climate crisis

If I had a nickel for every time an editor has sent me an SFGate story and asked me to match it, I’d be at least a couple dollars richer. The San Francisco-based news website provides solid coverage of California public lands, especially our national parks.

So when my colleague Jaclyn Cosgrove told me the National Park Service had reportedly blacklisted SFGate, I wasn’t exactly shocked.

Recent SFGate stories have revealed efforts to limit which public lands employees can share information with the public, quoted critics of the Department of the Interior’s decision to end reservation systems at popular parks and detailed a litany of items that were previously offered at the parks but are now being reviewed for possible removal, thanks to an executive order to “restore truth and sanity” to American history, including books about Indigenous culture and educational materials for children.

But over the past month, the National Park Service essentially stopped responding to inquiries sent by SFGate reporters on dozens of subjects, national parks bureau chief Ashley Harrell wrote last week. The outlet spoke with sources, reviewed internal communications and learned that an Interior Department spokesperson had instructed the National Park Service to ignore SFGate reporters, Harrell wrote. The blacklisting was apparently prompted by a Feb. 10 article on the Interior Department’s efforts to centralize control of park service communications.

I emailed the National Park Service to learn more. “Unfortunately, SFGate has distorted the facts and has caused confusion with their reporting with the mainstream media,” a spokesperson replied. “This has caused the Department to spend countless hours correcting their false narrative with other media outlets.”

Although the statement came from a park service email address, the wording is identical to a statement provided to SFGate by an Interior Department spokesperson.

I’ve also noticed changes in how the park service handles media requests over the past year or so. Some L.A. Times inquiries — about a coyote swimming to Alcatraz and a man charged with BASE jumping in Yosemite, for instance — received prompt replies.

But others — like questions about whether the park service is relying more heavily on seasonal employees amid a decline in permanent staff — went unreturned. And some — like an inquiry for a previous edition of a Boiling Point newsletter about an interpretive exhibit under scrutiny at Death Valley National Park — were fielded by a spokesperson for the Interior Department , rather than the park itself.

I’m not alone. When our wildlife and outdoors reporter Lila Seidman wrote about a wildfire that ripped through Joshua Tree National Park during last year’s government shutdown, she received responses from the Interior Department, but emails to the park service went unreturned.

Jack Dolan, an investigative reporter who often covers public lands, said he hasn’t received meaningful responses from the National Park Service since early last year.

And Cosgrove, who writes The Wild newsletter, said that park rangers remain friendly and helpful, but any communication involves a demand for all questions in writing.

Park service sources and advocates describe all this as part of a broader effort to centralize communications from sub-agencies to the Department of the Interior. Since last year, roughly 230 communications employees have been moved from the National Park Service to the Department of the Interior — part of a broader push in which more than 5,700 employees at the 11 agencies the Interior Department oversees were shifted from the agencies to the department, according to figures provided by the National Parks Conservation Assn., a nonprofit that advocates for the park system.

What’s more, the Interior Department must now approve many park service communications that were once left up to the parks themselves, said John Garder, senior director of budget and appropriations for the National Parks Conservation Assn. That includes exhibits, news releases, website updates and even social media posts, said a source within the park service who asked to remain anonymous over fears of retaliation.

The consolidation “creates significant inefficiencies and removes a layer of accountability to the parks themselves,” Garder said. “It makes it difficult for parks to act nimbly using their professional discretion to make decisions about informing the public about developments in the park,” like a closed road, wildlife hazard or natural disaster.

In an email to The Times, the park service accused National Parks Conservation Assn. employees of donating to Democratic political campaigns and pointed out the nonprofit’s X account follows progressive politicians and groups. “Our parks are nonpartisan, but the NPCA isn’t and they are using you to further raise money off of our parks while never giving those funds to our parks,” a spokesperson wrote in an emailed statement.

National Parks Conservation Assn.’s X account follows over 55,000 users of the platform, including both Democratic and Republican lawmakers and organizations. Garder also noted that the association’s longstanding role has been to advocate for national parks, rather than to raise money directly for them.

The park service email confirmed that officials are “modernizing” the Department of the Interior so that it “will share one voice when communicating the priorities of the Department.”

“The unification of the communication functions will allow for a more collaborative, creative and hands-on approach to Department communications,” the statement said, “and will modernize the federal government by providing a product that is not only better for the American taxpayer but also showcases the state-of-the-art communications capabilities of the United States of America.”

I asked whether I should attribute the statement to a spokesperson for the park service or the Interior Department. The spokesperson replied that I could attribute it to either.

A quick announcement

If you’re a Southern California local, you are probably familiar with PBS SoCal. On April 22, the public media organization is premiering the seventh season of the award-winning program “Earth Focus,” which will be followed by the eighth season in May. We’re excited for the eighth season in particular, because we collaborated with the PBS SoCal team on a few stories about the complexities of rebuilding Los Angeles. You can stream the show for free at pbssocal.org/earthfocus.

More recent land news

Karen Budd-Falen, the third highest-ranking official at the Department of the Interior, has been granted an ethics waiver to work on grazing issues despite potential conflicts of interests that prompted her to recuse herself from such matters during the first Trump presidency, according to Chris D’Angelo of Public Domain.

A pair of Republican senators have officially moved to overturn the management plan for Utah’s Grand Staircase–Escalante National Monument, casting uncertainty on its future and raising new questions about the future of public lands management, Caroline Llanes of Rocky Mountain Community Radio reports.

The Trump administration is aggressively expanding the border wall through ecologically sensitive public lands, with a portion planned for Big Bend National Park emerging as a political flash point, Arelis R. Hernández, Jake Spring, John Muyskens and Thomas Simonetti write in this Washington Post deep dive.

The Interior Department has officially pulled back more than 80% of its regulations tied to implementing the National Environmental Policy Act in a bid to streamline the environmental review process for major projects on federal public lands. Conservation groups say the changes will block public input and violate federal law, according to Hannah Northey and Scott Streater of E&E News by Politico.

The Trump administration is taking the final steps to undo the Public Lands Rule, which elevated conservation to an official use of Bureau of Land Management lands, Streater also reports. The rule allowed conservation groups to obtain leases for restoration work, similar to how the Bureau of Land Management awards leases to private contractors for extraction and development, points out Sage Marshall of Field & Stream.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Forest Service is expected to soon release an updated proposal for the rescission of the Roadless Rule, which blocked new road building and commercial logging on some 58 million acres of backcountry. The rollback would strike a big blow to hunting and fishing opportunities, according to a report from Trout Unlimited.

A few last things in climate news

Amid a global energy crisis that’s seen oil prices skyrocket, California has been particularly hard-hit due to a dearth of refineries and higher taxes and fees, all of which have left politicians, consumer groups and business interests arguing over who’s to blame, write Ivan Penn and Kurtis Lee for the New York Times.

In the latest maneuver in its campaign against renewable energy, the Trump administration will pay a French company $1 billion to walk away from two U.S. offshore wind leases, according to Jennifer McDermott of the Associated Press.

Southern California’s most destructive wildfires, wettest holiday season and hottest March heat wave have all taken place in the last 15 months, and there’s one clear through line connecting them all, scientists told my colleague Clara Harter.

Mosquitoes have gone year-round in Los Angeles, but business owners have indicated they’re not willing to pay to expand a promising effort to help control their numbers, my buddy Lila Seidman reports.

This is the latest edition of Boiling Point, a newsletter about climate change and the environment in the American West. Sign up here to get it in your inbox. And listen to our Boiling Point podcast here.

For more land news, follow @phila_lex on X and alex-wigglesworth.bsky.social on Bluesky.

A new UN report confirms the past decade was the hottest on record, warning that rising temperatures driven by fossil fuels demand urgent climate action.

Health and environment advocacy groups in the United States are suing the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) over the Trump administration’s decision to withdraw a key 2009 climate change ruling known as the “endangerment finding”.

That finding had established that greenhouse gases are a risk to public health and environmental safety, given that they are the primary drivers of climate change. It formed the legal basis for many regulatory policies aimed at curbing climate change.

When US President Donald Trump, who has called climate change a “hoax” and a “con job”, rescinded the declaration in February this year, the EPA supported the move, deeming it the “single largest deregulatory action in US history”.

The lawsuit, filed on Wednesday this week, alleges that the Trump administration’s decision will risk the health and welfare of US citizens.

“Repealing the Endangerment Finding endangers all of us. People everywhere will face more pollution, higher costs, and thousands of avoidable deaths,” Peter Zalzal, the associate vice president of clean air strategies at the Environmental Defense Fund, one of the plaintiffs, said in a statement.

Trump’s revocation of the endangerment finding is the latest in a series of steps he has taken to prioritise deregulation, boost fossil fuel production and reverse climate regulations.

But Trump is not the first US president to enact policy damaging to the environment. Here’s how decades of US policy have harmed the environment before he arrived in the White House

What is the ‘endangerment finding’?

The endangerment finding was established under the presidency of Democrat Barack Obama. It states that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases pose a threat to public health and welfare.

That ruling allowed the EPA under President Obama to move forward on policy aimed at limit the release of greenhouse gases in the US, Michael Kraft, professor emeritus of political science and public and environmental affairs at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay, told Al Jazeera.

Under the endangerment finding, power plants were required to meet federal limits on carbon emissions or risk being shut down. This forced oil and gas companies to invest more to detect and fix methane leaks, curb flaring, and improve tailpipe and fuel‑economy standards to enable automobile companies to manufacture more efficient, lower‑emitting vehicles.

What does rescinding it mean?

“By allowing for increased pollution, these recent changes [by the Trump administration] will harm practically every single person on the planet,” Washington, DC-based policy researcher Brett Heinz told Al Jazeera.

“People living near fossil fuel facilities will be some of the most immediately affected, as they will be exposed to the new air and water pollution unleashed by deregulatory policies,” Heinz added.

Without the endangerment finding in place, the EPA has lost a key legal basis on which to limit greenhouse gas emissions, making it easier for coal plants, oil refineries and petrochemical complexes to run older, dirtier equipment for longer, expand without installing modern pollution controls, and emit more soot, smog‑forming gases and toxic chemicals into nearby communities.

Heinz explained that higher greenhouse gas emissions from burning fossil fuels in power plants, cars and industry as well as continued deforestation will also amplify the dangers posed by natural disasters. This is because increased warming exacerbates heatwaves, storms, floods and droughts, and raises sea levels – all of which turn existing natural hazards into more frequent and more destructive disasters.

“The only people who will benefit from these decisions are a small handful of wealthy fossil fuel executives and shareholders, who will see healthy profits while the world grows sick. These fossil fuel elites, many of whom contributed money to Trump’s presidential campaign, have now gotten a return on this investment,” Heinz said.

Experts say that Trump’s decision to entirely do away with environmental policy is unlike any president before him.

“The White House’s tidal wave of new pro-pollution policies is completely unprecedented. While past administrations have modified environmental rules, the second Trump administration is essentially trying to eliminate them entirely. So far, this has been the most radically anti-environmental presidency in American history,” Heinz said.

How have previous US presidents endangered the environment?

Trump is by no means the first US president to enact policy which is damaging to the environment, however.

Under Republican Theodore Roosevelt, who was president from 1901 to 1909, Congress passed the Reclamation (Newlands) Act of 1902, which treated land and rivers primarily as raw material for large infrastructure projects rather than as ecosystems in need of protection.

This was furthered by Democrat Harry Truman, who was president from 1945 to 1953 and pushed for rapid post‑war industrial and suburban expansion by commissioning the construction of interstate highways and promoting car‑centric development.

Under Republican Dwight Eisenhower, who was president from 1953 to 1961, the interstate highway system burgeoned, and the private car became a developmental priority in the US.

While Republican Richard Nixon, who was president from 1969 to 1974, signed key environmental laws, he also backed massive fossil‑fuel expansion. Under Nixon, the highly toxic herbicide, known as Agent Orange, was used by the US military during the Vietnam War.

Republican Ronald Reagan, who was president from 1981 to 1989, appointed people to the EPA and the Department of Interior who pushed for expanded oil, gas, coal and timber extraction on public lands.

To facilitate this, they favoured deregulation and industry interests, and rolled back existing environmental policy, slashing budgets for EPA enforcement of the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts, easing rules on toxic emissions and pesticides, and opening up more federal land – including wilderness and wildlife habitat – to oil, gas, mining and logging activities.

Republican George W Bush, who was president from 2001 to 2009, refused to ratify the 1997 UN-backed emissions reductions Kyoto Protocol and actively undermined global climate negotiations by formally withdrawing US support for Kyoto in 2001, appointing senior officials who questioned climate science, and pushing voluntary, industry-friendly approaches instead of binding emissions cuts.

While Obama, who was president from 2009 to 2017, introduced several landmark climate regulations, he also oversaw the fracking boom, making the US the world’s largest oil and gas producer, and locking in long-term fossil infrastructure.

Fracking, or hydraulic fracturing, involves blasting water, sand and chemicals into shale rock to release oil and gas, a process believed to cause methane leaks, groundwater contamination, heavy water use and increased local air pollution.

Democrat Joe Biden, who was president from 2021 to 2024, approved large fossil projects such as the Willow project in Alaska. This involved oil development on federal land in the National Petroleum Reserve, projected to pump hundreds of millions of barrels of crude over several decades.

Figures released by the the US Bureau of Land Management (BLM) suggested that the project would release 239 million to 280 million tonnes of greenhouse gases over its lifetime. The project, approved in 2023 and ongoing, was projected to continue for 30 years.

Biden also backed LNG export growth by approving new and expanded export terminals and long‑term export licences, allowing companies to lock into multidecade contracts to ship US gas to Europe and Asia.

Is this a partisan issue?

No.

“The failure of US policymakers to aggressively tackle global warming is not so much a Democrat versus Republican matter,” Steinberg said.

“It’s neoliberalism, a form of corporate freedom, that is the heart of the problem. A bipartisan consensus on the need for economic growth has led to a general trend toward weakening environmental regulations,” he added.

The US once led the world in conservation by creating an extensive national park system in the 19th century, Ted Steinberg, a history professor at the US-based Case Western Reserve University, told Al Jazeera.

“That was then. US corporate interests, especially the fossil fuel industry, combined with the one-party political system, in which both Republicans and Democrats indenture themselves to the business class, have caused the United States to drag its feet on global warming,” Steinberg said.

What is the history of Washington’s impact on the environment?

The US has historically been the largest contributor to global warming, experts say.

“As in most countries, US environmental policy has been a response to the problems caused by industrialisation and urbanisation, starting in the mid-19th century and proceeding from there, happening at the local, state and national levels,” Chad Montrie, a history professor at the University of Massachusetts Lowell, told Al Jazeera.

“Much of that policy has been limited and inadequate, especially when corporations were able to exert their influence, but in some cases, it has been ahead of what other nations were doing,” Montrie, who specialises in environmental history, added.

There was a time when environmental policy was bipartisan. The EPA was, in fact, created by Republican President Richard Nixon in 1970.

“It wasn’t until the rise of pro-business politics in the 1980s that Republicans like President Reagan took a hard turn against environmental protections,” Heinz said.

“The Democratic Party continues to believe in environmental protection and climate-friendly policies to some degree, while the Republican Party has become one of the few political parties worldwide that completely denies the scientific facts around climate change.”

How does this affect the rest of the world?

“US policy often sets the standards for policy in other parts of the world, both because of its cultural influence and because of the control that the US has over global bodies like the International Monetary Fund,” Heinz said.

“Right now, the US is actively pushing dirty fossil fuels on the rest of the world and even threatening some of its allies for trying to negotiate new environmental agreements.”

Heinz explained that this pressure, coupled with soaring energy prices, seems to have convinced Europe to retreat from some of their climate goals. Household electricity prices jumped by about 20 percent across the European Union between 2021 and 2022, according to Eurostat data.

Heinz said that if the latest United Nations Climate Change Conference, or COP negotiations are any indication, global climate ambition appears to be on the decline right now.

The latest conference concluded in November 2025 in Brazil with a draft proposal which did not include a roadmap for transitioning away from fossil fuels, nor did it mention the term “fossil fuels” at all. This drew rebuke from several countries attending the conference.

“So long as Donald Trump remains in office, the hope of future generations relies upon the nations of the world coming together and acting responsibly to preserve a healthy environment at a time when the United States has gone truly mad.”

Almost exactly 10 years ago, Leonardo DiCaprio won a Best Actor Oscar (his first) for his performance in “The Revenant” as an early 19th century fur trapper who is injured in a bear attack, then by turns grudgingly kept alive, abandoned and left for dead by the avaricious hunting party he had been hired to lead.

In his acceptance speech at those 88th Academy Awards, DiCaprio first thanked the film’s cast and crew. He then pivoted quickly and forcefully to the environment. “The Revenant,” he said, was … “about man’s relationship to the natural world that we collectively felt in 2015, as the hottest year in recorded history.”

The rest of what he said is worth a big block quote; to read it today, the week after the 98th Academy, during which politics and policy both receded, is bracing.

“Our production needed to move to the southern tip of this planet just to find snow. Climate change is real, it is happening right now, it is the most urgent threat facing our entire species, and we need to work together and stop procrastinating. We need to support leaders around the world who do not speak for the big polluters, the big corporations, but who speak for all humanity, for the Indigenous people of the world, for the billions and billions of underprivileged people who will be most affected by this, for our children’s children, and for those people whose voices have been drowned out by the politics of greed. I thank you all for this award tonight. Let us not take this planet for granted. I do not take this award for granted.”

That year was something of a heady time for environmentalists. Barack Obama was in the middle of his second term as president of the U.S and though his climate and environmental policies were not especially progressive, in 2015 he did enact the Clean Power Plan, which had the stated goal of reducing carbon emissions locally, and “leading global efforts to address climate change” outside U.S. borders.

Further, just a couple of months after the 88th Academy Awards, the U.S. would become one the 196 parties to sign onto the Paris Agreement, an international treaty to reduce the rise of global temperatures, whose terms had been negotiated the previous fall.

Fast forward 10 years. Donald Trump withdrew from the Paris Agreement in 2020. Joe Biden rejoined in 2021. Trump withdrew again just a few months ago. And in this second go at the White House, the Trump Administration has done everything in its power to tighten the knots tethering the U.S. to fossil fuels. It has literally forced owners of coal plants in Colorado and Washington State that want to shut them down to keep them open. Trump has fought tooth and nail in court to suspend wind energy projects that are fully permitted, under contract and under construction across the eastern seaboard. And his administration has rolled backed numerous efforts to keep climate change in check, like the allowance of state-specific fuel economy standards and the landmark fossil-fuel endangerment finding of 2009.

Meanwhile, that global temperature record that DiCaprio mentioned in his acceptance speech in 2016 seems almost trifling compared to what has happened since. It’s been surpassed six times. According to data from the National Centers for Environmental Information, the three hottest years on record are 2024, 2023 and 2025.

At the 98th Academy Awards, DiCaprio was nominated again for Best Actor — his sixth in that category — this time for “One Battle After Another.” The film, directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, won Best Picture. DiCaprio lost in his category to Michael B. Jordan, the lead of Ryan Coogler’s “Sinners,” so he didn’t have a chance to say anything about climate change.

But not a single one of the Oscar winners this year mentioned it.

Both “One Battle After Another” and “Sinners” were produced by Warner Brothers, which is about to be acquired by Paramount Skydance, which in turn is owned by David Ellison, the son of Larry Ellison, one the world’s wealthiest individuals and noted Trump supporter. Ellison the younger has already made decisions that have significantly defanged the climate coverage at CBS News — Paramount’s flagship news network — and it would not be shocking if CNN — part of the WB — is next.

Indeed, one of the defining characteristics of this show was its dearth of any language at the awards that could be considered political.

Instead of the fire we got from, say, Michael Moore in 2003, what we got was a sort of mea culpa from P.T. Anderson — who might be the definitional American Gen X director — in his acceptance speech for Best Adapted Screenplay:

“I wrote this movie for my kids to say sorry for the housekeeping mess that we left in this world we’re handing off to them. But also, with the encouragement that they will be the generation that hopefully brings us some common sense and decency.”

I harbor the same hopes, but it might require at least acknowledging the problems first.

More culture & enviro news

One thing that does give me some optimism is that the feted films themselves did a pretty good job acknowledging climate change. According to Good Energy, a consultancy group, of the 16 scripted features that were nominated for an Oscar and met the eligibility criteria, five passed the “climate reality check.” That’s pretty good!

Relevant especially for those facing the heat wave right now in L.A. and the rest of the southwest: a study published earlier this week in Lancet attempted to quantify how rising global temperatures will impact physical inactivity in different parts of the world. Chloé Farand summed it up for the Guardian, noting the researchers’ projection of 500,000 additional annual deaths due to inactivity by 2050.

Meanwhile, Libby Rainey at LAist wrote about how the city is preparing for the inevitable heat challenges that will accompany the World Cup games this coming summer.

This isn’t brand new — in fact, it references the reporting of my former colleague Sammy Roth — but Alexandra Tey over at the Nation has a nice roundup of sports fans protesting their teams’ financial ties to fossil fuel companies. It focuses on one of the most visible of these partnerships: Citi Field, where the New York Mets play, is named for Citi group, the world’s biggest lender to oil and gas companies.

A few last things in climate news this week

With gas prices skyrocketing due to the war in Iran, some Californians have been wondering why oil companies in the state can’t just start drilling more. My colleague Blanca Begert explains why it isn’t that simple.

The related big question is will the turmoil in the middle east push countries around the world to double down on renewable energy. In the New Yorker, Bill McKibben makes the case that this could be the moment that small clean tech — think solar panels, heat pumps, induction cooktops, etc — really takes off.

Finally, somehow, some 10 million tons of manure produced at California factory farms is unaccounted for. Seth Millstein, writing for Sentient, explains how lax regulation let farms dispose of 200 Titanics’ worth of animal waste without telling anyone where or how they did it.

This is the latest edition of Boiling Point, a newsletter about climate change and the environment in the American West. Sign up here to get it in your inbox. And listen to our Boiling Point podcast here.

Turkana, Kenya – In the relentless heat of Kainama in Turkana county, Veronica Akalapatan and her neighbours walk several kilometres each day to a half-dried-up well surrounded by the parched earth of northern Kenya.

The dug-out hole in the ground with a wooden ladder is the only source of water in the area. Hundreds of people from several villages – and their livestock – share the well, most waiting hours to fill up small plastic buckets with meagre amounts of unclean water.

“Once we get here, we dig for water in the well and collect fruit. We wait for the water to fill the well,” says Akalapatan. “We take turns to fetch it because there is so little. There are many of us, and sometimes we fight over it.”

In Turkana, the land is rugged, roads disappear into dust, and villages are scattered across vast distances in a county of just more than a million people.

Despite it being the rainy season, weather experts warn that Turkana and other arid regions may receive little relief.

Authorities say drought is once again taking place, with 23 of Kenya’s 47 counties affected. An estimated 3.4 million people do not have enough to eat, at least 800,000 children show signs of malnutrition, and livestock – the backbone of pastoral life – are dying.

In Turkana alone, 350,000 households are on the brink of starvation.

“We are suffering from hunger,” Turkana elder Peter Longiron Aemun tells Al Jazeera.

“We don’t have water. Our livestock have died. We have nothing. We used to burn charcoal, but there are no acacia trees any more.”

Kenya is still recovering from one of its worst droughts in 40 years, which gripped the country between 2020 and 2023. The new weather crisis will likely make things worse.

But at the same time, experts note a stark paradox: Scarcity amid abundance.

Food loss and food waste

While families face acute water shortages and hunger – with boreholes broken down, and wells and streams dried up – Lake Turkana’s water levels have risen in recent years, displacing some shoreline communities.

In other areas, sudden heavy rains trigger flash floods in normally dry riverbeds – known locally as luggas – yet the land remains largely barren. The water comes too fast, runs off too quickly and cannot sustain agriculture.

At the same time, while droughts lessen food supplies and global donor funding cuts have reduced food aid, not too far away, experts say, there is a surplus of food that does not make its way to those who need it.

“In Kenya, a quarter of the population faces severe food insecurity, even as up to 40% of the food produced is lost or wasted each year,” according to a September report by the World Resources Institute (WRI).

Food loss occurs on farms, and during the handling, storage and transportation of supplies, while food waste occurs in households, restaurants and in the retail sphere, WRI researchers noted.

In parts of the North Rift – one of Kenya’s breadbaskets – farmers have recorded good harvests. But high prices and widespread poverty mean pastoralist families in Turkana cannot easily afford food transported from surplus regions.

Security adds another layer of strain. Competition over water and pasture fuels tensions, cattle raids persist, armed bandits operate in remote areas, and security forces struggle to contain violence amid logistical and political challenges.

“The biggest problem in drought areas is security,” says Joseph Kamande, a food trader in Wangige in central Kenya.

Still, he believes the country has the potential to feed itself with better planning.

“The land is vast. Some of it is arable,” he says, adding that “water is the solution.”

Untapped aquifers

In Turkana, though there is severe drought, there are also untapped natural resources.

Hundreds of metres underground are multiple aquifers, layers of rock and soil containing water. The government is hoping to tap into these sources.

In 2013, two major aquifers were discovered, the Napuu aquifer and the Lotikipi aquifer. The largest covers roughly 5,000km (3,100 miles) and holds about 250 trillion litres (66 trillion gallons) of water.

It is said to have the capacity to supply Kenya with water for decades.

However, much of the water is salty and expensive to purify, so the project has stalled.

“The big challenge is salinity,” says Turkana County Water Director Paul Lotum.

“The national government and partners are mapping out pockets where water is safe and reliable. We are working bit by bit to harness it for communities.”

Until then, relief food remains essential for Turkana communities.

The government’s disaster management teams and other agencies are distributing water and food. But supplies are stretched thin. And getting aid to those who need it most is nearly impossible in some areas.

“Most government organisations are either closed or running leaner programmes,” says Jacob Ekaran, Turkana’s coordinator for the National Drought Management Authority.

“The resource basket has shrunk. But the government is trying to do more with what it has.”

‘I can’t find food’

When supplies run low, many people turn to wild berries and fruits.

In Lopur village, resident Akal Loyeit Etangana harvests berries that she then cooks in a small pot over an outdoor fire.

She says she has not had a proper meal in two weeks, so the fruit mixture keeps hunger away. Still, it carries almost no nutritional value.

“If it doesn’t rain, trees and leaves dry up. There is no water,” she laments, adding that clinics are also very far away and people have to walk long distances to get help.

In another village, Napeillim, resident Christine Kiepa worries that there is no food.

“I try to look for food. Sometimes it’s not there,” she says. “If I can’t find food, how do I survive?” she asks.

Villages in the region are slowly emptying. Male herders, who are usually the providers for their families, have moved to neighbouring counties in search of pasture and water for their dying livestock.

Only the elderly, women, young children and the weakest animals remain in the homesteads.

Still, there have been some gains in the region.

Since Kenya adopted a devolved system of government in 2013, Turkana has seen new schools and health centres built, irrigation schemes launched, boreholes drilled, and some roads tarmacked. Officials say investments in drought response have strengthened resilience.

“In the past, drought always degenerated into disaster. You would see reports of deaths,” says Ekaran from the drought management authority. “We are coming from one of the worst droughts in 40 years, but we did not record deaths. That is because of resilience building.”

Painful cycle

For generations, northern Kenya’s nomadic communities have depended on livestock. But climate change is forcing a reckoning. Calls for diversification – irrigation, drought-resistant crops and trees, large dams – have grown louder.

“We can change our community mindset,” says Rukia Abubakar, Turkana coordinator for the Red Cross.

“We can plant drought-resistant trees. We can do irrigation. Our soil is good for crop farming.”

These proposals are not new. They have surfaced after every drought, repeated in policy papers and political speeches.

Yet for many people in Turkana, the cycle feels painfully familiar and daily survival remains precarious.

Back in Kainama, Akalapatan and her neighbours walk back from the water well through the vast, arid landscape, carrying a collection of filled yellow plastic buckets.

They finally return to their small community of thatched huts.

Akalapatan has managed to collect 20 litres (5 gallons) of water for her family for the day.

Her son eagerly fills a cup and gulps it down.

But she knows that what she has is barely enough for everyone, and she will soon have to make the journey to the well again.

Authorities have said most of those who died were found buried in mud.

The death toll from landslides and flooding in the Gamo Zone of southern Ethiopia has risen to at least 64, with dozens more people missing, police have said.

“The number of people missing due to the recent flood in Gamo zone has reached 128, and according to the latest information, 64 bodies have been found,” said the South Ethiopia Regional State Police Commission in a statement on Facebook on Thursday.

The Gacho Baba district communication chief, Abebe Agena, said most of those who died were found buried in mud. It is not yet clear how many households were affected.

Gamo Zone director of disaster response Mesfin Manuqa said that one person was pulled out of mud alive during rescue operations.

Tilahun Kebede, president of the South Ethiopia Regional State, expressed his sorrow over the disaster and urged residents to move to higher ground as rains continue.

“Given that it is the rainy season and these types of disasters could happen again, I am calling on communities living in the highlands and flood-prone areas to take the necessary precautions,” he said.

Flooding caused by heavy rains has led to the deaths, with most of East Africa seeing heavy flooding in recent days.

Dozens were killed in neighbouring Kenya after torrential rain hit the capital, Nairobi, and other areas on Friday.

Mudslides and floods caused by heavy rainfall are common in Ethiopia, especially during the rainy season.

In July 2024, a deadly mudslide caused by heavy rain killed more than 250 people in southern Ethiopia.

Multiple studies have tracked the increasing frequency of extreme wet and dry periods in East Africa in the last 20 years.

Scientists have long warned that human-driven climate change is increasing the likelihood, length and severity of severe weather events such as torrential downpours.

Erin Wagner lives in the Chicago suburbs but visits two bald eagles in Southern California’s Big Bear Valley nearly every day.

At work, the 41-year-old often plays a livestream featuring Jackie and Shadow on one of her monitors — a respite when she needs a break.

The avian power couple follows her home, keeping her company as she cooks dinner.

“We live in such a busy world, and things are always being thrown at our face, so sometimes it’s nice to just have a gentle reminder of nature and what else is out there in the world,” Wagner told me last week.

She is just one of many devoted fans; the eagles had the highest view count of any year-round nature livestream active on YouTube between last fall and this spring, said Rebecca Mauldin, an assistant professor at the University of Texas at Arlington who studies social connectedness.

While the eagles’ following is singular, it’s part of a broader trend: surging interest in webcams that broadcast nature, unadulterated, minute by minute, in all its messy glory.

The number of 24/7 livestreams created per year swelled by about 3,000% between 2019 and 2025, Mauldin’s data show.

Jackie and Shadow’s livestream exemplifies “Slow TV,” a genre that began with a 2009 Norwegian broadcast of a seven-hour train trip. It took off, with other marathon programs featuring chopping firewood and knitting.

Nature looms large in the format. Millions tune into Sweden’s live coverage of an annual moose migration, and the same goes for a seasonal broadcast of bears chowing down on salmon in Alaska.

The appeal makes intuitive sense. In a world of quick camera cuts, sound bites and troubling headlines, Mother Nature’s rhythms can be a salve. And with many of us wound up in concrete urbanity, the livestreams offer instant transportation to the wild.

Following Jackie and Shadow takes patience. If they’re not hanging out at the nest, it’s a waiting game until they come back. Even when they’re there, there may not be much going on.

Entertainment “can be very artificial, it can be very packaged, and it can be very short,” said Jenny Voisard, media manager for Friends of Big Bear Valley, the nonprofit that operates the cameras broadcasting the eagles. “This is long and slow and calm.”

Yet nature is unpredictable, another draw for viewers. This nesting season alone has brought plenty of drama, from the lovebirds losing their eggs to ravens to laying more not long after. Last week, I wrote about the couple’s shocking origin — it involves a love triangle! — and their rise to reality stardom.

Last year, Jackie and Shadow raised two chicks that went on to fledge: Sunny and Gizmo

(Friends of Big Bear Valley)

Research backs the vibes. Those who watch nature livestreams — from platypi to osprey — report a host of benefits, from uplifted mood to relaxation, said Mauldin, citing a literature review she-coauthored.

Others get jazzed about learning about a particular species, she said.

There may be limitations, though.

In terms of connecting to nature, “I lean toward the effect is stronger if you’re actually outdoors, or, you know, you’ve got a little ant crawling on your finger and watching it,” Mauldin said.

She highlighted another dimension I didn’t think of: Many “talk about how they’re developing strong online relationships, and you can see it in the chats or in the comments.”

Someone might comment that they had a bad day and are glad to be watching their favorite birds again, and another viewer will rally to support them. Then there are people who watch on their own, but gab about it later with a friend.

Friends of Big Bear Valley, with 1.2 million followers on Facebook, offers more than just updates on the eagles. It’s a buzzing community center where fans can share their thoughts and engage with one another.

Animals may also get something out of being watched: protection.

The eagle cam, for example, “sort of stokes the public’s imagination and interest in conservation,” said Thomas Leeman, deputy chief of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s migratory bird program in the Pacific Southwest. “They start to really care about whichever particular birds that they’re watching.”

Wagner, of Chicago, said her husband and 14-year-old son sometimes give her a hard time about how invested she is in Jackie and Shadow.

But her cat, Oscar, shares her fascination.

She recently posted a photo of the feline on Jackie and Shadow’s Facebook — looking intently at a TV where an eagle hunkered down on the nest.

“My new cat is just as obsessed as all of us,” she wrote.

More recent wildlife news

Big Bear’s celeb eagles continue to keep us on our toes. Jackie recently vanished from the nest for nearly 24 hours, sending fans into a panic — but eventually reunited with her eggs and mate, reports USA Today’s Michelle Del Rey.

While we’re on the subject of avian kind: Last week, I wrote about a pair of condors that appear to be nesting in Northern California, something not seen for a century. The Yurok Tribe is leading the effort to bring the large, endangered vultures back to their historic homeland in Humboldt and Del Norte counties.

As conservationists celebrate that win, the story for birds nationwide is not so rosy. A recent study found that North America is rapidly losing birds, and the loss is accelerating, largely due to intensive agriculture and warming temperatures, writes the Associated Press’ Seth Borenstein.

A few last things in climate news

Trump’s war on Iran has disrupted global oil and gas supplies. The conflict has kept ships that carry millions of barrels of oil a day stranded in the Persian Gulf, and key Middle East facilities have sustained damage, reports the Associated Press.

Oil prices have spiked, and Californians are paying the highest price at the pump in the nation. As my colleague Iris Kwok explains, that’s due to the state’s higher taxes and stricter requirements for cleaner, more expensive gas that pollutes.

Sticker shock at gas stations is expected to spur more Americans to consider hybrid or electric vehicles, according to fellow Times staffers Caroline Petrow-Cohen and Blanca Begert.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of Justice has released a legal opinion that sets the stage to approve a controversial oil operation off the Santa Barbara County coast, The Times’ Grace Toohey reports.

This is the latest edition of Boiling Point, a newsletter about climate change and the environment in the American West. Sign up here to get it in your inbox. And listen to our Boiling Point podcast here.

For more wildlife and outdoors news, follow Lila Seidman at @lilaseidman.bsky.social on Bluesky and @lila_seidman on X.

Israeli strikes on fuel depots and petroleum logistic sites in Tehran on Sunday saw apocalyptic images coming out of the Iranian capital, as the spilled oil ignited a river of fire, and thick black smoke blanketed the city of 10 million, leaving streets and vehicles covered with soot.

Israel and the United States claimed they were targeting Iranian military and government sites, but government officials and people say civilian structures such as schools, hospitals and major landmarks are increasingly coming under attack. At least 1,255 people have been killed in the strikes since February 28.

What Israeli and US military planners frame as a calculated degradation of state infrastructure is being described by local officials and environmental experts as an act of total warfare, and collective punishment.

Shina Ansari, head of Iran’s Department of Environment, described the systematic destruction of the oil depots as a blatant act of ecocide.

The attacks systematically targeted four major storage facilities and a distribution centre, including the Tehran refinery in the south and depots in Aghdasieh, Shahran, and Karaj. In the Shahran district, witnesses reported unrefined oil leaking directly into the streets as temperatures hovered around 13C (55F).

Ansari from Iran’s Department of Environment stated that the environment remains the silent victim of the war, noting that the incineration of vast fuel reserves has trapped the capital under a suffocating shroud of pollutants.

The medical and environmental fallout is immediate and severe. The Iranian Red Crescent Society warned that the smoke contains high concentrations of toxic hydrocarbons, sulphur, and nitrogen oxides. The organisation noted that any rainfall passing through these plumes becomes highly acidic, posing risks of skin burns and severe lung damage upon contact or inhalation.

Ali Jafarian, Iran’s deputy health minister, told Al Jazeera that this acid rain is already contaminating the soil and water supply. Jafarian added that the toxic air poses a life-threatening risk to the elderly, children, and those with pre-existing respiratory conditions, prompting authorities to advise residents to remain indoors.

The destruction has also forced the Iranian Ministry of Petroleum to slash daily fuel rations for civilians from 30 litres [8 gallons] to 20 litres [5 gallons]. At least four employees, including two tanker drivers, were killed in the depot strikes.

The strategic bombing myth

Major General Mamoun Abu Nowar, a retired Jordanian military analyst, told Al Jazeera that the primary objective of the strikes is to break the resilience of the Iranian people and paralyse the country’s logistics and economy.

“They are preparing the Iranian environment for an uprising against the regime,” Abu Nowar said, adding that the broader goal is to halt state operations and curb Tehran’s regional influence.

However, Abu Nowar raised urgent concerns about the specific munitions deployed, urging Iranian authorities to investigate the bomb fragments given the unusual density of the smoke and the resulting acid rain.

Some military strategists argue that striking an adversary’s vital infrastructure can paralyse the state from the inside out, bypassing the need to fight its military forces directly.

Modern warfare has increasingly relied on this strategic bombing via precision drones and missiles to destroy morale and incapacitate an adversary’s ability to wage war. For Israel, which is engaged in a genocidal war in Gaza and wider regional conflicts, targeting oil depots is viewed as a way to send a coercive message while avoiding a ground war.

However, Adel Shadid, a researcher in Israeli affairs, told Al Jazeera Arabic that the strategy is designed to make life hell for ordinary Iranians in hopes of sparking an uprising. Shadid noted a glaring contradiction in the rhetoric of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who claims to support the Iranian people while overseeing the destruction of their basic means of survival.

Raphael S Cohen, director of the Strategy and Doctrine Program at the RAND Corporation, notes that such bombing campaigns consistently fail to achieve their primary goal of breaking a population’s will. Instead, Cohen argues, strategic bombing typically produces a rally-around-the-flag effect, unifying societies against a common foe rather than causing them to capitulate.

Historical echoes and retaliation

The reality of targeting oil infrastructure rarely aligns with sterile military theory, as history shows that such tactics reliably produce devastating, long-term environmental consequences.

During the 1991 Gulf War, the torching of Kuwaiti oil wells created a regional environmental catastrophe. Similarly, during the battle against ISIL (ISIS) in Iraq, the burning of the Qayyarah oil fields created a “Daesh Winter” that blocked out the sun for months.

The fires released vast quantities of toxic residues, including sulphur dioxide and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, causing severe respiratory illnesses, soil acidification, and long-term carcinogenic risks for the local population.

Meanwhile, Mokhtar Haddad, director of the Al-Wefaq newspaper, told Al Jazeera Arabic that the targeting of energy hubs could trigger a global energy war.

According to Al Jazeera’s Sohaib al-Assa, reporting from Tehran, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has already retaliated by striking the Haifa oil refinery and targeting a US base in Kuwait, signalling that the conflict is no longer confined to military targets.

On Monday, Bahrain’s state-run oil company Bapco declared force majeure after waves of Iranian strikes targeted its energy installations. Iran has also been accused of also targeting energy facilities in other Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries.

When a Los Angeles County judge ordered a notorious Watts scrap metal yard to permanently halt its operations last year, many residents and environmental advocates thought it might finally bring an end to the facility’s dangerous pollution. Instead, the shutdown may have only marked the beginning of what could be a lengthy process to erase decades of environmental degradation.

For nearly 75 years, S&W Atlas Iron & Metal had crushed car parts, shredded aluminum cans and processed an assortment of recyclable metals. Over that time, the facility and its owners racked up dozens of environmental violations and were eventually criminally convicted of crimes that endangered students next door at Jordan High School and residents of Watts.

Since Atlas’ court-ordered closure, the towering piles of scrap metal have largely disappeared from the 3-acre recycling facility. Jordan High’s campus hasn’t been rocked by explosions, pelted with shrapnel or blanketed in layers of toxic, metallic dust.

But one of the most serious, and remaining, threats has gone unnoticed until recently.

A contractor hired by Atlas recently measured a witch’s brew of toxic chemicals percolating in the soil and groundwater beneath the site at orders of magnitude above California’s standards, according to court documents. Around five feet underground, a soil probe detected the highest reading of vinyl chloride — just one of the several carcinogens at the site — more than 1.3 million times higher than the state benchmark.

“What they found were astronomical levels of these contaminants,” said Danielle Hoague, director of research for the Better Watts Initiative.

“I think it’s definitely a hidden danger. I don’t think that the community has been informed of what underlies Atlas. But I would assume that people are experiencing the health effects of this.”

State regulators are still hashing out the scope of the cleanup at the shuttered industrial site. But, more concerning, Watts residents and school district officials fear these contaminants may be migrating with groundwater, posing a risk to neighboring Jordan High School and Jordan Downs housing complex. If that is the case, the question is who will foot the bill to clean up this pollution?

“The cleanup of the Atlas site has been slow, and Atlas is proceeding with a lack of executed urgency,” an L.A. Unified School District spokesperson said in a statement.

Atlas “has failed to advise Los Angeles Unified promptly of contamination found just feet away from the school campus and the adjacent Jordan Downs Housing Development,” the spokesperson added.

Shutting down a source of pollution is only the first step in campaigns for cleaner air. It’s often equally burdensome, time-consuming and expensive to hold polluters accountable for cleaning up the legacy contamination at their own property. And it’s even more difficult to compel companies to decontaminate nearby properties that may have been affected by their operations.

In Lincoln Heights, decades passed after the closure of a massive dry-cleaning operation before residents learned of underground contamination spreading off-site, potentially threatening nearby homes and an elementary school. In Newport Beach, a sprawling aerospace and defense hub was converted into luxury homes three decades ago, and homeowners were only recently informed about residual toxic pollution. In Jurupa Valley, residents were alarmed to learn about toxic vapors seeping into their homes after contaminated groundwater migrated several miles from a former hazardous waste dump uphill.

In Watts, many residents were already aware of the danger posed by toxic metals produced by Atlas’ operations. At times, metallic dust left parts of Jordan High’s campus covered in an iridescent sheen, and the school district has in the past removed contaminated soil from the campus.

But it was far more difficult to predict that pollution could be spreading underground. Many of the chemicals found beneath Atlas evaporate at room temperature and sneak into buildings through cracks in foundations, floor drains or other gaps — a process known as vapor intrusion.

Over the past year, an LAUSD consultant conducted two rounds of air sampling at Jordan High. The levels of airborne chemicals the detected in gym’s basement suggest toxic vapors are infiltrating the building. However, the consultant has said more air sampling is necessary to determine whether it constitutes an unacceptable health risk.

So far, the district says the concentrations have not warranted closing school buildings yet.

In the meantime, the school district is pleading with the state regulators to get Atlas to commit to cleaning up the toxic fallout.

A Los Angeles County judge recently ordered an audit of Atlas’ finances, raising doubts about the company’s ability to pay potential damages.

But community leaders, like Timothy Watkins, president of the Watts Labor Community Action Committee, won’t be satisfied until the case moves from courtroom to cleanup.

“There’s no champion for us. So we have to find a way — with very, very limited resources — to get our story out in a way that begins to raise some kind of alarm and awareness of the danger here.”

More recent air news

New research suggests some air pollutants can significantly alter insect behavior, science journalist Gennaro Tomma writes in National Geographic. Smog-forming emissions can interfere with insect communication by breaking down pheromones, causing ant colonies to exhibit aggression toward their own members and neglect their larvae.

The Trump administration reversed a Biden-era rule limiting brain-damaging mercury emissions from coal plants, arguing compliance costs threatened energy reliability, Guardian environmental reporter Oliver Milman writes. The rollback allows some of the coal plants to avoid expensive upgrades, sparking debate over the trade-off between economic concerns and public health risks.

The California Air Resources Board set an Aug. 10 deadline for some of the nation’s largest companies to disclose their greenhouse gas emissions, according to the Sacramento Bee’s climate reporter Chaewon Chung. A pair of state laws enacted in 2023 required companies with more than $1 billion in annual revenue to adhere to the reporting requirements.

In other climate news

As Western states brace for deep cuts to their allotments of Colorado River water, one California water agency may be in a position to help. San Diego County Water Authority’s board recently voted to consider selling a portion of its water to Arizona and Nevada, reports Ian James for the LA. Times. The San Diego area is home to the nation’s largest desalination plant, allowing the agency to rely less on unpredictable reservoirs.

The escalating war in the Middle East has triggered the biggest oil and gas market disruption since 2022, driving a surge in energy prices and forcing a re-evaluation of energy security, Bloomberg reports. While high prices could bolster the case for deploying renewable energy, experts warn that worsening inflation — from higher energy costs — could ironically hamper the shift to clean energy.

A Southern California architect is challenging the notion that wildfire-resistant designs can’t also be visually stunning. L.A. Times wildfire reporter Noah Haggerty interviewed a Palisades fire survivor who is so confident about the design of his newly constructed Spanish-revival home, he asked the fire department if he could spark a controlled fire on his property.

This is the latest edition of Boiling Point, a newsletter about climate change and the environment in the American West. Sign up here to get it in your inbox. And listen to our Boiling Point podcast here.

For more air quality news, follow Tony Briscoe on X and LinkedIn.