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greenhouse gas emissions
As Another Oil-Fueled War Erupts, Study Reveals Planet Heating at Unprecedented Rate
The findings mean global temperatures are on track to surpass 1.5°C above preindustrial levels before 2030.
Mar 06, 2026
Nearly a week into President Donald Trump's illegal war on Iran that is likely to increase climate-warming emissions, new research has found that the pace of human-caused global heating has accelerated over the past 10 years.
The study, published in Geophysical Research Letters on Friday, concluded that global heating had nearly doubled from a rate of less than 0.2°C a decade from 1970-2015 to 0.35°C between 2015-25. This would put global temperatures on track to surpass 1.5°C above preindustrial levels before 2030.
"Warming proceeding faster is not unexpected by climate models, but it is a cause of concern and shows how insufficient the efforts to slow and eventually stop global warming under the Paris Climate Accord have so far been," study authors Stefan Rahmstorf and G. Foster wrote.
Scientists had long suspected that global warming was speeding up, given that the past three years were the three hottest on record. Yet previous studies had not been able to find statistically significant evidence of acceleration. The new study removed the natural variability from solar variations, volcanic eruptions, and El Niño from the data, which revealed a statistically significant speedup.
“How quickly the Earth continues to warm ultimately depends on how rapidly we reduce global CO2 emissions from fossil fuels to zero."
It follows a study from 2025 that found a smaller increase of 0.27°C per decade from 2015-24.
“Either way, this represents a significant increase in the rate of warming,” Zeke Hausfather, a climate scientist at Berkeley Earth and a co-author on the earlier study, told The Guardian. “[This] should be worrying as the world hurtles toward crossing 1.5°C later this decade.”
Whatever the rate of increase, the solution, from a scientific perspective, is clear.
“How quickly the Earth continues to warm ultimately depends on how rapidly we reduce global CO2 emissions from fossil fuels to zero,” Rahmstorf, a Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research scientist, told The Guardian.
Yet the findings come at a time when emissions look set only to increase, as the US launches an oil-fueled war on Iran that risks drawing other major military powers into a greater conflict.
"The outbreak of any war is bad news for the climate, just as the election of politicians hostile to climate action is," Mark Hertsgaard, Covering Climate Now executive director and co-founder, and Giles Trendle, former managing director of Al Jazeera English, wrote in a newsletter on Thursday. "The climate implications of this new war are not the center of attention at the moment, but they are essential context for understanding what’s at stake. At a time when civilization is hurtling toward irreversible climate breakdown, to overlook the climate consequences of three of the deadliest militaries on Earth going to war would be journalistic malpractice."
War itself increases greenhouse gas emissions. Studies have found that Russia's invasion of Ukraine emitted as much in its first two years as the annual emissions of the Netherlands, while Israel's genocide in Gaza emitted as much in its first four months as each of the 135 lowest-emitting nations in a year.
The Conflict and Environment Observatory observed 120 incidents of environmental harm during the first three days of the Iran conflict, and noted that attacks on oil and gas infrastructure had global implications:
There are also consequences for the global environment through changes in greenhouse gas emissions. Attacks on oil and gas sites will release methane, carbon dioxide, and other greenhouse gasses, but the curtailment of production—as has occurred with Qatari LNG [liquefied natural gas], oil production in Iraqi Kurdistan, and Israeli offshore gas—does not necessarily reduce emissions. Instead energy price signals can lead to short term substitution, as well as more complex downstream energy supply changes over longer timeframes.
Fossil fuels are also required to power the machinery that makes war possible.
"What’s beyond dispute is that this war could not be fought without oil," Hertsgaard and Trendle wrote. "The aircraft carriers, jet planes, and the myriad support systems they require gobble immense quantities of fossil fuels. Which helps explain why the US Department of Defense is the largest institutional emitter of greenhouse gases globally."
There is also the speculation that control of fossil fuels is one motivation for the war itself, given that Iran has the world's third-largest reserve of oil. While Trump has not included oil in his incoherent word salad of war aims, as he did when he kidnapped Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in January, climate advocate Bill McKibben pointed out that members of US oil industry have said that they would rather develop Iran's oil than Venezuela's, as its industry is more "structurally sound."
"Europe, Asia, and other regions whose energy costs skyrocket because of this reckless escalation by the Trump administration are reminded, yet again, that fossil fuels are volatile, insecure, and expensive."
"The military attacks on Iran are not about peace and democracy, but rather about sowing fear, bloodshed, and despair as the US attempts to further destabilize the region and secure access to profitable natural resources that it wants to control," the Climate Justice Alliance said in a statement. "This is not surprising given recent foreign policy actions taken by the Trump administration in Venezuela and Cuba, and our ongoing history of engaging in coups, occupations, and endless wars to control resource-rich countries, especially for oil and gas."
Yet, at the same time, the war is already offering an object lesson in the dangers of relying on fossil fuels—for everyone except fossil fuel CEOs. The war could disrupt markets such that profits soar for Big Oil and liquefied natural gas companies while ordinary people suddenly find themselves struggling to pay gas or heating bills.
"Iran is in the middle of one of the world’s most important energy corridors," Lorne Stockman, Oil Change International research director, told Common Dreams. "Roughly 20% of global petroleum flows through the Strait of Hormuz, so when military escalation disrupts that route, global energy markets are immediately impacted."
Stockman continued: "That instability means higher energy bills for people around the world while communities in the region suffer the devastation of war. Europe, Asia, and other regions whose energy costs skyrocket because of this reckless escalation by the Trump administration are reminded, yet again, that fossil fuels are volatile, insecure, and expensive. The only question is whether governments will heed that signal and make a fair fossil fuel phase out a priority.”
Chair of the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Tzeporah Berman made a similar point on social media: "Drones hitting Saudi oil fields, Qatar halting LNG production, Iran putting a squeeze on the Strait of Hormuz, and US attack on Iran’s Kharg Island oil terminals—all of it should be a wake-up call that fossil fuel phaseout is a national and energy security priority."
Yet Berman noted that the energy landscape is different today than it has been during previous periods of war.
"Unlike previous oil wars renewable energy is now available at scale," Berman continued. "It's distributed, diversified, and resilient. Most importantly, solar panels don’t blow up and once they are in place you don’t need ships to constantly feed them to make energy. The sun is looking like a pretty stable energy source right about now."
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Warnings of 'Permanent' Damage to People and Planet as Trump EPA Set to Repeal Key Climate Rule
One critic blasted the impending move as "an obvious example of what happens when a corrupt administration and fossil fuel interests are allowed to run amok."
Feb 10, 2026
In what experts warn would be the most sweeping rollback of US climate policy ever, the Trump administration is expected this week to repeal the Environmental Protection Agency's "endangerment finding," the Obama-era rule empowering climate regulation over the past 15 years.
The endangerment finding determined that six greenhouse gases—carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons, and sulfur hexafluoride—caused by burning fossil fuels are a single air pollutant that threatens public health and welfare, rather than treating each gas individually, for regulatory purposes.
The 2009 finding has served as the legal foundation for EPA climate rules, including limits on power plant emissions and automobile fuel economy standards under the Clean Air Act.
The new rule would end the regulatory requirement to measure and report vehicle emissions, certify the results, and comply with limits. It would also repeal compliance programs and credit provisions.
“This amounts to the largest act of deregulation in the history of the United States,” EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said in a Monday interview with the Wall Street Journal.
However, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) warned Tuesday on the upper chamber floor that "this week, the Trump administration is set to take one of its most nakedly corrupt steps since Donald Trump returned to office, and that’s saying a lot: a wholesale reversal of essentially all greenhouse gas regulations."
"Trump is making a radical move that will send shockwaves across the economy—uncertainty for manufacturers, states, regulators everywhere. And it flies in the face, of course, of basic science," Schumer said. "Let's be very clear what this announcement represents: It is a corrupt giveaway to Big Oil, plain and simple."
"Big Oil has worked tirelessly for decades to undermine rules that protect against emissions, and now that they have their guy in the White House, they are taking their biggest swing yet," the senator added. "Remember, in the spring of 2024, Donald Trump invited top oil executives to Mar-a-Lago and told them, if you raise me a billion dollars to get me elected, I will cut regulations so you can make more money. That devil’s bargain is now coming true."
Trump is trying to repeal the "endangerment finding" -- the scientific investigation that led EPA to conclude that climate change is dangerous to humans.It's scientifically unjustifiable of course, but they're going to have to justify it to a court. That should be fun to watch.
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— David Roberts (@volts.wtf) February 10, 2026 at 9:22 AM
Big Oil spent over $445 million to elect Trump and other Republican candidates during the 2024 election cycle.
Gretchen Goldman, president and CEO at the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), a nonprofit advocacy group, said in a statement Tuesday that “Zeldin took a chainsaw to the endangerment finding, undoing this long-standing, science-based finding on bogus grounds at the expense of our health.”
“Ramming through this unlawful, destructive action at the behest of polluters is an obvious example of what happens when a corrupt administration and fossil fuel interests are allowed to run amok,” Goldman added.
More than 1,000 scientists and other experts have implored EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin to not repeal the endangerment finding. In a statement last year, the Environmental Protection Network warned that repealing the finding would result in “tens of thousands of additional premature deaths due to pollution exposure” over the next several decades and spark “accelerated climate destabilization with greater risks of heatwaves, floods, droughts, and disease spread.”
While Trump administration officials told the Journal that the new rules would not apply to regulation of emissions from power plants and oil and gas facilities, some said that repealing the endangerment finding could set the stage for additional rollbacks favoring such polluters.
UCS noted Tuesday that the Trump administration “relied heavily on shoddy science in a report developed by a ‘Climate Working Group,’ composed of five skeptics well outside the scientific mainstream in its proposal to repeal the endangerment finding."
“The report, which was commissioned by the Department of Energy (DOE), has been thoroughly discredited by the scientific community, which found that the report ‘misrepresents the state of climate science by cherry-picking evidence, exaggerating uncertainties, and ignoring decades of peer-reviewed research,’” UCS continued.
On January 30, Judge William Young of the US District Court for the District of Massachusetts, an appointee of former President Ronald Reagan, ruled that the DOE violated the law when Energy Secretary Chris Wright—the former CEO of a fracking company who denies there is a climate emergency—handpicked the five researchers for the dubious report.
Republicans have been working toward killing the endangerment finding for years. Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation-led blueprint for a right-wing overhaul of the federal government, explicitly mentions the rule as ripe for repeal. Project 2025’s policy lead, Russell Vought, now directs Trump’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB).
OMB Acting Administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs Jeffrey Clark—a purveyor of the “Big Lie” that Democrats stole the 2020 election—has also been working hard at dismantling federal climate regulations, which he once likened to a “Leninistic” plot to control the US economy.
“Instead of rising to the challenge with necessary policies to protect people’s well-being, the Trump administration has shamefully abandoned EPA’s mission and caved to the whims of deep-pocketed special interests,” Goldman said. “Sacrificing people’s health, safety, and futures for polluters’ profits is unconscionable. We all deserve better and this attack against the public interest and the best available science will be challenged.”
Climate scientist Michael Mann called the campaign to repeal the endangerment finding “a reminder that, while some of the damage that Trump [and the] GOP are doing might seem temporary, the damage they’re doing to the planet is permanent.”
Or, as Cardiff University ecologist Aaron Thierry put it, “You can repeal an endangerment finding. You can’t repeal the endangerment.”
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The US Isn’t Leading at COP30—But It Is Un-Damming Its Way to Climate Resilience
By removing obsolete dams, the US is reducing greenhouse gas emissions and building climate resilience.
Nov 20, 2025
As delegates huddle in Belém, Brazil for the 30th United Nations Climate Change Conference, or COP30, they are considering how to prevent runaway climate change, and also how to bolster resilience to extreme weather. The United States won’t have much to offer officially—the Trump administration has said it won’t send any high-level delegates. And with President Donald Trump pulling the US out of the Paris Climate Agreement earlier this year, the country is far from a climate leader these days.
But all is not lost. Local level climate work continues in the United States, with accomplishments worth cheering—and replicating. For the last few years, I’ve tracked one of the most overlooked: the removal of harmful and obsolete dams. The United States has been leading the global charge on dam removals. In just the last 25 years nearly 2,000 dams have been blasted and backhoed from our rivers and streams.
Dam removals, like the four-dam effort completed last year on the Klamath River, are often celebrated for helping imperiled fish, like salmon. But they also offer two important benefits for the climate.
The first is reducing emissions. A growing body of scientific research dating back to the 1990s has found that reservoirs from dams can produce greenhouse gas emissions, some on par with thermal power plants. The biggest culprit is methane, a potent greenhouse gas that traps 80 times more heat as carbon dioxide over 20 years. As organic material breaks down in a reservoir, methane is diffused from the water into the air.
Dam removals aren’t a climate cure-all, but the magnitude of the crisis we face will require all the tools we can muster—and master.
As we take stock of our greenhouse gas emissions, an honest accounting of the input from dams could help us make reductions where dams are unneeded, unsafe, or doing more harm than good. In some states there are thousands of “deadbeat” dams, which serve no purpose at all anymore, and should be put on the chopping block. And if you’re wondering if it makes sense to remove infrastructure that can produce “clean” energy, know that the vast majority of large US dams—upward of 97%—don’t produce power.
The second is strengthening resilience. Many dams are outdated, dilapidated, or not designed to handle the onslaught of water that comes with climate-amplified storms. Some have already failed, risking lives and costing millions. After Hurricane Helene slammed North Carolina last year, 40 dams were damaged or destroyed. Expect to see more of that. A recent report from researchers at Utah State University found that incidents of dam failures or interventions needed to prevent failures are skyrocketing. From 1990 to 1999 we averaged two such incidents a year. That number jumped to an average of 50 a year from 2020 to 2023.
After two years of dangerous floods, Vermont has gotten the message. Last year the state passed a law to identify dams that worsen flooding and create a fund to remove them. Other states are also assessing dam removal to boost climate resilience. Removing damaging dams and helping rivers reconnect with their floodplains can help protect communities from severe weather and save money.
Dam removals offer other climate resilience benefits. Dams hold back water, but they also block the movement of sediment, which depletes coastal beaches and speeds erosion. One of the most notorious examples is the Matilija Dam near Ojai, California, a now-defunct dam that has corralled nearly 9 million cubic yards of sediment. Removing Matilija would reinvigorate downstream beaches in Ventura. As rising seas eat away at ocean beaches, upstream dam removals can help protect coastal communities.
Dams also change the temperature of rivers. As climate change pushes up the mercury, some reservoirs are becoming more like bathtubs. Higher water temperatures can foster toxic algal blooms that threaten human health and kill wildlife. Dam removals can flip the script, helping to restore more natural stream temperatures and flows, improving water quality in rivers that millions of Americans rely on for drinking water. It can also support biodiversity by enabling aquatic animals to find cooler upstream waters to better weather our changing climate.
Dam removals aren’t a climate cure-all, but the magnitude of the crisis we face will require all the tools we can muster—and master. Several decades of dam removals across the US has proved they work to restore rivers better and faster than anything else. Now let’s put them to use for climate action, too
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