Climate Apocalypse

The world is now using so much fresh water amid the consequences of climate change that it has entered an era of water bankruptcy, with many regions no longer able to bounce back from frequent water shortages.

About 4 billion people – nearly half the global population – live with severe water scarcity for at least one month a year, without access to sufficient water to meet all of their needs. Many more people are seeing the consequences of water deficit: dry reservoirs, sinking cities, crop failures, water rationing and more frequent wildfires and dust storms in drying regions.

Water bankruptcy signs are everywhere, from Tehran, where droughts and unsustainable water use have depleted reservoirs the Iranian capital relies on, adding fuel to political tensions, to the U.S., where water demand has outstripped the supply in the Colorado River, a crucial source of drinking water and irrigation for seven states. A woman fills containers with water from a well. cows are behind her on a dry landscape.

Water bankruptcy is not just a metaphor for water deficit. It is a chronic condition that develops when a place uses more water than nature can reliably replace, and when the damage to the natural assets that store and filter that water, such as aquifers and wetlands, becomes hard to reverse.

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In a major assault on human health, the Trump administration is changing the policy of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regarding the control of air pollution. A review of internal EPA emails conducted by the New York Times found that consideration of the impacts of fine particulate matter (PM2.5) and ozone, two of the most prominent components of air pollution, would no longer be included as part of the evaluation of the effects of industrial air pollution on humans. A draft of the new regulation was released, signed by the EPA Administrator, Lee Zeldin, on January 9, 2026.

The consequences of our planet’s changing climate extend far beyond warming temperatures, rising sea levels, and extreme weather events. Human displacement as a result of the climate crisis is now one of the world’s most pressing issues, as estimates predict that there could be more than 1 billion climate refugees by 2050.

The plight of these people is neglected and forgotten as they remain unprotected by the law and are excluded from international aid programs.

Climate refugees are forced to flee their homes as the environment degrades and climate-related disasters take hold. Climate change is now one of the leading causes of mass forced displacement.

Climate change is also increasing rates of poverty, instability, and violence—further drivers of migration.

Those on the front lines of climate change are often in countries that contributed the least to it. The vast majority of climate migration is internal, which puts an unsustainable strain on the already limited resources of these nations.

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Without urgent action, we are all at risk of becoming climate refugees.

While working to address immediate needs, climate discussions should continue to focus on preventive measures. Climate mitigation, adaptation, and a just energy transition are essential.

Countries must begin cooperating on this global issue and ensure the fair treatment of all refugees. We must demand a new comprehensive legal framework for climate refugees to safeguard vulnerable populations and protect those who may be at risk in the future.

Supporting climate refugees is our moral obligation.

At present, the Middle East is entering an age where sovereignty will be measured not by flags or fighters, but by reservoirs and reliability. Those who ignore this will continue to be surprised by the instability they claim came out of nowhere. Those who understand it are already building the future—quietly, methodically, and without asking permission.

History is moving through pipes and dams. The question is who is paying attention.

Thousands of flying foxes have perished in the heatwave that scorched south-east Australia last week, the largest mass mortality event for flying foxes since black summer.

For decades, section 401 has granted states and tribes the authority to approve, impose conditions on, or reject, federal permits for projects that they determine will pollute or damage local waterways. Now, the Trump administration aims to scale back that authority in order to expedite projects and “unleash energy dominance,”...

the EPA is changing its cost-benefit analysis process for common air pollutants. Instead of comparing the economic cost of a certain pollution limit to an estimate of the economic value of the resulting improvements in human health, the EPA will just qualitatively describe health benefits while carefully quantifying economic costs.

The EPA will no longer consider the economic cost of harm to human health from fine particles and ozone, two air pollutants that are known to affect human health. The change was written into a new rule recently published by the agency. It weakened air pollution rules on power plant turbines that burn fossil fuels, which are sources of air pollution of many types, including from fine particles, sometimes called soot.

Experts decry move to leave UNFCCC as ‘embarrassing’ as president orders withdrawal from 66 international groups

Donald Trump has sparked outrage by announcing the US will exit the foundational international agreement to address the climate crisis, cementing the US’s utter isolation from the global effort to confront dangerously escalating temperatures.

In a presidential memorandum issued on Wednesday, Trump stated that the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is, along with 65 other organizations, agencies and commissions, “contrary to the interests of the United States” and will be ditched.

The UNFCCC treaty forms the bedrock of international co-operation to deal with the climate crisis and has been agreed to by every country in the world since its inception 34 years ago. The US Senate ratified the treaty in October 1992.

Trump has, however, routinely ridiculed climate science as a “scam” and a “hoax” and has actively hobbled clean energy projects and other climate policies as president, attempting to force the US and other countries to stay wedded to the fossil fuels that are driving disastrous heatwaves, storms, droughts and conflicts that imperils billions of people around the world.

A Yale Climate Connections analysis of electricity prices has found that data centers and other commercial electricity users are consuming more kilowatts than ever, but the price they pay for that electricity has risen only a little. And industrial users of electricity are actually paying lower prices, on average, than they were two years ago.

But between 2020 and 2024, residential electricity prices in the U.S. increased by 25%. In other words, people using their toasters, laptops, and electric heating and cooking at home are paying ever-increasing prices, while the data centers that are driving rapid growth in electricity demand are scoring handsome discounts.

Shortly after the Eaton Fire destroyed thousands of homes in and around Altadena, signs sprung up across the community announcing “Altadena is not for sale.”

Now, nearly one year later, hundreds of Altadena families have concluded that rebuilding isn’t in their budget. In nearly half of recent deals for empty lots, homeowners are selling to investors.

On Monday, the US Department of the Interior announced that it was pausing the leases on all five offshore wind sites currently under construction in the US. The move comes despite the fact that these projects already have installed significant hardware in the water and on land; one of them is nearly complete. In what appears to be an attempt to avoid legal scrutiny, the Interior is blaming the decisions on a classified report from the Department of Defense.

The second Trump administration announced its animosity toward offshore wind power literally on day one, issuing an executive order on inauguration day that called for a temporary halt to issuing permits for new projects pending a re-evaluation. Earlier this month, however, a judge vacated that executive order, noting that the government has shown no indication that it was even attempting to start the re-evaluation it said was needed.

As voters across the country begin to rally against the unchecked construction of data centers, artificial intelligence companies are panicking and investing millions into propaganda to paint the energy-sucking facilities in a more positive light.

By 2030, the amount of energy demanded by US data centers is expected to more than double, according to the International Energy Agency.

Energy costs have spiked considerably in the states with the most data centers. And as the industry continues its breakneck expansion, one watchdog report found that consumers on America's largest electric grid are expected to pay hundreds of dollars more to meet increased power demand from now until 2027.

These costs became an unexpected point of emphasis for Democrats in November, whose calls for greater transparency from tech companies seeking to build data centers propelled them to victory in elections from New Jersey to Virginia.

But tech companies want to keep building, and as AI threatens to become a central villain of the 2026 midterm elections, Politico reports that companies are putting the wheels in motion to portray themselves "as job creators and economic drivers rather than resource-hungry land hogs."

As Gabby Miller wrote on Wednesday:

A new AI trade group is distributing talking points to members of Congress and organizing local data center field trips to better pitch voters on their value. Another trade association, the Data Center Coalition, nearly tripled its lobbying spend in the third quarter of this year from the previous quarter, according to US lobbying disclosures.

The social media giant Meta, with billions invested in its own fleet of data centers from Stanton Springs, Georgia, to Richland Parish, Louisiana, has been running a multimillion-dollar ad campaign depicting data centers as a boon to agricultural towns in Iowa and New Mexico. It has spent at least $5 million nationally in the past month on TV ads plugging Meta’s $600 billion pledged investment in tech infrastructure and jobs.“

"There’s a very bad connotation around data centers. And this is something that, frankly, the data center industry needs to figure out,” said Caleb Max, president and CEO of the National Artificial Intelligence Association, a new trade group established in January to accelerate AI infrastructure development.

Tech giants are also putting focus on swaying policymakers. Max told Politico that his group has been making the rounds to talk with elected officials in critical battlegrounds for the AI future, like Georgia, Ohio, and Texas, to craft a "positive pro-data center campaign message for elected officials, for businesses, for current lawmakers who are going to be up for reelection in 2026."

Meanwhile, Meta reportedly aired its 30-second TV spots "featuring small-town imagery of farming equipment and mom-and-pop diners" in Washington, DC, and nine state capitals. Miller says this suggests "that policymakers might be Meta’s real target audience, rather than the rural Americans impacted by these energy-hungry server hubs."

AI and tech firms plan to ramp up the lobbying and ad blitzes as the next election draws nearer, and their attempt to reframe the narrative about data centers comes as no surprise, as communities across the US in recent months have increasingly come out in force to push their representatives to halt the construction of the facilities.

In Saline Township, a small community just outside Ann Arbor, Michigan, more than 800 residents descended upon a public input session earlier this month to protest against the construction of a $7 billion center—predicted to consume as much energy as the entire city of Detroit—fearing it would raise energy costs, pollute groundwater, and force the state to abandon its nation-leading climate policies.

The town initially blocked the plans, but reversed course following a lawsuit from a real-estate billionaire closely aligned with President Donald Trump, whose administration has backed the $500 billion "Stargate" initiative by OpenAI, SoftBank, and Oracle to expand data centers.

On Tuesday, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel joined Saline residents at a gathering outside the state Capitol, where they called for a statewide moratorium on data centers.

Data center projects have run into similar resistance nationwide. As of March, the group Data Center Watch found that more than $64 billion worth of projects had been blocked or delayed due to local opposition since May 2024. This opposition has reached a fever pitch in recent months.

Last week, after it received hundreds of angry comments from residents, the city council of Chandler, Arizona, unanimously rejected plans for a $2.5 billion data center that had been pushed by former US Sen.-turned lobbyist Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.).

Even in Trump country, backlash has been fierce. Last week, the planning commission of Starke County, Indiana, voted unanimously to recommend a one-year moratorium on the construction of centers bigger than 5,000 square feet after residents flooded a meeting to raise concerns about water pollution and energy costs.

"In Memphis, Tennessee, Elon Musk's AI company has built a data center whose energy demands have outgrown the region's energy capabilities," said one resident, Sophia Parker. "We've heard from everyone else saying that our infrastructure does not have the capacity to support a data center. And as a result, gas turbines are emitting nitrogen oxide to the point where residents cannot breathe. Their community is being used as a sacrifice for others to get rich. We cannot allow that to happen to us."

Last month in Montour County, Pennsylvania—a state where electric prices have surged by 15% this year, double the national average—environmentalists formed an uncommon alliance with conservative farmers and the Amish to stop the county planning commission from rezoning 1,300 acres of agricultural land for a massive new center.

“Stay out. We wouldn’t even be having this conversation without federal involvement,” said Craig High, a 39-year-old Trump supporter quoted by Reuters. “Both parties are pushing data centers and giving regulatory relief—water permits, permitting, all of it.”

“This is part of an experience that America and the world is having around tech billionaires who are seizing power and widening the gap between those who have much too much… and the working and middle classes,” Yousef Rabhi, a former Democratic state legislative leader from Michigan and clean energy advocate who opposes the construction of data centers, told The Guardian. “That’s what these data centers are symbolic of, and they’re the vehicle for the furtherance of this divide."

From Common Dreams via This RSS Feed.

A new global review argues that many “transition” projects touted by oil and gas companies, such as hydrogen hubs, biofuels, or carbon capture and storage, are doing more to lock in the fossil economy than to wind it down.

Drawing on 48 environmental conflict cases across continents, researchers from ICTA-UAB and the University of Sussex examined a range of fossil fuel “transition” initiatives.

The team found that these projects often fall short of climate goals, deepen environmental injustice, and entrench the political power of the very companies driving the crisis.

The authors argue this isn’t a sideshow – it’s the strategy. By coupling new “low carbon” facilities to existing refineries, pipelines, and gas-fired power stations, companies can justify running legacy assets for decades.

The proposed H2Med pipeline from Barcelona to Marseille is emblematic: marketed for hydrogen, it could also carry fossil gas, extending the life of old networks under a green banner.

In practice, many projects operate as add-ons: “blue” hydrogen dependent on fossil methane; biofuels that displace forests or food; offsets that permit ongoing emissions elsewhere.

Right-wing media's longstanding claims of a Democratic “war on meat" have given Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins cover to blame rising beef prices on Democrats and climate policy — even as cattle ranchers themselves point to climate-driven drought as one factor contributing to small herd sizes and voice their opposition to the administration’s plans to import Argentine beef.

Much of the National Center for Atmospheric Research’s non-climate portfolio will be dispersed, the White House says.

If there were any doubt that climate change is real and having a devastating impact on millions of people, this year’s hurricane season should put that doubt to rest. Only those with a powerful material interest in doing so will continue denying the reality, along with those who have fallen victim to the ensuing right-wing, anti-science propaganda.

Oilwell is a wellness app to help you embrace climate chaos, created by Edelman, Oil and Gas PR

(satire)

The name Homo sapiens—Latin for “wise man”—has always carried an air of self-congratulation. Carl Linnaeus, the father of modern taxonomy, coined the term in 1758, confident that his species stood apart by virtue of intelligence and reason. But what if wisdom, properly defined as the capacity to act with foresight and moral restraint, has proven not to be humanity’s defining trait but its greatest delusion? In an era of mass extinction, climate collapse, and ecological disintegration—each driven by our own actions—perhaps it is time to set the record straight.

The species that burns its own home for temporary comfort, poisons its water for profit, and annihilates the other inhabitants of its shared planet for convenience should no longer be known as Homo sapiens. The more fitting name is Homo stultus—“foolish man.”

Gross domestic product (GDP) was never designed to be a measure of societal well-being. It tracks only market transactions, conflates costs and benefits, and ignores the distribution of income, the contributions of household labour and volunteer work, and social and environmental costs and benefits.

In the decades after the Second World War, GDP growth functioned as a reasonable proxy for well-being when rebuilding economies and increasing production and consumption were the main priorities. However, since about 1950, which some call the Anthropocene era, ecological limits, inequality and declining social cohesion have restricted further improvements in well-being...

Measuring and modelling what truly matters, not just market transactions, is now essential. Processes are under way to develop indicators that move beyond GDP. In May, the United Nations secretary-general António Guterres appointed a High-Level Expert Group to develop such measures, with a focus on balancing economic, social and environmental dimensions of well-being. This initiative builds on the 2015 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs): target 19 of SDG17 commits governments to adopt beyond-GDP metrics by 2030.

Crossposted from https://lemmy.world/post/38968609

Lobbyists representing industry responsible for a quarter to a third of global emissions participated in key talks at the UN climate summit

More than 300 industrial agriculture lobbyists have participated at this year’s UN climate talks taking place in the Brazilian Amazon, where the industry is the leading cause of deforestation, a new investigation has found.

The number of lobbyists representing the interests of industrial cattle farming, commodity grains and pesticides is up 14% on last year’s summit in Baku – and larger than the delegation of the world’s 10th largest economy, Canada, which brought 220 delegates to Cop30 in Belém, according to the joint investigation by DeSmog and the Guardian.

One in four of the big agriculture lobbyists (77) are participating at Cop30 as part of an official country delegation, with a small subset (six) with privileged access to the UN negotiations where countries are meant to hash out ambitious policies to curtail global climate catastrophe.

More than 1,600 fossil fuel lobbyists have been granted access to the Cop30 climate negotiations in Belém, significantly outnumbering every single country’s delegation apart from the host Brazil, new analysis has found.

One in every 25 participants at this year’s UN climate summit is a fossil fuel lobbyist, according to the analysis by the Kick Big Polluters Out (KBPO) coalition, raising serious questions about the corporate capture and credibility of the annual Cop negotiations.

This year’s tally represents a 12% rise from last year’s climate talks in Baku, Azerbaijan, and is the largest concentration of fossil fuel lobbyists at Cop since KBPO first began exposing industry participation in 2021.

a new report reveals the colossal, yet often overlooked, climate footprint of Big Meat and Dairy.

• Download the executive summary
• Download the full report (with methodology annex)
• Read the press release
• Download the underlying dataset

Key findings:

• These 45 Big Meat and Dairy companies combined emitted an estimated 1 billion tonnes of greenhouse gases in 2023/22 (in CO2eq ). If they were a country, they would be the world’s ninth highest GHG-emitting nation. In fact, the companies’ combined emissions are estimated to be more than those reported for Saudi Arabia, reportedly the second largest oil producer in the world.
• The methane emissions from these 45 companies combined are estimated to exceed the reported methane emissions of all the EU27 countries and the UK combined in 2023.
• The top five emitters emerging from this analysis combined — JBS, Marfrig, Tyson, Minerva, and Cargill — emitted an estimated 496 million tonnes of greenhouse gases in 2023 (in CO2eq ), more than reported for Chevron, Shell, or BP. The estimated greenhouse gas emissions of these five companies combined accounted for nearly half (48%) of the estimated total emissions of 45 meat and dairy companies analysed.
• JBS alone, estimated to be the world’s highest-emitting meat corporation, accounted for nearly one quarter (24%) of all estimated greenhouse gas emissions from these 45 meat and dairy companies. Greenpeace Nordic has estimated in an earlier publication that JBS emits more methane than reported for ExxonMobil and Shell combined.