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greenhouse gas emissions
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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A Victorious Hamburg Climate Resolution Is a Model of Hope-Fueled People Power
While the current German government is rolling back or even boycotting climate action, Hamburg is showing the world that grassroots climate action is effective.
Nov 09, 2025
“This is a story of pure hope in times of climate roll-backs around the world.”
Young climate activists like Luisa Neubauer, cofounder of Fridays for Future in Hamburg, have good reason to celebrate: The city of Hamburg recently voted in favor of more ambitious climate action. Famously, Hamburg was where the Beatles took off. Now the city has another big project that could take off. Neubauer: “Germany’s second largest city has shown that citizens—after all—demand climate action and are willing to self-organize around a just transition.”
At a time when the climate crisis has seemingly been pushed aside by too many other crises, the decisive win of Hamburg’s “Zukunftsentscheid” (Decision about Our Future) at the ballot box on Sunday, October 12, was a win for a dramatically more ambitious climate action plan for the second-largest city in Germany. While the current German government is rolling back or even boycotting climate action, Hamburg is showing the world that grassroots climate action is effective. The new law will make climate policy more fair, more transparent, and more responsive to the needs of future generations. The result could be used as a blueprint by other cities in Germany and far beyond. American cities are perfectly positioned to adopt a similar plan. After all, Americans are actually much more familiar with ballot initiatives than Germans.
Hamburg’s over 1.9 million residents were asked to vote in favor of a binding referendum to require annual carbon dioxide reduction targets, with the goal of net-zero emissions moved up from 2045 to 2040, and requirements that all climate policies will have to be socially just. A majority of over 303,000 residents, or 53.2%, said yes; 43.6% of eligible voters participated in the decision.
While the federal government is indeed moving aggressively against climate action, ballot initiatives give power to the grassroots.
The revised bill, in typical German style comprehensively named “Klimaschutzverbesserungsgesetz” (climate protection improvement law) will require that the city administration must present an emissions estimate no later than six months after the end of every calendar year.
There is a lot in this new climate law that the wonky types among climate activists will love. On their website, proponents list the exact amount of tons of carbon (in thousands) the city will be permitted to emit each year until 2040. If the permissible total annual emissions for the previous calendar year have been exceeded, the government must take measures to offset the excess total annual emissions within five months. If the total emissions exceed or fall short of the permissible total annual emissions from the year in which the act comes into force, the difference shall be credited evenly to the remaining total annual emissions for the next five years until 2040 at the latest, thus greatly incentivizing ramped-up action and disincentivizing delay.
But the referendum’s emphasis on a just transition is also key: If climate action is to benefit everyone, not only those with large pockets who after all tend to also be the bigger emitters, measures taken to protect the climate must be designed in a socially acceptable way. The changes to the existing climate protection law will make climate protection more fair for all in Hamburg, impacting housing, energy, and transportation. Homeowners, for example, will be incentivized to retrofit their homes, but won’t be able to push the costs entirely onto their tenants. Public transit will be prioritized without penalizing those who commute by car.
By emphasizing transparency and predictability (“Planbarkeit”), the proponents also took the needs of companies into account that invest in climate protection initiatives. And because the referendum included legislation, the newly revised law will automatically go into effect within a month from this vote, i.e. on November 12, 2025.
Opponents were quick to complain that the new law would endanger jobs in the city. But over 100 businesses had written an open letter in support of the referendum, and the proponents include positive impacts on economic growth and job prospects for the city in their FAQ.
While the federal government is indeed moving aggressively against climate action, ballot initiatives give power to the grassroots. The climate movement in Hamburg had fought for two years to make this referendum happen. A group of volunteers from various backgrounds contributed to drafting and refining the text. Over 80 different organizations joined a broad alliance of supporters, including cultural and religious institutions, companies, and NGOs. Even the soccer club FC St. Pauli cosponsored the referendum. The chances were not high for it to win—typically, a referendum only wins once every 10 years.
Americans have lots of experience with the process of running ballot initiatives. Portland, Oregon, for example, ran a successful initiative that resulted in the establishment of the PCEF (Portland Clean Energy Fund), a smart move that has since brought hundreds of millions of dollars into the city’s coffers. Over 5,000 miles apart, Hamburg and Portland nevertheless have something in common: Hope-filled people power—sometimes a few frogs mix in…Keep ReadingShow Less
Why Is Taylor Swift's Engagement Bigger News Than the Risk of AMOC Collapse?
Media’s obsession with one story—and its ignoring of the other—highlights the gaps that remain in treating the climate crisis like the cataclysm it has become.
Sep 12, 2025
Chances are you’ve heard that Taylor Swift is getting married. When she and Travis Kelce announced their engagement last month, it was all over the news, all over the world.
Chances are equally good that you did not hear some other, literally Earth-shaping news that broke two days later. On August 28, some of the world’s foremost climate scientists dramatically revised their estimate of how soon one of the foundations of Earth’s climate system could collapse.
Media’s obsession with one story—and its ignoring of the other—highlights the gaps that remain in treating the climate crisis like the cataclysm it has become. While progress has been made in many newsrooms, old journalism habits linger, including sidelining important climate news out of misguided fears that it’s depressing or too complicated. As Covering Climate Now’s 89% Project has shown, that’s not how most readers or viewers see it.
The collapse of what is commonly called the Gulf Stream—the vast Atlantic ocean current that scientists refer to as the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, AMOC—would deal a crushing blow to civilization as we know it. Sometimes known as Europe’s “central heating unit,” the AMOC is why Britain, France, The Netherlands, and their northern neighbors enjoy relatively mild winters, even though they sit as far north as Canada and Russia.
AMOC originates in the Caribbean, where sun-warmed sea water flows northeast across the Atlantic toward Greenland. The amount of heat AMOC transports is staggering: 50 times more heat than the entire world uses in a year. Without AMOC, the history and present day of Europe would look very different. Winters would be much colder and longer. Food production would be much less, as would the human population and infrastructure the region could support.
The scientific study released on August 28 concluded that AMOC’s collapse “can no longer be considered a low-likelihood event,” to quote The Guardian, one of the very few outlets to report the news. Indeed, such a collapse is more likely than not if humanity’s greenhouse gas emissions remain on their current trajectory. If emissions continue to rise, there is a 7 out of 10 chance that AMOC will collapse, the scientists calculated. If emissions fall to a moderate level, the odds are 37%—roughly 1 in 3. Even if emissions decline in line with the Paris Agreement goal of limiting temperature rise to 1.5 to 2°C, there is a 1 in 4 chance of collapse.
“It’s like the saying that every disaster movie starts with scientists warning and being ignored.”
Although the collapse might not occur in this century, the scientists warned that the system could pass a “tipping point” in the next decade or two that makes its eventual collapse inevitable. As 44 scientists explained in an open letter to the Nordic Council of Ministers, AMOC might well collapse in this century, but there is an “even greater likelihood a collapse is triggered this century but only fully plays out in the next.”
The only hope, the scientists added, is a “global effort to reduce emissions as quickly as possible, in order to stay close to the 1.5 [°C] target set by the Paris Agreement.”
By no means is northern Europe the only region in peril. A collapse, or even significant slowdown, of AMOC would devastate agriculture in Africa and other parts of the Global South by massively disrupting rainfall patterns.
All of which helps explain why Stefan Rahmstorf of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, who coauthored the new study, was frustrated by how little attention he and his colleagues’ warnings got. “What more can we do to get heard?” he asked. “It’s like the saying that every disaster movie starts with scientists warning and being ignored.”
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