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Climate
Working-Class Taxpayers Subsidize Billionaires' Climate-Killing Private Jets: Report
"It’s time to stop making taxpayers subsidize luxury private jet travel and use our resources to green other industries," said one of the report's authors.
Sep 18, 2026
A handful of the world's wealthiest people are traveling aboard some of the planet's most polluting vehicles while receiving substantial public subsidies, according to a new report documenting how taxpayers and commercial airline passengers are funding billionaires' private jet lifestyles due to corporate lobbying, tax breaks, and other policies.
The Institute for Policy Studies' (IPS) "High Flyers 2026: The High Cost of Private Jet Excess," released on Friday, notes that only about 256,000 people around the world—roughly 0.003% of the global population—fly on private jets. Yet these ultrawealthy travelers account for a disproportionate share of aviation activity while paying a fraction of the taxes that fund air traffic infrastructure.
According to the report—which is co-authored by Chuck Collins, Omar Ocampo, Kalena Thomhave, and Emily Wagner—private jets and charter services account for roughly 16% of flight operations handled by the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), while noncommercial private jets account for about 7% of airspace activity.
NEW: Private jet travel — the most ecologically destructive form of transportation — is increasing among the wealthiest 0.003% of people. Taxpayers and commercial flyers are subsidizing it.It's time to tax this reckless consumption. REPORT:
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— Institute for Policy Studies (@ips-dc.org) September 18, 2026 at 6:05 AM
However, private jets contribute less than 0.6% of the taxes flowing into the Airport and Airway Trust Fund, which helps finance FAA operations.
"We all pay for the harms of private jet excess," the report states. "US taxpayers and commercial air travelers subsidize the luxury private jet transportation sector. Private jets fail to pay their fair share of their use of airspace and the costs of their carbon pollution, shifting the burden to everyone else."
The disparity is particularly stark when the climate consequences of private aviation are taken into account. IPS found that a passenger traveling by private jet is responsible for roughly 10 to 14 times the emissions of a passenger on a commercial airline and around 50 times those of a passenger traveling the same route by rail. On some low-carbon rail systems, the disparity can exceed 200-fold.
"Private jets are the super-polluters. On a warming planet, private jet operations are indefensible," the report's authors wrote. "Private jets account for a small sliver of aviation activity, but they are the most polluting form of transport and represent the fastest-growing segment of aviation emissions."
The report also found that at least half of private jet operations are for recreational, vacation, and personal luxury travel.
"The ultrarich and greedy corporations are private jet-setting at the expense of the rest of us," Collins told The Guardian on Friday. "The rest of us should not have to pay for the luxury excess of the private jet billionaire class."
The report comes amid increasing criticism of tax policies that have made private aircraft particularly lucrative investments for wealthy Americans. Last year, US President Donald Trump signed legislation permanently implementing 100% bonus depreciation for qualifying business assets, allowing full tax deductions for certain purchases—including private aircraft—in the year they are acquired.
In a May opinion piece published by Common Dreams, Collins and Wagner slammed what they described as "a massive tax break for billionaires and centimillionaires that use the most polluting form of transportation on the planet."
A corporation that buys a $50 million private jet could potentially deduct the entire purchase price from its taxes in the year of acquisition, meaning "ordinary taxpayers pick up the tab for the private jet industry and billionaire high flyers," according to Collins and Wagner.
The Trump administration has also recently declined to close another tax loophole benefiting wealthy private jet users. A proposal by Democratic senators would have changed the rules governing the so-called Standard Industry Fare Level method for calculating the taxable value of personal flights aboard corporate aircraft. The lawmakers argued that the system allows wealthy executives to substantially undervalue their personal use nof company jets.
"While working families struggle to afford groceries, housing, and gas," Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) said earlier this month, the Trump administration "focuses on tax breaks for billionaires—including tax breaks for private jets. What a disgrace."
The private jet industry has also benefited from efforts to shield aircraft owners from scrutiny. Earlier this year, House Republicans sought to restrict government use of flight tracking data that can help identify privately owned aircraft for taxation purposes.
“Oh look—Republicans helping private-jet billionaires avoid paying taxes," Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) quipped in June. "If only they worked that hard for consumers.”
IPS noted the private aviation industry's substantial political influence. The National Business Aviation Association spent approximately $2 million lobbying for the sector in 2025, including on policies concerning tax breaks and private flight secrecy.
The report's authors list policy changes they say would help "decarbonize private jet users' indefensible behavior."
"A luxury tax of 10% on used jets and 5% on new jets could have raised more than $3 billion in 2025, funds that could be invested in sustainable ground transportation," they asserted.
"Congress should strip a private jet tax avoidance provision from the pending air traffic safety legislation, the ALERT Act," the authors argued.
The report also calls for:
- Stopping another pending private jet tax break;
- Repealing accelerated bonus depreciation of private jet purchases and passing the End Subsidies for Private Jets Act;
- Increasing taxes on private jet fuel;
- Rolling back secrecy provisions; and
- Ending funding and construction of new private jet infrastructure.
“Since we first released our analysis on the costs of private jet travel to taxpayers and the planet in 2023, we’ve seen a shocking and irresponsible rise in the use of private jet travel,” Ocampo said in a statement.
“Unfortunately, the private jet lobby has worked hard to lower the tax obligations of the ultrawealthy," he added. "Meanwhile, the aviation industry pushes false solutions on the climate crisis. It’s time to stop making taxpayers subsidize luxury private jet travel and use our resources to green other industries.”
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'We Are Spending Our Reserves,' WMO Chief Warns as UN Drops Global Water Report
"The buffers that have historically protected water security—snow, ice, groundwater—are eroding in many regions on a timescale of years, not overnight," the agency leader said, stressing "a sense of urgency, not panic."
Sep 17, 2026
The world's water cycle "has become more erratic and unpredictable," and recent trends have "serious implications for people and economies in the future," the United Nations' weather agency said Thursday, announcing the release of its annual report on one of the planet's most important natural resources.
Speaking at the launch of the "State of Global Water Resources 2025," World Meteorological Organization (WMO) Secretary-General Celeste Saulo explained that "some parts of this cycle—such as precipitation, river flow, soil moisture—are fast. They respond to weather within hours, days, weeks. Others, like groundwater and glaciers, are slow. They accumulate or decline over seasons to decades or longer."
"Traditionally, these slow reserves have acted as the planet's savings account: a buffer that absorbs bad years so that a single drought or a single dry season does not translate directly into a water crisis," she continued. "One of the central stories of the 2025 report is what is happening to that savings account. And the simple answer is that we are depleting it. We are spending our reserves."
According to the WMO's new report, terrestrial water storage—or the total stored in groundwater, lakes, rivers, soil moisture, vegetation, ice, and snow—has been falling since the mid-2010s. Saulo stressed that "this is not a single bad year, but it is a persistent, decadelong signal."
The agency also found that 2025 was among the driest years for river discharge worldwide in more than three decades, with below-normal flows over a third of the global basin area—and for the seventh straight year in a row, the number of river basins with "normal" conditions was in the minority.
Last year was also the fourth straight to feature widespread glacier loss across all regions. The WMO noted that the losses from 2023-25 could fill about 560 million Olympic-sized swimming pools—or about a third of annual freshwater withdrawals.
The report also "shows that water-related extreme events continue to devastate communities and economies," Saulo noted, highlighting the Early Warnings for All Initiative. "Over the past five years, Asia and Africa have accounted for at least half of all reported hydrological extreme events and more than 80% of associated deaths. And precisely these regions often lack the observations necessary for forecasts and early warnings."
Her comments came a day after the death toll from the flooding disaster in Tibet and Nepal topped 1,400. Experts have emphasized that tragedy's connection to the fossil fuel-driven climate crisis, with University of Pennsylvania professor Michael Mann writing that the "glacial collapse and deluge... was not a freak weather event; it was the structural failure of a mountain itself, nature's latest commentary on the deadly consequences of human-caused planetary warming."
That warming has also intensified the naturally occurring warm phase of a key pattern in the Pacific Ocean called El Niño, according to a study published last month. The WMO chief warned in her Wednesday remarks that "the strengthening El Niño will increase the extremes—drought in some countries and floods in others."
The agency's latest forecast, also released Wednesday, anticipates an "exceptionally high likelihood of nearly 100%" that the warm phase will persist through to February 2027. UN Secretary-General António Guterres said that "El Niño is being supersized before our eyes. The science leaves no room for doubt: The planet is in uncharted waters, and those waters are heating up."
Only when the last glacier has melted and the last reservoir has dried up will you realize that you can't drink gasoline…#climatecrisis#climatecollapse
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— Jürgen Döschner (@jdoeschner.bsky.social) September 17, 2026 at 4:01 PM
While the related releases generated calls for action, Saulo said that "it is not all bad news. Some regions showed improvement in 2025," pointing out that "parts of South America saw a partial recovery in water storage during 2025 after a severe multiyear deficit," while "Central and Southern Africa maintained much-above-normal water levels across several major lakes."
Still, action is needed. As Saulo put it: "The State of Global Water Resources report calls for a sense of urgency, not panic. The buffers that have historically protected water security—snow, ice, groundwater—are eroding in many regions on a timescale of years, not overnight. We have a genuine window for action: expanding early warning coverage; investing in the hydrological monitoring infrastructure; and opting for water management policies to address both water supply and use/overuse."
"My concluding message is that this report exists because members share their data and their science," she said. "This level of understanding—global, standardized, comparable year to year—did not exist a decade ago. It is the product of sustained international cooperation under WMO's mandate. And my last call is for all of you to continue to invest in it."
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'Perpetual Villainy': Trump Admin Preps Yet Another Attack on Endangered Species
"What the administration is proposing to do is take all of the force out of what we have all understood the act to mean: Don't kill endangered species."
Sep 16, 2026
"Hmmmm.... I've done a lot of horrible things lately. What is another evil, cruel, nonsensical idea? Ya know, one that would have irreversible generational consequences?"
That's how University of Alberta professor Timothy Caulfield responded to The New York Times' Wednesday reporting that President Donald Trump's administration "is quietly moving to strip a core protection" of the Endangered Species Act (ESA), according to an internal memo obtained by the newspaper.
Signed by US Fish and Wildlife Service Director Brian Nesvik, the memo interprets the law to mean that only the intentional killing or wounding of a protected species is illegal. The Times explained that excluding accidental acts "would be a seismic shift," because "the killing of endangered animals almost always happens incidentally, in the course of economic activity."
The memo is dated September 14—the same day that another Trump administration attack on the ESA took effect. That legally contested earlier policy rescinds the regulatory definition of "harm" under the 1973 law so that extractive industries can degrade crucial habitats. When the move was announced in July, critics called it "a death knell for America’s wildlife."
The effort revealed by the Times goes even further. Andrew Mergen, a Harvard University law professor who previously supervised ESA litigation at the US Department of Justice, told the paper that "this is really an assault on the act like we've never seen before."
"What the administration is proposing to do is take all of the force out of what we have all understood the act to mean: Don't kill endangered species," he said. "What they seem to be saying in this document is, it doesn't matter if you killed an endangered species if you didn't mean to."
Brett Hartl, government affairs director at the Center for Biological Diversity, said in a statement that "this stabs at the very heart of the Endangered Species Act by giving federal approval to the killing of some of America's most beloved wildlife... The Trump administration is desperate to annihilate environmental protections, but this incredibly radical measure is both cruel and profoundly unlawful. Killing endangered wildlife is illegal, whether that's your purpose or not."
"If you chop down a tree full of endangered birds or race a huge ship through a pod of endangered whales, you should be held accountable for your destructive acts," Hartl added. "But this administration wants to give wildlife killers a 'Get out of jail free' card. Imposing new limitations on the entire definition of take is a flagrant and illegal attempt to rewrite the Endangered Species Act via unilateral fiat. This would drive imperiled species over the cliff to extinction."
Other opponents of the plan called it "pure evil," and blasted the "perpetual villainy" of Trump's second administration—which has continued an assault on the landmark law launched during the Republican's first presidential term. All of his previous attacks on the ESA have faced resistance from conservation organizations and many members of Congress.
The rule on harm has sparked not only legal challenges from advocacy groups and state attorneys general, but also legislative pushback. In late July, US Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.) and Mike Quigley (D-Ill.), co-chairs of the Congressional Animal Protection Caucus, introduced the Safeguarding Endangered Species Act, to nullify the policy.
Then, last month, Democratic US Sens. Adam Schiff (Calif.) and Sheldon Whitehouse (RI) introduced a Congressional Review Act resolution that, if passed, would repeal the policy. As the rule took effect on Monday, a Schiff spokesperson told CNN that "the senators will look to force a vote in the coming weeks."
This article has been updated with comment for the Center for Biological Diversity.
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124 Land Defenders Killed in 2025 Amid Trump-Driven Lawlessness and Aid Cuts
"When foreign aid retreats, Indigenous peoples and small-scale farmers can be left with fewer resources and less support as they defend the forests, rivers, and other ecosystems that sustain their communities and help keep the global climate stable,” one campaigner said.
Sep 16, 2026
A total of 124 people were killed defending the environment in 2025, according to a Global Witness report released Wednesday, as the global rise of authoritarianism and a dramatic decline in foreign aid makes the lives and work of environmental and humans rights advocates more challenging.
The report singles out the administration of US President Donald Trump—which dismantled the US Agency for International Development, delayed paying other United Nations fees, and has shown a broader disregard for international humans rights norms and the institutions that uphold them—for worsening the global climate for defenders. In 2025, total development aid plummeted by a record 23%, depleting the resources available to local communities and the organizations that support them.
“The effects of these budget cuts are not abstract," Juliana Vélez Echeverri, a senior campaigner at Global Witness, said in a statement. “In Colombia, projects working to promote and protect human rights and support defenders have been hit by the sudden drop in foreign aid, particularly from the US. When foreign aid retreats, Indigenous peoples and small-scale farmers can be left with fewer resources and less support as they defend the forests, rivers, and other ecosystems that sustain their communities and help keep the global climate stable.”
"We can’t prevent climate change when they kill those who protect the environment."
Colombia was the deadliest country for land defenders for the fourth year in a row with 39 killings, followed by Brazil with 26, and Honduras and the Philippines with 12 each. As the site of 85% of the killings, Latin America was the deadliest region, as it has been since Global Witness began counting the killings of environmental defenders in 2012. Indigenous people remain especially vulnerable to violence, as over three-quarters of the people killed in 2025 were either Indigenous, Afro-descendant, or small-scale farmers.
"For Indigenous peoples, land is life," said Joan Carling, executive director of Indigenous Peoples’ Rights International, in the report foreword. "Any threat to our lands, territories, and resources is a threat to our very existence—our cultures, our identities, our dignity, and our future generations. That is why our communities were willing to risk everything to protect them."
Seven of the Indigenous people killed in 2025 were members of Indigenous guards established to patrol and protect their territories from illegal encroachment. For example, the Indigenous Guard of the Kakataibo People of Peru was formed in 2022 to protect their rainforest home from illegal cocoa growing and logging.
“Defending our territory is important to us as a community and as a people, and we’re proud to support the climate that we all depend on," said Segundo Ispón, commander of Peru’s Kakataibo Indigenous Guard, in a statement. "In our culture, the work of defending our resources and territory is taught from an early age. But for this next generation coming up, the work is more dangerous than ever.”
The experience of the Kakataibo reflects another growing trend that endangers defenders: the rise of organized crime amid weakening state authority to oppose it. More than one-third of killings in 2025 were linked to organized crime or hitmen. And more than half of the killings were due to land disputes, "demonstrating how authorities’ failure to resolve competing land claims or demarcate territory paves the way for attacks on defenders and their communities," the report authors said.
As Ispón said in the report: “There is inaction from the state, inaction from the authorities. Faced with that, what do we do? We protect ourselves. We take care of each other.”
Yet the rise in lawlessness goes hand in hand with a rise in government repression against activists, making it difficult to get accurate information about the numbers of defenders killed. While the 124 figure is lower than the 142 killed in 2024 or the 196 killed in 2023, the report authors noted that "these figures are likely a significant underestimate, as many cases go unreported.
They added: "This is typical of situations involving serious armed conflict and genocide, where generalized insecurity and mass killings make identifying and verifying individual cases difficult. Research is also challenging in repressive contexts where victims and civil society groups face reprisals for reporting and documenting abuses."
Indeed, civic freedom tracker CIVICUS Monitor considers 10 of the 15 countries in which deaths were reported to be repressed.
Furthermore, the number killed does not reflect other forms of harassment and repression, such as the criminalization or weaponization of social media against activists, both of which are common in Asia.
The report comes as the state of the global environment is ever more dire, with the United Nations warning the planet is now on a path to overshoot the 1.5°C Paris Agreement goal even as the US, the No. 1 historical emitter, has jettisoned all attempts at climate policy under Trump.
"We can’t prevent climate change when they kill those who protect the environment," Amnesty Norway policy adviser Frank Conde Tangberg wrote on social media in response to the report.
The Indigenous and local voices being violently silenced could have a lot to teach global leaders at a crucial moment, if only they would listen.
As Carling wrote:
In today’s world, that ancestral knowledge is vindicated every day. From sustainable agriculture to climate-resilient water management, Indigenous peoples’ customs offer effective climate solutions.
But the climate crisis is testing our capacity to adapt to the natural world. It is too drastic, too vast in scale. Rather than try to respond to this emergency on our own, we want to contribute to collective global efforts.
Instead of being listened to, however, Indigenous peoples are being excluded from major decision-making spaces. As a result, the very projects touted as solutions—renewable energy, transition minerals—drive land grabs, dispossession, and violence. We call this “green colonialism.”
After land grabs, mining was the industry linked to the most deaths in 2025, followed by logging and agribusiness.
Yet another way forward is still possible. As Carling concluded: "Indigenous peoples and our knowledge must be at the heart of climate decision-making. Our role as custodians of land, our understanding of the consequences of climate breakdown, and our collective resistance to dispossession must have an influence on policy at the centre of power."
"But this can only happen when our territories are secure and our people protected from harm," she said. "States and leaders must work with us firstly to ensure that our communities are safe—and then to tackle the environmental crises that pose an existential threat to us all."
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Antarctic, Greenland Sheets Have Melted Enough Since the '70s to Cover US in 5 Feet of Ice
"With every additional centimeter of sea-level rise," the lead author noted, "about 2 to 3 million people are put at risk of annual coastal flooding."
Sep 16, 2026
Following fresh warnings from scientists about governments not doing nearly enough to cut fossil fuel pollution and what that could mean for the warming planet, an international team of experts on Wednesday published "the most complete picture of ice loss from Greenland and Antarctica to date."
The polar scientists compared and combined 42 independent estimates derived from satellite observations for Earth's two main ice sheets to determine their gains and losses from 1972 in Greenland and 1979 in Antarctica until 2023—then released their findings in the journal Scientific Data.
The Ice Sheet Mass Balance Inter-comparison Exercise (IMBIE) team found a collective loss of about 11.3 trillion metric tons, or 12.5 trillion US tons.
Inès Otosaka, the professor from England's Northumbria University who led the study, told Reuters that "to put this very large number into context, 11.3 trillion tons of ice is enough ice to fill in a cube that would be 23 kilometers (14.3 miles) in height."
The Associated Press pointed out that it is also "enough frozen water to stack ice 5 feet (1.5 meters) deep across the continental United States."
The ice loss led to around 3.1 centimeters, or 1.2 inches, of global sea-level rise. Study co-author, IMBIE founder, and Northumbria professor Andrew Shepherd said in a statement that the figure "may sound small, but that puts another 6 to 9 million people at risk of coastal flooding and erosion."
The study stresses that "since the 1990s, the pace of ice loss from the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets has accelerated, contributing to the increase in global mean sea-level rise, with the ice sheets now representing almost a quarter of global sea-level rise."
"Our dataset shows that Antarctic mass loss continues to be dominated by ice discharge from West Antarctica," the scientists explained, "rising in every decade of our record," from 29 billion metric tons per year in the 1980s to 163 billion in the 2010s. Across the ice sheet, that rate rose from 48 metric tons in the 1980s to 202 billion in the 2010s. The team estimated that during the study period, Antarctica lost a total of 4.78 trillion metric tons.
"Greenland was close to a state of balance in the 1970s but started to lose mass in the following decades," they explained. While the ice sheet lost about 60 billion metric tons annually in the 1980s and 57 billion in the 1990s, "losses then accelerated, reaching a rate three times higher in the 2000s," at 192 billion metric tons, and climbing to 264 billion in the 2010s. Overall, Greenland lost 6,215 trillion metric tons of ice from 1972 to 2023.
TK said that "by reaching back to the 1970s, we can now see how the ice sheets have changed across half a century. More than four-fifths of the ice lost was discharged into the ocean by faster-flowing glaciers, rather than melted at the surface—which tells us the long-term trend is being driven by the dynamic response of the ice sheets to a warming ocean."
International scientists have previously found that the ocean stores an estimated 91% of the heat from excess greenhouse gases, and the rate of ocean warming has more than quadrupled over the past four decades, as humanity has largely ignored experts' warnings to urgently phase out fossil fuels.
The new study was released less than two months ahead of the next United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP31) in Türkiye—where recent deadly fires have reignited demands for a swift global transition away from fossil fuels and stronger efforts to prepare vulnerable communities around the world for what UN scientists now warn is an inevitable, but potentially temporary, overshoot of the Paris Agreement's 1.5°C target for temperature rise this century.
Otosaka told Reuters that "when ice sheets melt, they contribute to rising global sea levels. And with every additional centimeter of sea-level rise, about 2 to 3 million people are put at risk of annual coastal flooding."
"These findings have implications for coastal planning," she added, "showing that we urgently need to develop plans for protecting coastal communities around the world from the impact of ice sheet melting."
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Hundreds of Groups and Lawmakers Demand Trump Not Give Private Developer Part of Yosemite
"The federal government should be protecting our national parks, not parceling them out behind closed doors to benefit the wealthy and politically connected," said one campaigner.
Sep 15, 2026
Hundreds of advocacy groups and members of Congress on Tuesday called on President Donald Trump's administration to reject a proposal to hand over part of Yosemite National Park in California to a private developer.
The Washington Sun—formerly known as NOTUS—revealed late last month that federal staffers were under political pressure to keep working on a possible land swap for a quarter-mile strip of the famed park with "a company that, through a web of limited liability companies, is operated by real-estate developer and investment firm Kingsbarn Realty Capital."
California's Democratic US senators, Alex Padilla and Adam Schiff, partnered with two other Democrats from the state, House Natural Resources Committee Ranking Member Jared Huffman and Congressman Jim Costa, to spearhead a Tuesday letter to Trump's interior secretary, Doug Burgum, about the future of the park.
Yosemite "is a cornerstone of the National Park System and is one of California's crown jewels," wrote the bipartisan group of over 150 lawmakers. "We are extremely concerned that the Department of the Interior is considering selling off portions of the park to private development, and we strongly oppose the proposed land transfer."
According to the Sun, the developer owns 83 acres west of the park and wants "to build a short road connecting the property to one of Yosemite's central thoroughfares," providing "the land exceptionally rare private access to a park that is otherwise almost entirely buffered by national forests."
The lawmakers noted similar previous efforts that were blocked in court and argued that "at its core, this proposal appears to provide a private benefit at the expense of land that belongs to all Americans."
"This transaction does not seek to expand public access to Yosemite, improve visitor services, or address transportation deficiencies in park access," they emphasized. "Rather, this land exchange seeks to merely cut down on driving time for a select few on private property. Any decision to relinquish public land to private ownership should be supported by a clear and compelling public benefit, not merely the economic interests of a private party."
"We were alarmed that the Department submitted to Congress a proposal to use money from the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF) authority to facilitate this exchange. That fund exists to acquire and protect public lands for the benefit of the American public—not sell them off to corporate developers," the lawmakers wrote, noting that a Senate subcommittee has not agreed to move forward.
The lawmakers also pointed out that "in response to inquiries from Congress, the department indicated that it has not identified any land to be exchanged for the parcel of Yosemite National Park that the department is seeking to sell to the private developer. This gives further credence to the notion that this exchange is not being done in the public interest, but rather solely to benefit a private developer."
"Public lands belong in public hands. Protection of public lands is a bipartisan issue, overwhelmingly supported by the American people from all walks of life," they concluded. "We oppose any effort to privatize, sell off, give away, or otherwise undermine the continued existence of public lands, in Yosemite or across the country. We ask that you honor congressional objections and abandon this effort to sell off a piece of Yosemite National Park."
Separately on Tuesday, a coalition of over 150 advocacy organizations—led by the Center of Biological Diversity—sent a similar letter to Burgum.
"Trump wants to carve off a chunk of Yosemite so a private equity firm can turn it into a playground for billionaires," said Laiken Jordahl, national public lands advocate at the center. "The federal government should be protecting our national parks, not parceling them out behind closed doors to benefit the wealthy and politically connected. If Yosemite can be chopped apart, no national park in America is safe."
The center was joined by groups including the American River Conservancy, California Environmental Justice Coalition, Greenpeace USA, Public Citizen, Public Lands Conservancy, Save Our Parks, Sierra Club, and Yosemite Rivers Alliance.
The coalition described Yosemite as "sacrosanct—the cradle of American conservation, and the first land the federal government protected purely for its scenic value," and warnd that "ceding national park land to a developer sets a dangerous precedent: America's parks are for sale to whomever has the money and power to take them."
Highlighting that "Kingsbarn CEO Jeff Pori is a donor to Trump's campaign... and the firm is represented by politically connected lawyer Lanny Davis," the groups stressed that "deals like this undercut the public's faith in government."
"In your confirmation hearing," the coalition reminded Burgum, "you said 'we need to support and protect every single inch' of our national parks. Yosemite is invaluable, and no portion of it should end up on Kingsbarn's ledger. We expect you to keep your promise and to abide by your statements to Congress."
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'Actively Malevolent': Trump EPA to Eviscerate Rules on Planet-Heating Pollution From Power Plants
"This is full-throated climate denial while the climate crisis happens in real time and a shocking betrayal of the American public."
Sep 14, 2026
In what environmental advocates describe as "another gift to the fossil fuel industry," the Trump administration plans to end rules limiting the release of planet-heating emissions from power plants that burn coal and gas.
Power plants are considered the largest industrial source of greenhouse gas emissions in the US and account for about a quarter of the nation's climate pollution, according to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
In 2024, the EPA under the Biden administration used the Clean Air Act to require that many new gas plants and existing coal plants reduce their carbon emissions by 90%, including by installing carbon capture technology, by 2032.
The EPA estimated that the rule would reduce the amount of CO2 emissions by about 1.38 billion metric tons over the next two decades, the equivalent of about a year of emissions from the entire US electric power sector.
On Monday, Lee Zeldin, the EPA administrator under President Donald Trump, announced an end to this policy at a meeting of energy ministers at the Group of 20 conference in Houston.
Not only will this prevent the enactment of a policy that the EPA has estimated would prevent around 1,200 premature deaths and 360,000 asthma cases by 2035. But the administration is also rolling out a proposal seeking to prevent future administrations from regulating carbon emissions as a health risk.
It is an effort that runs parallel to the administration's rescission of the 2009 "endangerment finding," which allowed the EPA to regulate vehicle emissions under Section 202 of the Clean Air Act on the grounds that they are harmful to human health. That move is also being challenged in court.
Power plants are regulated under a different section of the Clean Air Act, Section 111, which allows the EPA to regulate facilities that "cause, or contribute significantly to" dangerous air pollution.
But whereas the courts have previously interpreted this statute to regulate the outputs of entire facilities, the Trump administration is asking courts to adopt a novel reading of the statute which says each individual chemical under scrutiny must “contribute significantly” to climate change.
As Meredith Hankins, legal director for climate and energy at the Natural Resources Defense Council, explained in a policy memo last week, it likely won't be easy for the administration to prove that the CO2 emissions from US power plants aren't a significant driver of climate change.
"Power sector emissions account for a quarter of total US emissions, so if they cannot be counted as significant, it’s hard to conceive of any emissions that would," Hankins wrote. "In fact, if the US power sector were a nation, it would be the world’s fifth-largest emitter after China, the United States, India, and Russia. That’s a pretty 'significant contribution' to the problem."
The effort to gut power plant regulations comes after the hottest meteorological summer recorded in US history and amid a year with one of the largest numbers of climate disasters on record, including widespread drought, destructive wildfires, and repeated flooding and tornado outbreaks.
As the planet has warmed over the last half-century, the US has seen a sharp, near-sevenfold increase in weather disasters costing over $1 billion, according to data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
“While wildfires rage, floods devastate communities, and families struggle to afford skyrocketing electricity bills and insurance premiums, the Trump administration is handing the fossil fuel industry a license to keep polluting," said Holly Bender, chief program officer for the Sierra Club, following news of the EPA's rollback of power plant rules. "This is full-throated climate denial while the climate crisis happens in real time and a shocking betrayal of the American public."
She added that "the Sierra Club will fight back against this reckless and dangerous proposal with everything we have in the courts, in Congress, and in communities across the country.”
If successful, the reversal of the power plant rules would be one of the most significant steps in Zeldin's push to eviscerate the EPA's authority to combat climate change on behalf of the fossil fuel industry. Earlier this summer, during a meeting of the National Coal Council, he bragged that "many of the items" on the industry's "wish list are now done."
He has put the wheels in motion to roll back virtually every Biden-era regulation on the coal industry, including rules limiting pollution from mercury and toxic metals, controls on toxic wastewater from coal plants, and limits on coal ash.
And while seeking to undermine the legal basis to regulate greenhouse gases, Zeldin's EPA has also taken a sledgehammer to its practical ability to do so, dismantling offices that collect climate data, erasing information about human-caused climate change from the agency's websites, and filling research panels with scientists employed by the fossil fuel industry.
Former State Department energy official Alan Eyre noted that on the world stage, the US "has always been obstructionist" when it comes to climate policy. Under Trump, he said, "we're actively malevolent."
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Federal Appellate Court Kills Trump Bid to Keep 'Old, Expensive, and Dirty' Coal Plant Open
"Preventing the market-driven retirements of coal plants to advance a coal-friendly agenda is not a proper use of emergency powers," said one lawyer.
Sep 11, 2026
Climate defenders celebrated on Friday after a federal appellate court rejected the US Department of Energy's abuse of emergency powers to keep a Michigan coal plant open, part of President Donald Trump's broader push to boost the climate-wrecking industry.
"The court rejected the Trump administration's nationwide push forcing unreliable, aging coal plants that are bleeding money and polluting communities to stay online," said Ted Kelly, director and lead counsel for US clean energy at the Environmental Defense Fund—which was among the advocacy groups that joined Michigan, Minnesota, and Illinois in challenging the DOE's abuse of Section 202(c) of the Federal Power Act to keep the JH Campbell Generating Plant running.
"The Department of Energy's unlawful actions attempted to make families and businesses in the Midwest wastefully pay hundreds of millions of dollars for a coal plant that should have been shut down over a year ago," said Kelly. "That's why these aging coal plants are scheduled to retire in the first place—they are incredibly expensive, dangerous to our health, and break down frequently."
The Campbell plant was scheduled to retire on May 31, 2025, after over six decades of operation. As the opinion from the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia notes, Consumers Energy "worked for several years to develop plans and secure regulatory approval to retire the old Campbell plant and replace it with a mix of expanded and new electricity-generation sources."
While Michigan officials approved the company's retirement plan for the facility, Trump's DOE intervened, forcing not only that plant but six others across the country to remain open—collectively costing Americans over $547 million, according to a live tracker from the Sierra Club, which has challenged all of the department's coal plant orders.
The three-judge appellate panel unanimously vacated the department's order on Friday, writing that "our reading of the text, structure, and history leaves us unpersuaded by DOE's sweeping conception of its 'emergency' authority under Section 202(c)."
The Associated Press reported that while the DOE didn't respond to a request for comment, Consumers Energy spokesperson Brian Wheeler said the plant operator was reviewing the court ruling and, in the meantime, will keep the facility operating through mid-November.
In a statement to Bridge Michigan, DOE spokesperson Emily Mathews claimed the emergency orders prevented blackouts and "likely saved hundreds of lives," without offering evidence. She did not confirm plans for an appeal but did say that the department "will continue to protect and defend energy security for all Americans."
Consumers Energy spokesperson Katie Carey told the outlet that the company "is reviewing today's court ruling," and "while that happens, we are continuing to comply with the current 90-day Department of Energy order." Still, those who fought against the administration's policy welcomed their legal victory.
"By forcing its continued operation, DOE tried a never-before-used tactic to illegally prop up the aging JH Campbell coal plant that nobody asked to keep, sticking ratepayers with a bill for a facility that should have been retired more than a year ago," said Democratic Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel in a statement.
"I am relieved that the court saw through this facade and threw out DOE's order that had zero basis in reality," she continued. "My office has been fighting this unlawful political stunt at every turn, and this ruling proves what we have been saying all along: This administration does not get to invent fake emergencies to bypass the rule of law against the best interests of Michigan residents. We remain committed to fighting these nonsensical orders and protecting our ratepayers."
Derrell Slaughter, the Natural Resources Defense Council's Michigan policy director for climate and energy, declared that "Michiganders shouldn't have been saddled with artificially high energy bills or forced to deal with toxic air pollution over a fabricated 'emergency.' The Campbell coal plant is out of date, costs more to operate than other electricity generation options, and is one of the worst polluters in the state."
While applauding the decision as "a victory for families across the Midwest who are tired of paying to keep this old, expensive, and dirty power plant online," Sierra Club chief appellate counsel Sanjay Narayan stressed that "instead of working to lower costs and clean up our air and water, the Trump administration has been pulling out all the stops to try to bolster dirty and expensive fossil fuels—at public expense."
"This reckless agenda will not succeed," the attorney pledged. "We will continue to hold the Department of Energy accountable to the law, and ensure that the JH Campbell plant finally retires as it was scheduled to, and we will continue to fight back against the other illegal extensions across the country."
Earthjustice attorney Michael Lenoff also cheered the court's rebuke of the "Trump administration's abuse of emergency powers" and vowed to "continue to challenge unlawful orders if DOE persists in issuing them."
"The DOE needs to stay in its lane and use its emergency powers only in actual emergencies," he said. "Preventing the market-driven retirements of coal plants to advance a coal-friendly agenda is not a proper use of emergency powers."
Tyson Slocum, director of Public Citizen's Energy Program, noted that two years ago, his consumer advocacy organization "predicted Trump would try to force household consumers to pay higher utility bills to prop up uneconomic coal power plants, and we proudly joined with other public interest groups in June 2025 to challenge his bogus emergency declaration for the Campbell coal power plant."
"But Americans have already been forced to shell out half a billion dollars for Trump's obscene coal bailout vanity project," he emphasized, pledging to "explore all options to force" the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission "to refund consumers for this Trump boondoggle."
The appellate court's ruling came on the heels of data released this week showing that 2026 had the warmest August and meteorological summer on record in the contiguous United States, and globally, last month was the hottest ever recorded, tied with July 2023.
Despite such records, and scientists' persistent warnings, Trump has repeatedly delivered on his campaign promises to serve the fossil fuel industry, from declaring a national energy emergency and waging a war on renewable power projects to ditching the Paris Agreement, again, and signing executive orders on coal denounced as "reckless" and "breathlessly stupid."
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Trump EPA Accused of Endangering Public as Study Highlights 'Hidden Health Costs' of Data Centers
The Environmental Protection Network listed actions "that could increase pollution-related health risks, weaken protections that would otherwise reduce those risks, or shift more costs onto families and communities."
Sep 10, 2026
As President Donald Trump claims that US communities fighting against artificial intelligence data centers are promoting "poverty, crime, and squalor," a Thursday report details how his administration "is weakening or proposing to weaken pollution and permitting safeguards" for such facilities, to the detriment of public health.
The Environmental Protection Agency's "mission is to protect human health and the environment," notes the new report. "Yet Administrator Lee Zeldin has made turning the United States into the 'AI capital of the world' a pillar of EPA's work."
"The Hidden Health Costs of AI Data Centers"—from the Environmental Protection Network (EPN), which is made up of hundreds of former EPA staffers—documents "at least 30 federal actions since January 2025 that could increase pollution-related health risks, weaken protections that would otherwise reduce those risks, or shift more costs onto families and communities."
As the document details: "17 of the 30 explicitly cite or target AI or data centers in the action itself or in an agency statement specifically describing or justifying that action. The remaining 13 affect how data centers are powered, what pollution safeguards apply, how projects are approved, or how federal requirements are enforced."
The report points to the EPA policy that "made it easier for some long-idled facilities to restart without triggering the major air-permitting requirements," as well as its proposed elimination of federal carbon pollution standards for fossil-fueled power plants and some outstanding state clean-air requirements for areas that failed to meet ozone standards.
The publication also notes the EPA's extended deadlines for several coal-plant wastewater requirements, newly regulated coal-ash units, the 2024 oil and gas standards, and for states to submit plans to reduce visibility-impairing pollution. The agency further interpreted a policy on nonemergency backup generator use that it framed as a move supporting AI and data centers.
It's not just the EPA. The US Department of Energy "authorized grid use of backup generation at data centers and other major facilities during emergencies," the report explains, while the Army Corps of Engineers "expressly named data centers as examples of commercial development covered by" a streamlined water permit.
The race for AI data center growth shouldn’t mean weaker safeguards on pollution. Former EPA official Walter Mugdan explains why strong enforcement matters when families’ health is at risk.What’s being weakened? Read the full report at the link in the comments.
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— Environmental Protection Network (@enviroprotnet.bsky.social) September 10, 2026 at 4:39 PM
"No study has yet calculated the combined health effects of these actions, but the direction is clear," the report says. It cites a study from this year that estimates air pollution related to data centers "could impose roughly $11.7 billion to $20.9 billion in annual public health costs by 2028," and "contribute to roughly 600,000 asthma symptom cases and 1,300 premature deaths."
Dan Costa, who spent about 35 years at EPA studying the impact of air pollution on human health and led its national research program on air quality, climate, and energy, said that "the existing health study gives us a picture of the potential health burden under particular data-center growth and emissions scenarios."
"But it does not estimate the additional health effects of the 30 federal policy actions EPN documents," he stressed. "That is the analysis EPA should be doing now: Measuring what these sources actually emit, modeling both local and regional air-quality effects, and translating those changes into health impacts."
In addition to laying out the Trump policies and their risks, the publication highlights how his agenda on AI data centers conflicts with voters' wishes. An April poll conducted by YouGov for EPN found that:
- Just 16% of US voters support making the United States the "AI capital of the world" an EPA priority;
- 69% of voters are highly concerned about fast-tracking data centers without usual safeguards;
- 85% of voters say Trump should be tougher on corporations that violate environmental laws; and
- by an 8-1 margin, voters say the EPA should prioritize people's health over reducing pollution regulations.
"You would think a build-out of this magnitude would mean more vigilance from EPA: stronger safeguards to make sure companies control their pollution, more science to understand what this scale will bring, and more monitoring," said Dr. Lynn Goldman, a pediatrician and former EPA assistant administrator. "Instead, EPA and other federal agencies are doing the opposite."
The EPN report was published amid mounting calls for Congress to rein in artificial intelligence development in the wake of Jacob Coxon, a researcher at Anthropic who previously worked at OpenAI, quitting, and spotlighting fears within the industry that the rapidly advancing technology "could kill us all by the end of the decade."
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas) have introduced legislation that would permanently ban the development of "superintelligent" AI until a federal body is created to regulate it—and, according to polling results published on Wednesday by Data for Progress, 68% of likely voters in the United States support that proposal.
Sanders has also partnered with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, (D-NY) for the Artificial Intelligence Data Center Moratorium Act, which would pause construction on the facilities "until strong national safeguards are in place to protect workers, consumers, and communities, defend privacy and civil rights, and ensure these technologies do not harm our environment."
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'A Wake-Up Call': Scientists Behind Study on Climate Feedback Loops Demand Global Action
"This research makes clear that the Earth and climate system doesn't stand still while we debate policy," said a co-author of the new paper.
Sep 10, 2026
On the heels of the United States setting new summer heat records and United Nations scientists warning that at least a temporary overshoot of the Paris Agreement's 1.5°C target can no longer be avoided, researchers on Thursday published an alarming new study on climate feedback loops.
For years, experts have feared that humanity's continued reliance on fossil fuels that heat the Earth could lead to several "positive" feedback loops—or changes to natural systems that amplify global warming. The scientists behind the new paper in the journal Environmental Research focused on carbon dioxide and methane emissions from inland freshwaters, permafrost thaw, wetlands, and wildfires.
"Continued warming from greenhouse gases emitted from human activities threatens to feed further warming as permafrost, wetlands, and wildfires destabilize and respond by releasing carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide," said co-author Ben Poulter, warming-induced emissions program director at Spark Climate Solutions, in a statement.
"This study provides a critical look at the magnitude of the temperature response," he explained, "and a call to action to accelerate the accounting and monitoring of warming-induced emissions to support pathways that phase out fossil emissions to stabilize the planet's climate."
Lead author and Spark research scientist Sam Abernethy noted that "what surprised us was the size of the feedback."
"We found that natural systems could amplify global warming by 20-30%," he said. In other words, these natural systems could add an estimated 0.2-0.4ºC of warming this century to any temperature rise tied to human activity.
"This hidden multiplier is missing from the models guiding climate policy, so those models are likely underestimating how much warming is coming—and overestimating how much carbon we can still afford to emit," Abernethy added.
Permafrost is ground that remains fully frozen for at least two consecutive years, and the scientists who study it "have long warned that thawing soils would become a significant emissions source as the planet warms," said co-author Christina Schädel, senior research scientist at the Woodwell Climate Research Center.
"This paper shows that permafrost thaw accounts for half of the anticipated warming-induced emissions," she pointed out. "Warming-induced emissions are already in motion, and they scale with every fraction of a degree. Every little bit of warming we can avert today matters for what the climate looks like in the long term."
Co-author Robert Jackson, a Stanford University professor and chair of the Global Carbon Project, similarly stressed that "the results are a wake-up call, and it's imperative that they be included in the next generation of climate policies. Failure to do so will make meeting the world's climate goals less and less likely."
The paper's publication came just two months away from the next United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP31) in Türkiye, where firefighters are currently battling deadly blazes that have fueled calls for the country's government to fight for rapidly phasing out coal, gas, and oil on a global scale.
"This research makes clear that the Earth and climate system doesn't stand still while we debate policy," said Brian Buma, a co-author of the new study and senior climate scientist at Environmental Defense Fund.
"Emissions from permafrost, wetlands, and wildfire could meaningfully erode our remaining time to warming thresholds—and they are unaccounted for in most scenarios," Buma reiterated. "This means rapid fossil fuel emissions reductions are even more urgent than current projections suggest."
"The good news," he added, "is that it's in our hands—lower emissions now limit how severe these feedbacks become."
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'Deaths Will Continue to Mount,' Scientist Warns After August and Summer 2026 Set US Heat Records
"It's unconscionable that the federal government is putting specific industry interests, including fossil fuel companies’ profits, ahead of people’s health and safety."
Sep 09, 2026
Under US President Donald Trump's predecessor, government scientists used the release of data about record-breaking temperatures to warn that "we are facing a climate crisis," but with the Republican climate denier back in the White House, that commentary now comes from outside experts.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) announced Wednesday that 2026 had the warmest August ever recorded in the contiguous United States. Following a July that broke a Dust Bowl record, August averaged 75.6°F—which was 3.5°F above the 20th-century average—with daytime maximum temperatures averaging 88.6°F.
This year also featured the hottest meteorological summer—June to August—in the 132-year record, with an average temperature of 74.4°F, or 3°F above average, according to NOAA. As CNN reported, "The Dust Bowl summer of 1936 has... long been regarded as the benchmark of hottest summers in the US, but has now been equaled or eclipsed twice in the past five years thanks to the influence of human-caused climate change," both in 2026 and 2021.
Andrew Dessler, a climate scientist at Texas A&M University, told Agence France-Presse that "it is now time to stop acting surprised that our warming planet keeps getting warmer."
"This is occurring exactly as forecast by scientists literally decades ago," he stressed. "The interesting question is not whether we will keep breaking heat records (we will), but whether we're going to do anything about it or just stand there while the climate train runs us over."
NOAA said that "record-breaking warmth was widespread across the West, Southwest, southern Rockies, and southwestern Plains, as well as the southern Florida Peninsula. California, Nevada, New Mexico, and Colorado each set records for their warmest August average temperature. California and New Mexico also recorded their warmest average daytime maximum temperatures on record, while average nighttime minimum temperatures were record warm in California, Nevada, Arizona, Utah, New Mexico, and Colorado."
Beyond the Lower 48, "Alaska's average temperature during August was 52.4°F, 2.9°F above the 1925-2000 average, ranking in the warmest third of the 102-year record. Alaska's June-August average temperature was 51.6°F, 1.1°F above average and ranking in the warmest third of the record," the agency detailed.
"Hawaii's average temperature during August was 70.8°F, 1.4°F above the 1991-2020 average, ranking as the third-warmest August in the 36-year record," the agency added. "Hawaii's June-August average temperature was 69.4°F, 0.8°F above average and ranking in the warmest third of the record. Hawaii's average temperature during August was 70.8°F, 1.4°F above the 1991-2020 average."
Marc Alessi, a climate scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists, said in a statement that "we now live in a completely different climate than the one that existed 50 years ago. Heat records were shattered in all parts of the globe this summer, from the United States to Europe to Asia."
Alessi pointed to El Niño, the warm phase of a key pattern in the Pacific Ocean. Recent research suggests fossil fuel-driven global heating has intensified El Niños, and experts have said that the currently developing event "may be stronger than anything since our monitoring began" and make 2027 the hottest year humanity has ever endured.
"While the developing super El Niño undoubtedly impacted the summer's global temperature and heat records, we must recognize that this El Niño is occurring on top of a changed climate from the burning of fossil fuels," Alessi said. "In other words, we can expect record-breaking summers for generations to come if nations fail to sharply curtail heat-trapping emissions."
"What's equally clear is that policymakers—especially in richer, high-emitting countries like the United States—must act urgently to limit climate change impacts and hold the fossil fuel industry accountable for its role in the crisis," he continued. "Extreme heat and back-to-back heatwaves have taken a deadly toll this summer in the United States and across the world. Without action to reduce global warming emissions and invest in climate resilience measures, heat-related illnesses and deaths will continue to mount."
Despite the threats currently posed by the global crisis, and expectations that they will only get worse as the world blows past the Paris Agreement's goal of limiting temperature rise this century to 1.5°C above preindustrial levels, "the Trump administration has attacked and dismantled policies to limit heat-trapping emissions and to prepare for climate disasters," Alessi noted.
After openly courting Big Oil on the campaign trail, Trump has served fossil fuel industry interests in a range of ways since returning to the White House last year, including by declaring a national energy emergency, waging a war on renewable power projects, and ditching the Paris Agreement, again.
"Failure of the administration and Congress to act has also left workers exposed to killer heat without comprehensive, enforceable heat-health protections," Alessi said. "It's unconscionable that the federal government is putting specific industry interests, including fossil fuel companies' profits, ahead of people's health and safety."
NOAA's new data was released less than two months away from the midterm elections—which which Democrats hope to win back majorities in Congress from Trump's Republican Party—and as firefighters in Türkiye, host of the next United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP31), battled deadly blazes.
"It is not enough merely to respond to the consequences of the climate crisis. We must eliminate the causes that exacerbate it," Efe Baysal, Türkiye manager at the global advocacy group 350.org, said Wednesday, calling for a phaseout of fossil fuels. "COP31 is an opportunity for Türkiye to demonstrate true leadership in this direction."
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