climate crisis

Paris and Chamonix, France – Ibrahim Doukanthi prepares to plunge into the Canal Saint-Denis. It is almost noon, and the temperature in the Paris region is nearing 30 degrees Celsius (86F).

He grew up just north of Saint-Denis, one of France’s poorest municipalities, and now lives in La Plaine, hundreds of metres from the Stade de France, the country’s national stadium.

“The water here is completely normal,” he said. “It’s just that it’s green, so you don’t know what’s in it – that’s what makes it a bit scary.”

He has been jumping into the canal – technically not open to swimmers – to cool off during the recent heatwaves.

Like many residents of Paris’s sprawling, historically disinvested suburbs, Doukanthi had to be creative to beat the heat while living in an apartment building without air conditioning.

“What I do is take the spray bottles – I call them ‘pshit-pshit’ – fill them with water, spray myself down, then sit in front of the fan,” he said. “It cools you off like crazy.”

Sitting in the shade at a flea market in Saint-Denis, Natifa Segli, a municipal employee, criticised the government’s response to the heatwave.

“I don’t feel like we learned the lesson from the 2003 heatwave. Here we are in 2026, and this heatwave was horrible,” she said. “Even at work, we weren’t sheltered. The temperatures in the offices were very, very hot.”

For Segli, the only consistent solution is to avoid the sun. “We’re going to stay in the shade,” she said of an upcoming heatwave, expected later this week.

‘We really have nothing to cool off with’

In areas like Saint-Denis, access to cooling infrastructure is unevenly spread, Louiza Ammari, a childcare worker who lives in social housing, told Al Jazeera.

In her building, police banned residents from setting up an inflatable pool for children. As renters, her family is not allowed to install air conditioning. Though one municipal pool opened free swimming hours, she could not go because it does not allow burkinis.

“We really have nothing to cool off with,” she said.

In France, there were 2,025 additional deaths during the last heatwave, the week of June 22 – a week-over-week increase of 30 percent nationwide and 62 percent in the Paris region, according to the national public health agency.

Extreme heat highlights existing inequalities, according to Bruno Villalba, a political science professor at AgroParisTech Paris-Saclay, specialising in political ecology and environmental policy.

“The heatwave is merely a symptom of social vulnerability, particularly in terms of housing,” Villalba told Al Jazeera.

Wealthier people can insulate their homes, afford a portable air-conditioning unit, eat fresh produce, or even leave the city for vacation when it gets too hot, options that are unavailable to many others.

“It’s up to the government to step in,” Villalba said.

“They tell us, ‘Stay hydrated, don’t stay in the sun, drink water,’” he said. “The French government did not sufficiently anticipate the acceleration of climate change.”

‘We are not all equally exposed’

There is a pervasive misconception of “universality” when it comes to climate deregulation, noted Mael Ginsburger, a lecturer at Universite Paris Cite focused on inequalities linked to the ecological transition.

Although experienced by everyone, more vulnerable populations have limited resources to mitigate heatwave conditions.

“We are not all equally exposed, just as we are not all equally responsible. There are significant inequalities in carbon emissions,” Ginsburger said. “Not everyone is equally capable of adapting, and there are certain groups that face multiple vulnerabilities linked to poor health, for example.”

Among wealthy households in France, 70 percent consider their homes properly insulated to combat heat, compared with 46 percent of lower-income households, according to Ginsburger’s research. More people report now suffering from heat in the summer – 66 percent – than cold in the winter, 46 percent.

“Overcrowded housing is much more likely to be in poor condition and have extremely poor insulation,” Ginsburger said. “These are populations facing a combination of overcrowding in dilapidated housing located in areas like Marseille and Lyon that are particularly vulnerable to heat.

“We’re sticking with this same approach of small steps rather than a structural approach that would actually require a more far-reaching overhaul of [building] infrastructure.”

For the homeless, the ramifications of heatwaves can be even worse.

“People who are outside don’t have a moment’s respite. They are suffocating in a concrete jungle where there is no simple, effective way to escape the intense heat. On asphalt, the perceived temperature can often rise to 45-50 degrees,” Paul Alauzy, at NGO Medecins du Monde, or Doctors of the World, told Al Jazeera.

He is a member of Le Revers, an activist group that formed during the 2024 Paris Olympics to bring awareness to the conditions faced by unhoused people in the Paris region.

“We’re asking for long-term policies designed to protect as many people as possible and reduce the number of people living on the streets, precisely to shield them from the harsh weather,” Alauzy said. “Once again, the authorities are stubbornly resorting to reactive, weather-dependent management.”

During heatwaves and cold snaps, French officials usually add a few emergency shelters and install temporary water stations.

“This is obviously not nearly enough,” Alauzy said.

Not all parks and natural spaces, essential for cooling down, are accessible to all.

“Trees, which are natural tools for regulating temperatures, have been effectively pushed out of our cities,” Villalba said, especially in deprived areas.

In places like Saint-Denis, schools and other public infrastructure are insufficiently equipped, said Ammari, the childcare worker.

‘Definitely an advantage to be at an altitude’

Even in the mountains, temperatures rose above 30C during the last heatwave, about 10C (18F) above normal end-of-June temperatures.

In Chamonix, the Bossons Glacier above town visibly shrank and conditions along popular routes up Mont Blanc and neighbouring peaks are becoming dangerous due to rockfall risks.

But nights are not stifling, and locals and visitors in the Alps sleep comfortably.

There are forested trails and a river fed by glacial melt that cools the surrounding area.

“In Chamonix, like in many mountain towns, it’s definitely an advantage to be at an altitude of 1,000 metres [3,280 feet] and to have the forest a few minutes from home,” Jean-Michel Bouteille, who recently retired from his role as director of municipal services in Chamonix, told Al Jazeera. “We’re a town of 9,000 people, but we still have nearby green spaces that are free and easily accessible.”

Although the mountain weather is not oppressive, climate change is felt in Chamonix.

“We have temperatures much higher than in previous years, which is leading to significant consequences. The Bossons Glacier is a disaster,” said Bouteille, who has lived in the valley for 26 years.

World Meteorological Organization forecasts more likelihood of heatwaves, droughts and heavy rainfall due to El Nino.

The United Nations’ weather watchdog is warning governments and humanitarian organisations to brace for “extreme weather events” including heatwaves, droughts and heavy rainfall due to the El Nino weather phenomenon.

The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said in a statement on Friday that El Nino conditions had already set in and are “forecast to strengthen rapidly” between July and September.

El Nino typically peaks between November and February.

The UN agency has activated climate information services and early warning systems to help governments and humanitarian agencies prepare support plans for farmers and vulnerable communities.

“El Nino conditions are already under way and are forecast to strengthen rapidly into a strong event – as accurately anticipated by WMO forecasts,” said WMO Secretary-General Celeste Saulo.

“This will intensify the chances of drought and heavy rainfall and the risk of heatwaves on land and marine heatwaves in many regions of the world.”

Saulo added that “advanced seasonal forecasts and early warnings are vital to save lives and cushion the impact on our economies and our communities.”

El Nino is a natural climate phenomenon that warms surface temperatures in the central and eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean, bringing worldwide changes in winds, pressure and rainfall patterns.

El Nino events typically occur every two to seven years and usually last between nine and 12 months. Not all regions of the world are affected.

Conditions oscillate between El Nino and its opposite La Nina – both phases of the El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) – with neutral conditions in between.

Even when ENSO is neutral, extreme weather can still occur.

On Thursday, the WMO reported that global ocean temperatures hit a new high in June, partly driven by El Nino.

The last El Nino contributed to making 2023 the second-hottest year on record and 2024 the all-time high, at about 1.55 degrees Celsius (2.79 degrees Fahrenheit) above the 1850-1900 pre-industrial average.

Temperatures in Europe hit a new high this summer, with hotter early-summer heatwaves triggering illness, deaths and the collapse of infrastructure across the continent.

Transport buckled on Sunday as temperatures hit 40C (104F) across Germany, the Czech Republic and Poland. In France, days averaging 29.8C (85.6F) – spiking to 44C (111.2F) in one town – gave way to storms, leaving an estimated 1,000 excess deaths behind.

Scenes like this may well be the new normal.

Last summer’s heatwave alone caused an estimated 2,300 climate-related deaths in 12 European countries, WWA says.

A study by World Weather Attribution (WWA) has found that intense heat on this level is now tens to hundreds of times more likely than it was in 2003, and was unheard of 50 years ago.

“Heat-related mortality is likely to remain a feature of Europe’s warming climate,” warns Dr Hans Kluge, the World Health Organization (WHO)’s regional director for Europe. Deaths have already risen by an average of 52 per million people annually since the 1990s, he told Al Jazeera – a trend he says shows little sign of reversing on its own.

So what does this mean for the future? Are these temperatures the new normal, and if so, why?

We asked the climate experts:

Is this really the new normal?

Yes, it certainly looks that way. According to WWA, heatwaves were generally about 3.5C cooler in June 1976, and 2C cooler even in 2003.

“Think of it like a race where the starting line has been moved much closer to the finish,” Dr Akshay Deoras of the University of Reading told Al Jazeera. Ultimately, this is down to global warming, he says.

Europe has warmed at roughly twice the global average since the 1980s, according to the European Commission’s climate change service, Copernicus.

Deoras says this amounts to “loading the dice” towards once-rare extremes.

WWA’s modelling goes further: at current emissions rates, an event of the magnitude of this summer’s heatwave is expected to occur every couple of decades – and today’s extremes are effectively a preview of what an ordinary summer could look like by the middle of the century.

Why is this happening in Europe now?

The immediate trigger is a stalled high-pressure system, or a “heat dome”, which traps heat in one concentrated area for days or weeks.

Heat domes aren’t new, but Europe’s already-shifted baseline means the same pattern now produces far hotter outcomes than decades ago, Deoras told Al Jazeera.

Professor Hannah Cloke of the University of Reading told Al Jazeera that’s because the warming behind new, extreme weather patterns comes from emissions released decades ago, and the climate system takes time to respond – so we’re feeling the effects now of pollution from the past.

Copernicus’s European State of the Climate 2025 report confirms this: more than 95 percent of the continent saw above-average annual temperatures last year, alongside record Alpine glacier loss and the highest sea-surface temperatures ever measured in Europe.

And because Europe is warming roughly twice as fast as the rest of the planet, that gap with the global average is projected to keep widening – meaning whatever the world experiences on average in the coming decades, Europe will likely see first, and worse.

Is this trajectory irreversible?

Partly. Some of the damage is permanent. Some of it isn’t – yet.

Take glaciers. Because the effects of pollution from decades ago are cumulative, “some of what we are experiencing this summer is already locked in”, Cloke says.

Alpine glaciers, which feed major European rivers, she says, have already shrunk past the point of recovery, and their contribution to summer river flow is “permanently reduced”.

Not everything is set in stone, however. “Every tonne of emissions avoided changes the odds of what comes next,” Cloke says.

What we do now, therefore, will decide the difference between summers that are simply hard to live with in the future, and summers that become “genuinely beyond our ability to cope with”.

Some resources, like groundwater in northern Europe, can still recover – “but the window to act is narrowing with each dry year”, she says.

What is this doing to human health?

The toll is already severe and likely to worsen.

The Lancet Countdown Europe calculates that there were 62,000 heat-related deaths across the region in 2024 alone, with projections showing a steep further rise by 2050 if we don’t make changes.

Much of the problem, Kluge told Al Jazeera, is architectural and largely unaddressed.

“Most of the housing stock across this region was designed for a colder climate – to retain heat, not shed it,” he said, warning that without large-scale retrofitting, deaths could keep climbing past 2050 regardless of how good warning systems become.

His prescription: treat heat as predictable, not an emergency.

“Governments need to plan for heat the way they plan for winter flu – as a recurring, predictable challenge requiring permanent infrastructure, not a one-off crisis requiring emergency improvisation.” The highest-return step, he added, is identifying who’s most at risk – often older people living alone – and reaching them before a heatwave hits, not after.

What else can be done?

Cloke points to two priorities: early warning systems that reliably reach the people who most need to be protected, and an overhaul of water infrastructure in Europe which has been built for rainfall patterns that no longer exist.

Deoras says emissions also still matter: cutting them won’t eliminate heatwaves, which are “a natural part of the climate system”, but doing so would make them “less intense, less frequent and shorter-lived”.

None of the experts who spoke to Al Jazeera describe this as hopeless.

They do warn that the window of opportunity for addressing the issue is narrowing: infrastructure can still be retrofitted, emissions can still be cut, warning systems can still be improved – if the decisions to do so are made now, rather than after the next heatwave.

What a “normal” European summer looks like in 2050 is still being written, they say.

Last week, the U.S. Forest Service and Department of the Interior expanded the situations in which their firefighters are allowed to wear N95 masks.

Starting in September, the federal government began allowing firefighters to wear the masks, but not when they were working on the fire line, only at times such as in camp and sitting in vehicles. Now they’ll be allowed to wear them during some work battling wildfires, including patrolling for areas where the blaze has jumped past fire lines and putting out smoldering remains after a fire is contained.

Masks are still prohibited during firefighters’ most grueling tasks — digging lines to stop fires and directly attacking flames. And the masks they’re using, N95s, do not protect against all of the toxic substances in wildfire smoke.

Nonetheless, health experts applauded the move as a step in the right direction.

Here’s why it took so long to get here:

Research has linked wildfire smoke to a range of long-term health issues, including respiratory problems, cardiovascular diseases and cancers.

“The fire service knows that,” said Rachael Jones, professor and chair of environmental health sciences at UCLA’s Fielding School of Public Health. “They all have stories” of lung damage or cancer, either their own or their coworkers’.

But this wasn’t always common knowledge.

“The verbiage was that wildland smoke was benign,” one firefighter told Jones’ colleagues for a recent study on firefighters’ thoughts on mask use. “It was like sitting around a campfire.”

Even as scientists and fire officials came to terms with the very real long-term health risks, some firefighters still had concerns that masks could muffle communication, make it hard to breathe and interfere with other equipment. That slowed adoption.

Missing crucial orders because a voice is muffled, or struggling to pull out an emergency fire shelter because a mask is in the way, could be the difference between life and death.

“These are not trivial things when the fact is that they reflect life safety outcome,” Jones said.

Deciding on the right type of mask or respirator has slowed adoption too. There are no commercially available respirators that protect against all of the dangerous pollutants in wildfire smoke.

Scientists have not even fully determined which pollutants pose the greatest risks to firefighters, further complicating a choice.

N95s filter for solid particles in the air but not dangerous gases. Heavy smoke or sweat can cause them to clog.

Half-face respirators — often gray rubber with pink canisters — offer different filters for different gases, but none can filter all of the concerning gases in wildfire smoke. The masks and backup canisters are also much bulkier to carry around than N95s.

Respirators that can filter out all of the “literally hundreds” of concerning compounds in smoke “just simply don’t exist,” said Matt Rahn, research director for the Wildfire Conservancy, a nonprofit dedicated to protecting firefighters.

The result: “In our pursuit for perfection in finding the best respiratory devices for firefighters, we’ve basically fallen into a decision paralysis of doing nothing,” Rahn said. “It’s been that way for years.”

The federal government acknowledges the limitations of N95s in its educational material for firefighters. In a statement to The Times, the Forest Service said it will begin studying different respirators in a small pilot program to “determine if their use will be suitable for the wildland fire environment.”

The Forest Service said that N95s are already “readily available” to its firefighters and that it has more than 30,000 of them.

More recent wildfire news

Many in the western United States will have to celebrate the country’s 250th birthday with fewer fireworks due to heightened wildfire risk. Utah’s governor restricted fireworks statewide through July 5 as multiple wildfires raged in the state and the National Weather Service issued a rare “Particularly Dangerous Situation” warning, Kathy McCormack reports for the Associated Press. California officials, meanwhile, warned of zero tolerance for illegal fireworks, with some local governments recently increasing fines, Kassia Bonesteel reports for CBS News.

Three federal wildland firefighters were killed and two were injured by the fast-moving Knowles fire in Colorado on Saturday. As a ground crew began some of the first attacks on the fire, an order came over the radio to “get out of there now,” CNN reported. Within minutes, the crew was forced to deploy their emergency shelters, a desperate last line of defense when escape is impossible. Firefighters lined the streets of Grand Junction, Colo., on Sunday in a procession for their fallen colleagues.

Much of the western U.S. is facing above normal fire potential after one of the hottest and driest winters in recent years. Coastal Southern California, conversely, is facing average wildfire potential, fire weather analysts say, thanks to monsoon breezes bringing damp air from the tropics.

A few last things in climate news

A pair of hazardous chemical crises in Greater Los Angeles — at an aerospace facility in Garden Grove and a warehouse in Boyle Heights — have left Californians questioning why environmental and public health agencies such as the South Coast Air Quality Management District and the state’s Division of Occupational Safety and Health failed to address known risks, a team from CalMatters and the LA Local reports.

The Boyle Heights warehouse fire coincided with a spike in emergency room visits for smoke inhalation and throat pain, my colleague Hayley Smith found. Meanwhile, the water used to fight the toxic blaze ended up in the Los Angeles River, The Times’ Mack Baysinger reports. Local organizers collected water samples for testing as L.A. County public works deployed floating barriers to contain the runoff.

The headwaters of the Colorado River, a vital source of water for 35 million people and 5 million acres of farmland, is drier than anyone can remember, my colleague Ian James reports. As seven U.S. states and Mexico remain gridlocked in complex debates over use of the river, it’s a stark reminder that the climate of the 21st century will leave less for everyone.

Europe is facing its second major heat wave of the year, with France recording its hottest day ever, Lauren Dalban reports for Inside Climate News. As residents struggled to handle the extreme heat, worsened by climate change, so did climate infrastructure championed to combat it. Trains were halted as the heat risked buckling tracks and nuclear reactors were slowed or powered off as the cooling water they discharged became too hot, the New York Times’ Chico Harlan reported.

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 wildfire news, follow @nohaggerty on X and @nohaggerty.bsky.social on Bluesky.

A punishing heatwave affected many parts of the country during the last week of the month.

Last month was provisionally the warmest June in England since records began, as well as the second-warmest for the United Kingdom, according to figures published by the country’s Met Office.

Rare extreme heat warnings were issued for several days last month, with “exceptionally warm overnight temperatures”, the weather agency said on Wednesday.

England registered an average temperature of 17.1C (62.78 degrees Fahrenheit) last month – the highest since records began in 1884.

“The exceptional warmth was driven by an intense and record-breaking heatwave at the end of the month,” the Met Office said in a statement.

The previous record of 16.9C (62.4F) was set in June 2025, nearly 3C (5.4F) above the long-term average. It means England’s top three warmest Junes since data began in 1884 have all occurred this decade, with the third being in 2023.

A punishing heatwave affected many parts of the country during the last week of the month, with temperatures topping 30C (86F) at some places in the UK for seven days in a row from June 21-27.

A peak of 37.7C (99.86F) was provisionally reached at Lingwood in Norfolk on June 26 – the highest maximum temperature ever recorded for the month.

This was more than 2C higher (3.6F) than the previous June record of 35.6C (96.08F), set in 1957 at Camden Square in London and equalled in 1976 at Mayflower Park in Southampton.

Last month also saw a provisional new June record for the highest overnight minimum, with temperatures at Cardiff Bute Park dropping no lower than 23.5C (74.3F) on June 25.

More than 1,000 schools and nurseries were closed during the heatwave, and there was disruption to public transport with overhead wires and signalling strained because of the heat.

Critics felt the country was ill-prepared to deal with the sweltering heat. Climate experts have urged the UK government to adapt its infrastructure to warming summers, with a surge in demand for fans and air conditioners, which remain rare in British homes.

The heatwave has also affected many countries in Europe, including France, Germany, Slovakia, Serbia, Croatia, Italy, Austria and western Ukraine, with more than 1,000 deaths linked to the scorching heat reported in France alone.

A group of scientists blamed climate change for the dangerous weather blazing across Europe. In a report by the World Weather Attribution, experts warned that the phasing out of fossil fuels is essential to reverse the extreme weather trend.

An intense heatwave is set to blanket much of the central and eastern United States this week as a “heat dome” settles over the region, bringing days of oppressively high temperatures and humidity ahead of the Fourth of July weekend and FIFA World Cup matches in several US cities.

Forecasters say in some places it could feel as hot as 46 degrees Celsius (115 degrees Fahrenheit). Dozens of temperature records could be broken, according to the National Weather Service (NWS), which called the conditions “dangerous”. More than 60 million people are currently under heat alerts.

At the centre of this week’s forecast is a weather phenomenon known as a heat dome. What is it, and why does it make heatwaves even more intense and unbearable?

What is a heat dome?

A heat dome is a large area of high pressure, formed when warm air flows northward, that acts like a lid over the atmosphere, trapping hot air close to the ground.

As the air sinks, it compresses and warms even more. At the same time, the pressure system helps prevent cooler air and storms from moving in, allowing heat to build at the surface and remain trapped there. With few clouds and little wind, the sun has more direct access to the ground, creating a heat feedback loop.

Heat domes are linked to prolonged heatwaves that can last for days.

How long will it last?

The heat dome is already building and is expected to strengthen over the coming days, spreading from the central US towards the east coast, with dangerous heat lasting several days into early July.

The hottest conditions are expected Thursday and Friday, according to the NWS, and are set to continue through the Fourth of July weekend, which marks the 250th anniversary year of the US, and forecasters say some areas across the Great Plains, the southeast, and the mid-Atlantic are likely to remain unusually hot into next weekend.

What will the highest temperatures be?

Many places are expected to see daytime temperatures in the high 30s Celsius (low 100s Fahrenheit), but humidity will make it feel much hotter. In parts of the central and eastern US, the heat index – a measure of how hot it feels when humidity is factored in – could climb between 40C and 46C (100F and 115F).

“That’s heat that’s impactful to anyone,” said NWS meteorologist Bryan Putnam. “It’s not just older adults or younger children or people who are spending a ton of time outdoors, maybe straining themselves a little more than normal. This is heat that really could impact everyone, especially with people outdoors going into the holiday weekend.”

The nights won’t bring much relief either, with temperatures expected to stay in the 20s Celsius (70s Fahrenheit) overnight, creating potentially miserable sleep conditions for those without air conditioning and making it harder for people to cool down.

“Even after the sun goes down, it’s still going to be very hot,” said AccuWeather senior meteorologist Alan Reppert. “We’re at a pattern that’s really going to be hot during the good portion of the afternoon and even into the evening hours.”

Which parts of the US will be hit the hardest?

The most dangerous conditions are expected in a broad corridor stretching from the Great Lakes to the East Coast, where several cities could experience their hottest day of the year so far. New York City, Philadelphia, Washington, Baltimore, Chicago, Indianapolis, Detroit and St Louis are all expected to be affected, with temperatures also soaring farther south in Dallas, Little Rock and Memphis.

Several of those cities are also hosting FIFA World Cup events. In Philadelphia, organisers have already changed Fan Festival hours to start later in the day.

Cities across the US are rolling out emergency measures as temperatures climb.

Chicago said it would open cooling centres and send city workers to check on vulnerable residents.

In New York City, Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s office announced what it called an “unprecedented” response to the heat, including hydration vans and pop-up cooling stations equipped with misting fans and cooling towels.

Washington, DC, where temperatures are expected to exceed 38C (100F) from Thursday through Saturday, the heat will coincide with Fourth of July celebrations, including what organisers say will be the largest fireworks display ever held on the National Mall.

What are some ways to stay cool?

The NWS says people should stay hydrated, avoid strenuous outdoor activity during the hottest part of the day and seek air conditioning or cooling centres where possible. If you’re spending time outside, wear loose, lightweight clothing and stay near shady areas.

Experts say one of the biggest risks during a prolonged heatwave is that the body doesn’t have time to cool down overnight, which can make the effects of the heat build up from one day to the next. They also recommend drinking water before you feel thirsty and limiting alcohol, which can increase the risk of dehydration.

“If somebody realises that they’re hot, but they’re not sweating, or if they begin to feel a little bit dizzy, those are some signs that they really need to take a break, get inside, find some cooling, and drink plenty of water,”  said Geoff Cornish, assistant chief video meteorologist for the weather forecasting company AccuWeather. “And if they really begin to experience significant symptoms, they need to seek medical attention right away.”

Grid operators warn the US heatwave could send electricity demand near record levels before the Fourth of July holiday.

Power grid operators in the United States are warning that a dangerous heatwave could put more strain on an electric grid already under pressure from surging energy consumption.

A stretch of extreme heat is expected to intensify across much of the central and eastern parts of the country this week, peaking from Tuesday through Thursday.

That heatwave is likely to continue through one of the busiest travel weekends of the year, as millions of Americans prepare for Fourth of July celebrations on Saturday.

Temperatures this week are forecasted to climb above 38 degrees Celsius (100 degrees Fahrenheit) from Boston to Washington, DC, pushing up demand for air conditioning.

The heatwave coincides with two major events on the US calendar. Saturday’s holiday marks the 250th anniversary of the US’s independence, and millions are expected to gather for barbecues, parades and fireworks.

The extreme temperatures also come as the FIFA World Cup has reached the knockout stage, with many host cities, including New York, Boston, Philadelphia and Washington, expected to feel the heat.

Humidity could push the heat index as high as 46 degrees Celsius (114 Fahrenheit) in some places, while overnight temperatures will offer little respite.

The US’s largest regional grid operator, PMJ Interconnection, is forecasting record summer electrical demand of 166.3 gigawatts for Thursday evening, surpassing the previous summer peak set two decades ago, in 2006.

The New York Independent System Operator (NYISO), the state’s grid operator, is also expecting electricity demand to approach record highs, while the Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO), which covers 15 states in the Midwest and South, could also see its peak demand record challenged.

Authorities at MISO say they will rely on PMJ for support in covering consumer needs.

In a May report, PMJ’s executives warned of a “fundamental mismatch between how fast demand is growing and how quickly new supply can be built and connected to the grid”.

New power plants, they said, now take twice as long to build and cost twice as much as they did a decade ago.

Meanwhile, there has been increasing pressure on electrical grids from new technology like data centres and electric vehicles.

In May, PMJ said hyperscale data centres were “adding load at an unprecedented pace”.

Experts say the artificial intelligence (AI) boom is colliding with climate change, with tools like ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude being processed in vast, energy-hungry data centres.

The most energy-intensive are the hyperscale facilities that require between 100 and 300 megawatts of electricity, enough to power hundreds of thousands of homes.

Many of those are concentrated in northern Virginia, which sits within PJM’s service territory and is widely described as the world’s largest data centre hub.

Researchers have also identified what they call a “data heat island effect”, finding that land surface temperatures around AI data centres rise by an average of 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit), with some locations seeing increases of up to 9 degrees Celsius (16.2 degrees Fahrenheit).

The National Weather Service in the US warns that long periods of extreme heat create significant stress on the body.

It has urged people to limit outdoor activity, stay hydrated and keep close to air conditioning or cooling centres.

A 2024 report from the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) found that 21,518 deaths in the United States from 1999 to 2023 were heat-related.

The highest number came in the final year of the report’s analysis, 2023. That year, 2,325 people died from causes attributed to high temperatures.

Every morning Marisol Winfrey Herrera’s three-and-a-half-year-old daughter Jo reminds her to turn off the tap while washing her hands and brushing her teeth.

When they leave home, she reminds her mother to keep a bottle of ice with them to offer it to homeless people, who they sometimes find wilting in the Tucson heat. At first, they press the ice-filled bottles on the homeless folks to help them revive, then they offer the water to drink and hydrate. At her daycare, Jo is taught water-saving habits to combat Tucson’s soaring heat.

It is what prompted Herrera to join No Desert Data Center, a residents’ group that opposes two large data centres coming up on either side of Tucson – the $3.6bn project on the city’s southeast edge and a $5bn project on its northwest side in the town of Marana, together known as Project Blue.

The group believes these would consume more water and power than the city set in the Sonoran Desert can afford.

“We are in the middle of a 30-year drought, which is now an extreme drought,” says Lisa Shipek, co-executive director of the Watershed Management Group, a Tucson-based nonprofit.

“Water was a unifying theme in our campaign. The Colorado River cuts are looming, and this project would take water away,” Herrera told Al Jazeera.

Water flows in the Colorado River, which provides much of Tucson’s water through the Central Arizona Project canal system, have dropped by 20 percent since the year 2000 compared with water flows in the 20th century due to climate change, melting snow caps and warmer weather, making water cuts to Tucson imminent as the state could face as much as 77 percent water cuts.

“We say Not One Drop for data centres,” says Herrera, speaking of the campaign’s particularly emotive appeal for residents as water cuts get deeper and temperatures rise, with Tucson recording the warmest weather in 125 years last July and August.

Beale Infrastructure, a San Francisco-based company that is owned by investment management company Blue Owl in New York, had asked the city of Tucson to acquire 290 acres that were outside city limits for Project Blue. That would make it the city’s largest water consumer and among its largest power consumers. Beale did not respond to an emailed request for comment.

But at city council meetings, City Councillor Kevin Dahl began seeing hundreds of residents turn up to express their opposition to the project.

“Not for many issues do we get so much response,” he said. Herrera was among those who went.

Pitting environment against unions

At council meetings, Beale executives proposed that Project Blue could be the economic engine the city needed. It would create a few thousand jobs for construction workers, ironmongers, plumbers and other such workers during the construction of the project and a few hundred after that.

“Sometimes people travel as far as Phoenix for work,” Dahl said about Arizona’s largest city, which is nearly a two-hour drive from Tucson.

The project could bring jobs closer. Beale also expected the project to generate nearly $250m in taxes for the city, county and state in the first 10 years.

This left councillors with a difficult decision to make, weighing the project’s economic benefits against allocating it a share of the city’s increasingly scarce water and power.

Activists also raised concerns about whether Tucson Electric Power (TEP), the power utility, would raise rates for consumers so it could expand capacity to provide power for Project Blue. After raising rates by 10 percent in 2023, TEP proposed a 14 percent rate hike in June 2025 for grid upgrades made in the previous year.

Lee Ziesche, an activist from the Democratic Socialists of America who is campaigning to make TEP a public utility, said Project Blue could “lead to higher temperatures and higher rates” because of the heat island effect of the air conditioners and higher rates for power.

She often hears from residents that a rate hike would make it hard to pay bills or put on air conditioning, even as the number of 100-degree Fahrenheit (37.8 degree-Celsius) days has increased in Tucson, which is among the hottest cities in the United States.

The same concerns of needing ramped-up air conditioning would plague data centres too, experts say.

“The viability of data centres in Arizona will always be subject to climate change and heat risks,” says Kate Gordon, chief executive of California Forward, a think tank that works on a sustainable economy.

“The heat in Arizona makes energy less efficient, and servers heat up, so projects will need higher amounts of water and cooling, which developers have to balance against a possibly lower real estate and labour cost,” she said. “I am always amazed at how climate does not figure in business plans.”

Dahl and Andres Cano, a supervisor in Pima County, in which Tucson is located, had discussions with Beale representatives.

“We thought they would go elsewhere if the city did not acquire the land” for the project, Dahl said. Cano also came away with the same impression.

In August 2025, Tucson councillors voted unanimously not to acquire the land for the project or provide it with water and power. In December, Cano became one of only two supervisors in Pima County to oppose the project, and it was approved for construction in an unincorporated part of the county.

“It will create short-term construction jobs for what will ultimately be a project with few wins,” Cano said. “This pitted the environment and unions, but industry is not for unions. This will have just about 100 jobs when it is done.”

With no access to Tucson’s water supply, Beale decided to cool its servers with air conditioners rather than water and use a closed-loop water system, so it would recycle and reuse water.

But Vivek Bharathan, a spokesperson for the No Desert Data Center, said using air conditioners would increase power usage.

Nearly half of TEP’s power comes from fracking, he says. Data centre demand will only mean “more fracking somewhere else, climate and health consequences all along the way”.

The state’s largest data centre

Even as Project Blue was making its way through a fraught approval process, Beale announced another data centre project in the neighbouring farming town of Marana. It was to be spread over 600 acres (242 hectares), twice the size of Project Blue. The area was spread over two farm plots, one owned by the Mormon church and the other by a family trust of city council member, Herb Kai.

This project, too, is slated to bring thousands of construction jobs to a farming town as well as tax revenues.

But when Jackie McGuire, a mother of three and former Wall Street banker, heard about it, she and other residents launched a campaign to stop the land from being rezoned for a data centre. Residents wanted Marana to stay a farming town.

McGuire, who works as a research analyst, said the data centres’ servers and large air conditioners that would be installed to keep them running would raise the project’s cost and make Marana unbearably hot.

Temperatures rose by up to 2.2F (1.22C) downwind from data centres in the Phoenix area, a study published in May had found.

“The heat generated will be like one to two million space heaters,” McGuire says. “It can go up to 112 degrees [44.4C] here already. The heat island effect could make Marana uninhabitable.”

The Marana data centre will be provided power by TEP and Trico, which announced a 7.23 percent rate hike in January.

McGuire and other residents campaigned to have a referendum on whether the land could be rezoned for a data centre. Their plea was not successful, and the city council approved the rezoning of the land.

But the experience of the campaign had invigorated McGuire, and she decided to run for city council herself. The central issue of her campaign is to bring transparency to the data centre’s functioning.

Even as the campaigns in Pima County and Marana raged on, La Osa, the state’s largest data centre project, took shape in Tucson’s neighbouring Pinal County. The 3,300-acre project by the Vermaland real estate group was expected to house 59 data centres and two of its own natural gas facilities, as well as a utility-scale battery storage system.

But residents worried about noise pollution from protracted project construction and a possible increase in power costs.

“I’m worried about the constituents in that area, about the power bills going up, even though you’re saying that they’re going to pay for it,” Pinal County Supervisor Rich Vitiello said in a board of supervisors meeting on May 27.

In the face of such opposition, a La Osa lawyer spoke at the meeting to say the project had been scaled down and would now house 11 data centres from the 59 planned earlier.

‘A straw to the aquifer’

Sharing limited water has long been an emotive issue in the state, and the looming Colorado River cuts and data centre projects have brought such concerns to a head.

Arizona fought one of the longest-running cases, stretching more than three decades, in the US Supreme Court over the sharing of Colorado River water with California. Eventually, Congress adjudicated to provide California with a greater share of the water, which turbocharged its economic growth.

“No water can flow into Tucson and Phoenix unless California gets its full share,” says Jason Robison, co-director of the Gina Guy Center for Land and Water Law at the University of Wyoming College of Law.  “Arizona has always been in a tough spot.”

It strengthened the state’s long-held tradition of conservation.

“Arizona communities have been preparing for the drought conditions we see today since 1980,” a spokesperson for the Arizona Department of Water Resources said in an emailed response.

Authorities have curtailed lawns in Tucson, he said, and educational campaigns of the kind Herrera’s daughter underwent are the norm.

It has meant that groundwater reserves go deep, and homeowners are assured of a water supply before it is given to data centres or farms.

“The use by data centres is low compared to farm use, especially alfalfa and hay,” says Eric Kuhn, retired general manager of the Colorado River Water Conservation District and co-author of Science Be Dammed: How Ignoring Inconvenient Science Drained the Colorado River.

However, “data centres are not under the same rules to replenish water” as other industries, says Sharon Medgal, director of the Water Resources Research Center at the University of Arizona. “So it adds a straw to the aquifer.”

Arizona’s governor, Katie Hobbs, who is up for re-election in November, has represented to the Bureau of Reclamation that the state is home to essential industry, including semiconductors, space and data centres, and so needs a higher share of water from the Colorado River. Water, as well as its use for data centres, has been an important issue in primary races across the state.

Construction began for Project Blue at the end of April. No Desert Data Centers’ activists arrived just after dawn to protest. Within days, they found subcontractors bringing in water to control dust on site from construction. County authorities cited Beale.

Then Beale began digging wells on site after reportedly receiving permits allowing that from the Arizona Department of Water Resources. This is likely for 31,000 gallons  (more than 117,000 litres) a year, which is just enough for toilets and kitchens and will likely be recycled for reuse after.

“This may not yet be a winning story,” Bharathan, the spokesperson for the No Desert Data Center, said. “But it is a continuing story.”

The extreme June temperatures would have been ‘virtually impossible’ 50 years ago, says the World Weather Attribution group.

The historic heatwave gripping Europe is part of a dangerous weather trend that can only be explained by human-caused climate change, scientists have said.

The extreme temperatures sweeping across much of Europe mark the region’s “most severe” heatwave ever tracked for the month, and would have been “virtually impossible” half a century ago, the World Weather Attribution group of scientists said in a report released on Friday.

Millions in France, Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom and elsewhere in Europe have been experiencing blazing heat this week, with daytime temperatures topping 40 degrees Celsius (104 Fahrenheit) in many places.

The heatwave was reported on Friday to be moving eastwards, threatening Germany and central Europe with similar conditions to those which killed dozens in the western reaches of the continent, strained medical services and stressed the economy.

The World Weather Attribution estimated that a heatwave with similar characteristics occurring in the climate of June 1976 – when Europe was also hit by persistently high temperatures – would have been about 3.5 degrees Celsius cooler.

During another episode in 2003, temperatures would have been about 2 degrees Celsius cooler, the research suggests.

The analysis shows that intense heat is increasing rapidly, even within living memory, “with such events tens to hundreds of times more likely since only 2003 and virtually impossible just 50 years ago,” the study says.

“This event would not have been possible in June without climate change,” the study’s lead author, Theodore Keeping from Imperial College London, told reporters.

Phasing out fossil fuels ‘critical’

The planet has warmed about 1.4C above pre-industrial times, driven by the burning of coal, oil and gas.

Scientists agree this is making extreme weather events like heatwaves more frequent and intense, and that limiting warming is vital to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.

Of the nearly 850 cities the World Weather Attribution’s study analysed in Europe, some 45 percent had broken – or were expected to break – their all-time heat stress records in June.

“The weather pattern itself is not particularly unusual, but the temperatures are – or at least they used to be without human-induced climate change,” said Friederike Otto, the cofounder of World Weather Attribution.

The June heatwave in Europe is the second such episode this year. An early-season period of heat in May brought temperatures more typical of high summer to central and western parts of the continent.

World Weather Attribution said the rapid phase-out of fossil fuels is “critical if we are to avoid even higher temperatures and their consequences in the future”.

Reporting from Caracas for Al Jazeera, Noris Soto says authorities appear to lack a clear response plan in the aftermath of two powerful earthquakes. The recovery is being hampered by severe damage to communication systems, as displaced residents are housed in hotels.

As the destructive Bobcat fire sent plumes of smoke billowing from the Angeles National Forest in 2020, Ryan Huling recalled that at the time news reports claimed the blaze caused “no injuries” and that no homes had been destroyed.

That irked the Sierra Madre writer, who watched from his cabin as flames incinerated the home of bears, coyotes, pumas and squirrels. He believes countless critters were killed or maimed by flames, and points to accounts of mountain lions emerging with singed paws and bears scrambling into communities.

“Anonymity has done them no favors, in the sense that people don’t know where they live, they don’t know what landmarks are important to them, they don’t know what areas carry special significance to bears and other animals,” Huling said.

Yet through his research he discovered that rapidly advancing technology — including artificial intelligence, GPS tracking and crowdsourcing — is revealing more about animal “societies” than ever before. The revelation launched him on a worldwide tour of non-human communities, culminating in his debut book, “The Hidden Nations of Animals.”

The cover of Ryan Huling’s first book, published in June.

(Penguin Random House)

Published this month, the book’s first chapter takes readers to North America’s “beaver belt,” roughly 1,100 miles in northern Canada that are jam-packed with beaver dams. According to Huling, the sheer density of those dams only became apparent thanks to technology that allows researchers to analyze high-resolution satellite imagery and identify them from space. One analysis found 2,700 dams surrounding a town of only about 1,000 people.

Another stop took him to Zambia, where African mole-rats dig complex tunnel systems that include designated nurseries, pantries and bathrooms. Just before Huling arrived, a researcher had used radio trackers to determine that the subterranean animals operate on a biological clock that has them alternate between a few hours of activity and a few hours of napping — not a bad work schedule!

Some of Huling’s other adventures include exploring a tornado of Mexican free-tailed bats outside of San Antonio and red-crowned cranes that have found refuge in the Korean Demilitarized Zone.

But uncovering these hidden worlds isn’t just left to the experts anymore. While the expense or difficulty of tracking wild animals has resulted in knowledge voids in the past, crowdsourcing is helping to fill in the gaps.

Today, any smartphone-toting nature lover can snap a photo of a great horned owl or a ground squirrel and upload it to a citizen science app such as iNaturalist. Some platforms are specialized, for example Merlin for birds and Happywhale for marine mammals. All that data is a rich playground for scientists. According to an article published last year in BioScience, iNaturalist data in peer-reviewed research grew tenfold in the previous five years.

Now, AI is making it so humans don’t have to necessarily look at the raw material. Instead, AI can mine images, videos or sound clips for the appearance of an animal of interest — or even catalogue individual critters. Happywhale has an AI feature that identifies particular humpbacks by unique patterns and shapes on their tails.

Technology is advancing so fast that Huling said it was hard to stay current. In his prologue, he mentions a researcher showing him a prototype of a teeny solar-powered radio tag for monarch butterflies. By the time the book hit the shelves, the concept was already live — harnessed, in one instance, to study how the brilliant orange insects use overwintering groves along the California coast. Just this week on Instagram, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife highlighted a study in which rare bumblebees are tagged with minute QR codes that can be read by remote cameras.

After about a half-year of travel, Huling returned home with a heightened awareness of what he calls “inconspicuous abundance” — that the world is teeming with more life than meets the eye. He puts this new lens to the test by venturing to the storm-battered shores of San Miguel Island off the coast of Santa Barbara. Considered “uninhabited” in the traditional sense, he finds that the rarely visited corner of Channel Islands National Park is a haven for lumpy seals, glimmering fish and squawking seabirds. Sharks lurk beneath the waves.

“For them, as now for me, this distinctive island remains anything but deserted,” he writes.

On San Miguel Island, Huling saw and heard hundreds of sunbathing seals and sea lions.

(Oliver Uberti / Penguin Random House)

In other animal news

• Earlier this month, in Big Bear Lake, a memorial service was held for Sandy Steers, the late conservationist who was best known for turning two bald eagles into an international phenomenon by livestreaming their nest. It was a touching gathering, where Steers’ friends and colleagues got personal about a woman who they said was willing to go to the mat for her beloved raptors.

An illustration for “Hidden Nations” depicts author Huling at home, surrounded by the natural environment — including a black bear.

(Oliver Uberti / Penguin Random House)

• For decades, Steers battled a planned development near the nest of famed eagle couple Jackie and Shadow, and helped to negotiate an agreement in which a land trust could buy the site for $10 million. The nonprofit she led is now racing to raise the money by July 31 so it can be bought and conserved.
• In the desperately needed good-news department, endangered steelhead trout that scientists feared had perished in last year’s Palisades fire unexpectedly survived — and even had babies. It’s a big deal: they represent the last known population of steelhead in the Santa Monica Mountains.
• A civil grand jury has found that the L.A. Zoo needs new leadership, citing deterioration of its facilities and rapidly declining membership. In less than a year, membership dropped 23% and exhibits for lions, bears, sea lions and pelicans have closed because they need major renovations.
• Last summer, researchers made an astonishing discovery off the Sonoma County coast — 18 sunflower sea stars, a species decimated by disease and all but gone from California waters. SF Gate writes that the finding was only just announced, with scientists now racing to learn all they can about the survivors. As previously reported, the stars with up to 24 arms could hold the key to restoring the state’s ravaged kelp forests.

And news about the environment

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 @lila_seidman on X and @lilaseidman.bsky.social on Bluesky.

EXPLAINER

Paris and other European cities are experiencing temperatures above 40C (104F), reaching levels normally seen across the Middle East.

A blistering heatwave has gripped much of Europe, prompting the highest-level red alerts in parts of the United Kingdom, France, Spain and Italy.

Authorities have warned of health risks, wildfires and travel disruptions as extreme temperatures persist.

With temperatures approaching record highs, officials have taken emergency measures, including a localised alcohol ban in parts of France under red alert, nationwide heat warnings in Germany and the cancellation of a World Cup fan zone screening in Madrid, where temperatures hit 39C (102F).

Why is it so hot in Europe?

A persistent area of high pressure, known as a heat dome, has trapped hot air over Western Europe, bringing clear skies, weak winds and prolonged sunshine. Hot air moving north from North Africa has added to the extreme temperatures.

Unusually warm seas around the UK, Ireland, France and the western Mediterranean have also helped keep coastal areas hot, especially at night. Coastal waters around Spain have reached record warm levels, according to Spain’s port authority.

In the worst-affected areas – western France, England and Wales – daily average temperatures have soared more than 12C above the 1991-2020 baseline, according to Copernicus data.

Scientists say the early-season heatwave is part of a broader warming trend. Europe is the world’s fastest-warming continent, with temperatures rising by approximately 0.56C per decade since the mid-1990s, more than double the global average.

Climate change is making heatwaves more frequent, more intense and likely to occur earlier and later in the year.

How hot are European cities today?

To contextualise the temperatures Europe is dealing with, Al Jazeera looked at the maximum temperatures in five European capitals on June 24 and compared them with cities across the Middle East, North Africa and Asia, where high temperatures are more typically experienced.

Europe is particularly vulnerable – much of its housing and infrastructure was not built for prolonged extreme heat, and only about 20 percent of European homes have air conditioning.

The graphic below shows how European cities’ maximum temperatures today compare with some other cities around the world:

How is temperature measured?

The temperature you see on the news or the weather app on your phone relies on a network of weather stations positioned around the globe.

To ensure accurate readings, weather stations typically use specialist platinum resistance thermometers placed inside shaded instruments known as a Stevenson screen.

Measurements are taken at a standard height of 1.25-2 metres (4-6.5 feet) above the ground. This provides a reading that reflects the air temperature that people actually feel.

There are two well-known scales used to measure temperature: Celsius and Fahrenheit.

Only a few countries, including the United States, use Fahrenheit as their official scale. Most of the world uses the Celsius scale, named after Swedish astronomer Anders Celsius, who invented the 0-100 degree freezing and boiling point scale, although originally inverted, in 1742.

Why does the temperature feel hotter than the forecast says?

Air temperature alone often doesn’t match how hot it feels to your body. That is why forecasts report a “feels like” temperature, which adjusts air temperature based on factors like humidity, wind speed and sun exposure.

Humidity

Humidity measures how much water vapour is in the air. This moisture slows the evaporation of sweat, so your body can’t cool itself as effectively.

Wind speed

In hot weather, a light breeze can help evaporate sweat, making it feel cooler.

Sun exposure

Even if the thermometer reads the same, direct sunlight adds extra warmth, which is why shaded areas feel cooler.

President Trump recently took action that could pave the way for opening many more federal lands to recreational off-road enthusiasts. When I heard about it, I immediately thought of the battle over off-highway vehicle access in California’s Mojave Desert.

Earlier this year, a judge ordered the Bureau of Land Management to close roughly 2,000 miles of off highway vehicle trails in the western Mojave to reduce ongoing harm to the endangered desert tortoise, a keystone species of the local ecosystem whose numbers are in steep decline.

That court decision capped off a decadeslong legal fight led by environmental groups including the Center for Biological Diversity and the Desert Tortoise Council.

Under the ruling, which the BLM has appealed, the agency has roughly three years to redraw the network of Mojave off-road trails.

In the latest action, Trump has rescinded a pair of 1970s executive orders that directed federal land managers to minimize damage to wildlife and natural resources, as well as conflicts between off-roading and other types of recreational land use, when choosing where to locate OHV trails.

He described them as “excessive regulation” that used “ill-defined criteria” to minimize vehicle impacts. “These vague, subjective criteria often result in barriers to energy and timber production and utility maintenance, permit delays, and de facto bans on hiking and other forms of recreation that require accessing remote areas, all while doing little to benefit multiple use of Federal lands,” he wrote.

I called up Lisa Belenky, who’s representing the Center for Biological Diversity in the Mojave proceedings, to ask whether Trump’s order changed anything about the case, or the rules the BLM must follow as it revises the trail network.

The short answer, she said, is no.

Each federal land management agency has its own regulations with criteria for managing off-road vehicle use — for instance, the BLM uses travel management plans to determine where vehicles are allowed on specific pieces of land. Trump’s order rolled back the executive directives that guided those regulations, but the regulations themselves remain in place.

Still, Trump’s order directs federal agencies to reexamine their regulations.

In some cases, such a reexamination appears to be already underway, said Paul Sanford, director of policy analysis at The Wilderness Society. The administration last year signaled its intent to repeal the rule that governs motorized access to Forest Service lands, he noted, the Travel Management Rule.

“The rescission of the executive orders makes that easier,” he said.

The Forest Service said in a statement that the rule is expected to be addressed later this year.

“It’s absolutely irresponsible and stupid,” said Jim Baca of Trump’s order. The former BLM director said it was already hard enough to regulate OHV use when he led the agency from 1993 to 1994. “It was difficult to do anything, especially if oil and gas people, mining people and others wanted to get into an area,” he said. To Ryan “Cal” Callaghan, president and CEO of Backcountry Hunters and Anglers, the order reflects “the prioritization of one set of user groups over all others.”

Increasing vehicle access in remote areas can cause erosion, stress animals and transport weeds into the backcountry, where they can outcompete native plants, and there’s a strong correlation between roads and human-caused fires, he said. Plus, there’s no indication that any increase would mean funding for more personnel to handle enforcement and lessen negative consequences, he said.

To the contrary, between the end of 2024 and the end of last year, the BLM lost nearly 20% of its staff, and the Forest Service and National Park Service each lost roughly 16%, according to an analysis of Office of Personnel Management data by Hawk Eye Strategies and Prospect Partners. Together, those three agencies responsible for managing more than half a billion acres of public land — about 23% of the United States — count fewer employees than the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, per the figures provided by the consulting firms.

The staffing cuts and regulatory rollbacks — which also include the recent rescission of the public lands rule that put conservation on equal footing with other uses of BLM land — are part of a strategy to “suffocate” federal land management agencies, said Jora Fogg, public lands policy associate director at the Conservation Lands Foundation.

“There’s an effort to undo regulations and protections on public lands because there is a push for this energy dominance and extractive uses,” she said.

I’ve met plenty of OHV enthusiasts who care deeply for public lands. I’ve also encountered degradation and damage.

Earlier this year, tortoise biologist Ed LaRue told me he could show me a corner of the desert that had been scarred by off-roaders departing from designated routes. In the tawny hills of the Ord Rodman Natural Area, a smattering of legal trails had widened into a thick braid so intertwined that it was difficult to tell which were authorized. And while the area was once among the most densely populated tortoise spots in the western Mojave, on that warm February afternoon, LaRue could find no evidence of them.

Reached by phone last week, he said he found some comfort in the fact that certain restrictions on off-roading still remain in place, and that the public will be given the opportunity to weigh in should agencies seek changes.

Still, he said, it’s not clear whether anyone will listen.

More recent land news

Republicans have introduced an amendment to a federal wildfire bill that would repeal the 2001 Roadless Rule protecting certain national forest lands from logging and roadbuilding, reports Brooke Larsen of the Salt Lake Tribune. That comes nearly a year into the Trump administration’s effort to rescind the rule via the rulemaking process, which has faced public opposition.

The Forest Service has cited cost savings as the impetus for a reorganization that will shutter dozens of research facilities. But much of the agency’s research is already inexpensive, and closing these local facilities could make it less so while encouraging workers to leave, according to Chiara Eisner of NPR.

Why is Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins dead set on saving a failing Northern California dam? Grist’s Jake Bittle and Ayurella Horn-Muller report this tale, which also includes a ranch-animal veterinarian and his daughter, a Riverside County water district and an X post from county Sheriff Chad Bianco.

New proposed grazing rules appear to prohibit Indigenously managed bison from grazing on federal public lands. That has tribes urgently seeking government-to-government talks with Interior Department officials in a bid to win an exemption, according to Blaine Harden of Inside Climate News.

A few last things in climate news

As a historic El Niño supercharges the Pacific Ocean, a crumbling Pacifica pier has become a climate battleground over what to save — and who pays, my colleague Susan Rust reports.

The Times’ Grace Toohey visited Santa Rosa Island to learn how a recent wildfire has affected a piece of North America’s so-called Galapagos. Here’s what she saw.

Clean water advocacy groups say recent changes to California’s “cap-and-invest” climate program could mean less help for hundreds of thousands of people who live with contaminated water, our water reporter Ian James writes.

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.

Report highlights the growing threats posed by climate change and calls for the green transition to be accelerated.

Almost all children across the globe are exposed to at least one climate hazard and the situation is expected to worsen unless greenhouse gas emissions are urgently reduced, says a report by UNICEF.

The report, published on Tuesday, warns that climate hazards pose a threat to children on multiple fronts, with nearly half of the world’s children exposed to at least three such hazards, putting their health, education and survival at risk.

“The lives of children continue to be upended by the impact of heatwaves, wildfires, droughts, and floods,” said UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell. “Half of the world’s children are now living with at least three overlapping climate threats shaping their daily lives.”

The report highlights the growing threats posed by climate change and calls on governments and business leaders to accelerate the transition to renewable energy.

According to UNICEF’s report, 1.8 billion children are currently at risk from drought, while 1.2 billion are exposed to extreme heat, as warmer temperatures wreak havoc on the world’s water cycle.

Countries across Western Europe experienced a record-breaking heatwave last month, reaching temperatures not typically expected until the summer.

UNICEF also says that nearly every child is exposed to air pollution, while one billion are exposed to malaria.

Scientists have repeatedly warned that global warming must be limited to 1.5C (2.7F) above pre-industrial levels to avoid the worst effects of climate change.

Nearly 200 countries signed the Paris Agreement, aiming to curb global warming to that 1.5C mark. The accord came into force in November 2016.

Since then, scientists have repeatedly warned that the target is unlikely to be met.

In January, the United States formally withdrew from the Paris Agreement for a second time, following an order by President Donald Trump.

Sweaty, shirtless football players lying on the pitch have seldom raised eyebrows as they did last week when photographs of European players struggling to train in the heat sparked concerns over sweltering US summer temperatures at the World Cup.

Scientists have long cautioned that extreme heat could disrupt sporting events. Last month, climate experts warned that one in four World Cup games could be played in very hot conditions, affecting fans and players alike.

Those warnings materialised last week; social media was abuzz with sunburnt players — mostly from European teams used to cooler climates — dousing themselves with water to cool off. Norway’s team even opted to wear ice collars around their necks during the friendly against Morocco.

But England captain Harry Kane quickly dismissed speculation over how much the heat would affect players, saying it “won’t be a factor”, thanks to his team’s World Cup training regimen.

So, how much will higher temperatures actually affect players at the World Cup? Al Jazeera takes a look.

What have experts said about heat during World Cup matches?

Th 2026 World Cup could be the hottest on record since the tournament began in 1930 due to a sharp rise in global temperatures, explained Al Jazeera weather presenter Everton Fox.

“Around half a dozen of the venues are prone to extreme heat; places like Dallas, Houston, Miami and the Mexican venues are all likely to swelter,” Fox said.

Daytime temperatures there are expected to average 28C, though the stadiums in Dallas, Houston and Atlanta have air conditioning.

Approximately 26 of the 104 matches could reach at least 26C in the Wet Bulb Globe Temperature (WBGT) index — which measures how effectively the body can cool itself — while five games are expected to be played in conditions of 28C WB or higher, according to World Weather Attribution (WWA), a network of climate scientists.

Of those 26 matches, 17 will be played in stadiums with cooling systems, reducing risks for players and fans.

But more than a third of the games with a one in 10 chance of exceeding 26C will be in venues without air conditioning.

How do hotter temperatures impact athletes’ performance?

Heat stress due to increased humidity, exposure to solar radiation and the effects of wind speed will impact players running around in direct sunlight, Fox said.

“All this makes it harder for the body to cool down as it becomes harder for sweat to evaporate as quickly,” said Fox, a senior meteorologist with more than 30 years of experience.

Physical performance coach Raiyan Abbasi explained that, although the body sweats to achieve thermoregulation – a process that allows the body to maintain its core internal temperature – excessive sweating due to heat could lead to dehydration, cramps and increased fatigue.

Are athletes used to such high temperatures?

“Yes, the majority of athletes will know how to deal with this kind of heat since they’re elite players training and competing in various conditions,” said Abbasi, who has worked as a physical performance coach for British clubs Swansea and West Ham, as well as the Pakistan national side.

Teams will have a performance coach and medical staff to make sure players are ready for the tournament, including through acclimatisation, Abbasi explained – echoing what Kane said over the weekend after his side beat New Zealand 1-0 in Tampa, Florida, where temperatures soared beyond 30C.

Do athletes from hotter nations have an advantage?

World Cup nations whose players train in hotter climates may have a slight advantage when it comes to adjusting to high temperatures in the US.

“But essentially, countries that prepare and perform well can minimise that difference,” Abbasi said, adding that heat can be used positively too.

“Heat is a significant factor in creating good athletes; one way to improve athletic capabilities is to train in the heat.

“It can make big adaptations in your body to improve body temperature.”

Could the World Cup have been held before or after summer in the US?

Fox noted that international tournaments are traditionally in the European domestic off season, which is when the 2026 World Cup is being held.

“Ideally, US weather is most conducive in the spring and autumn, but you’d then be looking at the tornado season in spring and hurricane late summer through autumn before you even begin to think about their domestic sports which locals have more interest in,” Fox said.

What measures has FIFA taken for players and fans?

FIFA said it has carried out heat-risk planning, with measures including three-minute hydration breaks in each half of games, cooling infrastructure for fans and players, adapted work-rest cycles, and enhanced medical readiness that scale according to real-time conditions.

“The hydration breaks probably need to be longer to gain full benefit, but then you risk turning it into a game of four quarters,” Fox said jokingly, although he argued that FIFA could have confined games to northern parts of the US and Canada.

FIFA has also delayed kickoff times for some matches to start outside the hottest afternoon hours.

Parisians cooled off in the city’s Saint-Martin canal as an unprecedented heatwave pushed temperatures across Europe far above seasonal norms. Swimmers ignored long-standing bans, swimming outside designated bathing sites.

California is facing a major vote in the days ahead — and no, it’s not who will be the next governor.

Regulators at the California Air Resources Board are set to decide on May 28 whether to approve the latest blueprint for limits on greenhouse gas emissions from major polluters through 2045, a program known as cap-and-invest. The update to the state’s signature climate program has Sacramento in a tizzy and seemingly no one is pleased with the proposal on the table.

California is one of a handful of states, and the first, to have an an enforceable annual limit on the emissions that change the climate.

After a January draft was criticized by both industry and lawmakers over concerns that capping emissions too much and too quickly would drive up already soaring energy costs, CARB went back to the drawing board and came up with the latest iteration, unveiled in April. But opponents now say the plan kowtows to oil and gas interests who are lobbying hard for concessions, citing an already unstable state and international energy market.

The program works by setting a limit on the greenhouse gases that industries can emit in California. Companies must obtain credits, or allowances, for every ton they release, with the total number of allowances declining over time, consistent with what scientists say actually addresses climate change. The auctions for unused allowances generate billions of dollars in revenue for the state each year that fund clean energy, clean water and other key climate programs.

This year’s original draft sought to remove 118 million allowances from the market by 2030, which it identified as the minimum that must be retired to meet the state’s ambitious climate goals. But the April revision upends that, instead creating a new pool of 118 million “compliance instruments” — defined as allowances or offset credits — above the cap that companies can earn if they invest in decarbonization projects.

Critics argue this first-of-its-kind mechanism, called the Manufacturing Decarbonization Incentive, effectively dismantles the program.

“The whole goal of the cap is to lower emissions over time,” said Mary Creasman, chief executive of the nonprofit California Environmental Voters. “To then allow pollution above the cap is kind of blowing up the program.”

CARB maintains that this change still cuts the emissions coming from California, because the new instruments enter the market only “if they’re applied for, are approved, and deliver verified greenhouse gas emissions reductions.” And the proposal still results in an 11% cap decline year over year through 2030, and 7% from 2031 to 2045, said spokeswoman Lindsay Buckley.

The move would also significantly reduce cap-and-invest’s revenue, according to an analysis from the Legislative Analyst’s Office. It found that the new plan would result in a loss of $2 billion, or roughly 50% less money per year for the state’s Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, than it has received through the program in recent years.

Many of the lawmakers who voted to reauthorize the program last year are also concerned. Nearly 30 Democrats signed a recent letter urging the air board to “push back on pressure from an oil industry that is making hundreds of billions in wartime profits.”

The fossil fuel industry has indeed lobbied heavily against requirements that it pollute less, spending a record $10.3 million in the first quarter of this year to influence state policy around cap-and-invest and other climate and energy issues, state records show. Among them are the Western States Petroleum Assn., Chevron and Phillips 66, which have argued that lowering the pollution cap will drive up gasoline prices and push more refineries out of the state.

But even they are not thrilled with the latest iteration of the cap-and-invest plan.

“We need to continue to be competitive with other refineries throughout the world, and while there are some very short-term changes within the [revised package], it still doesn’t have the long-term certainty that will drive investment,” said Jodie Muller, WSPA’s chief executive. Muller said she’d like to see the new decarbonization incentive program extended beyond 2030 and eligibility expanded to include additional activities, such as refinery maintenance programs.

“It’s important that we get this right,” she said.

More California climate news

Gov. Gavin Newsom recently unveiled his revised $350-billion budget proposal, which came with an unexpected $16.8-billion increase in tax revenue largely attributed to the success of artificial intelligence companies. Among the plan’s big wins and losses are boosted funding for public schools and higher health premiums for undocumented immigrants.

On the environment, the plan broadly maintains funding and policy support for climate commitments, such as a $200-million incentive program for passenger electric vehicles designed to make up for federal tax credits canceled by the Trump administration. It also includes a new $100-million disaster rebuilding fund to help wildfire survivors rebuild their homes.

But the plan does not include major new spending on the environment, in part due to the ongoing restructuring of cap-and-invest, the state’s main climate funding source. Some environmental groups said the revised budget doesn’t do enough to support California’s clean energy transition or hold oil and gas companies accountable for their role in the climate crisis.

Katelyn Roedner Sutter of the nonprofit Environmental Defense Fund urged lawmakers to prioritize proven climate investments in the final budget agreement, such as virtual power plants and incentives for zero-emission delivery trucks. “The actions we take over the next decade are vital to preventing the worst possible scenarios for our kids’ future,” she said.

A few more things

Speaking of the governor’s race, California Resources Corp., one of the state’s top oil producers, just made a hefty $500,000 contribution to an independent campaign committee supporting leading Democratic candidate Xavier Becerra, Politico reported. Becerra has already been criticized for accepting a $39,200 donation from Chevron, while opponents Tom Steyer and Katie Porter have both pledged not to accept contributions from fossil fuel companies.

Fervo Energy, a Houston-based geothermal developer with a major Google project in Utah, raised $1.89 billion in an initial public offering this month. The company’s $7.7-billion valuation signals growing investor appetite for energy companies amid soaring demand for electricity fueled by the growth of AI, the Wall Street Journal said. Geothermal technology taps into pockets of steam and hot water rising from the center of the earth, which is then used to spin turbines to generate power.

Los Angeles is gearing up for its role as a host city of the 2026 World Cup, which will be held in 16 stadiums across Canada, the U.S. and Mexico beginning in mid-June. But experts told my colleague Blanca Begert that the tournament’s expansion will make it “the most emissions-intensive World Cup that we’ve ever seen,” in part because fans and players will have to traverse the three countries to watch the games. Jet exhaust is a major contributor to climate change, representing 3% to 4% of all warming. It is the second of our stories examining the environmental implications of the coming World Cup.

141 UN member states voted in support of the ICJ’s finding climate change is an ‘existential threat’.

The United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) has voted to support a landmark ruling from the International Court of Justice (ICJ), which found states have a legal responsibility to act to prevent the climate crisis from worsening.

More than two-thirds of UN member states, 141, voted in favour of the resolution on Wednesday, with eight voting no and 28 abstaining.

Ralph Regenvanu, the minister for climate change from Vanuatu, which championed the case, described the vote as a victory for “communities on the frontlines of the climate crisis”.

“Today the international community affirmed that climate change is not only a political and economic challenge, but a matter of law, justice, and human rights,” Regenvanu said in a statement.

“For vulnerable countries like Vanuatu, this resolution is deeply significant because it confirms that no State is above its obligations to protect people, future generations, and our planet.”

The historic ruling from The Hague-based court in July last year found that states have a legal obligation to act on the “existential threat” of climate change.

The case was the biggest ever to be considered by the ICJ’s 15 judges, who reviewed tens of thousands of pages of written submissions and heard two weeks of oral arguments before delivering their verdict.

The case came to the court at the request of the UNGA after a resolution led by Vanuatu was adopted by consensus in March 2023.

Wednesday’s vote, by contrast, attracted a number of objections, with Belarus, Iran, Israel, Liberia, Russia, Saudi Arabia, the United States and Yemen voting no.

Al Jazeera reported in February that the US had sent a diplomatic cable urging UN member states not to support the resolution.

“We are strongly urging Vanuatu to immediately withdraw its draft resolution and cease attempting to wield the Court’s Advisory Opinion as a basis for creating an avenue to pursue any misguided claims of international legal obligations,” a copy of the cable seen by Al Jazeera stated.

Wesley Morgan, a fellow with the Climate Council, an Australian nonprofit, said the vote confirmed states had a legal duty to act on climate change.

“This landmark resolution is a massive victory for Vanuatu and the Pacific leaders who have spent decades fighting for survival on the frontlines of the climate crisis and a warning for Australian governments,” Morgan said in a statement.

“For far too long, fossil fuel heavyweights have treated climate action as a political choice, but the UN General Assembly has now confirmed it is a binding legal duty,” he added.

The emails continually fill my inbox: Startups exclaiming they have engineered a solution to protect homes from wildfires.

I’ve been pitched a system that monitors fires via satellite so it can automatically turn on water cannons when fire gets too close. Another offered high-tech speakers that homeowners can place around their home that blasts powerful but silent sound waves designed to disrupt the chemical process of combustion.

One recent one was so outlandish, I couldn’t ignore it:

An entrepreneur together with a former mayor of Malibu were appearing on Shark Tank to pitch a new system to literally lower an entire home into a subterranean vault when a wildfire approaches.

Many fire officials and experts are optimistic we really can find part of the solution to California’s wildfire crisis in the proliferating world of home defense tech. But they also warn these wild ideas are often expensive as well as largely unproven.

Of course I tuned in to Shark Tank.

“I know, this sounds like a magic trick,” entrepreneur Holden Forrest told the Sharks.

“It sounds crazy,” investor and businesswoman Barbara Corcoran interjected.

Nonetheless, Corcoran, who lost her Pacific Palisades home in the 2025 fires, invested $1 million in exchange for a 20% ownership stake in the company — on the condition that its first proof-of-concept home is her own.

If you, like Corcoran, want to put down some serious money for exciting new tech, there are a few things you should know.

This kind of tech is often significantly more expensive than proven, less flashy approaches to reduce the risk of your home burning — such as covering vents with mesh so embers can’t sneak into the home and multipaned windows that are less likely to shatter in the extreme heat, allowing flames and embers to enter.

For example, Forrest expects the retractable homes to cost around $1,000 per square foot. The company hopes to eventually get it down to around $400.

For reference, Palisades fire survivors expect to pay around $800 per square foot to rebuild, while Eaton fire survivors expect to pay just shy of $600. It’s also more than a new series of fire-resilient homes in the Palisades that incorporate both tried-and-true and flashy new tech, sitting around $700.

Fire safety experts also warn that some of this technology can encourage dangerous behavior such as ignoring evacuation orders and staying to defend homes. For example, even when water cannon companies insist their technology can function autonomously, some homeowners nonetheless stay behind to operate them.

Forrest rejected the idea that his technology, HiberTec Homes, would encourage homeowners to disobey evacuation orders — he argued the opposite. The trust that comes with knowing your home will survive actually decreases the likelihood residents will stay behind, he told the Sharks.

Many of the new home protection systems remain unproven, in part because it takes time for researchers to evaluate them. There are three steps to that:

First, scientists head to the lab to see whether the physics behind the tech works as expected in controlled tests.

Second, they investigate individual homes that used the tech in major fires to piece together whether the same physics held together in the chaos and immense power of real-world fires.

Third, they determine whether what they saw in the lab and on the ground translates to a reduced risk at scale. To do this researchers survey thousands of structures that faced wildfires and compare the percentage with the tech that survived with the percentage without the tech that survived.

If you live in a fire-prone area, and you understand the risks and uncertainties of new tech and have money to spare, by all means, build the wildfire bunker of your dreams — just email me an invite to check it out.

Otherwise, Cal Fire maintains a list of the less flashy solutions that have already gone through their scientific paces.

More recent wildfire news

After months of fierce debate between fire officials and residents in fire-prone areas, California released a new “Zone Zero” proposal outlining landscaping restrictions within 5 feet of people’s homes. Unlike previous proposals, many Southern Californians seem to be … OK with this one.

California regulators determined State Farm “delayed, underpaid, and buried policyholders in red tape.” The Department of Insurance may now seek to suspend the company’s license. Meanwhile, the U.S. Justice Department filed a brief supporting 60 fire victims who are suing State Farm and other insurers, my colleague Laurence Darmiento reports.

Survivors of the 2023 Maui fires could start receiving their share of a $4-billion settlement with Hawaiian Electric, the state of Hawaii, Maui County and other defendants as early as June. However, few will break even, reports Stewart Yerton of Honolulu Civil Beat. Lawyers will get a slice for legal fees; the Internal Revenue Service may claw back as much as a third if Congress doesn’t resurrect a tax exemption for such settlements; and insurers who paid out claims will get 10% of the money.

Oh — and this Saturday is Fire Service Day. There’s a good chance your local fire station will hold an open house, complete with fire equipment demos and maybe even free pancakes.

A few last things in climate news

Tom Steyer, a Wall Street prodigy turned billionaire who made a portion of his money off investments in coal-fired power plants, is now trying to use that money to convince Californians he’s the best candidate on climate and energy affordability. Read my colleagues Ben Wieder and Hayley Smith’s full profile here.

The last California-bound oil tanker to pass through the Strait of Hormuz before the Iran war reached the Port of Long Beach, my colleague Blanca Begert reports. After the ship finishes offloading its crude oil, California will have to manage a deficit of roughly 200,000 barrels of oil per day.

The company that produces the widely used weedkiller Roundup promised to “provide a small thanks” to the Environmental Protection Agency administrator after the agency asserted it would not approve a label for the weedkiller warning it causes cancer, reports Sky Chadde of Investigate Midwest. The revelation came at a congressional hearing last week as the company seeks immunity in the Supreme Court.

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 wildfire news, follow @nohaggerty on X and @nohaggerty.bsky.social on Bluesky.

Maryam watched her goats starve and her crops fail. She buried two of her children before she finally gave up hope and sought help from international aid agencies in southern Somalia.

She left her village with her remaining six children, making the long journey along the Jubba River to one of a clutch of makeshift settlements on the outskirts of Kismayo, the capital of Somalia’s Jubbaland state.

Three consecutive seasons of failed rains have doubled Somalia’s malnutrition rate. Maryam, 46, is among more than 300,000 Somalis forced to leave their homes since January alone.

Several international organisations have stopped operations in the Kismayo camp for internally displaced people (IDPs), largely due to aid cuts ordered by United States President Donald Trump last year.

“We are hungry. We need care and help,” said Maryam.

Haunted by the memory of her dead children’s swollen bellies, she says she will not return to her village, which is under the control of the al-Qaeda-linked armed group al-Shabab. Fighters there have started seizing the limited food supplies available.

But the camp is hardly better. In March alone, five children died of malnutrition, its manager says.

Since the early 1990s, Somalia has endured near-constant civil war, armed rebellions, floods and droughts. The war-torn country ranks among the world’s most vulnerable to climate change, which scientists say is leading to more frequent and more intense episodes of extreme weather such as droughts and floods.

Africa, which contributes the least to global warming, bears the brunt.

The recent cuts in foreign aid have not helped. They have had “a huge impact on our work”, said Mohamud Mohamed Hassan, Somalia director for NGO Save the Children.

More than 200 health centres and 400 schools have closed since last year.

Farmers, whose herds and crops have been decimated, describe one of the worst droughts ever recorded in a country where a third of the population already lacked regular meals. Even if the forthcoming rainy season is normal, it will take months for affected populations to recover.

“We cannot afford to actually address all the needs of these people,” said Ali Adan Ali, a Jubbaland official managing the displaced.

At a mobile health clinic supported by Save the Children, the only one still operating for multiple camps in the area around Kismayo, a woman named Khadija tried to feed a high-calorie solution to her severely malnourished one-year-old daughter.

She came to the camp after last year’s drought killed her livestock, but here also “we have nothing to eat”, the 45-year-old said.

A hospital in Kismayo is the only facility in the region capable of treating the most severe cases of malnutrition. But it is turning patients away due to a lack of space and staff.

Every bed is occupied by starving babies, some on ventilators with intravenous drips in their fragile arms. Cases have tripled since last year, and things are only getting worse.

The US-Israel war on Iran has increased fuel prices, affecting food and water supplies.

Those in the camp seek work in construction or cleaning jobs in Kismayo or sell firewood, but the options are limited.

Meanwhile, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has had to steadily reduce its Somalia programme from $2.6bn in 2023 to $852m this year, especially since Washington slashed its donations. So far, only 13 percent of this year’s target has been raised.

“It’s a toxic cocktail of factors … Things are really, really desperate,” Tom Fletcher, head of OCHA, told the AFP news agency in an interview last week.

“Often we’re having to choose which lives to save and which lives not to save.”

Dealing with emissions could help alleviate effects of Iran crisis on global energy supply, says report.

Tackling methane emissions in the fossil fuel sector would help efforts to hold back climate change and increase energy security, especially as the Iran crisis threatens global supplies, according to a report by the International Energy Agency (IEA).

The oil, gas and coal industries account for about 35 percent of all methane emissions from human activity, notes the IEA’s Global Methane Tracker 2026, released on Monday. However, there is little progress in reducing them, the report points out.

“There is still no sign that methane emissions from fossil fuel operations are falling, despite well-known and proven mitigation pathways,” the IEA said.

Methane, the second-biggest contributor to climate change, stays in the atmosphere for far less time than carbon dioxide, but its warming effect is roughly 80 times more potent over a 20-year period.

The IEA estimates that methane emissions from oil, gas and coal total 124 million tonnes a year. Oil is the largest source at 45 million tonnes (Mt), followed by coal at 43 Mt, and natural gas at 36 Mt.

“A further 20 Mt comes from bioenergy production and consumption, largely from the incomplete combustion of traditional biomass used for cooking and heating in developing economies,” the report added.

Oil prices have soared since the United States and Israel launched their war against Iran in late February and Tehran closed the Strait of Hormuz in response. An April ceasefire between the sides is currently holding, but global energy supplies remain limited.

The ongoing crisis is reshaping the global energy system and disrupting about 20 percent of global liquefied natural gas (LNG) trade flows.

Nearly 100 billion cubic metres of natural gas could be made available annually through a global effort to cut methane from oil and gas operations, the IEA said, estimating that nearly 15 billion cubic metres could be made available in a sufficiently short period of time to provide some relief to gas markets.

A further 100 billion cubic metres would be unlocked through the elimination of non-emergency flaring worldwide, it added.

Paris initiative

France, using its role as rotating chair of the Group of Seven (G7) bloc of industrialised powers, convened government officials, industry leaders and experts on Monday to build momentum on cutting methane emissions.

The conference aimed at reducing methane emissions ahead of the United Nations’ November COP31 summit.

“I sincerely hope that the discussions we will have today will enable us to join our forces to accelerate the implementation of effective solutions to reduce methane emissions,” French Ecological Transition Minister Monique Barbut said in a speech.

“Of course, action on methane is not a fight of any single actor and nobody can win it alone,” she added, noting that the world remains “very far” from meeting a pledge to cut methane emissions by 30 percent by 2030 compared with 2020 levels.

“Reducing methane emissions remains one of the best things we can do to slow global warming while cleaning up our air, improving public health, and increasing our energy security,” British Secretary of State for Energy Security Ed Miliband said in a video message.

I was on a road trip to visit a friend late in March when my phone started lighting up. The Trump administration had just announced a sweeping reorganization of the U.S. Forest Service. People — among them current and former agency staffers — had thoughts.

Under the overhaul, the Forest Service will move from a regional to a state-based leadership structure, relocate its headquarters from Washington, D.C., to Salt Lake City and close nearly three-quarters of its research stations. A news release described this as a much-needed shift to streamline the agency and bring its leadership closer to the forests and grasslands it manages, which are primarily west of the Mississippi.

But a common refrain emerged among the sources I spoke with: The Trump administration is trying to break the Forest Service, they claimed, to pave the way for privatizing or even selling off the 193 million acres of land it oversees.

On a recent podcast, Forest Service Chief Tom Schultz said this is false, that the reorganization is about prudently stewarding taxpayer dollars, not dismantling the agency. Trump officials have also said that a public lands sell-off is not part of the president’s agenda.

I figured the controversy would die down a bit by the time I wrote this newsletter. But nearly a month later, it’s still top of mind for most of the former firefighters and recreation and environment advocates I speak with.

“I worry that I sound paranoid like a conspiracy theorist — why would anybody want to break a federal agency?” said Rich Fairbanks, a former Forest Service firefighter and board member of Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics and Ecology. “But that’s exactly what they appear to be trying to do.”

To him, the reorganization smacks of an attempt to sow chaos and drive experienced employees out the door. He described the decision to move the headquarters to Salt Lake City as a red flag. Not only is it likely to prompt more staff departures, he said, but Utah is widely seen as the epicenter of an ongoing movement for states to take over federal public lands. It’s also home to Sen. Mike Lee, who last year proposed selling off millions of acres of public lands.

Max Alonzo, a former Forest Service firefighter who now works as national secretary treasurer for the National Federation of Federal Employees, similarly believes the administration is setting the agency up to fail. He noted the president has also proposed deep cuts that would slash the USFS operations budget by 44% and eliminate funding for forest and rangeland research to refocus the agency’s mission primarily on timber sales.

The administration plans to replace its nine regional offices with 15 state directors. These changes to leadership structure make little sense to Alonzo unless the intention is to lay the groundwork for an eventual state takeover of the agency and its lands, he said.

“They’re putting the chess pieces in place to get rid of our national forests,” he said. He believes the goal is to open the door to more mineral extraction, logging and drilling.

“It’s all about breaking the government so people decide the government doesn’t work,” echoed Hugh Safford, a UC Davis researcher who worked for the Forest Service for over two decades.

Safford is concerned that the move to shutter dozens of research stations will prevent Forest Service scientists from doing on-the-ground work on issues affecting local lands, like seeing how different ecosystems respond to wildfire, pests and drought. This research has driven some of the most important global advancements in fire planning and forest management, he said. He would know: Until 2021, he managed a staff of ecologists that provided science support to Forest Service leadership.

“They are destroying the research part of the agency,” he said. “These plans are so draconian and so depressing my hair stands up when I even read about them.”

Dave Calkin worked for 23 years at the Forest Service, overseeing a team of scientists that researched wildfire management. He took an early retirement offer last April, just after the agency terminated thousands of probationary employees, including a young researcher in his office.

“The more you can demonstrate government isn’t working, the more you can argue to privatize and sell off public lands,” he said. “And that’s clearly one of the intentions of everything they’re doing.”

More recent land news

Although administration officials would later distance themselves from the effort, the Interior Department helped craft talking points that Sen. Lee used to pitch his controversial proposal to sell off federal public land last summer, Chris D’Angelo of Public Domain reports.

Trump has withdrawn hospitality executive Scott Socha as his nominee to lead the National Park Service, reports Jake Spring of the Washington Post. That comes as many parks face their peak seasons with a dramatically reduced staff and the agency braces for more potential cuts, my colleague Justine McDaniel writes.

It’s not just the Park Service: The president’s budget proposal also seeks to decrease staff at the Bureau of Land Management and eliminate its wilderness management funding in favor of focusing on energy production, reports Christine Peterson of Outdoor Life.

The Trump administration is again planning border wall-related construction inside Big Bend National Park, weeks after U.S. Customs and Border Protection backed away from such plans amid bipartisan backlash, according to Travis Bubenik of Marfa Public Radio, who cited an online map showing the planned construction.

A day after Bubenik’s report, the border wall map disappeared from the Customs and Border Protection website, leaving the public with no way to know where and when construction on the wall will take place, writes Mary Andino of Gear Junkie.

A few last things in climate news

Wildfire, insurance and the price of gas took center stage at the California governor’s debate on Tuesday night. My colleague Blanca Begert broke down each candidate’s defining statements.

In yet another escalation of President Trump’s efforts to obstruct clean energy projects in favor of fossil fuels, the administration said it will pay two energy companies to abandon their offshore wind projects in federal waters — including one off Morro Bay, according to The Times’ Hayley Smith.

Extreme drought is fueling wildfires in the southeastern U.S., Zachary Handlos writes for The Conversation, as concern also grows over intensifying drought conditions in Nevada and Northern California.

Winters have grown shorter in most places across the country, upending everything from tourism and recreation to the transmission season of certain diseases, report Ignacio Calderon, Ramon Padilla, Veronica Bravo and Janet Loehrke in this interactive USA Today project.

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.