd-Falen’s official financial disclosures between 2018 and 2021 failed to mention the $3.5 million deal. 

“It’s not clear that Karen Budd-Falen knew she had a conflict, but it’s clear she should have known, and that the public should have known,” Robert Weissman, co-president of Public Citizen, told the New York Times. “It’s also clear that she should not have met with Lithium Nevada.”

Now, serving as associate deputy secretary of the Interior, Budd-Falen again wields vast power over the nation’s public lands while maintaining a large portfolio of potential conflicts. Her financial disclosures, which the Interior department released only after requests from reporters, show that she and her husband hold Wyoming ranch land valued up to $5 million as well as thousands of dollars in Exxon Mobil and Tyson Foods stock.

Quick hits Venezuela takeover has Wyoming oil industry bracing for negative impacts

WyoFile

Interior Secretary Doug Burgum calls for American oil production in Venezuela

Fox Business | Fox News

Interior official did not disclose husband’s ties to a Nevada lithium mine

Deseret News

Tribes stake their claim on the Colorado River, and help conserve it

Utah News Dispatch

Colorado’s wolf pipeline is collapsing. Is a pause in lethal control needed?

Colorado Sun

Apache leader walks 60 miles to court hearing that will decide fate of Oak Flat

Native News Online

An age-old monument faces modern threats

High Country News

Wildfire smoke is a national crisis, and it’s worse than you think

Grist

Quote of the day

The United States of America clearly violated procedures and laws and ignored not only the Native Americans, but also the state of Arizona and the people of this country. Their decision to give full exemptions from the law [at Oak Flat] has opened the door forever for corporations to follow suit.”

—Wendsler Nosie, Sr. (San Carlos Apache), founder of Apache Stronghold

Picture This

@Interior

Dry January? The Bohemian waxwing did not get the memo.

These sleek songbirds spend winter in large flocks, plucking berries that can naturally ferment in cold weather. Nature has its own happy hour.

Photo by Lisa Hupp / @USFWS

Feature image: Karen Budd-Falen speaks at the 2024 Western Ag and Environmental Law Conference; Source: U of A System Division of Agriculture photo by Drew Viguet

The post Top Interior official faces corruption allegations over Thacker Pass water deal appeared first on Center for Western Priorities.

The results are in! A total of 43 Christmas Bird Count participants (including staff and volunteers) joined forces on Saturday, December 20, to participate in the 126th annual count in and around...