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Climate
Global Summit Ends Without Securing Finance Commitments Needed to Protect Biodiversity
“This meeting should have been a turning point, not just a stocktake. Success required governments to commit the political will and financing needed to reverse biodiversity loss," said one advocate.
Oct 31, 2026
The 17th United Nations summit on biodiversity ended in Yerevan, Armenia on Friday with more than 200 countries adopting a "forward-looking" agreement aimed at speeding up and scaling up action to protect nature, reforming "harmful subsidies fueling nature’s demise," and closing the biodiversity finance gap—with the global economy spending $1 on nature protection for every $30 it spends on destruction, according to a recent UN report.
But conservation advocates warned that with four years to go until 2030, when 30% of land and water is meant to be protected under the 30x30 goal set by the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework in 2022, biodiversity conservation is behind schedule, and the goal of accelerating beneficial finance is still falling short in the Yerevan Pathway that came out of the meeting.
The conference produced about $1.8 billion in nature-finance agreements, including a commitment of $500 million from the Netherlands to the Tropical Forest Forever Facility, which rewards countries for protecting their tropical forests. Six contributors also pledged $60.13 million to the Global Biodiversity Framework Fund, which supports the Global South in implementing the 2022 framework.
However, "overall spending on biodiversity remains far short of the $200 billion per year target in the Kunming-Montreal framework," wrote John Cannon at Mongabay, while the framework's demand to reform "damaging subsidies remains largely unmet."
Experts say $700 billion in additional annual spending is needed to protect and restore ecosystems damaged by mining, drilling, and other industries, pollution, and other human activities.
Governments committed to reducing subsidies by at least $500 billion per year by 2030, but about $2.4 trillion "is still estimated to flow annually toward subsidies that can harm nature," said Sustainable Business Services.
Daudi Sumba, chief conservation officer at World Wildlife Fund International (WWF), said that the Global Review that came out of the summit was “a strong signal to countries that they must do better when it comes to action for nature."
"But without clear scaling of the funds to be able to deliver, I fear finance will remain the key issue that continues to haunt the UN biodiversity summits," said Sumba. "Negotiators returning home must now turn the Global Review into clear dedicated action, scaling nature’s recovery by transforming the most damaging sectors and activities across our food and finance systems.”
The Cali Fund, a mechanism that came out of COP16 in Colombia and is designed to share digital sequence information on genetic resources, is also falling short of the goals set for it by last year's conference. The fund aims to raise at least $1 billion annually from companies that access DSI from genetic resources for pharmaceuticals and other products, but "with only $10,000 pledged at the close of [COP17]," said WWF, "follow-up work at intersessional meetings will be important."
“Back when the UN Convention on Biological Diversity was first adopted in 1992, one of the main pillars was ensuring the fair and equitable benefit-sharing from biodiversity, especially from provider countries and local communities,” said Vishaish Uppal, director of governance, law, and policy at WWF-India. “Almost 35 years later, we’re still not seeing the companies that profit off nature sharing their benefits with the Indigenous peoples and local communities that act as the custodians of much of the biodiversity that their businesses rely upon. It really is about time that countries iron out these differences, so that funding can reach the people and places that need it the most.”
An Lambrechts, a biodiversity politics expert at Greenpeace International, said that "giant corporations did everything they could to keep the Cali Fund voluntary two years ago, and then did everything they could to stop the fund from working in Yerevan."
"It is unacceptable that big multinational corporations are turning massive profits from what they take from nature while contributing very little to its protection and leaving people across the world to face the impacts of the biodiversity crisis," said Lambrechts.
"It is unacceptable that big multinational corporations are turning massive profits from what they take from nature while contributing very little to its protection and leaving people across the world to face the impacts of the biodiversity crisis."
Negotiators also established a permanent body for Indigenous peoples and local communities under Article 8(j) of the Convention on Biological Diversity, but Sustainable Business Services warned that "questions remain over institutional status, representation, and the extent of their participation in decision-making."
COP17, said the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), "put forth a clearer picture of the global biodiversity crisis and the gaps that must be closed to meet the world’s 2030 targets."
But Susan Lieberman, vice president for international policy at WCS, said that "the negotiations themselves ended up weak on ambition."
“This meeting should have been a turning point, not just a stocktake. Success required governments to commit the political will and financing needed to reverse biodiversity loss," said Lieberman. "That means protecting and restoring ecological integrity, respecting the rights and leadership of Indigenous peoples and local communities, and reducing the drivers of decline. With just four years until 2030, we cannot afford another conference that diagnoses the crisis without accelerating the cure."
Twenty-two of the 23 targets set by the Kunming-Montreal framework are behind schedule, and Lieberman said that COP17 "has clarified the challenge" of ensuring they are met.
"Now governments must summon the political will, resources and resolve to meet it," she said. "We applaud the Armenian government, the [Convention on Biological Diversity] secretariat, and many governments and partners for keeping the momentum moving toward achieving the 2030 goals and targets. But ‘good enough’ should never be acceptable.”
Friends of the Earth International (FOE) also said the two weeks of negotiations had "ended with weak decisions and many unanswered questions," pointing to "the capture of this space by transnational corporations" and the "greenwashing and false solutions like biodiversity offsets and credits" that it said would continue.
Along with calling out harmful subsidies, FOE helped launch a campaign during COP17 highlighting how "business sectors contribute to biodiversity destruction and related human rights impacts," such as in the pulp and paper and biomass industries.
"In Indonesia, the expansion of industrial plantations and biomass production continues to drive forest loss and biodiversity decline," said the Environmental Paper Network, which joined the initiative.
With the Yerevan Pathway, said Nele Marien, coordinator of the forest and biodiversity program at FOE, "the structural drivers of biodiversity loss remain an elephant in the room: the financial and legal systems that undermine biodiversity need to be addressed."
Wilmer Lucitante, member of the Kofan nation and spokesperson for the Union of People Affected by Texaco and FOE Ecuador, said that COP17 is "a turning point, as the ways of operating of the Indigenous body of the convention were established."
"Yet the measures are voluntary, and do not alter the power transnational corporations wield in our territories," said Lucitante. "In the Kofan territory, from the time of Texaco and until now, fossil fuel companies have contaminated our lands and violated our rights. Voluntary measures are clearly not enough."
WCS said the overall outcome of the summit, just before countries meet in Türkiye for the 31st UN Climate Change Conference, where climate finance is expected to be a major topic, was "too timid."
"The COP17 decision merely encourages countries to begin applying a set of voluntary guidelines, which will be negotiated further before COP18," said the group. "This 'kicking the can down the road' falls far short of what is needed at a time when climate change poses a significant threat to biodiversity ecosystems, and the loss and degradation of ecosystems is driving emissions and reducing the capacity of people and nature to adapt."
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As Big Oil Reports Billions in Q3 Profits, Climate Groups Say Tax Them to 'Protect Communities'
A Greenpeace campaigner said the revenue should be used to help everyday people deal with "price shocks and extreme weather, and accelerate a just transition away from fossil fuels."
Oct 30, 2026
As US fossil fuel giants on Friday followed European companies in reporting their soaring profits for the third quarter of this year, and as President Donald Trump's illegal Iran War drives up prices worldwide, climate campaigners renewed calls to tax the corporations wrecking the planet.
Chevron and ExxonMobil respectively reported adjusted earnings of $10.4 billion and $17.5 billion for July-September, a day after UK-based Shell and the French firm TotalEnergies said their adjusted earnings were $10.8 billion and $9.1 billion—announcements that all came after Trump, who is personally invested in the industry, bragged that "we're making a freaking fortune."
Collectively, major firms in the United States have "earned more than $130 billion in profit as people pay much higher prices for gasoline, diesel, and other fuel," The New York Times reported Friday, after analyzing "the performance of more than 50 large US oil and gas companies, most of them producers or refiners, in the six months from April through September."
Not only are fossil-fuel companies killing people with pollution and helping to destroy the conditions for life on this planet, they absolutely flourish when there’s war.Has there ever been a more demonic industry?
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— Dr. Genevieve Guenther (she/they) (@doctorvive.bsky.social) October 30, 2026 at 7:17 AM
Meanwhile, as greenhouse gases in the atmosphere climb to unprecedented highs ahead of the next United Nations climate summit, COP31, the Climate Solutions Lab at Brown University estimates US residents have paid at least $81.5 billion more for gasoline and over $66 billion for diesel, or a total of $147.8 billion, since Trump began bombing Iran in February.
"Trump called on polluters to finance his campaign as a quid pro quo in exchange for his administration doing all it can to tear down protections for people and the environment," Sierra Club's director of beyond fossil fuels policy, Mahyar Sorour, noted Thursday. "That $1 billion campaign investment is bringing big returns for the biggest oil and gas companies that heeded the call and are now expected to double their Q3 earnings over last year as energy prices skyrocket due to Trump's war in Iran."
"It's not just Big Oil that is profiting off of Trump's action: The president himself is lining his own pockets and bragging about it on stage while Americans struggle to make ends meet," Sorour stressed. "Trump does not care about people's health or about building a secure, clean energy future. He cares about himself and his friends in Big Oil getting richer. We need to rein in Big Oil and Gas profiteering and enact a windfall profits tax."
Rebecca Newsom, global political lead at Greenpeace International, pointed out Friday that "every time a crisis pushes up the prices, the same oil and gas giants are there to cash in. This is fossilflation. The rest of us pay, at the pump, at the checkout, and again through the climate disasters driven by the fuels the industry intends to extract down to the last barrel."
"This is where decades of fossil fuel dependence have led us, and governments that keep letting these corporations off the hook are leaving households to foot the bill," she continued. "It doesn't have to be this way. If governments permanently increase taxes on oil and gas profits and clamp down on corporate profit shifting, hundreds of billions of dollars could be raised, while supercharging a shift in investment towards cleaner, more secure renewable energy."
According to Newsom, "That revenue should protect communities from price shocks and extreme weather, and accelerate a just transition away from fossil fuels."
Candice Fortin, US campaigns manager at the group 350.org, highlighted that the fossil fuel industry's latest profit reports came just days before Americans head to the polls next Tuesday for elections that will determine control of Congress for the rest of Trump's second term.
"As we head into the midterms, energy affordability is on everyone's minds," she said. "Families and small businesses want reliable electricity they can afford, and communities want a say in how their land, water, and energy resources are used. Yet as people struggle with energy bills and the impacts of extreme weather, the biggest oil companies are forecast to make billions."
"We need an energy system that puts people first," Fortin argued. "That means protecting households from losing access to essential electricity during extreme heat and cold, expanding affordable solar and wind power, and ensuring that new sources of electricity demand, including data centers, do not drive up bills or place additional pressure on communities. It also means making sure oil and gas companies pay their fair share towards the costs of the crisis, rather than leaving the public to pick up the bill."
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Ahead of COP31, 146 Scientists Urge UN to Declare Climate Change a Global Health Emergency
"The health harms of climate change are growing faster than the world's response to them, and in many cases even accelerating."
Oct 28, 2026
With less than two weeks to go until the 31st United Nations Climate Change Conference, or COP31, brings world leaders to Antalya, Türkiye to discuss the need to transition away from fossil fuels, nearly 150 international experts warned that climate change brought on by greenhouse gas emissions constitutes a "global health emergency" whose harms are accelerating.
The "2026 Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change," written by researchers at University College London and the World Health Organization (WHO) and published in The Lancet, tracks dozens of indicators that link climate change to public health, including drought, extreme hurricanes and flooding, and economic losses.
But one top indicator that planetary heating has caused a worsening public health crisis is the extreme heat that was blamed for more than 50,000 deaths across Europe this summer, and which could lead to 450,000 excess deaths in the coming months as the climate emergency is compounded by this year's "Super El Niño."
According to the report, annual average heat-related deaths have surged by nearly 36% since the Paris climate agreement was signed in 2015, securing pledges from governments to draw down fossil fuel emissions, compared to the decade preceding the deal.
More than 70% of the 710,000 heat-related deaths recorded in 2023 were found to be attributed to climate change, and between 2016-23, 68% of the world's 540,800 heat-related deaths were linked to the warming planet. The previous decade, 55% of deaths caused by extreme heat were blamed on the climate emergency.
"These numbers point to a clear emergency," said climate health researcher Marina Romanello, the executive director of the Lancet Countdown. "The risks become even more profound when you consider how different hazards interact and compound. At the same time, drought is spreading, and the world is swinging to water extremes, some drying out, while others are flooding."
"Progress has been too slow, too small, and isn't reaching those who need it most."
The report was published less than two months after a glacial collapse killed at least 1,000 people in Nepal and Tibet as it sent sudden extreme flooding down a mountain into a number of towns.
Türkiye, where COP31 is set to begin on November 9, was one place where massive wildfires spread rapidly this summer, while hundreds of thousands of people in Spain and France were also displaced by fast-moving blazes.
And in August, more than 5,000 square miles of forest burned in the Northwest Territories in Canada, sparking public health concerns when smoke drifted thousands of miles south to the continental United States.
"A decade after the Paris Agreement, our findings are unambiguous: The health harms of climate change are growing faster than the world's response to them, and in many cases even accelerating," said Romanello.
Diarmid Campbell-Lendrum, head of the climate change and health unit at WHO, said the report "demonstrates that climate action is a health intervention. Cleaner energy, stronger health systems and early warning systems are saving lives today. As countries prepare for COP31, placing health at the center of climate policies can help protect communities, strengthen resilience, and deliver immediate benefits for people’s health and wellbeing."
The 146 scientists who authored the report noted that strides have been made in some countries in expanding clean energy infrastructure, passing health protection regulations, and preparing health systems for climate-related crises and conditions.
But in the US, the largest historic emitter of greenhouse gases, the Trump administration has blocked renewable energy projects and rolled back regulations meant to reduce people's exposure to harmful emissions.
"Progress has been too slow, too small, and isn't reaching those who need it most," said Romanello. "That is why we are calling for climate change to be formally recognized as a global health emergency, with health placed at the center of every climate decision."
The report was released a week after the UN Environment Program warned that achieving the Paris Agreement's goal of limiting planetary heating to 1.5°C above preindustrial temperatures is no longer possible, and that world leaders must now focus efforts on ensuring the overshoot is as short-lived as possible.
In the Lancet Countdown, the researchers called on the UN to declare that climate change is a public health emergency of international concern, which could require an international response.
"Priorities," said WHO, "include accelerating reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, increasing support for adaptation, and expanding investments that strengthen health system resilience."
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'Another Year, Another New Record': UN Highlights Rising Greenhouse Gas Levels Ahead of COP31
"We are supercharging the ocean and the atmosphere," said one WMO leader. "That means that heatwaves, tropical cyclones, and rainstorms are intensifying faster than our historical baselines prepared us for."
Oct 27, 2026
With the next United Nations Climate Change Conference less than two weeks away, a UN agency confirmed Tuesday that levels of three key greenhouse gases in the atmosphere "reached unprecedented highs in 2025, locking in more long-term temperature increase for the planet."
“Another year, another new record," World Meteorological Organization (WMO) Deputy Secretary-General Ko Barrett said in a statement. "The past 11 years have been the warmest on record, and this trend is set to continue."
"The big three are carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide. Since the 1960s, growth rates of CO2 have tripled," Barrett told journalists during a press briefing about the "Greenhouse Gas Bulletin of 2025," which is published annually.
Global greenhouse gas concentrations reach record highs in 2025. The unprecedented atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide and methane lock in severe climate impacts and temperature increases for centuries ahead of the upcoming United Nations climate summit in Turkey.www.france24.com/en/live-news...
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— Flingjore (@flingjore.com) October 27, 2026 at 11:12 AM
"When the bulletin was first published in 2004, the annual level of carbon dioxide was 377.5 parts per million. In 2025, it was 426.8 parts per million," Barrett noted. Methane, or CH4, hit 1,948 parts per billion, while nitrous oxide, or N2O, was 339.1 ppb.
"Every additional part per million matters because it traps additional heat," she stressed. "In effect, we are supercharging the ocean and the atmosphere. That means that heatwaves, tropical cyclones, and rainstorms are intensifying faster than our historical baselines prepared us for."
While carbon dioxide is "the most abundant long-lived gas," Barrett also addressed "gases which are present in much lower concentrations but are of potential concern," such as sulfur hexafluoride, or SF6—which "is closely related to electricity production and distribution, and has been rising over the past three decades because of the switch to global electrification."
"Sulfur hexafluoride concentration in 2025 have increased by 249% relative to 1995 levels. They are measured in parts per trillion—not million. So why should we be concerned?" she said. "Because SF6 has an atmospheric lifetime of up to 3,200 years. Its global warming potential is more than 24,000 times that of CO2."
"The energy transition is essential and welcome," Barrett added. "But as with every transition, it has to be done in a smart way and informed by environmental observations."
The WMO bulletin follows a series of recent UN reports showing the Paris Agreement's goal of limiting global temperature rise this century to 1.5°C above preindustrial levels is no longer possible without an overshoot, but getting back to that level is, with ambitious action to phase out fossil fuels.
Additionally, before the ongoing biodiversity summit in Yerevan, Armenia, the UN warned that the world is not on track to meet any of the targets from the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, or the "Paris Agreement for Nature."
While that event on the global biodiversity crisis—which is linked to the worsening climate emergency—is set to conclude in a few days, world leaders are scheduled to convene again on November 9 in Antalya, Türkiye for the next climate conference, or COP31.
Although the United States is the world's biggest historical climate polluter, and one of the recently released UN reports repeatedly calls out US emissions, Big Oil-backed President Donald Trump has ditched the Paris Agreement, again, and is not expected to send a delegation to Antalya.
"The rest of the world is exhausted when it comes to counting the damage that the US is willingly doing to allies, multilateral structures, economic cooperation, disaster relief," Australian climate scientist Malte Meinshausen told The Associated Press earlier this month. "The rest of the world should probably continue to focus even less on the US."
There is hope in the elections taking place around the world and how they may usher in new leadership in many countries. Even with those changes, we all are in for a warm ride filled with climate shocks until we stabilize the concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
— Dana R. Fisher (aka the Apocalyptic Optimist) (@fisherdanar.bsky.social) October 27, 2026 at 6:37 AM
In the United States, University of Pennsylvania professor Michael Mann said Tuesday that "there is a lot of support among the public for a clean energy transition. The problem is that the fossil fuel industry currently owns our government. But there are reasons for optimism that we might begin to turn the corner, with the midterm elections" on November 3.
"If they return one or both houses of Congress to the Democrats, there will be the possibility of Congress acting as a check on the destructive policies of the Trump administration and in a couple of years, with new leadership at the presidential level, the US could once again reassert leadership on climate," the climatologist told writer Brian McHugh.
"We have to transition rapidly away from fossil fuel burning," Mann emphasized. "There's simply no other way. Without regulating them and imposing an incentive structure that leads them to move toward clean energy, nothing else is really going to matter."
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'A Crime of Extreme Inequality': Richest 0.1% Generate More Carbon Pollution Than Half of Humanity
“The ultra-rich are setting the planet on fire and then charging the rest of us for the extinguishers."
Oct 27, 2026
The richest 0.1% of humanity generates more planet-heating carbon pollution than nearly half of the global population combined, according to an Oxfam analysis released late Monday as world leaders prepared to gather in Türkiye next month for the United Nations climate summit.
The new analysis provides an updated look at global elites' outsized contribution to a climate crisis that disproportionately impacts the poorest segments of the global population through increasingly devastating heatwaves, droughts, flooding, and other extreme weather, causing death, destruction, and mass displacement worldwide.
Oxfam estimates that a person in the richest 0.1% "has contributed nearly 400 times more to today’s extreme heatwaves than someone in the poorest 50%." The 8 million richest people in the world combined produce "over three times more carbon pollution than the entire population of Sub-Saharan Africa"—around 1.3 billion people.
"The climate crisis is often described as a shared human challenge. It is not," said Amitabh Behar, Oxfam International's executive director. "Those who have done the least to cause it are losing their homes, their harvests and, increasingly, their lives. Meanwhile, the super-rich can buy their way out of danger—by retreating to high-tech underground survival bunkers, hiring private firefighting crews, and securing private insurance—and are actively profiting from the consequences of their pollution. This is not a tragedy of shared fate; it is a crime of extreme inequality."
Oxfam's report notes that the same investors and firms profiting massively from the fossil fuel companies driving the climate crisis are also benefiting from disaster preparedness and recovery. The analysis places those investors in what it calls a "Destroy and Rebuild" index.
"Six major asset managers (including Vanguard, BlackRock, and State Street) make up more than one-quarter of all the Destroy and Rebuild corporations," the report states. "BlackRock and Vanguard are invested in 92% of the corporations in the index: The pair’s total investments in these corporations are more than $1 trillion."
“The ultra-rich are setting the planet on fire and then charging the rest of us for the extinguishers," said Behar. "They profit from the pollution. They profit from the disaster. And they profit again from the clean-up.”
"While ordinary people are forced to grapple with the consequences of emergencies they bear little responsibility in fueling, billionaires are busy outrunning the reality they and their private jets created."
In the United States—where the country's billionaire president has taken a sledgehammer to domestic and international efforts to combat the climate crisis—a person in the richest 0.1% emits 48 times as much carbon dioxide as the average American.
"The country’s richest 0.1% (333,271 people) emit 108 times more CO2 per person than the poorest half of the population (166.6 million people)," Oxfam's analysis shows. "In just under four months (118.3 days), someone in the richest 0.1% emits more CO2 than someone in the poorest half of the U.S. has emitted over the last 30 years."
Rachel Carle, senior advisor on climate justice at Oxfam America, said in a statement that the global climate emergency is "an inequality crisis at its core."
"While ordinary people are forced to grapple with the consequences of emergencies they bear little responsibility in fueling, billionaires are busy outrunning the reality they and their private jets created," said Carle. "Mark Zuckerberg can hunker down in his Hawaiian bunker at the first sign of chaos, but the rest of us don’t have that luxury. Addressing this glaring inequality is the first step to mitigating climate disaster, and that starts with making ultra-rich polluters pay their fair share."
In view of its findings, Oxfam urged governments to use the upcoming COP31 summit in Türkiye to:
- Make rich polluters pay to significantly and rapidly curb their carbon emissions, including through permanent wealth and income taxes, a permanent tax on fossil fuel corporations, and punitive taxes on high-emitting luxury items like private jets;
- Substantially increase climate finance for the Global South, prioritizing public, grant-based finance rather than loans that deepen debt. The amount for adaptation should be tripled by 2035;
- Radically reduce inequality within and between countries, including through climate-resilient public infrastructure and public services; and
- End profiteering from climate disasters. Governments need to curb corporate power in emergency response, reconstruction, and food systems during disasters.
"Another future remains possible," Oxfam's report concludes. "Creating a more equal world would enable emissions to fall rapidly, food systems to become fairer and more resilient, and the creation of public systems to protect people from crisis and adapt to the effects of climate change. Achieving that future will require bold political choices to curb excessive wealth and corporate power while investing in the resilience, rights, and livelihoods of the majority. Climate justice and equality must now become the foundation of climate action."
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Analysis Warns Bipartisan Senate Permitting Bill Would Lock In Trump-Era Data Center, Fossil Fuel Approvals
“Any permitting deal passed under this administration must strengthen the guardrails that keep Burgum and Trump in check, not hand them a blank check," said one advocate.
Oct 22, 2026
An analysis out this week warns that should the US Senate pass the Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act of 2026 after the midterm elections, communities across the country can expect to live with the consequences for decades to come, as the permitting bill would allow the Trump administration to swiftly approve data centers, nuclear facilities, and fossil fuel infrastructure—and "then make those approvals nearly impossible to reverse" after President Donald Trump is out of office.
As Common Dreams reported last month, the bipartisan bill could significantly weaken the Endangered Species Act in the interest of speeding up infrastructure projects.
Aaron Weiss, executive director of the Center for Western Priorities, said Wednesday in an analysis at the group's blog, Westwise, that the bill also contains three provisions that would be "disastrous for America’s public lands."
Section 1401 of the legislation would "lock in" development of data centers, nuclear energy facilities, and other projects "the minute" they were greenlit by the federal government.
It states that agencies "shall not take any new action that would revoke, rescind, withdraw, terminate, suspend, amend, or alter” any federal permit in effect on or after September 16, 2026, with few exceptions.
Section 1401 also weakens a court's authority to pause a construction project if it finds an agency did not complete a thorough or accurate environmental review of the project—essentially turning a court-ordered review into "an empty paperwork exercise," according to Justin Pidot, a University of Arizona law professor who served as general counsel of the White House Council on Environmental Quality.
"A judge can send the review back for a redo, but construction continues in the meantime, and Section 1401 bars the agency from changing the permit based on what the new review finds," wrote Weiss. "Challengers also get just 150 days to sue."
Finally, Weiss pointed to Section 1402 of the bill, which says that if an agency changes a previously approved permit and a court finds they cannot move forward with the project, "taxpayers would owe the developer 25% to 50% of everything it has spent."
"If a future administration slows a whole category of projects, such as gas plants or nuclear fuel facilities, developers can collect 50% to 100% of a project’s expected construction cost," wrote Weiss.
"This disastrous bill would permanently scar our natural heritage and sacrifice clean water, wildlife, and the health of our communities just to make the wealthiest people on Earth even richer.”
Should the bill pass, any permit in effect on or after September 16, 2026 would be protected under the provisions, and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum would have 27 months, until Trump's term is over, to approve more projects that would also be shielded from actions by future presidents.
But the bill "spares everything the Trump administration has done to mess with clean energy permits,” wrote Matthew Littleton, a former Justice Department lawyer—meaning it does nothing to lift Trump's actions blocking wind and solar energy projects.
Weiss called on the bill's sponsors, including longtime public lands advocate Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-NM), to salvage the bill by engaging "with the tribes, the communities, and the millions of Americans who have made clear they don’t want data centers and nuclear waste forced onto their public lands or into their backyards."
According to a poll released in August by Embold Research, 75% of Americans now oppose building data centers in their area.
Heinrich, said Weiss in a statement, has claimed that the bill "will age very well over time."
"As it’s currently written, it will indeed age, locking in data centers and a new nuclear legacy on our public lands for generations—after all, the half-life of plutonium-239 is about 24,000 years," continued Weiss. “Any permitting deal passed under this administration must strengthen the guardrails that keep Burgum and Trump in check, not hand them a blank check. Sen. Heinrich should pump the brakes on this bill during the lame duck session and work with leaders in the next Congress to get it right.”
The analysis came as more than 100 groups called on Congress to oppose the bipartisan bill, which is also sponsored by Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.), and Mike Lee (R-Utah).
“Here in Utah, where 73% of voters oppose fast-tracking oil, gas, and mining projects on public land, we say America’s worst ideas come from the desk of Sen. Mike Lee,” said Olivia Juarez, GreenLatinos public land program director. “This bill exemplifies what we mean. Its only guarantee is blocked public land access, dangerous air quality, and reckless exclusion of public input on how we treat the places we should pass on to future generations in a better condition than we received them. It’s a handout to the fossil fuel and AI industries, and a rubber stamp on wildlife extinction and climate disaster.”
Ashley C. Nunes, a public lands policy specialist at the Center for Biological Diversity, said that "handing our public lands over to corporate polluters and tech billionaires is a staggering betrayal of all Americans."
"It will put irreplaceable public lands at the mercy of industries bent on exploiting them," she said. "This disastrous bill would permanently scar our natural heritage and sacrifice clean water, wildlife, and the health of our communities just to make the wealthiest people on Earth even richer.”
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Finnish Petition Demands Data Center Regulation After Google Felled 250,000 Trees to Make Way for AI Project
“It has been done in the wrong way," said one resident of the Finnish town of Muhos. "American style. No sense. No sense at all."
Oct 22, 2026
A petition calling for more regulation of data centers in Finland has gathered more than 96,400 signatures—nearly twice the amount needed to force the Finnish Parliament to formally take up the petition for a debate—after Google infuriated residents and officials of two towns where the tech giant illegally chopped down an estimated 250,000 trees across 815 acres of forest after purchasing the land area.
The company felled the trees and stripped the entire area of its top soil without conducting a legally required environmental impact assessment, prompting the Finnish Licensing and Supervision Authority (LVV) to order Google to suspend all "measures that significantly change the environment."
The company was given a deadline of October 23 to halt the work in the rural towns of Muhos and Otanmäki, and LVV said it would consider enforcement proceedings and fines if Google does not comply.
Google's Finland country manager, Antti Järvinen, said last week that the company had acted “on the best understanding we had of the legislation at the time" as it cleared the land for its €13 billion ($14.5 billion) artificial intelligence infrastructure projects.
With 145 new data centers planned in Finland, where vast swaths of uninhabited land and the cool climate have attracted AI companies looking to rapidly build out the massive facilities, the petition proposed by citizens calls on Parliament to draft legislation that would ensure data centers are subject to "conditions and restrictions [in] connection to the electricity network."
The legislation must take "into account the capacity of the electricity network, mandatory reserve power, and the utilization of waste heat," reads the petition. "The aim of the legislative drafting is to ensure the adequacy and affordability of electricity for households and other industries."
Citizens are also calling for a "data center fee" to be imposed, "the basis for which must correspond to the environmental damage caused by the operation and the resources used (e.g. electricity, water, land use) to act as a system that compensates for these disadvantages."
Across the US and in other countries, the rapid AI data center build-out pushed by President Donald Trump, tech CEOs, and other leaders has prompted outcry in numerous communities, where residents have led grassroots efforts to block the construction of the centers.
Public approval for data centers has plummeted as residents have raised concerns about the facilities hiking household energy bills, guzzling water supplies, and providing few, if any, long-term jobs.
But Finnish Prime Minister Petteri Orpo of the conservative National Coalition Party has called attracting investment from AI firms a "top priority" for the Nordic country and has promised that Google's development will “deliver lasting benefits for both parties."
Speaking to The Guardian Thursday, Jussi Kangasharju, a computer science expert at the University of Helsinki, was skeptical of those claims.
“Really, for Finland, there are no benefits,” he told the outlet. “They are international companies serving international customers. Very little corporate taxes go to Finland. Data centers ultimately have very little benefit for others except the data center operator.”
Hanna Halmeenpää, chair of the Finnish Association for Nature Conservation (SLL), expressed disbelief over Google's destruction of the country's prized forests.
“I have never heard that any company has done anything like this in Finland," Halmeenpää told The Guardian Thursday. “They bought the vast land area, and they just started to cut it, just like that... It’s pure arrogance."
Another SLL official, Vesa Hyyryläinen, told the newspaper that wildlife in the forest that used to surround Otanmäki, including nesting woodpeckers, had been pushed out, while a resident whose family has lived in the town for generations explained how Google may have endangered locals by cutting down the biodiverse forest.
“We had wolves coming into the village because all the wild animals moved out of the forest,” Anni Ranta told The Guardian.
Conservationists were unimpressed Thursday with Google's pledge to plant trees across 130 hectares in the Muhos area and to work to protect water quality in the town following the destruction of the forest.
“It has been done in the wrong way," Muhos resident Aantti Jakonen told The Guardian. "American style. No sense. No sense at all."
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UN Report Shows How Killing Progress on Climate Pollution Is 'Trump's Real Legacy'
One campaigner said the United Nations Environment Program report "shows that America's retreat isn't just a political embarrassment. It has real consequences for the planet and for millions of people around the world."
Oct 21, 2026
President Donald Trump's pro-fossil fuel agenda not only is "making everyone's lives more expensive" but also is expected to have deadly and destructive consequences far beyond the borders of the United States, as made clear in a global emissions report released Wednesday.
The United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) put out "The Emissions Gap Report 2026: The Point of Return" in preparation for the next UN Climate Change Conference in Türkiye. It warns that the world's chance to meet the Paris Agreement's goal of limiting temperature rise this century to 1.5°C above preindustrial levels "with 'no or limited' overshoot has been lost."
While that is a global failure, a key factor is Trump's return to power in the United States last year. After pledging to roll back his predecessor's meager climate action policies if fossil fuel executives pumped money into his campaign, the Republican president has pursued a range of polluting actions, which include abandoning the Paris Agreement, again.
"Most of the climate-related policies from the Inflation Reduction Act have been repealed under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act," the report says, referring to Republicans' 2025 budget package, which Trump signed into law. "Additionally, several long-standing Environmental Protection Agency regulations concerning power plant and vehicle emission standards, electric vehicle support, methane emissions, and renewable energy proliferation have also been rolled back."
It also notes that the Trump administration recently moved to completely repeal limits on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from fossil fuel-fired power plants, which was criticized as "the largest deregulatory action of the USA power sector in history," though "a significant number of these attempts are in a judicial state of uncertainty, as they are being challenged in courts."
Countries that remain parties to the Paris Agreement develop plans to reduce emissions, called nationally determined contributions. The report explains that "if all NDCs are delivered and similar efforts continue, there is a 66% chance that warming will be limited to 2.6°C by 2100. This is a worse outcome than expected last year, as a result of the formal withdrawal of the United States of America from the Paris Agreement and revised estimates of historical emissions."
Historically, the United States is the world's worst climate polluter. The publication points out that "currently, the six largest emitters in terms of total GHG emissions are China, the United States of America, India, the European Union, the Russian Federation, and Indonesia."
While the US, Indonesia, and China all had increases in emissions last year, the document details, "in terms of magnitude, the increase in the United States of America (133 megatons of CO2 equivalent, MtCO2e) far exceeded that of all other countries, and was driven by increased electricity demand and a rebound of coal power generation."
Studies show that recent policy changes under Trump "have significantly altered the projections" for the years ahead, the report says, "with 2030 emissions projections now estimated to be almost 0.9 GtCO2e higher than projections based on policies in place under the previous administration."
As The Associated Press reported:
Report lead author Anne Olhoff, director of UNEP Copenhagen Climate Center, said the US policy change will likely add one-tenth of a degree Celsius (nearly two-tenths of a degree Fahrenheit) to global temperatures by the end of the century.
"This report shows that America's retreat isn't just a political embarrassment. It has real consequences for the planet and for millions of people around the world,” said Mohamed Adow, director of Power Shift Africa, a climate organization. "An extra tenth of a degree might sound insignificant, but in climate terms it is enormous. It means more dangerous heatwaves, more destructive floods, more failed harvests, and more lives lost. For vulnerable communities in Africa, already living on the frontlines of the climate crisis, every fraction of a degree matters. These are not abstract numbers. They are human lives."
The Trump administration doubled down on its position, with White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers telling The New York Times that the United Nations was “pushing the woke Green Energy Scam, pressuring countries across the world to jeopardize their economic and national security in order to meet arbitrary climate goals."
Meanwhile, climate advocates and scientists joined Adow in ripping the administration's devastating agenda.
"All governments have a job to do, but in particular it is time for major fossil fuel producers such as the US and Saudi Arabia, which produce 20-25% of fossil fuels globally, to stop playing politics and face the scientific reality," said Bill Hare, CEO of the think tank Climate Analytics. "Right now they are looking at the fire, denying it exists, and pouring more petrol on it, while their own citizens increasingly face searing heat, wildfires, and other impacts."
Scott Forbes, an ecology professor at Canada's University of Winnipeg, said on social media that "America is now the biggest impediment to climate action. Of all the evil that Trump has done, this may top it all."
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'We Must Pull Out All the Stops': UN Emissions Report Confirms 1.5°C Target Is Dead
"The emissions gap is now a leadership gap, and the world is running out of time and excuses to close it," said the UN secretary-general.
Oct 21, 2026
Over a decade after world leaders adopted the Paris Agreement, United Nations experts warned Wednesday that the climate treaty's goal of limiting global temperature rise this century to 1.5°C above preindustrial levels is no longer achievable without an overshoot—though returning to that threshold remains possible with sweeping action to end the era of fossil fuels.
"The opportunity to bridge the 1.5°C emissions gap with 'no or limited' overshoot has been lost. Decades of insufficient mitigation action means that larger exceedance of 1.5°C above preindustrial levels based on multidecadal averages is now imminent and unavoidable," says "The Emissions Gap Report 2026: The Point of Return."
The United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) released its report with that "sobering" message in the wake of its "Limiting Overshoot" publication from last month, during a global biodiversity summit in Armenia, and in the lead-up to next month's climate conference in Türkiye.
Scientists have long stressed that surpassing the Paris target could cause "irreversible impacts" to the planet and its inhabitants. The new report points out that "every additional fraction of a degree and additional year of warming above 1.5°C raises the risk of irreversible changes including in ice sheets, permafrost carbon, ocean circulation, and coral systems, along with devastating human impacts."
"The task now, therefore, is not only to ensure that global warming stays well below 2°C," the document says, referring to another Paris target, "but to minimize the duration and magnitude of overshoot and establish a credible return path to 1.5°C by the end of the century."
As Inger Andersen, executive director of UNEP, put it: "We must pull out all the stops to minimize peak warming and return to 1.5°C by the end of the century. This is possible."
"We have a wealth of success stories showing that emissions can be cut quickly," she noted. "It is now up to nations to urgently put in place policies that spark fast, deep, and sustained emissions reductions, and put the world on track for a more stable climate and more stable economies and societies."
The 2026 UNEP Emissions Gap Report is out: The Point of Return. 🌍🌡️🔥It's sobering but actionable. Decades of inadequate climate action have closed off opportunities to limit warming, but ambitious action today can still prevent much greater harm.A thread of some of the highlights 🧵
[image or embed]
— Joeri Rogelj (@joerirogelj.bsky.social) October 21, 2026 at 4:51 AM
According to the UNEP analysis, the "lowest possible" 1.5°C overshoot scenario would involve peak warming of 1.7-1.8°C around mid-century, with global mean temperatures returning to 1.5°C or lower. It says that "to get on such a pathway, global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions must be reduced by 18% by 2030, 45% by 2035, and 69% by 2040, all relative to 2025 levels."
"By contrast, the full implementation of the new nationally determined contributions (NDCs) submitted by around two-thirds of all countries would reduce emissions by 5-8% by 2030 and 11-15% by 2035 relative to 2025 levels," the report warns, citing the climate plans produced by governments that are parties to the Paris Agreement.
Germany's Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, whose scientists were lead authors of two chapters of the new report, explained that "transitioning away from fossil fuels would require reducing the shares of coal, oil, and gas in global energy supply by at least 55%, 15%, and 5%, respectively, by 2035 relative to 2025. Electricity generation from coal would need to be effectively phased out globally by 2040, while methane emissions would need to fall by at least 25% by 2035 relative to 2025 levels."
In addition to highlighting the "devastating" consequences of failing to implement policies aligned with the 1.5°C limit—"Deadly floods. Brutal heatwaves. Raging wildfires. Lost lives. Crippled economies. Deepening inequalities."—outgoing UN Secretary-General António Guterres emphasized that "the emissions gap is now a leadership gap, and the world is running out of time and excuses to close it."
"Governments must go much further and faster," he declared. "Accelerate clean energy and electrification across every sector. Adopt credible roadmaps to transition away from fossil fuels—with clear timelines and protection for affected workers and communities. Invest in grids and storage. Improve energy efficiency. Cut methane emissions. Halt and reverse deforestation. And deliver on their climate commitments—then over-deliver."
While the UN chief also said that Group of 20 nations "must lead," one of the G20's key members—and the world's biggest historical climate polluter—the United States, has ditched the Paris Agreement, again, under Big Oil-backed President Donald Trump's second administration, as part of broader agendas supporting fossil fuels and attacking international cooperation.
The report itself highlights that "emissions growth slowed down in the G20," with the Trump-led US "being the major exception," and "currently, the six largest emitters in terms of total GHG emissions are China, the United States of America, India, the European Union, the Russian Federation, and Indonesia—noting that in per capita terms, India and Indonesia are much lower emitters."
Within the United States and beyond, climate scientists and campaigners used the report to renew pressure on governments to push strong policies to reduce planet-heating emissions. Among them was Fenton Lutunatabua, Pacific and Caribbean lead at the advocacy group 350.org, who said that "this report is clear: Fossil fuels are driving us beyond the 1.5°C limit."
"The fastest and fairest way back is not to bet on unproven technologies, but to cut emissions now, end the expansion of fossil fuels, and protect the forests, oceans, and ecosystems that already keep carbon out of the atmosphere," he said. "We know this works: Since the Paris Agreement, global renewable electricity capacity has grown three times faster than expected, and the report shows that bold climate policies cut emissions at scale."
"But what's on the table now is far from enough, putting us on track for around 2.6°C of warming. We need more, and we can do more," he added. "Every five years of CO2 emissions at current levels pushes peak warming up by around 0.1°C, and every tenth of a degree is measured in lives. The time for action is now."
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'Absolutely Maddening': UK Approves Jackdaw Gas Drilling in North Sea
The drilling will "make no real difference to our energy bills or security," said one advocate, but "it will signal to other fossil fuel producers that they too should carry on with business as usual."
Oct 21, 2026
With drilling in the Jackdaw gas field in the North Sea set to go forward following the United Kingdom's approval, announced on Wednesday, climate groups and progressive lawmakers demanded to know how Prime Minister Andy Burnham could declare the decision a "pragmatic" one, considering the meager job growth and energy savings and massive climate damage expected from the project.
“Is the prime minister living in a parallel universe?" asked Danny Gross, climate campaigner for Friends of the Earth (FOE). "One where we haven’t just endured our hottest summer on record, with droughts, wildfires and, in all likelihood, the most heat-related deaths on record?"
The approval of the oil and gas extraction from Jackdaw by Adura, a joint venture between Shell and Equinor, was announced as the United Nations warned that continued fossil fuel drilling has put the possibility of avoiding a global temperature rise that breaches the 1.5°C threshold out of reach, and emphasized that countries must take action to mitigate the damage and ensure the breach is temporary.
The UN said greenhouse gas emissions must be slashed by nearly one-fifth in the next four years to avoid the worst impacts of the climate crisis.
"Against this backdrop, there’s nothing that justifies giving the go-ahead to a colossal new fossil fuel project in North Sea. The disconnect is absolutely maddening," said Gross.
The Jackdaw approval was announced as the government said inflation had jumped to its highest level in almost a year, with US President Donald Trump's war on Iran and Russia's invasion of Ukraine driving up energy prices worldwide.
But an analysis by the UK climate action group Uplift, which compiled data from the public record, found that the Jackdaw project would provide enough gas to displace just 2% of the UK's current imports.
"This will not lower international gas prices paid by UK consumers," said Greenpeace, which also emphasized that Adura has admitted in an environmental statement that the project is projected to create just 27 full-time jobs—making little difference to the area surrounding Aberdeen, Scotland, the center of the UK oil industry where local officials have reported losses of 1,000 oil and gas jobs per month.
Zack Polanski, the leader of Britain's Green Party, said the projected impact of the Jackdaw project couldn't compare "to all the benefits of investing in renewables and insulating our homes."
CBI Economics found earlier this year that the UK's green economy employs more than 1 million people and is worth £100 billion ($133 billion) per year, with workers in the sector paid more than the national average.
“Jackdaw won’t make a jot of difference to our energy bills, but it will fuel the climate chaos already unfurling in front of us. The route to lower bills and true energy security lies in the UK’s vast capacity for cheap, homegrown renewable power and street-by-street home insulation programs," said Gross. “This decision makes Shell and its shareholders richer at the expense of ordinary people’s lives—a move that sees the prime minister turning his back on the very people he claims to be on the side of."
Richard Burgon, a member of Parliament who represents Burnham's Labour Party, called the approval "absolutely terrible" and urged the government not to "repeat the same mistake" with Rosebank oil field in the North Sea, which the prime minister said he would make a decision about at a later date.
Fossil fuel development in both the Jackdaw and Rosebank fields was blocked by a moratorium in 2024, imposed by the Labour government of former Prime Minister Keir Starmer. Drilling has previously been approved in 2022 and 2023 by the Conservative government. Supporters of oil and gas extraction in the North Sea have argued that since the fields were approved for exploration under the Conservatives, allowing drilling now does not violate the moratorium.
The climate impacts of the two projects are projected to cost each UK household £3,000 ($4,017) annually, according to Greenpeace, and gas production from Jackdaw is estimated to be equivalent to about 40 million barrels of oil, Adura has said.
"Using government calculations for climate harm, burning Jackdaw’s gas will cause an estimated £16.1 billion [$21.5 billion] in global damage and over 8,000 heat-related deaths," said Greenpeace.
This past summer, extreme heat across Europe helped ignite wildfires and was blamed for tens of thousands of excess deaths on the continent. The breakdown of a glacier in Nepal and Tibet also caused a flooding disaster that killed more than 1,000 people.
“It is a shame that one of the first big decisions for the new energy secretary, Miatta Fahnbulleh, has been to approve more fossil fuel drilling," said Rosemary Harris, North Sea senior campaigner for Oil Change International. "At a time where the impacts of climate breakdown are so clearly felt, from the loss of livelihoods, homes, and lives in the UK over the summer, to the devastating floods in Nepal, our government should look to the future, not cling to the past."
The approval also came weeks before Burnham is set to represent the UK at the UN Climate Change Conference (COP31) in Antalya, Türkiye.
While drilling in the Jackdaw field will "make no real difference to our energy bills or security," said Bob Ward, policy and communications director at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics and Political Science, "it will signal to other fossil fuel producers that they too should carry on with business as usual, less than a month before the COP31 United Nations climate change summit.”
Harris said that following the approval, "all eyes are now on Rosebank, and the hope that Andy Burnham and his energy secretary have the courage and vision to push back against the industry and plot a path to an energy transition that provides more security, lower bills, and a safe climate."
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'Batshit Insane': As Extreme Weather Worsens, Trump's FEMA Head Tells States to Prepare to Handle Disasters on Their Own
"Donald Trump's FEMA has a message to Americans during hurricane season and ahead of a historic El Niño: DROP DEAD."
Oct 21, 2026
As the climate crisis intensifies extreme weather events, President Donald Trump's head of federal disaster relief sent a stark message to states on Tuesday: You're on your own.
Politico reported that Cameron Hamilton, the administrator of the US Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), told state officials at the National Emergency Management Association’s annual meeting in Little Rock, Arkansas, that they would need to allocate resources to respond to most disasters without help from the federal government.
“Every state must have the appropriate financial reserves” and other abilities “to ensure that recovery efforts can start immediately and not necessarily be held up simply because of the federal [disaster] declaration process,” Hamilton said, according to a recording of his remarks obtained by the outlet.
“A future that I hope we would shoot for is one where we wouldn’t require as many disasters because the capability of states is so high and so substantial,” Hamilton added, referring to presidential authorizations of federal disaster aid.
Trump has instituted dramatic cuts to FEMA that have hampered its response to disasters. When Texas faced floods last year that killed at least 138 people, for example, the administration’s spending restrictions delayed FEMA’s deployment of search-and-rescue teams for more than 72 hours, while lapsed call-center contracts left thousands of survivors’ calls for assistance unanswered.
While cutting its workforce, Trump has suggested FEMA is "very bureaucratic" and "very slow" and has floated shutting the agency down entirely, shifting its responsibilities to the states. Yet a FEMA report released Friday found that state disaster agencies are "typically understaffed and underfunded, and many depend heavily on federal assistance."
Hamilton's speech comes days after the publication of an internal memo stating that FEMA would “strengthen state and local emergency management capacity." The memo, also obtained by Politico, said that "reducing federal dependency requires partners to build, maintain, and exercise the capabilities needed to manage incidents effectively."
President Donald Trump, first lady Melania Trump, and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott meet with local emergency services personnel as they survey flood damage along the Guadalupe River on July 11, 2025, in Kerrville, Texas. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
"This is just the latest step in Trump’s agenda to push the cost of disasters onto states who are already stretched thin," said Mia Logan, a senior adviser to Climate Power. "States rely on federal disaster aid to rebuild roads, bridges, and the communities where people live and work. From his first days in office to now, Trump’s message to Americans has been consistent: If extreme weather hits, you’re on your own, because help is probably not coming.”
Dana Fisher, an American University professor who studies climate politics, has stressed that Trump is pulling back disaster aid "even though the United States is experiencing more disasters as the climate changes."
"The hottest US summer on record left millions of Americans facing life-threatening heatwaves," she wrote for The Conversation. "Extreme heat and drought set the stage for wildfires. Flooding from powerful storms and days of heavy rainfall inundated communities in several states. And now a ‘Super El Niño,’ on top of already rising temperatures and sea levels, is expected to make extreme events worse, at least into spring 2027."
Firefighters battle the Eaton Fire on January 8, 2025, in Altadena, California. (Photo by David McNew/Getty Images)
Dan Koh, a former Biden White House official who helped coordinate federal disaster responses, called placing the recovery burden on states "batshit insane."
"I worked with FEMA in the White House," he wrote on social media. "States don’t have the budget for this."
He pointed to Hurricane Katrina as an example: The storm caused about $108 billion in damage, nearly six times Louisiana's entire 2005 operating budget of about $18.7 billion.
"There are many states with minuscule emergency management offices and budgets," wrote Eric Holdeman, the former emergency management director for King County, Washington, in a blog post. "There are states with slim rainy-day funds and no capacity to make up for a lack of federal disaster recovery funds—without RAISING TAXES."
He suggested that the scarce federal funds that remain could be wielded by presidents as a political tool—something Trump has already done many times during his second term. An Associated Press investigation in July found that Trump had approved three-quarters of disaster aid requests from states he won in 2024, compared with less than half from states he lost.
On the campaign trail last month, Trump told North Carolina voters the state would not receive disaster recovery funds for Hurricane Helene unless Republican Michael Whatley won his competitive Senate race, though he later said he was "only kidding."
Trump has also used disaster recovery to coerce states into adopting specific policies. In California, he threatened to withhold assistance for recovery from last year's devastating wildfires unless the state adopted voter identification requirements and changed its water policies.
Hamilton told state officials on Tuesday that changes to federal disaster assistance could begin “in the next six months”—just as the developing El Niño is expected to intensify extreme weather through next spring.
In response, Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom—who is expected to run for president in 2028—wrote that "Donald Trump's FEMA has a message to Americans during hurricane season and ahead of a historic El Niño: DROP DEAD."
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