Inside Climate News

The California valley with the most dairy farms in the state will follow stricter water pollution requirements following years of advocacy and a marathon six-hour meeting this week. The State Water Resources Control Board unanimously agreed to adopt the regulations under what several environmental groups call a long overdue dairy order.  Nitrogen from the manure […]

Democrats are poised to achieve trifectas—control of the governor’s office and both legislative chambers—in at least three states in this year’s midterm elections, and maybe even more. This matters because states play an outsize role in climate and energy policy. And when Democrats control state government, they often take substantial action. This isn’t a partisan […]

For the second year in a row, Antarctica’s industrial krill fishing fleet halted operations ahead of schedule after reaching its seasonal catch limit.  The vessels had been harvesting the tiny shrimp-like crustaceans from waters around the Antarctic Peninsula and the South Orkney Islands, located about 400 miles north of the peninsula. Under current rules, the […]

NY-17: First in a series on the environmental stakes of one of the nation’s most fiercely contested congressional races. The Hudson River bisects New York’s 17th Congressional District, with basalt bluffs lining its western bank 40 miles north of New York City.  The district, which includes Putnam and Rockland counties, as well as parts of […]

Under a recent legal settlement, Florida will have to adopt new plans for addressing pollution in nine of the hundreds of freshwater springs in the state that constitute one of the largest concentrations of springs in the world. The agreement between environmental groups and the state Department of Environmental Protection, announced earlier this month, applies […]

Climate attribution researchers say “there is absolutely no doubt” that decades of global warming set the stage for the deadly rock and glacier collapse on Langtang Lirung Mountain in Nepal. At least 1,300 people died in August when a cascade of semi-frozen sludge, boulders, trees and other debris roared through the region at speeds up […]

The Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources heard testimony Wednesday on the Energy Efficiency Reform Act. The new bill would make it much more difficult for the Department of Energy to update energy efficiency standards for home appliances like dishwashers, washing machines and boilers. It would also set a path for the department to […]

The unfinished expansion of Gross Reservoir near Denver can proceed after three judges ruled Tuesday in favor of the federal government and a water utility’s challenge to a lower court opinion halting construction. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and Denver Water defended the dam expansion before the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals against a […]

AUSTIN, Texas—A chair with Railroad Commissioner Wayne Christian’s name on it sat empty Tuesday in the hearing room of the Texas House Committee on Energy Resources. Committee Chairman Drew Darby had called Christian to testify before the panel, which oversees the Railroad Commission, regulator of the state’s powerful oil and gas industry. Christian failed to […]

In the East Tampa neighborhood where Dee Morales bought her house, residents have been asking for a supermarket for 10 years. They still don’t have one. So Morales did the math out loud: In the decade the neighborhood has spent waiting, a community garden could have grown thousands of pounds of food. Morales runs 813 […]

Republicans in Congress are continuing their efforts to shield the fossil fuel industry from legal liability for its role in unleashing the heat-trapping gases linked to a cascade of deadly, record-setting disasters across the globe.  On Wednesday, the House Judiciary Committee is scheduled to debate and vote on a bill introduced in April by Rep. […]

Every three days someone is killed for defending nature.  In 2025, watchdog group Global Witness documented 124 such deaths worldwide, a toll researchers say is likely only a fraction of the total number because repression and armed conflict make many deaths impossible to verify.  The victims included Indigenous people, small-scale farmers and community organizers peacefully […]

A Trump administration rule eviscerating widespread habitat protections for endangered species just went into effect.  First proposed in April, the rule rescinds the long-held definition for a single word—harm—under the Endangered Species Act, a landmark law enacted in 1973 to conserve the country’s imperiled animals and plants. This seemingly tiny tweak has profound consequences, clearing […]

Philip Landrigan learned about the attacks on 9/11 the way much of the world did when he was chair of the Department of Preventive Medicine at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York: by watching television. “We were distressed that it was a terrorist attack,” he said in an interview on Friday, the 25th […]

Before its abrupt dismantling last year, the U.S. Agency for International Development was one of the world’s largest funders of conservation, climate resilience and other environmental programs. The money aimed to curb deforestation in the tropics, help farmers and communities cope with extreme weather, increase clean energy development and more. Now, a year and a […]

IRONWOOD FOREST NATIONAL MONUMENT, Ariz.—Cassandra Becerra didn’t know it when she first arrived in the U.S. from Mexico as a three-year-old, but she was already an environmentalist. Her family didn’t have much money, but they were rich in the abundant public lands that make up Arizona. Becerra remembers a childhood filled with fishing at the […]

Second time’s the charm? On Aug. 25, Maine’s Public Utilities Commission selected winning proposals in a years-long effort to turn more of northern Maine’s howling winds into energy that can power population centers in the southern part of the state and region. The PUC selected one developer to build 800 megawatts of new onshore wind […]

On the heels of the hottest summer on record and a United Nations report warning that global temperatures are likely to push climate risks to “increasingly dangerous heights,” the Trump administration overturned most of a Biden-era rule limiting climate pollution from power plants, the second-largest source of greenhouse gas emissions.  The Environmental Protection Agency announced […]

The Iowa Utilities Commission is moving toward hearings on the second phase of a proposed carbon dioxide pipeline, which would add hundreds of miles of lines to a project already stuck in a legal quagmire. Summit Carbon Solutions initially intended to carry CO2 from ethanol plants across the Corn Belt to North Dakota for underground […]

Welcome to Inside Climate, a podcast from the staff of Inside Climate News. In this episode, we delve into how President Donald Trump’s environmental policy rollbacks are impacting ordinary people. In Pennsylvania, a jet fuel pipeline spill has tainted the drinking water source for more than 200 homes in Pennsylvania and homeowners continue to struggle […]