Climate Crisis

Last February, I climbed into a Jeep and rumbled up a rocky shelf road that took me high above a breathtaking corner of the Mojave National Preserve. At the top was an old gold mine where an Australian company had recently restarted activities, looking for rare earth minerals.

The National Park Service had been embroiled in a years-long dispute with the company, Dateline Resources Ltd., alleging that it was operating the Colosseum Mine without authorization and had damaged the surrounding landscape with heavy equipment. Dateline said it had the right to work the mine under a plan its prior operators had submitted to the Bureau of Land Management decades before.

President Trump had taken office just weeks before my visit. Environmentalists told me the conflict posed an early test of how his administration would handle the corporate exploitation of public lands.

At the time, observers weren’t sure how things would shake out. Conserving public lands is one of the rare issues that’s popular on both sides of the political aisle, they pointed out.

Almost a year later, it’s clear that the Trump administration has sided with the corporations.

Trump directed the Department of Interior to inventory mineral deposits on federal lands and prioritize mining as the primary use of those lands. He instructed officials to dramatically fast-track permitting and environmental reviews for certain types of energy and critical minerals projects — and designated metallurgical coal a critical mineral, enabling companies that mine it to qualify for a lucrative tax credit.

His budget bill lowered the royalty rates companies must pay the government to extract coal, oil or gas from public lands and provided other financial incentives for such projects while reducing the authority of federal land managers to deny them.

Under the president’s direction, the DOI has opened up millions of acres of federal land to new coal leasing and moved to rescind both the 2021 Roadless Rule, which protects swaths of national forest lands from extractive activities by barring most new road construction, and the 2024 Public Lands Rule, which puts conservation and restoration on par with other uses of BLM land like mining, drilling and grazing.

The administration is seeking to roll back limitations on mining and drilling for specific pieces of public land, including portions of the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska, the watershed feeding the Boundary Waters in Minnesota and a buffer surrounding Chaco Culture National Historical Park in New Mexico. Meanwhile, conservative lawmakers overturned management plans limiting energy development on certain BLM lands in Alaska, Montana, North Dakota and Wyoming.

Altogether, the Trump administration and its legislative allies have taken steps to reduce or eliminate protections for nearly 90 million acres of public land, according to the Center for American Progress, a progressive think tank. That figure rises to more than 175 million acres if you include the habitat protections diminished by the administration’s moves to weaken the Endangered Species Act, the organization notes.

“All of these things represent in some ways the largest attack on our public lands and giveaway to large multinational mining corporations that we’ve seen probably since the 19th century,” said U.S. Rep. Melanie Stansbury of New Mexico, who likened the level of resource exploitation to “something like what happened during the robber baron era when there was no regulation or protection for our communities or the environment.”

Stansbury has introduced legislation that would increase the fees mining companies must pay to sit on speculative claims on federal lands and require those funds be used for conservation. She told me it’s just a tiny contribution to a larger effort to push back against the administration’s approach to initiate extraction on public lands, which she described as so frequent and pervasive that “it’s a bit like whack-a-mole.”

“So much damage has been done, both administratively and legislatively, over the last 11 months since Trump took office,” she said.

As for the Colosseum Mine, the DOI sided with its operators back in the spring, saying Dateline Resources did not have to seek authorization from the Park Service to keep mining. The announcement was followed by public endorsements from Trump and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum. The company’s stock value soared, and by September, it had kicked off a major drilling blitz.

The company has already uncovered high-grade gold deposits. It’s taking a break for Christmas, but is expected to resume drilling in the new year.

More recent land news

The Pacific Forest Trust returned nearly 900 acres of land near Yosemite National Park to the Southern Sierra Miwuk Nation in a transfer partially financed by the state, reports Kurtis Alexander of the San Francisco Chronicle. Members of the Indigenous group were forced off their ancestral lands during the California Gold Rush, when state-sponsored militias undertook efforts to exterminate them. Some now hope the new property will bolster their decades-long push for federal recognition.

California State Parks is violating the Endangered Species Act by allowing offroaders to drive over dunes that are home to western snowy plovers, a judge recently ruled in a long-running legal case over the use of Oceano Dunes State Recreation Area along the Central Coast. Edvard Pettersson of the Courthouse News Service reports that State Parks will need a federal “take” permit to continue to allow offroading at the popular beachside spot.

California lawmakers introduced legislation to conserve more than 1.7 million acres of public lands across the state, in part by expanding the Los Padres National Forest and the Carrizo Plain National Monument, according to Stephanie Zappelli of the San Luis Obispo Tribune.

The federal public lands grazing program was created as a bulwark against environmental damage but has been transformed into a massive subsidy program benefiting a select few, including billionaire hobby ranchers and large corporations, according to an investigation by ProPublica and High Country News. The three-part series also found a loophole allowing for the automatic renewal of grazing permits has led to less oversight over the health of these lands.

A few last things in climate news

President Trump’s media company is merging with a nuclear fusion energy firm in a $6-billion deal that some analysts have described as a major conflict of interest, my colleague Caroline Petrow-Cohen reports.

House Republicans pushed through a bill that would overhaul the federal environmental review process in a way that critics say could speed up the approval process for oil and gas projects while stymieing clean energy, report Aidan Hughes and Carl David Goette-Luciak of Inside Climate News.

The iconic chasing-arrows recycling symbol is likely to be removed from California milk cartons, my colleague Susanne Rust reports. The decision exposes how used beverage packaging has been illegally exported to East Asia as “recycled” mixed paper, violating international environmental law.

Wind energy is again under attack from the Trump administration, which this week ordered all major wind construction projects to halt. As The Times’ Hayley Smith notes, the White House has been consistent in slowing down clean energy development in 2025, but offshore wind has been a particular bête noire for the President.

We’ve published a comprehensive collection of stories looking back on the wildfires that burned though Altadena and Pacific Palisades last January and all that’s happened since, which columnist Steve Lopez calls “one of the most apocalyptic years in Southern California history.” Check out After the Fires here.

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.

From Israel’s genocide in Gaza and the Russia-Ukraine war to devastating global weather events – including floods, storms and earthquakes – this year was defined by turmoil and humanitarian crises.

Prolonged violence in Sudan, marked by attacks by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), added to the mounting civilian toll and displacement across the country.

The year also saw heightened tensions between India and Pakistan, a deadly blaze in Hong Kong, United States and Israeli attacks on Iran, revelations from the Epstein files, and waves of “Gen Z” protest movements across multiple regions.

Together, these developments dominated international headlines, reflecting deepening political instability, social unrest and growing humanitarian needs worldwide.

View the gallery below for powerful photographs that documented and encapsulated these pivotal 12 months.

Four residents of Pari, a low-lying Indonesian island, filed the complaint in January 2023.

A Swiss court has agreed to hear a legal complaint against cement giant Holcim, accusing the company of failing to do enough to cut carbon emissions.

NGO Swiss Church Aid (HEKS/EPER), which is supporting the complainants, said on Monday that the court had decided to admit the legal complaint. Holcim confirmed the decision and said it plans to appeal.

The complaint was filed in January 2023 by four residents of Pari, a low-lying Indonesian island that has suffered repeated flooding as rising global temperatures drive up sea levels. The case was submitted to a court in Zug, Switzerland, where Holcim has its headquarters.

According to HEKS, this is the first time a Swiss court has admitted climate litigation brought against a big corporation.

If successful, it would also be the first case seeking to hold a Swiss company legally responsible for its contribution to global warming, the group has previously said.

The lawsuit is also among the first climate cases brought by people in the Global South directly affected by climate change and forms part of a growing push for compensation for “loss and damage”, campaigners backing the case said.

The nongovernmental organisation supporting the plaintiffs said Holcim was selected because it is one of the world’s largest carbon dioxide emitters and the biggest so-called “carbon major” based in Switzerland.

A study commissioned by HEKS and conducted by the United States-based Climate Accountability Institute found that Holcim emitted more than 7 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide between 1950 and 2021 – about 0.42 percent of total global industrial emissions over the period.

Holcim has said it is committed to reaching net-zero emissions by 2050 and is following a science-based pathway to meet that goal. The company says it has cut direct CO2 emissions from its operations by more than 50 percent since 2015.

The plaintiffs are seeking compensation for climate-related damage, financial contributions to flood protection measures on Pari Island, and a rapid reduction in Holcim’s carbon emissions.

Cement production accounts for about 7 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions, according to the Global Cement and Concrete Association.

More than two months after an explosion erupted at the Chevron oil refinery in El Segundo, neither the company nor the regulators responsible for monitoring the facility have released details on the cause and the extent of the environmental fallout.

Here’s what we do know so far: Around 9:30 p.m.on Oct. 2, a large fire broke out in the southeast corner of the refinery, where Chevron turned crude oil into jet fuel. The resulting violent blast allegedly wounded several workers on the refinery grounds and rattled homes up to one mile away.

The refinery carried out emergency flaring in an effort to burn off potentially hazardous gases, as public officials told residents in neighborhoods nearby to stay indoors. That warning held until firefighters managed to extinguish the fire the following day.

The South Coast Air Quality Management District — the agency responsible for regulating the refinery’s emissions — said Chevron would submit reports detailing the potential cause of the fire and any unexpected equipment failures within 30 days. But the preliminary reports were handed in nearly a month late — and without any significant updates from what was said in the days immediately following the fire.

In those reports, Chevron said the fire was “unexpected and unforeseeable.” The cause is still under an investigation that probably won’t conclude until next month, an air district spokesperson told me recently.

Company officials said the fire significantly damaged power supply, utilities and gas collection systems in that section of the refinery. Repairs are underway but could take months. Meanwhile, the majority of the 1,000-acre refinery is operational, distilling crude oil into gasoline and diesel.

At an air district meeting on Dec. 2, Chevron asked for leniency from conducting equipment testing at the damaged wing of the refinery that is now offline, and the air district obliged.

One member of the agency’s hearing board, Cynthia Verdugo-Peralta, said she understood that the investigation was “quite involved” but stressed the need for “some type of response” from Chevron on the cause.

“I’m hoping that this will never happen again,” she said. “Hopefully this repair will indeed be a full repair and there won’t be another incident like this.”

Environmental regulators like the South Coast Air Quality Management District often rely on the very industries that they oversee to arrange for monitoring and investigations into disasters. For obvious reasons, that’s not ideal. Experts say this system of self-reporting is somewhat inevitable, given that many government agencies lack the staffing, budget and access to provide adequate oversight.

But it often leaves the public waiting for answers — and skeptical of the findings, when they finally arrive.

For example, there are still serious questions surrounding the air monitoring systems at Chevron’s El Segundo refinery that were supposed to act as a safety net for the public nearby during emergencies like the October fire.

Under state law, refineries are required to install, operate and maintain real-time fence line air monitors. Indeed, over four hours after the Oct. 2 fire at El Segundo, Chevron’s fence line air monitors detected elevated levels of volatile organic compounds, a category of quickly vaporizing chemicals that can be harmful if inhaled.

However, at the time of the incident, the refinery’s monitors oddly did not detect any elevated levels of some of the most common types chemicals that experts say would have been likely to be released during such a fire, such as cancer-causing benzene, a typical byproduct of burning fossil fuels.

Experts are now asking whether those monitors were fully functioning at the time.

Earlier this month, the Bay Area Air Quality Management District fined Chevron’s refinery in Richmond $900,000 after the agency found 20 of the oil company’s fence line monitors were not properly calibrated to detect the full range of emissions, potentially allowing excessive air pollution to go undetected and unreported.

As for the El Segundo facility, neither the South Coast air district nor the refinery could confirm whether the air monitors were working properly on Oct. 2. A spokesperson said the air district is scheduled to audit Chevron’s fence line air monitoring network sometime next year.

But it may already be too late to warn nearby communities. Since October’s explosion, there have been more than a dozen reported incidents of unplanned flaring at Chevron’s refinery in El Segundo, according to air district data.

Each one raises the question: What happened?

More news on air pollution

The holiday season is associated with fragrant candles, incense and gathering around the fireplace. But health experts say these traditions should be done in moderation to avoid respiratory risks, according to Associated Press reporter Cheyanne Mumphrey.

That’s especially true in Southern California, where the air district continues to issue no-burn advisories, prohibiting burning wood to limit unhealthy levels of soot, per Pasadena Now.

Almost a year after the Eaton and Palisades fires, the health effects from breathing wildfire smoke are still coming into focus. L.A. Times science and medicine reporter Corrine Purtill writes that emergency room visits rose 46% for heart attacks at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in the 90 days after the fires. The findings suggest the death toll could be much higher than the 31 fatalities that have been linked with the fires.

California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta sued the Trump administration — for the 50th time — after the suspension of $3 billion in federal funding that Congress approved for building more electric vehicle chargers, according to Times climate reporter Hayley Smith. California alone stands to lose out on $179.8 million in grants that could help reduce smog and greenhouse gases.

A few last things in climate news

The Trump administration announced it will dismantle the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado, one of the world’s premier Earth science research institutions, per reporting from the New York Times. Scientists fear this could undermine weather forecasting in an age when global warming is contributing to more intense storms and other natural disasters.

A new analysis from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution found the rate of sea-level rise has more than doubled along U.S. coastlines over the last 125 years, according to Washington Post environmental reporter Brady Dennis. The research rebuts a controversial federal assessment published this summer that concluded there was no acceleration in rising ocean waters.

The U.S. and Europe continue to abandon their electric vehicle aspirations, ceding the clean car market to China, Bloomberg auto reporter Linda Lew writes. The European Commission recently scrapped an effective ban on combustion engine vehicles by 2035, and Ford Motor Co. walked away from plans to significantly overhaul its EV production — including the imminent demise of its all-electric Ford 150 Lightning truck.

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.

Scientists say up to 4,000 glaciers could melt annually if global warming is not curbed.

The world could lose thousands of glaciers each year over the coming decades unless global warming is curbed, leaving only a fraction remaining by the end of the century, scientists warn.

A scientific study published on Monday in Nature Climate Change warned that unless governments take action now, the planet could reach a stage of “peak glacier extinction” by midcentury with up to 4,000 melting each year.

About 200,000 glaciers remain in the world, and about 750 disappear each year. That rate could rise more than fivefold if global temperatures soar by 4 degrees Celsius (7.2 degrees Fahrenheit) from pre-industrial levels and accelerate global warming, according to the report, which predicted only 18,288 glaciers would remain by the end of the century.

Even if governments meet their pledges to limit warming to 1.5C (2.7F) under the Paris Agreement, the world could still end up losing 2,000 glaciers a year by 2041. At that pace, a little more than half of the planet’s glaciers would be gone by 2100.

That best case scenario appears unlikely. The United Nations Environment Programme already warned last month that warming is on track to exceed 1.5C in the next few years. It predicted that even if countries meet promises they have made in their climate action plans, the planet will warm 2.3C to 2.5C (4.1F to 4.5F) by the end of the century.

Monday’s study was published at the close of the UN’s International Year of Glacier Preservation with the findings intended to “underscore the urgency of ambitious climate policy”.

“The difference between losing 2,000 and 4,000 glaciers per year by the middle of the century is determined by near-term policies and societal decisions taken today,” the study said.

Coauthor Matthias Huss, a glacier expert at ETH Zurich university, took part in 2019 in a symbolic funeral for the Pizol glacier in the Swiss Alps.

“The loss of glaciers that we are speaking about here is more than just a scientific concern. It really touches our hearts,” he said.

Authorities in Gaza have warned that stormy weather could spur more war-damaged buildings to collapse and heavy rains are making it more difficult to recover bodies still under the rubble.

Authorities sounded the alarm on Monday, three days after two buildings collapsed in Gaza, killing at least 12 people, during winter rains that have also washed away and flooded the tents of displaced Palestinians and led to deaths from exposure.

A ceasefire has been in effect since October 10 after two years of Israel’s genocidal war against the Palestinian people in Gaza, but humanitarian agencies said Israel is letting very little aid into the enclave, where nearly the entire population has been displaced.

Al Jazeera’s Tareq Abou Azzoum said despite a shortage of equipment and fuel and the weather conditions in the enclave, Palestinian Civil Defence teams retrieved the bodies of 20 people on Monday.

The bodies were recovered from a multistorey building bombed in December 2023 where about 60 people, including 30 children, were believed to be sheltering.

Gaza Civil Defence spokesman Mahmoud Basal called on the international community to provide mobile homes and caravans for displaced Palestinians rather than tents.

“If people are not protected today, we will witness more victims, more killing of people, children, women, entire families inside these buildings,” he said.

Father mourns children killed in building collapse

Mohammad Nassar and his family were living in a six-storey building that was badly damaged by Israeli strikes earlier in the war and collapsed in heavy rain on Friday.

His family had struggled to find alternative accommodation and had been flooded out while living in a tent during a previous bout of bad weather. Nassar went out to buy some necessities on Friday and returned to a scene of carnage as rescue workers struggled to pull bodies from the rubble.

“I saw my son’s hand sticking out from under the ground. It was the scene that affected me the most. My son under the ground and we are unable to get him out,” Nassar said. His son, 15, died as did a daughter, aged 18.

Exposure warning

The head of the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees warned on Monday that more aid must be allowed into Gaza without delay to prevent putting more displaced families at serious risk.

“With heavy rain and cold brought in by Storm Byron [late last week], people in the Gaza Strip are freezing to death,” UNRWA Commissioner General Philippe Lazzarini posted on X.

“The waterlogged ruins where they are sheltering are collapsing, causing even more exposure to cold,” he added.

Lazzarini said UNRWA has supplies that have waited for months to enter Gaza that he said would cover the needs of hundreds of thousands of Gaza’s more than two million people.

UN and Palestinian officials said at least 300,000 new tents are urgently needed for the roughly 1.5 million people still displaced. Most existing shelters are worn out or made of thin plastic and cloth sheeting.

Gaza authorities, meanwhile, were still digging to recover about 9,000 bodies they estimated remain buried in rubble from Israeli bombing during the war, but the lack of machinery is slowing down the process, spokesman Ismail al-Thawabta said.

Azzoum reported that Civil Defence teams said they require a surge in heavy machinery to expedite the work.

“They are saying that they are still in need, initially, for 40 excavators and bulldozers in order to achieve some slight progress in the whole process on the ground,” Azzoum said, reporting from Gaza City.

Israel’s continuing ban on the entry of heavy machinery into the Gaza Strip is a violation of the ceasefire, he added.

Earlier on Sunday, Hamas said Israel’s continuing violations of the ceasefire risk jeopardising the agreement and progress towards the next stage of United States President Donald Trump’s plan to end the war.

Since the ceasefire began, Israel has continued to strike Gaza on a daily basis, carrying out nearly 800 attacks and killing nearly 400 people, according to authorities in Gaza, while blocking the free flow of humanitarian aid.

“There is no real sense of safety nor protection for families,” Azzoum said of the ongoing violations.

Twenty states had challenged the end of the programme, meant to make localities more resilient to natural disasters.

A federal judge has said the administration of United States President Donald Trump acted unlawfully in ending a programme aimed at helping communities become more resilient to natural disasters.

The Trump administration had targeted the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC) programme as part of a wider effort to overhaul the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).

But on Thursday, US District Judge Richard Stearns ruled that the administration lacked the authority to end the grant programme. The decision came in response to a lawsuit filed by 20 states, the majority led by Democrats.

Stearns said the administration’s action amounted to an “unlawful executive encroachment on the prerogative of Congress to appropriate funds for a specific and compelling purpose”.

“The BRIC program is designed to protect against natural disasters and save lives,” Stearns wrote, adding that the “imminence of disasters is not deterred by bureaucratic obstruction”.

Stearns had previously blocked FEMA from diverting more than $4bn allocated to BRIC to other purposes.

Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell was among the plaintiffs praising the decision.

“Today’s court order will undoubtedly save lives by preventing the federal government from terminating funding that helps communities prepare for and mitigate the impacts of natural disasters,” she said in a statement.

BRIC is the largest resiliency programme offered by FEMA, designed to reduce disaster-related risks and bolster efforts to recover quickly.

The programme is emblematic of efforts under FEMA to take preventive measures to prepare for natural disasters, as climate change fuels more extreme weather across the country.

According to the lawsuit, FEMA approved about $4.5bn in grants for nearly 2,000 projects, primarily in coastal states, over the last four years.

Upon taking office for his second term, Trump initially pledged to do away with FEMA, with the agency sitting at the crossroads of the president’s climate change denialism and his pledge to end federal waste.

Trump has since softened on his position amid pushback from both Republican and Democratic state lawmakers. He has said he plans to reform the agency instead.

In November, acting FEMA head David Richardson stepped down from his post. That came amid internal pushback over Richardson’s lack of experience and cuts to the agency.

In a letter in August, nearly 200 FEMA staffers warned the cuts risked compounding future disasters to a devastating degree.

Upon taking on the role in May, Richardson threatened he would “run right over” anyone who resisted changes to the agency.