In Brazil, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva's presidential runoff win is widely seen as a win for the environment, and it means the country won’t make a sharp pivot in its approach to the climate crisis.

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Earth Radio is a podcast by Earth.Org. It is produced, edited, scored, and written by Rebekah Hendricks.

Earth.Org is a non-profit environmental news organization funded by readers and listeners. For more information, visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠our ⁠website⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠subscribe to our new Substack newsletters⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

🔎 The big story

On this World Cities Day, we stand just 10 days away from COP31 in Antalya, Turkey – the year’s most critical global climate summit. With urbanization accelerating at an unprecedented rate, the fight against global warming will be won or lost in our cities. In this edition of the Weekly Dispatch, we explore why urban centers are our greatest asset in decarbonization and why they must be at the very top of the agenda at next month’s climate summit.

This week, the United Nations confirmed that atmospheric concentrations of all three main greenhouse gases – carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide – surged to historic levels last year, committing the planet to rising temperatures “not just for years but for decades and even centuries.” It came days after another UN report said the Paris Agreement’s 1.5C global warming goal is “no longer viable” and that even the most ‌optimistic scenario sees average temperatures rise to 1.7-1.8C above pre-industrial levels by mid-century.

That is unless the world manages to slash emissions by 18% by 2030 and 45% by 2035. This rather ambitious scenario cannot be achieved without the help of cities, which account for 70% of global primary energy consumption and contribute between 67% to 72% of global carbon dioxide emissions.

Some 4.4 billion people – or 56% of the world’s population – live in urban areas. By mid-century, the figure will rise to nearly seven in 10 people worldwide. As the urban population continues to grow, its environmental footprint will expand significantly.

Ironically, cities worldwide are also on the frontlines of the climate crisis, as numerous disasters this year have reminded us. It is estimated that flooding, rising sea levels, wildfires, and extreme heat are already affecting approximately 70% of urban areas worldwide – a number only destined to grow.

Long-awaited recognition

After decades of warnings and in light of more frequent and intense extreme weather events racking up billions of dollars in damages each time they hit, governments are finally beginning to recognize the crucial role that cities can play in achieving a net-zero future. This is according to a recent UN-Habitat report finding that a record 80% of the third and latest round of Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) now include “well developed urban measures” – a 49% increase from the previous cycle.

NDCs, ambitious national plans for emissions reduction that each signatory to the Paris Agreement must update every five years, form the foundation of the world’s collective efforts to tackle climate change. The fact that cities – after long being underrepresented – now feature prominently in the vast majority of national climate action plans, is reason for optimism.

The UN-Habitat’s analysis shows that countries are increasingly prioritizing urban action in buildings, land use, infrastructure, water, and basic services, and they’re recognizing that housing as well as the social and ecological function of land are central to resilient and sustainable urban development.

Keep the momentum going

Cities function as crucial hubs for refining and scaling innovations and are an obvious place to start cutting emissions. Excitingly, some cities have already responded to the call.

Freetown, Sierra Leone’s capital, has planted over 1.2 million trees to mitigate urban heat, while Colombia has turned Bogotá into Latin America’s first cycling capital. Both projects had a huge impact at a very manageable cost.

In Switzerland, Basel became the first city in history to make green roofs a legal requirement for new flat-roofed buildings. Studies show that rooftops cool buildings by up to 5C, cut energy use, and reduce stormwater runoff by roughly 20%.

In South Korea, Seoul authorities successfully regenerated the buried Cheonggyecheon River, completely changing the city’s landscape and turning it into a place that people enjoy. Building on the project’s success, the city is now working to revitalize the Hangang River. Over 90% of the river’s embankments have already been restored to natural forms, with soil, sand and vegetation replacing concrete. The city has also planted hundreds of thousands of trees, boosting local carbon sequestration and biodiversity by nearly 30%.

European cities are also increasingly recognizing the value of rivers. In the French capital, the 2024 Olympics inspired a €1.4 billion (US$1.6 billion) cleanup operation to make the Seine swimmable. For decades, the iconic river had been polluted by E. coli, enterococci bacteria and other contaminants from industrial waste, sewage overflow, and urban runoff.

The Seine reopening represented one of Mayor Anne Hidalgo’s last major climate-focused projects in the city before she left office earlier this year. Under her leadership, Paris converted the Seine riverbanks from busy roads to pedestrian-friendly areas and planted some 130,000 trees to create new green spaces across the city. The city government, like London’s and several others across Europe, also implemented car bans in certain areas, hiked parking fees for SUVs, closed roads in front of schools, and expanded sidewalks – interventions that had a notable positive impact on emissions and air pollution.

Ultimately, urban climate action centers on people. Far from compromising our quality of life, climate solutions actively enhance city living, generating local employment, clearing the air, and delivering the green public spaces every community wants.

Besides jeopardizing the well-being of these communities, inaction also presents significant financial risks.

It is well documented that the costs of inaction far exceed the expenses associated with implementing mitigation and adaptation strategies. The World Economic Forum, for instance, estimates that for every $1 spent on adaptation action now, there are avoided costs of $2-10 in the future.

Financing climate mitigation in cities is indispensable if we are to tackle the climate crisis rapidly, efficiently, and effectively. As Marco Zupi, Scientific Coordinator of the UN Local2030 Coalition Network, noted in a recent piece for Earth.Org:

What makes cities such demanding teachers is that they cannot wait. National governments can hide behind policy cycles; cities are judged every day. Either the water flows or it doesn’t; either the bus arrives or it doesn’t. That immediacy is why the city remains one of the clearest tests of how serious we are about sustainability.

The COP31 Presidency has already signaled that cities will be prominent in the summit’s agenda, announcing a global pledge to reduce energy consumption intensity in buildings by at least 25% by 2035. In Antalya, UN-Habitat will also set up a dedicated space for conversations around urban infrastructure, housing, and sustainable cooling.

For nations that have put cities at the heart of their climate goals, the immediate priority next month is turning broad pledges into fully funded, well-managed, and actionable reality.

You might also like: How cities are bracing for more heat

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• The Trump administration has proposed rolling back a Biden-era rule regulating how much methane the oil and gas industry can emit at drilling sites nationwide. Methane is the second most prevalent greenhouse gas after carbon dioxide (CO2) and has 80 times more planet-warming potential than CO2 in the short term, making it a major driver of climate change. President Trump announced the proposal at a rally in Lubbock, Texas, just days after satellite images revealed a large plume of methane pouring out of oil and gas wells near the city. One proposed change is the elimination of the Super Emitter Program, which starting in 2027 would have allowed third parties – such as non-profits or private companies using satellites, aircraft, and mobile sensors – to alert the Environmental Protection Agency of large methane leaks. The administration also plans to loosen regulations on methane leaks coming from so-called "marginal" oil wells – smaller and therefore not very lucrative wells which nevertheless account for 70% of all onshore oil and gas wells in the US and produce about 50% of the industry’s methane emissions.

• The US is set to erase 15 years’ worth of greenhouse gas emission reductions as it continues to build new fossil fuel-, primarily gas-powered, plants to run AI data centers. That’s according to an internal analysis by the Sierra Club first reported by Bloomberg. By 2030, US emissions would be 42% higher than 2025 when planned AI projects are factored in, the environmental group said. Its estimates are higher than most previous projections. Experts say that actual emissions will ultimately depend on unpredictable variables, such as project delays, potential cancellations, and grid connection backlogs.

• Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva stunned the country when he won Sunday’s presidential election runoff, defeating his opponent Flávio Bolsonaro, a senator and the son of now jailed former president Jair Bolsonaro. Lula’s win is widely seen as a win for the environment, and it means the country won’t make a sharp pivot in its approach to the climate crisis. During Lula’s first two terms in office, between 2003 and 2010, deforestation rates in the Amazon rainforest, a crucial carbon sink, dropped significantly, followed by further declines upon his return to office in 2023. It marked a huge shift from Jair Bolsonaro’s administration, under which the rate of Amazon deforestation reached 13,000 square kilometers, the highest in a decade, along with a dramatic rise in assassinations of Indigenous leaders and record illegal Indigenous land invasions.

The Trump administration’s attacks on the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) have stalled climate research and hampered the country’s response to more frequent and intense extreme weather events.

NOAA’s workforce is at a historic low after losing roughly 20% of its staff since Trump took office in January 2025. Meteorologists, IT workers, and forecasters were among those affected. Aside from the firings, the administration canceled contracts and grants and ordered the shutdown of crucial climate and weather databases as well as research laboratories.

While the attacks have already had an impact on NOAA’s environment and workforce, the real test will be a large-scale disaster, Di Liberto, who now works as the media director for Climate Central, told the Guardian. And with El Niño expected to supercharge storms, raise sea levels and bring devastating landslides and flash floods in parts of western America, such a disaster may be around the corner.

“Whether we as a country can handle the kind of coast-to-coast extremes that could potentially happen this winter is a big question,” Di Liberto said.

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That’s how much more someone from the richest 0.1% has contributed to extreme heat events we see today compared to the bottom 50%, according to Oxfam. Its latest report also shows that just one year of emissions by the wealthiest 1% of the population (that’s about 8 million people) will be responsible for 1.9 million excess heat-related deaths worldwide.

🔎 The big story

This month, millions of people across Europe have taken to the streets to protest mounting living costs and underfunded public services, driven partly by a global energy market crisis linked to the ongoing war in Iran. Yet, while households struggle to afford fuel and basic necessities, fossil fuel giants continue to draw record profits from the chaos.

Earlier this month, the head of French oil giant TotalEnergies Patrick Pouyanné welcomed the energy market instability, declaring: “The disruption in the energy world … gives us plenty of opportunities if you’re able to capture them.”

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This month’s protests began in France as students marched over a lack of investment in schools. It didn’t take long for other members of society – frustrated by rising fuel and living costs – to join in, and for the movement to spread to neighboring Spain, Italy, Belgium, and Portugal.

Of course, each of these countries has its own unique set of issues. France’s spiraling national debt and soaring deficit are severely restricting the government’s ability to reinvest in public services. Spain’s Congress earlier this month voted down a set of emergency housing decrees despite soaring rent costs and property shortages, triggering massive street demonstrations and snap elections. In Italy, salaries have been stagnant or even falling since the 1990s while the cost of living keeps going up, and both farmers and truckers are struggling amid soaring fuel prices.

But these countries also have a lot in common.

The prices of everyday items such as food, energy, transport, and bills have risen by between 59% and 78% since 2000 in France, Italy, Spain and Portugal, according to Eurostat – the European Union’s statistics agency. The surge was driven mainly by energy costs, which skyrocketed after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and again after the US-Israel attacks on Iran earlier this year. This week, Eurostat confirmed that the eurozone annual inflation rate was 3.8% in September, up from 3.2% in August and 2.2% a year ago.

For more than a week, southern Italian truckers have blocked roads in protest against fuel costs, which have surged roughly 30% since the start of the war in Iran. Meanwhile, oil giants are turning the market chaos into billions in profits. Pouyanné said it himself:

“I prefer the world of disruption to the peaceful world. There are more opportunities, but you need to have the assets.”

TotalEnergies and other oil and gas giants like Shell and BP are expected to report huge third-quarter profits next week, following a string of staggering earnings between April and June. As is always the case, the windfall will go to these companies’ shareholders, at the expense of people paying at the pump.

So, here’s an idea: Why don’t we tax polluters to fund public services across Europe?

The concept of a windfall tax isn’t new or innovative. Environmental groups have long campaigned for permanent taxes on fossil fuel profits, while some European countries have at least temporarily imposed them in the past. The last to do so was Portugal. This summer, its government approved a 33% windfall tax on extraordinary profits earned in 2026 ​by oil and refining companies benefiting from the energy ‌price surge triggered by the Iran war.

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The EU is now looking at implementing a similar measure across the bloc. Last week, Wopke Hoekstra, ​the European Commissioner responsible for climate and taxation, told Reuters that the Commission is “setting ⁠up a working group to examine the merits and drawbacks” of an EU-wide windfall profit tax on oil and gas companies and “assess whether ​such a measure would be viable.”

It followed calls by Germany, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Poland and Austria to impose such a tax. “We are experiencing ⁠one of the biggest supply shocks in decades, and all over the ​world there is growing discontent about the rise in the cost of living,” the ​finance ministers of the six countries wrote in a joint letter to the European presidency in August. They argued that measures taken so far have not been able to mitigate the fallout on businesses and citizens, adding, “This is why we need a common approach, one that ensures that ​those who are profiting from the crisis do their part to ease the burden on ‌the ⁠general public.”

This wouldn’t be the first time the EU has implemented a windfall profit levy on fossil fuel companies. In 2022, following the invasion of Ukraine, the bloc imposed a minimum 33% tax on profits of more than 20% above a company’s average earnings. The tax raised nearly 29 billion euros (US$32 billion), which member states used “for financial support measures to energy consumers.”

For green groups, a windfall tax is a no-brainer.

This summer, Greenpeace UK launched a petition urging the British government to introduce permanent taxes on oil and gas companies’ windfall profits during wars and other crises, saying the proceeds could be used “to support communities affected by climate disasters, ease high energy bills and invest in climate solutions.”

350.org, an international environmental movement, also called on European governments to tax fossil fuel profits as public anger in France and elsewhere escalated into riots and violent clashes between protesters and the police this week.

“The government must stop telling us the coffers are empty and crack down on oil profits instead,” said Fanny Petitbon, Manager at 350.org France, adding:

“The money for more classrooms and teachers exists — it’s sitting with oil executives and shareholders. Our leaders must listen to this unprecedented alliance of students, workers and families, tax these excess profits and invest public money in a better future.”

While European leaders deliberate in Brussels, citizens are left deciding between filling up their cars or buying groceries. If the EU hesitates to act, it risks sending a message that private corporate gains take precedence over public welfare during a historic crisis.

A permanent, bloc-wide windfall tax wouldn’t just claw back extraordinary profits but also send an important message: that those who profit from global instability must help bear the cost of protecting society.

• A new United Nations report projects that global ​warming will exceed previous estimates, with even the most ‌optimistic scenario seeing average temperatures rise to 1.7-1.8C above pre-industrial levels by mid-century. The Paris Agreement 1.5C goal is “no longer viable,” the UN admitted. The report identifies the US as an outlier among the nations responsible for the vast majority of greenhouse gas emissions: among the Group of 20 industrialized nations, emissions overall slowed down in 2025, “with the United States of America being the major exception.” Under Trump, the US has withdrawn from the Paris Agreement and abandoned a Biden-era pledge to cut emissions.

• Nearly all assessed shallow-water coral reef ecosystems on the planet face an extremely high risk of collapse by 2075, according to the first global coral reef assessment under the IUCN Red List of Ecosystems.⁠ The analysis covered all coral reef ecosystems in warm, shallow waters, spanning 127 tropical and subtropical ecoregions, and encompassing 188,362 square kilometers of coral reefs globally. A staggering 96% of them were classified as Critically Endangered, the highest level of threat.⁠ Ocean warming and marine heatwaves are causing mass bleaching events that trigger widespread coral mortality with increasing frequency. Last year, the world’s coral reefs underwent the largest mass coral bleaching event in history. Some 83.7% of the world’s coral reef area across at least 83 countries and territories were impacted by bleaching-level heat stress that began in 2023.⁠

• UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham is facing backlash from environmental groups over his government’s decision to greenlight a major offshore natural gas project in the North Sea. The approval for the Jackdaw field, off the coast of Scotland, is a major victory for the country’s oil and gas industry and for President Trump, who praised the decision on social media on Wednesday. Burnham says the project will reduce the UK’s reliance on imported fuels and shield households from price volatility. But green groups say the project undermines Britain’s efforts to curb the impacts of climate change and violates its climate policy and net-zero targets. They also argue that domestic gas won’t lower household energy bills, as gas prices are set on international markets.

• Europe’s hottest summer on record was also by far its deadliest. That’s according to a new study, which estimates that 50,000 excess heat deaths have occurred in 854 European urban areas this summer. Southern and western Europe saw the highest estimated mortality rates, although typically cooler northern European countries like the US also recorded thousands of excess deaths. Researchers at Imperial College London also found that about two thirds of the expected mortality total is attributable to climate change, which is primarily caused by the burning of fossil fuels. The modeled mortality toll is the highest since 2000, far exceeding the next highest in 2022 (about 29,000) and 2003 (about 28,000).

Another week, another El Niño update – and it’s not good news. On Thursday, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) released a new seasonal climate outlook indicating that the current event could be “unprecedented in strength.” The UN agency declares an El Niño when the sea surface temperature anomaly in the tropical Pacific – the epicenter of El Niño – reaches 0.5C above average. The latest forecast predicts temperatures may be as much as 3.8C above average between November 2026 and January 2027.

Read more on Earth.Org: El Niño has arrived. Here’s what you need to know

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Super Typhoon Champi is barreling across the western Pacific Ocean this week. It became the strongest cyclone of the year on Wednesday as its maximum sustained winds reached 185 miles per hour (296 km/h). Champi is the seventh Category 5-strength storm of 2026 and has exceeded maximum sustained winds of Hurricane Polo’s 180 mph (287 km/h) and Super Typhoon Sinlaku’s 177 mph (285 km/h).

We also discuss the United Nations' latest assessment of global coral reefs. According to new data, some 96% of coral reefs across 80 countries are endangered because of heat stress caused by climate change. Meanwhile, UK scientists found that bird populations in the country have fallen to the lowest level on record. Nearly half of species are in decline, with farmland birds and seabirds among the worst hit, conservation bodies have said.

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Earth Radio is a podcast by Earth.Org. It is produced, edited, scored, and written by Rebekah Hendricks.

Earth.Org is a non-profit environmental news organization funded by readers and listeners. For more information, visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠our ⁠website⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠subscribe to our new Substack newsletters⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

🔎 The big story

Hundreds of millions of people across Southeast Asia are choking in toxic haze, but the real story is being swept under the rug.

For the past week, our social feeds have been flooded with eerie, apocalyptic photos of Singapore and Kuala Lumpur shrouded in grey. But while neighboring capitals dominate headlines, there is disproportionately little outrage over the epicenter of this catastrophe: the burning peatlands and forests of Indonesia, where the crisis actually begins.

Nearly 1.5 million hectares of land have been reduced to ash – an area larger than Northern Ireland, or nearly the size of Beijing municipality. In the past four months, more than 280,000 cases of severe respiratory illness have been recorded across just seven Indonesian provinces.

This is not a natural disaster. It’s a corporate crime

Behind the vast majority of these fires is the widespread, illegal practice of “slash-and-burn” clearing. It remains the cheapest, fastest way for commercial palm oil, pulp, and paper corporations to clear dense forest and maximize profits. While Indigenous subsistence farmers are legally permitted small-scale burning, massive conglomerates hide behind weak enforcement, systemic corruption, and zero transparency to evade responsibility.

A report published earlier this month by Greenpeace directly linked both Singaporean and Malaysian businesses to Indonesian plots where wildfires raged between August and October. As the NGO rightfully put it: persistent peatland fires are not a natural cycle – they are proof that global commodity profits are valued more than human lives.

Furious over decades of state inaction, a coalition of civil society groups in West Kalimantan filed a class-action lawsuit against the Indonesian government earlier this month, accusing officials of gross negligence. Tellingly, on the opening day of court in Pontianak, not a single government official named in the suit showed up. The reason? Thick haze grounded their flights.

A transboundary crisis

Neighboring countries Singapore and Malaysia have also been dealing with toxic haze caused by the forest fires that started in July, although air pollution levels truly escalated in the past few weeks.

In Singapore, which is battling the longest continuous stretch of haze since 2015, demand for air purifiers and N95 face masks surged in recent days. Singapore ranked first on the list of the world’s most polluted major cities on Friday, followed by Kuala Lumpur.

Yet instead of taking accountability, Indonesian officials have defaulted to diplomatic deflection. This week, Syahganda Nainggolan, head of Indonesia’s government communications agency, publicly scolded Singapore and Malaysia for being “ungrateful” for the oxygen Indonesia’s forests provide the rest of the year.

This absurd shifting of blame triggered immediate outrage – not just across Singapore and Malaysia, but among everyday Indonesians who are exhausted by their government’s complicity. On social media, local residents are openly pleading with foreign entities to take legal action against Jakarta, with one comment summing up the national frustration: “Please forgive us. You can help us to sue our government; we will support you.”

Singapore Prime Minister Lawrence Wong announced this week that the city-state is looking into offending companies under its Transboundary Haze Pollution Act, sending palm oil stocks tumbling. The 2014 law allows the government to take action against local and foreign firms found to be contributing to haze, although past efforts to evoke it, notably in 2015, drew sharp ire from Jakarta, which refused to share information about the suspected companies.

Unfortunately, legal threats from across the border are only a band-aid. True progress requires addressing the root drivers of deforestation in Indonesia: strengthening supply-chain transparency for global palm oil and pulp paper supply chains, enforcing strict penalties against corporate offenders, and providing viable, sustainable land-clearing alternatives for rural communities.

Until regional governments stop shielding corporate polluters and treat these recurring fires as a human rights violation rather than an acceptable cost of doing business, millions of people across Southeast Asia will continue to pay for corporate greed with their lungs.

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• In last week’s edition, we examined how the Atlantic hurricane season broke records by reaching late September without a single hurricane, marking the slowest start to a season in the modern satellite era. That streak finally ended on October 8, when Isaias reached hurricane status, tying a 121-year-old record set in 1905 for the latest first Atlantic hurricane of a season. Isaias rapidly intensified into a major hurricane the following day. According to Climate Central scientists, climate-warmed Gulf waters made the storm’s winds 7 mph (11 km/h) stronger than they would have been in a pre-industrial climate.

• Last month was the second-warmest September ever recorded and marked the second consecutive month so far this year where global temperatures exceeding 1.5C above the pre-industrial levels, according to the European Union’s Copernicus. The September average sea surface temperature was the highest on record for the month as El Niño conditions continued to strengthen, likely resulting in one of the strongest events ever recorded. Meanwhile, around Antarctica, the sea ice extent reached its third-lowest annual winter maximum.

• Wild bird populations in the UK have reached their lowest level since records began in 1970, threatened by a multitude of pressures including habitat loss, rising temperatures, and avian flu. New government figures show that average populations across 132 native breeding species fell by 19% between 1970 and 2025. Of them, 45% have declined over the past five years, while just 27% have increased. In England, 55% of monitored species have declined. Turtle doves are on the brink of extinction after populations more than halved in just the past five years. Tree sparrows, wood warblers and capercaillie recorded the next biggest annual decrease, followed by swifts and bullfinches. Bird populations have long been considered to provide a good indication of the broad state of wildlife as they occupy a wide range of habitats and respond to environmental pressures that also operate on other groups of wildlife.

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Earlier this month, some 4,000 climate envoys, negotiators, global ministers and participants gathered for pre-COP meetings in Fiji and Tuvalu - two Pacific islands on the frontline of global warming.⁠

The availability of financing to lower emissions and fund adaptation against extreme weather impacts remains a major concern for Pacific islands. As reported by Bloomberg, of the roughly $16 billion in climate finance pledged to Pacific countries alone since the 2015 Paris Agreement, more than $5 billion remains undisbursed.⁠

Cook Islands Prime Minister Mark Brown delivered a statement on access to climate finance, speaking plainly about a problem the Pacific knows too well: climate finance can be “available” on paper while communities wait, unprotected.⁠

California researchers have come across an intriguing new way to save coral reefs from the devastating impacts of rising ocean temperatures. During a lab experiment, almost by accident, they observed a sick coral recovering after being placed in direct contact with a healthy one. In just a few weeks, the heat-shocked coral was able to regain its color.

Coral reefs are extremely important ecosystems that exist in more than 100 countries and territories and support at least 25% of marine species. Sometimes referred to as “rainforests of the sea” for their ability to act as carbon sinks by absorbing the excess carbon dioxide in the water, they are also integral to sustaining Earth’s vast and interconnected web of marine biodiversity and provide ecosystem services valued up to $9.9 trillion annually.

Unfortunately, coral reefs are disappearing at an alarming pace: coral cover worldwide has shrunk by half since the 1950s, with 14% of the loss occurring in the last 15 years.

More on Earth.Org:

• Scientists confirm largest global coral bleaching event on record

• Global coral reefs face ‘widespread death’ amid rising temperatures

• Scientists identify many new climate-resilient coral reefs

• Inside scientists and green groups’ efforts to build artificial reefs

• US states are filling the federal void on PFAS regulation

• How agrotech startups are fighting food waste and hunger worldwide

• ‘Too hot outside, too cold inside’: Why are Hong Kong’s malls so cold?

• Global survey reveals mounting extreme heat risks for maternal and infant health

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🔎 The big story

In the late 1970s, big tobacco perfected the art of native advertising and targeted sponsorships to preserve its social license while quietly disputing medical science. Decades later, Big Oil is executing the exact same playbook.

During last month’s New York Climate Week – the largest annual climate gathering, bringing together heads of state, global business leaders, governments, philanthropic leaders and civil society – readers of a major news outlet were greeted by an ironic spectacle: climate reporting brought to you by the very architects of climate denial.

Semafor is a US digital news organization that’s been around since October 2022, founded by media veterans Ben Smith (former NYT media columnist/BuzzFeed News editor-in chief) and Justin B. Smith (former Bloomberg Media CEO). It has since established a reputation as a trustworthy and high-quality news source, with a stated mission to “build upon fostering trust amongst our readership and combating misinformation that abounds in today’s news landscape,” and a newsletter audience of more than 1 million readers.

But there’s a glaring elephant in the room, and media observers are taking notice.

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Since its inception, Semafor’s Energy newsletter – a twice-weekly briefing on the energy transition – has featured prominent banners promoting questionable partnerships with fossil fuel giants. Its debut edition was supported by none other than Chevron, one of the world’s largest publicly traded fossil fuel companies. Last month’s “Climate Week Edition” (and several others before that) were supported by ExxonMobil, not only one of the world’s leading oil and gas producers, but a pioneer in climate change denial.

Exxon waged a decades-long misinformation campaign: first hiding its own internal findings that linked fossil fuels to accelerating global warming in the late 1970s and subsequently pouring tens of millions of dollars into public campaigns casting doubt on climate science.

Sponsorships of high-profile climate events, academic conferences, and media platforms have always been central to that strategy:

• For 15 years, Exxon sponsored the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union, the world’s largest gathering of Earth and space scientists, in direct opposition to the union’s own Organizational Support Policy, which openly states that it “will not accept funding from organizational partners that promote and/or disseminate misinformation of science, or that fund organizations that publicly promote misinformation of science." Exxon finally pulled its funding in 2016 following huge backlash from lawmakers as well as over 50,000 scientists and activists arguing that accepting oil and money compromised the union’s climate goals – though AGU continues to accept oil money, including from Chevron.

• Exxon serves as a long-term, multi-year sponsor for the Hong Kong 2050 is Now Young Environment Ambassador Programme, a move one environmental scholar has called “hypocritical.” Organized by independent think-tank Civic Exchange, the initiative supports localized education training programs for secondary school students, with a focus on decarbonization and nature-based solutions.

• Exxon partnered with the New York Times to run a highly publicized native advertising campaign titled “The Future of Energy,” which first appeared in 2018 and is still running today. The sponsored content highlighted the company’s research into alternative fuels, like algae-based biofuels. Journalists and advocates widely condemned the campaign for masking Exxon’s massive fossil fuel expansion behind a minuscule biofuel budget – a research effort that Exxon quietly dropped altogether in 2023.

Such campaigns are never-ending, and Semafor is simply the latest stop on this tour. The media company defends the practice by stating that advertisers “are a key force in supporting our newsroom,” while reassuring readers sponsors “have no bearing on our editorial coverage” due to “a strict separation between news and third-party ads.”

But that misses the point.

Asking a fossil fuel company to sponsor a climate change newsletter is like asking a cigarette company to fund a lung cancer health awareness campaign.

A 2025 study by researchers at Boston University and the University of Cambridge found that Exxon’s ad placement in news publications is actually “part of an evolving – and often successful – effort by fossil fuel companies to ‘manipulate mass public opinion’ about their role in the climate crisis using ‘misleading’ advertising.” It concluded that even a single exposure to these misleading ads shapes reader beliefs, and news outlets cannot run them without enabling industry manipulation.

One way to mitigate the disinformation, it added, is by running these ads alongside pre-exposure warnings and explicit sponsor disclosures.

Beyond fossil fuels

Semafor and the New York Times are far from alone in falling into this trap.

A few years ago, American news site Vox partnered with Delta Airlines to sponsor a YouTube video series on climate change, green technology, and urban sustainability. Each episode carried a disclaimer: “This episode is presented by Delta. Delta doesn’t have a say in our editorial decisions, but they make videos like this possible. For more information, visit http://www.delta.com/sustainability.”

As a non-profit newsroom ourselves, we deeply understand the severe financial pressure digital media faces nowadays. Philanthropic grants are drying up, while search engine changes like Google’s “AI Overviews” continue to erode web traffic – long the lifeblood of digital journalism.

With traditional ad revenue collapsing, many newsrooms have turned to reader support to sustain their work. But building a viable reader-funded model requires absolute editorial trust – something that is increasingly fragile in today’s media landscape.

When it comes to climate reporting, partnering with the very companies driving the climate crisis compromises that trust. Accepting money from major polluters who spent decades misleading the public while expanding fossil fuel extraction makes newsrooms complicit in their greenwashing. Some, like the Guardian, understand this, and have publicly committed to scrapping partnerships with fossil fuel players altogether:

We have decided that we will no longer accept advertising from fossil fuel extractive companies on any of the Guardian’s websites and apps, nor in the Guardian, Observer and Guardian Weekly in print. Our decision is based on the decades-long efforts by many in that industry to prevent meaningful climate action by governments around the world.

As the Boston and Cambridge researchers demonstrated, the goal of these corporate ad buys isn’t necessarily to dictate a newsroom’s daily headlines. It is to buy social license, infiltrate the narrative, and present a sanitized public image. By taking the money, outlets help them do exactly that.

The Guardian’s approach proves that newsrooms can reject Big Oil’s money without sacrificing their financial survival or editorial integrity. It’s time for others to follow suit.

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​We also explore a new study detailing a 50-year coordinated effort by conservative think tanks, donor networks, and energy companies to target university governance, and look at how this long-term campaign left academic climate and energy research vulnerable, paving the way for recent federal attacks and funding freezes.

Earth Radio is a podcast by Earth.Org. It is produced, edited, scored, and written by Rebekah Hendricks.

Earth.Org is a non-profit environmental news organization funded by readers and listeners. For more information, visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠our ⁠website⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠subscribe to our new Substack newsletters⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

Meanwhile, Global Witness says at least 124 land and environmental defenders were killed last year for standing up to protect their lands and livelihoods from destruction. Since it began gathering data in 2012, the NGO was able to verify and report on 2,375 killings globally, although each year it warns that the figures are likely a “significant underestimate,” as many cases go unreported.

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Earth Radio is a podcast by Earth.Org. It is produced, edited, scored, and written by Rebekah Hendricks.

Earth.Org is a non-profit environmental news organization funded by readers and listeners. For more information, visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠our ⁠website⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠⁠subscribe to our Substack newsletters⁠⁠⁠⁠.

🔎 The big story

This week, the Guardian released a bombshell investigation into how fossil fuel interests are penetrating the world’s most authoritative scientific body on climate change. Let’s talk about it.

The IPCC, or Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, is a United Nations body founded in 1988 to advance scientific knowledge about human-caused climate change and to “provide governments at all levels with scientific information that they can use to develop climate policies.” It does so through comprehensive scientific assessments, published every five to seven years, which inform policymakers on the climate crisis and its potential future risks, and put forward adaptation and mitigation recommendations.

The IPCC does not conduct its own research – rather, its job is to gather experts from various fields, who then study the thousands of scientific papers on climate science published each year and summarize them into comprehensive reports. Once completed, the reports are thoroughly reviewed in plenary sessions by UN member states, who need to approve and adopt them.

During plenary sessions, which take place at least once a year, the hundreds of attendees from relevant ministries, agencies, and research institutions from both member countries and observer organizations also decide on the IPCC’s budget and work program as well as the scope and outline of its upcoming reports.

Over 8,000 experts from nearly all countries in the world have volunteered their time to the IPCC assessment cycles – with six completed to date. They put together dozens of reports on various climate-related topics, including more than a dozen so-called “Special Reports” on topics agreed to by its member governments, ranging from the impacts of aviation and land-use change to carbon dioxide capture and storage, renewable energy, and managing the risks of extreme weather events.

Each assessment cycle concludes with the publishing of an Assessment Report, covering the state of scientific, technical, and socio-economic knowledge on climate change, its impacts and future risks, and strategies to mitigate or adapt to them. They come in four parts – a contribution from each of the three IPCC Working Groups, plus a Synthesis Report, which includes a Summary for Policymakers.

Overall, each report has delivered increasingly stark warnings, painting a clear picture of accelerating global warming, escalating climate impacts, and a rapidly narrowing window for effective action. The IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report, its most recent, delivered a “final warning” to countries to invest in mitigation and adaptation projects upon which “the magnitude and rate of climate change and associated risks” strongly depend:

It is unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land. The scale of recent changes across the climate system as a whole ... are unprecedented over many centuries to many thousands of years. Global warming of 1.5C and 2C will be exceeded during the 21st century unless deep reductions in carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gas emissions occur in the coming decades.

Conflict of interest?

Across the scientific community, the IPCC’s work is broadly viewed as the most comprehensive and reliable assessment of the climate crisis, undergoing “more scrutiny than any other documents in the history of science.” It was even awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007 for its “efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change.”

This week, the authority the UN body has built over many decades came into question.

The Guardian investigation, carried out in partnership with a team of international journalists with the support of Journalismfund Europe, identified 20 cases “with strong conflict of interest concerns.” Of these, 11 were IPCC lead authors with ties to Saudi Aramco, the world’s largest petroleum company; Saudi-funded universities and research institutions; and other fossil fuel interests. The remaining cases involved experts from other nations linked to industry collaborations, fossil-fuel sponsorship of academic research, environmental campaigning, and sustainable finance.

The journalists looked at the 223 lead authors in Working Group III, which is tasked with exploring emission reduction and removal strategies, policies and technologies (Working Groups I and II cover the science surrounding climate change and the impacts). The group is currently working on the Seventh Assessment Report, scheduled for release by late 2029.

Experts interviewed about the findings do not recall ever seeing such a heavy presence of people with Saudi ties within the institution and argue they would be in breach of the IPCC’s Conflict of Interest Policy.

The Conflict of Interest Policy was adopted in 2011 following mistakes in its major reports and allegations of financial conflicts involving Rajendra Pachauri, who served as the IPCC’s chairman from 2002 to 2015. As per the IPCC website:

The overall purpose of the Conflict of Interest Policy is to protect the legitimacy, integrity, trust, and credibility of the IPCC and of those directly involved in the preparation of reports, and its activities. The staff of the IPCC Secretariat is subject to the disclosure and ethics policies of the WMO and UNEP. For the purposes of the IPCC Conflict of Interest Policy, individuals must disclose circumstances that could lead a reasonable person to question an individual’s objectivity, or whether an unfair advantage has been created, constitute a potential conflict of interest.

According to an IPCC member interviewed for the investigation, at least one IPCC member, Mustafa Babiker, had declared his role as a consultant for Saudi Aramco on the IPCC’s conflict of interest form. And yet the latest Conflict of Interest (COI) Committee meeting, held this February, noted “with appreciation” that a review of all forms submitted by all the IPCC Bureau and Task Force Bureau members found “no conflict of interest.” Crucially, these forms are never made public, and the COI Committee provides no details regarding its deliberations.

Saudi Aramco is part of the Carbon Majors, a group of around 100 private and state-owned companies that have been responsible for a significant proportion of global industrial greenhouse gas emissions since the Industrial Revolution. It ranked first for emissions in 2024, with a global carbon dioxide emissions share of 4.28%.

At least two of the 14 lead authors for the chapter on energy systems, which looks at ways to reduce emissions across the board, also have ties to Saudi Aramco. They are Diego Armando Moya Pinta, who has worked as an energy and sustainability scientist at the company since 2022, and Professor Zain Yamani from King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals, who, the Guardian says, “was conducting joint research with Aramco’s New Energies Research Division during the past year while also serving in his IPCC role.”

The list goes on. Dr Malak Al-Nory, a senior adviser to the Saudi energy ministry, also serves as one of Working Group III’s seven vice-chairs, a job that requires her to evaluate authors’ conflict of interest disclosures, among other tasks. Saudi Arabia, the quintessential petrostate, holds the second-largest proven oil reserves in the world, with the government depending on oil and gas revenues for much of its income and export earnings.

The nation is part of a broader coalition of fossil fuel-friendly states that have long campaigned against phasing them out at UN climate negotiations, instead pushing for technological climate solutions like carbon capture and storage, which is widely seen as a necessary but limited tool in the fight against climate change.

Professor Hussein Hoteit from the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology in Thuwal, Saudi Arabia, was conducting research on underground carbon storage that was heavily funded by Saudi Aramco when he was appointed as a lead author on the IPCC chapter on carbon dioxide removal technologies. Working Group III also includes five authors from the King Abdullah Petroleum Studies and Research Center (KAPSARC), a think-tank funded by the Saudi government and chaired by the country’s energy minister, whose stated mission is to “advance Saudi Arabia’s energy sector.” The appointments make KAPSARC the most represented institution in the group, alongside Imperial College London and Vienna’s International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, according to the Guardian investigation.

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Reclaiming integrity

At a time when anti-climate rhetoric is gaining political traction worldwide and public trust in multilateral bodies is hitting historic lows – particularly in the US – revelations like these are catastrophic for science communication. When international institutions like the UN and the IPCC suffer from perceived or actual regulatory capture by the very industries driving planetary degradation, it hands fuel to climate skeptics and isolationist political movements seeking to dismantle international climate agreements altogether.

If the world’s gold standard for climate science loses its perceived independence, the fallout will extend far beyond academic debates. It risks undermining the fragile global consensus required to fund energy transitions and policy reform. To rebuild trust, the IPCC must enforce robust, transparent governance mechanisms that hold conflict of interest disclosures to public scrutiny – before the consensus model breaks down completely.

• In 2022, nearly 200 countries signed on to the “30 by 30” goal, committing to protecting and conserving biodiversity in at least 30% of the world’s land and seas by 2030. The pledge was part of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, the world’s first biodiversity framework aiming to “halt and reverse” nature loss. But governments are set to fall short of meeting the framework’s targets, which also include climate finance commitments, according to a new report published this week. US-based Campaign for Nature and Together for the Ocean, which led the research, found that while another ​1.3 million square kilometers of land and 6 million square kilometers of ⁠marine areas have come under formal protection since the agreement went into effect, total coverage ​is still only 20% and 10% respectively. Read more here.

• In yet another blow to the Trump administration’s efforts to slow down the energy transition, a court last week ordered the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to reinstate a $7 billion grant program aimed at expanding solar energy in low-income communities across America, ruling that it had exceeded its authority when it rescinded the grants last year. This isn’t the only billion-dollar grant the EPA has attacked. In August, the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled that the agency improperly terminated billions of dollars in funds originally disbursed by the Biden administration to finance clean energy and transportation projects. Read more here.

The climate crisis is "the power fueling climate chaos and the war on nature,” UN Secretary-General António Guterres said on Tuesday as he opened the general debate of the General Assembly’s (UNGA) 81st session. Warning of a near-certain breach of the 1.5C limit and accelerating impacts like glacier melt, he called on all governments to adopt national 1.5-aligned plans to transition away from fossil fuels with clear timelines and support for affected workers.

The UN chief, who will be stepping down at the end of his second five-year term in December, criticized major oil companies for profiting immensely while treating the atmosphere as an “open sewer.”

Amid an increasing amount of governments downplaying climate risks and backtracking on climate policy, some world leaders in New York this week have chosen to openly talk about the impact the climate crisis is having on their countries – and what they’re doing to address it. These included Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who in his UNGA speech said that those who reject scientific evidence are denying reality, but also the Australian and Icelandic prime ministers, Anthony Albanese and Kristrún Frostadóttir, who spoke at the New York Climate Week, which runs alongside UNGA.

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The 2026 Atlantic hurricane season has broken records by reaching late September with zero hurricanes. It marks the slowest start to a hurricane season in the Atlantic basin in the modern satellite era. But why is that?

Ahead of what has become one of the strongest Niño events on record, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) in May released its hurricane season outlook, predicting a 55% chance of below-average hurricane activity in the Atlantic.

El Niño, a global climatic phenomenon that occurs every two to seven years on average, is associated with the warming of sea surface temperatures in the central and eastern tropical Pacific Ocean. These high temperatures tend to create vertical wind shear in the Atlantic, with strong winds in the upper atmosphere and weaker winds in the lower atmosphere. This makes it harder for thunderstorms to organize into hurricanes.

Conversely, warmer water in the Pacific provides atmospheric conditions favorable for storms to form and that fuel strong hurricanes. Indeed, in line with NOAA’s predictions, the Pacific has so far this year been much busier than usual, with significantly higher-than average storm and hurricane activity.

This week, Hurricane Polo grew into one of the most powerful Pacific tropical cyclones in decades as it skirted Mexico’s southwestern coast as a major hurricane. Meanwhile, another Pacific system, Odalys, strengthened Wednesday from a tropical storm to a hurricane, becoming the 15th named storm to form in the Eastern pacific in 2026.

• The precarious existence of critically endangered gorillas

• Nature as medicine: redesigning urban green spaces for nature-based healthcare

• In Indonesia, sago is a symbol of Indigenous identity and food resilience

🔎 The big story

A little over three weeks after a catastrophic avalanche and subsequent flood in the Himalayas swept away entire villages on both sides of the Nepal-China border, claiming thousands of lives, new research confirms what many feared from day one: this multi-layered disaster unfolded as a compound crisis fueled by a rapidly changing climate.

Let’s start with the facts.

At 8.37 a.m. on August 26, a large rock avalanche from the north face of Langtang Lirung – the highest peak of the Langtang Himal, a subrange of the Nepalese Himalayas – triggered the collapse of a section of the glacier that was sitting on top of it. The enormous mass of rock and ice (some 110 million cubic meters) fell approximately 1,400 meters (4,593 feet), crashing onto the valley floor in Nepal’s Langtang national park, some 60 kilometers (35 miles) north of the capital Kathmandu. The impact was so strong it triggered seismic energy equivalent to a 5.2-magnitude earthquake.

The massive cascade of rock, ice and mud first wiped out the Gyirong checkpoint on the China-Nepal border before continuing along a 64-kilometer stretch of the Trishuli River, one of the major river systems of central Nepal. Along the way, it eroded and entrained further material and buried glacier ice from the valley’s glacial deposit, with the debris mass growing by another 30 million cubic meters. Traveling at a speed of between 150 and 180 km/h (93.2 to 111.8 mph), the debris flood obliterated dozens of settlements in its path and even backflowed up to 2 kilometers upstream into China.

The videos are striking.

As of Thursday, 1,410 people are confirmed dead in Nepal, and 6,145 remain missing. More than 21,000 people were mobilized for search, rescue, and relief operations, with 13,756 rescued so far. Some 84,600 people required emergency water, sanitation and hygiene support. On the Chinese side, the death toll stands at 43, with 519 still missing.

In Nepal, an estimated 7,570 buildings, including dozens of public buildings and cultural heritage assets, seven health facilities and 18 schools were affected. Most were destroyed.

What attribution research tells us

This week, 24 scientists from the World Weather Attribution group published the first comprehensive scientific assessment of what led to the catastrophe.

The analysis concerned itself with the following:

A key question for attribution is … not only whether meteorological conditions were unusual, but also how long-term warming and changes in precipitation could have modified the mechanical stability of the source slope before failure.

As noted earlier, it wasn’t the glacier that gave way first, but rock. What contributed to it progressively becoming less stable were several interacting processes. None of them independently caused the rock detachment itself. Rather, the research says, “they operate over different timescales and should therefore be regarded as potential contributing mechanisms.”

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Here’s a quick recap of these influencing processes:

1. Permafrost degradation and thawing: Sustained warming is thawing mountain permafrost, melting the ice that holds rock fractures together and raising water pressure deep inside cliffs. This hidden degradation weakens steep slopes and can set the stage for catastrophic rockslides. While measurements of permafrost from the Langtang catchment are not available, data from other parts of Nepal collected over the past six decades show a rise in discontinuous permafrost at altitude. Last month’s landslide occurred within an elevational zone (4,500-5,500 meters/14,700-18,000 feet) where permafrost degradation is most likely.

2. Glacier thinning and meltwater infiltration: In recent decades, the Langtang-Lirung glacier has thinned and retreated at an accelerating pace, especially after 2010. This rapid ice loss has removed crucial structural support from the surrounding lower slopes while producing extra meltwater that can seep deep into rock fractures and further destabilize the cliff faces.

3. Heavy rainfall and higher rain-snow transition: While more long-term analysis is needed to better determine the true influence of this process, researchers found evidence of increasing rainfall and decreasing snowfall during the monsoon season over the past two decades. More rain at higher elevations increases water input to the glacier and rock wall, raising pore pressure and potentially triggering failure.

4. Anomalous warmth: The region in question saw elevated temperatures between September 2025 and this August. Within this timeframe, the monsoon months of July and August were the warmest on record locally, and the three days leading up to the collapse itself were also anomalously warm.

The study also lists the powerful 7.8-magnitude Gorkha earthquake of 2015 as a potential contributing factor, arguing that shaking may have enlarged fractures and weakened the rock mass. However, its contribution to last month’s failure could not be verified.

The bottom line

The fingerprints of climate change are all over last month’s “apocalyptic” floods. The data gathered by World Weather Attribution is proof that human-caused warming had a “very strong linkage” to the disaster and, more broadly, to the changes we’re witnessing in the Himalayas.

Human-caused climate change is pushing the freezing line – the zero-degree isotherm – upward by roughly 100 meters per decade. That means ground and bedrock that have been frozen for thousands of years are now exposed to temperatures warmer than ever and that persist for much longer than they used to.

As Walter Immerzeel, a Mountain Hydrologist at Utrecht University and one of the researchers behind the study, put it:

We are witnessing fundamental, irreversible shifts in Himalayan mountain environments … When you combine high-elevation permafrost degradation with glacier retreat and record summer heat, the structural integrity of these mountain walls is compromised. The catastrophic impacts of what can then happen are clear for all to see.

But there’s one other thing we should bear in mind: because glaciers and high-altitude permafrost take decades to react to rising temperatures, past global warming has already guaranteed future mountain destabilization. This delayed reaction makes phasing out fossil fuels even more urgent to prevent further catastrophic collapses down the line.

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• The Trump administration is repealing emissions standards for coal and gas power plants, which are among the largest sources of planet-warming greenhouse gases in the country. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is stripping itself of its ability to regulate pollution from power plants under the Clean Air Act, a move that will also limit future adminitrations from curbing this kind of pollution. Power plants are responsible for a quarter of the country’s greenhouse gas emissions, making it the second-largest source of greenhouse gases behind vehicles. Trump’s EPA had already eliminated emission standards for vehicles earlier this year when it revoked the endangerment finding, the legal underpinning for federal regulation of greenhouse gas emissions. The administration is currently facing legal action over the repeal. Read more here.

• After the World Bank announced in June that it would abandon its goal to devote 45% of lending resources to climate change projects, at least two multilateral development banks (MDBs) – the Inter-American Development Bank and the Asian Development Bank – are expected to scrap their own climate finance targets, the Financial Times has reported. In both case, the decision followed “real pressure” and “direct demands” from the Trump administration. One development finance official warned that all MBDs with large US shareholding may follow suit. Several countries, including the UK and France, are also expected to reduce climate financing contributions in the coming years. At COP29, developed countries had agreed to mobilize at least $300 billion annually by 2035 for developing nations to deal with the consequences of climate change, and to boost that to $1.3 trillion – what’s really needed – over the same period. The recent collective backtracking on vital climate finance makes it increasingly unlikely that these obligations will be respected.

• Speaking of climate finance, Nepal is planning to use the aformentioned World Weather Attribution study to request money from the United Nations Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage. Nepal authorities have said the country needs around $5 billion to rebuild itself following the deadly event, although they are reportedly only seeking around $20 million from the fund. Almost 120 countries have already submitted claims to the UN fund, which was formally operationalized in 2023, requesting a total of nearly $3 billion. However, the fund has so far only received $600 million in contribution from 26 countries.

• The global push to build thousands of massive AI data centers will generate an “unprecedented tsunami” of rapidly obsolescent electronic equipment, according to a new report investigating the impacts of the build-out of AI infrastructure on toxic electronic waste, which is known to contain toxic substances like lead, mercury, cadmium and other forever chemicals. On top of the computer servers and “the thousands of tonnes of copper, steel, concrete” for cooling, power distribution, networking and energy storage equipment each data center needs to have, the analysis also predicts that the AI revolution will increase consumer technology devices such as computers, phones and telecommunications equipment, as computing requirements change. The e-waste AI generates in the next 25 years could fill enough shipping containers to encircle the globe six times, with no plans to deal with it, it concluded.

In an opinion piece for The Independent, Prince William makes the case for “urgent optimism” in the face of escalating wildfires and extreme weather.

While the climate crisis demands immediate action, feeling overwhelmed can paralyze progress. The key isn’t blind hope - it’s evidence-based optimism. Prince William argues that the tools to fix our climate already exist, from local conservation models restoring whole ecosystems to scalable clean energy bringing power to millions.

The mission for the rest of this decade isn’t starting from scratch but rather taking proven, ground-level solutions and building them to global scale.

The Antarctic ozone hole in 2025 ranked as the fourth to fifth smallest since severe depletion patterns were first observed in 1992, the World Meteorological Organization said this week. This is testimony to the continuing success of international action through the Montreal Protocol to protect the Earth’s ozone layer, Earth’s protective shield against the sun’s ultraviolet radiation. Last year, the UN said the ozone layer is on track for full recovery by mid-century. Read more here.

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• At least 124 land and environmental defenders killed in 2025: report

• Explainer: Is the EU backtracking on its climate pledges? The implications of the European Omnibus Simplification Package

• Opinion: Sustainable development goals live or die in our cities

• What a YouTuber’s Bugatti repair dispute reveals about the global ‘Right to Repair’ movement

🔎 The big story

No matter where you were in the world last month, you likely felt the heat. Much of the planet was indeed dangerously hot, with August 2026 tying July 2023 as the hottest month ever recorded.

The global average surface air temperature was 1.65C higher than the pre-industrial baseline – the first time since November that it exceeded the 1.5C warming limit nearly all countries in the world pledged to stick to 11 years ago.

This underlines just how severely off course global mitigation efforts remain. The United Nations this month issued a desperate plea for countries to act – its latest in a long string of warnings – because we’re headed for 1.8C of warming. While it’s true to say that a permanent breach of the critical limit is measured over decades, this still sends a clear warning to humanity that we are approaching the point of no return much faster than expected. As the UN put it:

Last month’s record temperatures are reflective of an accelerating climate crisis. All 10 of the warmest Augusts on record have occurred since 2016; the same is also true for the warmest years on record. A March paper confirmed that the Earth has warmed around 0.35C in the decade to 2025, compared to less than 0.2C per decade on average between 1970 and 2015.

But there’s another reason why this summer has been particularly unbearable: a “Godzilla El Niño” is currently intensifying in the tropical Pacific and is poised to be the strongest we’ve ever seen, scientists say. While it is expected to peak at the end of the year, the impacts of this event, which occurs at intervals of between two and seven years, are already being felt globally. First and foremost in this summer’s record-breaking temperatures, but also elsewhere in the form of severe droughts and torrential rainfall, intensifying wildfires and – depending on where you are in the world – a more active or quieter hurricane season.

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El Niño is being fueled by exceptionally warm Pacific waters, which remained “exceptionally high” last month, according to the European Union’s Copernicus service. But El Niño does not directly warm every ocean hotspot. The North Pacific and the Mediterranean, the Gulf of Mexico, and the extra-polar oceans are also exceptionally warm. In the first half of 2026, more than 80% of the ocean experienced a heatwave.

Globally, oceans logged their 100th consecutive day of record average heat this week – something that’s not totally unprecedented but is still a “symbolic marker,” according to Climate Central climatologist Zachary Labe, who added:

A run of 99 days compared with one of 102 days will not make much difference in terms of impact. The real determining factor is the prolonged period of record heat that we continue to see this year.

The ultimate driver behind this relentless heat is no mystery. A 2025 study linked nearly half of marine heatwaves since 2000 to climate change, which makes them longer and more intense.

Yet as concerning as these current records are, conflating temporary El Niño-driven heat spikes with future baselines misses a crucial distinction.

Unlike El Niño, which temporarily moves existing heat between the ocean and the atmosphere, greenhouse gas emissions relentlessly trap brand-new energy within the global system. While an El Niño offers a brief peak at a hotter climate, it cannot replicate the permanent structural changes awaiting the planet a decade down the line. As climate scientists Andrew Dessler and Zeke Hausfather note: in 2037, the planet’s “oceans will be warmer, its land will be warmer, and the underlying changes in temperature and precipitation will be driven by persistent greenhouse forcing rather than the temporary rearrangement of heat associated with [the El Niño–Southern Oscillation].”

An El Niño may give us a glimpse of a hotter world, but it doesn’t reflect the permanent, structural shifts the Earth will experience a decade from now.

• The fashion industry’s emissions grew 6.3% between 2023 and 2024 to 1 gigaton (about the same climate footprint as Japan). The rise was driven by an increase in the amount of fiber (particularly polyester) used to produce apparel, according to a new report by the Apparel Impact Institute. Global fiber production increased to a record 132 million tonnes in 2024 from roughly 125 million tonnes the year prior, with polyester accounting for 59%. But it’s not all bad news: the report also praises “meaningful” progress across renewable energy deployment in Vietnam, a key sourcing country; coal phaseout in textile mills and finished goods production; and a shift to recycled polyester and other sustainable materials, with both brands and governments investing in next-generation materials like textile recycled fibers. Read more here.

• Several environmental organizations lodged a formal complaint with the European Ombudswoman this week, alleging maladministration by the European Commission over its decision to revise the Water Framework Directive, its main water protection and management law. The changes came partly in response to complaints by mining and metals companies that the law’s ​environmental safeguards are delaying permits for new critical raw materials mines and other industrial projects. They are the latest in a series of simplification packages to EU environmental law announced in recent years. Known as the EU "Omnibus," the simplification strategy was developed in response to complaints from industries saying the bloc’s “burdensome” environmental laws hurt ​their competitiveness on the global stage. Read more here.

• One in nine migratory birds is threatened with extinction and 45% of migratory species are in decline, according to a global report on the state of the world’s birds. Seabirds and shorebirds are among the most threatened groups. The drivers of these declines are “overwhelmingly” caused by human actions (climate change, pollution, hunting and trapping, urban development and disturbance), with species that use marine habitats, forests and coastal wetlands faring particularly poorly. Seven species are confirmed or suspected to have been lost in the last 150 years. Exactly 196 countries committed to halt and reverse biodiversity loss by 2030, but progress toward achieving these goals and targets remains far too slow.

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The mayors of Paris, Milan and Phoenix are joining forces to protect residents from rising deadly heat affecting their cities. In an opinion piece for The Guardian, Emmanuel Grégoire of Paris and Giuseppe Sala of Milan discuss how frequent heatwaves across Europe this summer forced them to redirect their efforts to developing systems and strategies to “protect vulnerable residents, communicate risk, and redesign neighbourhoods for hotter summers.” These efforts led them to a desert city in the US’ southwest.

Phoenix, an arid city in the US’ southwest, has been dealing with these question for decades. The city government has established one of the world’s first city offices dedicated to heat response and mitigation; shade plans require 75% shade coverage in new development in areas with high pedestrian activity; and local laws require landlords to maintain a safe indoor temperature of 28C/82F or lower. The city is also applying cool surface treatment to buildings and roadways, including on more than 300 kilometers of neighborhood streets and providing a 24-hour cooling center with wraparound support to connect people with resources such as housing, medical services, and even job placement.

By sharing decades of desert-tested solutions with European capitals, Phoenix proves intercity collaboration is becoming essential to surviving extreme climate realities.

More about the topic: How cities around the world are bracing for more heat

Listen to this week’s episode of the Earth Radio podcast, live on your favorite podcasting platform: Spotify | YouTube | Amazon Music | Apple Podcasts | Overcast.

We also cover a new study on the impacts of human actions on migratory birds. According to the report,one in nine migratory birds is now threatened with extinction, while 45% of migratory species populations are declining. And in the US, an appellate court has decided that the federal constitution does not guarantee a right to clean water.

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Earth Radio is a podcast by Earth.Org. It is produced, edited, scored, and written by Rebekah Hendricks.

Earth.Org is a non-profit environmental news organization funded by readers and listeners. For more information, visit ⁠⁠⁠our ⁠website⁠⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠subscribe to our new Substack newsletters⁠⁠⁠.

Extreme weather dominated headlines at the 2024 Paris Olympics. Heavy downpours during the opening ceremony degraded water quality in the River Seine, which the city had spent $1.53 billion on to clean it in time for the Games. Then came a brutal heatwave, pushing temperatures as high as 36C (97F) in the French capital, and up to 41C (105F) in the South of France, where soccer and sailing were taking place. Scientists said those temperatures would have been “virtually impossible” without human influence on the climate system.

A similar fate awaited last year’s Athletics World Championships in Tokyo, which forced organizers to move up some races’ start times on the first three days of the event to ensure athletes’ safety. Weeks later, tennis stars competing in the Shanghai Masters in China described the stifling conditions as “very challenging physically.” And this summer, heat forced world No. 1 Jannik Sinner out of the prestigious French Open tournament after he suffered severe dizziness and heat exhaustion during the second round.

Too hot to run

Rising global temperatures, increasingly long summers and shorter winters, and more frequent floods and droughts pose an array of challenges that threaten not only individual sporting events and athletes’ well-being, but the very future of the sports industry.

Take marathons as an obvious example. As the planet continues to heat up, runners will have fewer opportunities to race in optimal conditions.

A study by independent climate research group Climate Central evaluated the impact of rising temperatures on 221 global marathon races, including all seven World Majors, and concluded that 86% will see a decline in odds of optimal running conditions by 2045.

Optimal running conditions vary by gender: elite men perform best in cooler conditions around 4C (39F), while elite women peak near 10C (50F). Yet marathons are already blowing past these thresholds. The average temperature at last year’s Tokyo Marathon hit 15.2C (59F) – about 8.2C warmer than typical. Months later in Berlin, temperatures averaged 20.7C (69F), a massive 6.7C above normal. In both instances, Climate Central confirmed that human-caused climate change made the unseasonable heat significantly more likely.

To cope with these escalating risks, organizers of the 42.2-kilometer (26.2-mile) races are being forced to adapt – shifting events to cooler months, pushing start times to dawn, or allowing runners to cut their courses short. The Abbott World Marathon Majors had already warned about this back in 2020:

In the coming years, the warming trend will likely mean more event date adjustments and occasional cancellations, such as when flooding from Hurricane Sandy and outcry from locals prompted the cancellation of the New York City Marathon in 2012, or when smoke from wildfires made the air quality so poor that Virgin Sport had to scrap its USA debut ‘fitness festival' in San Francisco in 2017. In the longer term, (decades) it may render certain locations unsuitable for mass participation running events altogether.

‘The last World Cup of its kind’

This summer, Climate Central launched an interactive dashboard monitoring how extreme heat impacted player performance during the World Cup across the US, Mexico, and Canada.

Research on elite soccer shows that heat can affect player performance – especially how fast, far, or frequently they run during a match. This is particularly true when temperatures rise above 28C (82.4F) and are combined with high humidity. Climate Central found that 55.8% of all 104 matches were played in cities where the daily high exceeded that threshold.

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Also this week, a federal judge ‌ruled that New York cannot enforce a 2024 state law that sought to force fossil fuel companies to contribute $75 billion over 25 years into a fund to pay for damage caused by climate change, handing a victory to Republican states and the Trump administration. And the World Meteorological Organization now forecasts a near 100% chance that El Niño will persist through February 2027.

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Earth Radio is a podcast by Earth.Org. It is produced, edited, scored, and written by Rebekah Hendricks.

Earth.Org is a non-profit environmental news organization funded by readers and listeners. For more information, visit ⁠⁠our ⁠website⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠subscribe to our new Substack newsletters⁠⁠.

Subscribe now

Earth Radio is a podcast by Earth.Org. It is produced, edited, scored, and written by Rebekah Hendricks.

Earth.Org is a non-profit environmental news organization funded by readers and listeners. For more information, visit ⁠our ⁠website.

The UK has just endured its fifth major heatwave of 2026. The Met Office, the national weather forecaster, declares a heatwave if the heatwave temperature threshold for a certain area…

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I’m writing this newsletter from my family’s steamy flat in northern Italy, where the desk thermometer reads 33C. Outside, it is 37C. It has been relentlessly hot every single day sin…

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Welcome to the very first edition of Monthly Monitor – our subscriber-only climate deep dive! We’re unlocking this inaugural issue for everyone so you can see what’s inside. If you enjoy this analysi…

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Meanwhile, July 30 marked Earth Overshoot Day - the date when humanity has exhausted nature’s budget for the year. It means that for the rest of the year, we are using resources beyond what our planet provides.

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Earth Radio is an Earth.Org project. Earth.Org is a non-profit environmental news organization funded by readers and listeners. For more information, visit our ⁠website⁠.

Credits:

• Editor: Rebekah Hendricks

• Producer: Rebekah Hendricks

• Music: Rebekah Hendricks

In the past three decades, emissions of sulfur dioxide (SO2) and nitrogen oxides (NOx) in the US have declined “dramatically”, thanks largely to a single cornerstone policy: the Acid …

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