By  MELINA WALLING
Updated 6:38 AM PDT, March 31, 2025

Erin McGuire spent years cultivating fruits and vegetables like onions, peppers and tomatoes as a scientist and later director of a lab at the University of California-Davis. She collaborated with hundreds of people to breed drought-resistant varieties, develop new ways to cool fresh produce and find ways to make more money for small farmers at home and overseas.

Then the funding stopped. Her lab, and by extension many of its overseas partners, were backed financially by the United States Agency for International Development, which Trump’s administration has been dismantling for the past several weeks. Just before it was time to collect data that had been two years in the making, her team received a stop work order. She had to lay off her whole team. Soon she was laid off, too.

“It’s really just been devastating,” she said. “I don’t know how you come back from this.”

The U.S. needs more publicly funded research and development on agriculture to offset the effects of climate change, according to a paper out in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences this month. But instead the U.S. has been investing less. United States Department of Agriculture data shows that as of 2019, the U.S. spent about a third less on agricultural research than its peak in 2002, a difference of about $2 billion. The recent pauses and freezes to funding for research on climate change and international development are only adding to the drop. It’s a serious issue for farmers who depend on new innovations to keep their businesses afloat, the next generation of scientists and eventually for consumers who buy food.

Read more here

Rice University researchers have developed an innovative solution to a pressing environmental challenge: removing and destroying per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), commonly called “forever chemicals.” A study led by James Tour, the T.T. and W.F. Chao Professor of Chemistry and professor of materials science and nanoengineering, and graduate student Phelecia Scotland unveils a method that not only eliminates PFAS from water systems but also transforms waste into high-value graphene, offering a cost-effective and sustainable approach to environmental remediation. This research was published March 31 in Nature Water.

PFAS are synthetic compounds in various consumer products, valued for their heat, water and oil resistance. However, their chemical stability has made them persistent in the environment, contaminating water supplies and posing significant health risks, including cancer and immune system disruptions. Traditional methods of PFAS disposal are costly, energy-intensive and often generate secondary pollutants, prompting the need for innovative solutions that are more efficient and environmentally friendly.

“Our method doesn’t just destroy these hazardous chemicals; it turns waste into something of value,” Tour said. “By upcycling the spent carbon into graphene, we’ve created a process that’s not only environmentally beneficial but also economically viable, helping to offset the costs of remediation.”

Read More: Rice University

by Allyson Lapierre, WGME
Mon, March 31st 2025 at 6:02 AM

A renewable energy project to protect Maine forests has been put on pause. Millions of federal dollars initially promised to Maine woodland owners are being blocked by the Trump administration.

Six Maine commercial woodland owners were chosen to lead a 12,000-acre climate project to enhance carbon storage in the state.

The federal government issued a $32 million grant to fund the project last year. But that funding has been frozen.

“What this is going to do is remove a lot of opportunities for diverse landowners in the state,” said Brian Milakovsky, with the New England Forestry Foundation.

The grant was promised under the Biden administration but has been blocked and put under review by the Trump administration, leaving landowners, loggers, and others in jeopardy.

“Continue to be a challenge and a constant transformation for forest landowners over the coming decades, and the competitive edge is really going to be growing high-quality sawtimber of the kind that you can sell to sawmills, veneer plants to make into long lived wood products, flooring, furniture,” Milakovsky said.

Patty Cormier with the Maine Forest Service says the pause of funding is not only impacting the future of the forestry sector, but also the state's ecosystem.

“The water, the air we breathe, the wildlife so it has wide ranging impacts. It’s just unfortunate,” Cormier said.

A part of the grant is budgeted to reimbursing Maine companies for forestry work. And without knowing if the funding is coming through, many jobs are on the line.

“We could see some disruptions to the contractors that work with some of our landowners due to the fact that these federal funds are committed, which we have been planning with landowners to you have just been frozen without warning,” Milakovsky said.

Forest agencies are optimistic that these funds will eventually come through.

“We are seeing some of the grants at the forest service open, so I'm hoping its just the federal government to go through all these grants,” Cormier said.

In the meantime, agencies are asking lawmakers for help to unfreeze the funds.

Read more here

Published: 3/31/2025
By Daniel Strain

Don’t breathe in the dust on Mars.

That’s the takeaway from new research from a team of scientists, including researchers from the University of Colorado Boulder. The findings suggests that long-term exposure to Martian dust could create a host of health problems for future astronauts—leading to chronic respiratory problems, thyroid disease and more.

The study, published in the journal GeoHealth, is the first to take a comprehensive look at the chemical ingredients that make up Martian dust, and their possible impacts on human health. It was undertaken by a team from the worlds of medicine, geology and aerospace engineering.

“This isn't the most dangerous part about going to Mars,” said Justin Wang, lead author of the study and a student in the Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. “But dust is a solvable problem, and it’s worth putting in the effort to develop Mars-focused technologies for preventing these health problems in the first place.”

Wang, a CU Boulder alumnus, noted that Apollo era astronauts experienced runny eyes and irritated throats after inhaling dust from the moon. Apollo 17’s Harrison Schmitt likened the symptoms to hay fever.

But scientists know a lot less about the potential harms of Martian dust. To begin to answer that question, Wang and his colleagues drew on data from rovers on Mars and even Martian meteorites to better understand what makes up the planet’s dust. The group discovered a “laundry list” of chemical compounds that could be dangerous for people—at least when inhaled in large quantities and over long periods of time.

They include minerals rich in silicates and iron oxides, metals like beryllium and arsenic and a particularly nasty class of compounds called perchlorates.

In many cases, those ingredients are present in only trace amounts in Mars dust. But the first human explorers on Mars may spend around a year and a half on the surface, increasing their exposure, said study co-author Brian Hynek.

“You’re going to get dust on your spacesuits, and you’re going to have to deal with regular dust storms,” said Hynek, a geologist at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) at CU Boulder. “We really need to characterize this dust so that we know what the hazards are.”

Into the bloodstream

One thing is clear, he added: Mars is a dusty place.

Much of the planet is covered in a thick layer of dust rich in tiny particles of iron, which gives the planet its famous red color. Swirling dust storms are common and, in some cases, can engulf the entire globe.

“We think there could be 10 meters of dust sitting on top of the bigger volcanoes,” said Hynek, a professor in the Department of Geological Sciences. “If you tried to land a spacecraft there, you’re going to just sink into the dust.”

Wang found his own way to Martian dust through a unique academic path. He started medical school after earning bachelor’s degrees from CU Boulder in astronomy and molecular, cellular and developmental biology, followed by a master’s degree in aerospace engineering sciences. He currently serves in the Navy through its Health Professions Scholarship Program.

He noted that the biggest problem with Martian dust comes down to its size. Estimates suggest that the average size of dust grains on Mars may be as little as 3 micrometers across, or roughly one-ten-thousandth of an inch.

“That’s smaller than what the mucus in our lungs can expel,” Wang said. “So after we inhale Martian dust, a lot of it could remain in our lungs and be absorbed into our blood stream.”

An ounce of prevention

In the current study, Wang and several of his fellow medical students at USC scoured research papers to unearth the potential toxicological effects of the ingredients in Martian dust.

Some of what they found resembled common health problems on Earth. Dust on Mars, for example, contains large amounts of the compound silica, which is abundant in minerals on our own planet. People who inhale a lot of silica, such as glass blowers, can develop a condition known as silicosis. Their lung tissue becomes scarred, making it hard to breath—symptoms similar to the “black lung” disease that coal miners often contract. Currently, there is no cure for silicosis.

In other cases, the potential health consequences are much less well-known.

Martian dust carries large quantities of highly oxidizing compounds called perchlorates, which are made up of one chlorine and multiple oxygen atoms. Perchlorates are rare on Earth, but some evidence suggests that they can interfere with human thyroid function, leading to severe anemia. Even inhaling a few milligrams of perchlorates in Martian dust could be dangerous for astronauts.

Wang noted that the best time to prepare for the health risks of Martian dust is before humans ever make it to the planet. Iodine supplements, for example, would boost astronauts’ thyroid function, potentially counteracting the toll of perchlorates—although taking too much iodine can also, paradoxically, lead to thyroid disease. Filters specifically designed to screen out Martian dust could also help to keep the air in living spaces clean.

“Prevention is key. We tell everyone to go see their primary care provider to check your cholesterol before it gives you a heart attack,” Wang said. “The best thing we can do on Mars is make sure the astronauts aren’t exposed to dust in the first place.”

Co-authors of the current study include USC medical students Jeremy Rosenbaum, Ajay Prasad and Robert Raad; Esther Putnam, former graduate student in aerospace engineering sciences at CU Boulder now at SpaceX; Andrea Harrington at the NASA Johnson Space Center; and Haig Aintablian, director of the Space Medicine Program at the University of California, Los Angeles, also affiliated with SpaceX.

By Austyn Gaffney | March 21, 2025

Amid the torrent of executive orders signed by President Trump were directives that affect the language on government web pages and the public’s access to government data touching on climate change, the environment, energy and public health.

In the past two months, hundreds of terabytes of digital resources analyzing data have been taken off government websites, and more are feared to be at risk of deletion. While in many cases the underlying data still exists, the tools that make it possible for the public and researchers to use that data have been removed.

But now, hundreds of volunteers are working to collect and download as much government data as possible and to recreate the digital tools that allow the public to access that information.

Read more here

March 20, 2025, 2:53 AM PDT / Source: CNBC

By Sam Meredith, CNBC

A jury on Wednesday ordered environmental campaign group Greenpeace to pay more than $660 million in damages to Texas-based oil company Energy Transfer, the developer of the Dakota Access Pipeline.

A nine-person jury in Mandan, North Dakota, reached a verdict after roughly two days of deliberations. The outcome found Greenpeace liable for hundreds of millions of dollars over actions taken to prevent the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline nearly a decade ago.

It marks an extraordinary legal blow for Greenpeace, which had previously warned that it could be forced into bankruptcy because of the case. The environmental advocacy group said it intends to appeal the verdict.

“This case should alarm everyone, no matter their political inclinations,” Greenpeace U.S. interim executive director Sushma Raman said in a statement published Wednesday.

“It’s part of a renewed push by corporations to weaponize our courts to silence dissent. We should all be concerned about the future of the First Amendment, and lawsuits like this aimed at destroying our rights to peaceful protest and free speech,” Raman said.

Greenpeace has described Energy Transfer’s case as a clear-cut example of SLAPPs, referring to a lawsuit designed to bury activist groups in legal fees and ultimately silence dissent. SLAPP is an acronym for “strategic lawsuit against public participation.”

Energy Transfer said the jury verdict was a “win” for “Americans who understand the difference between the right to free speech and breaking the law,” according to The Associated Press, citing a statement from the company.

“While we are pleased that Greenpeace has been held accountable for their actions against us, this win is really for the people of Mandan and throughout North Dakota who had to live through the daily harassment and disruptions caused by the protesters who were funded and trained by Greenpeace,” the company added.

A spokesperson for Energy Transfer was not immediately available to comment when contacted by CNBC on Thursday morning.

Read more here

Helen Briggs | BBC environment correspondent

A humpback whale has made one of the longest and most unusual migrations ever recorded, possibly driven by climate change, scientists say.

It was seen in the Pacific Ocean off Colombia in 2017, then popped up several years later near Zanzibar in the Indian Ocean - a distance of at least 13,000 km.

The experts think this epic journey might be down to climate change depleting food stocks or perhaps an odyssey to find a mate.

Ekaterina Kalashnikova of the Tanzania Cetaceans Program said the feat was "truly impressive and unusual even for this highly migratory species".

The photograph below shows the same whale photographed in 2022, off the Zanzibar coast.

Dr Kalashnikova said it was very likely the longest distance a humpback whale had ever been recorded travelling.

Humpback whales live in all oceans around the world. They travel long distances every year and have one of the longest migrations of any mammal, swimming from tropical breeding grounds to feeding grounds in cooler waters.

But this male's journey was even more spectacular, involving two distant breeding grounds.

One theory is that climate change is altering the abundance of the tiny shrimplike krill humpback whales feed on, forcing them to travel further in search of food.

• Too hot for humpbacks: The race to protect Pacific whales

• Following Antarctic whales for climate change clues

Alternatively, whales may be exploring new breeding grounds as populations rebound through global conservation efforts.

"While actual reasons are unknown, amongst the drivers there might be global changes in the climate, extreme environmental events (that are more frequent nowadays), and evolutionary mechanisms of the species," said Dr Kalashnikova.

Read more here

by Letters to the Editor
March 16, 2025

To the Editor:

Before his appointment as U.S. Energy Secretary, Chris Wright was the CEO of Liberty Energy, North America’s second largest fracking company. Wright recently asserted:

“I am a climate realist. The Trump administration will treat climate change for what it is, a global physical phenomenon that is a side effect of building the modern world…The only interest group that we are concerned with is the American people.”

However, stopping Earth’s warming is not consistent with the Trump Administration’s agenda of “Drill, baby, drill!” and “American energy dominance.” While it’s true that some forms of fossil fuel generation are cleaner than others, they are all increasing the concentration of heat-trapping carbon in the atmosphere.

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, “Limiting global mean temperature increase at any level requires global CO2 emissions to become net zero at some point in the future.”

This means reducing carbon dioxide emissions enough that they are balanced by CO2 removal, such as being absorbed by forests and dissolved in the oceans. Otherwise the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will continue to grow.

Disturbingly, the earth has already warmed to the point that, instead of absorbing and storing carbon dioxide, the planet’s carbon sinks are becoming sources of CO2 emissions. Warmer oceans are less able to take up carbon dioxide. Moreover, permafrost is thawing, and forests are burning.

These climate feedbacks indicate that we are losing our allies in nature that are essential to the climate fight.

In the words of Johan Rockström, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, “Nature has so far balanced our abuse. This is coming to an end.”

And in a interview about the catastrophic fires in California, climate scientist Peter Kalmus warned:

“It’s not a new normal. A lot of climate messaging centers around this idea that it’s a new normal. It’s a staircase to a hotter, more hellish Earth.”

A recent report by the United Nations states that, without a greater commitment to reduce emissions, the Earth will warm by 3.1° C above pre-industrial levels by 2100. And the increase in global heating is expected to continue beyond the end of the century.

A World Bank report titled Turn Down the Heat, warns: “(A) global mean temperature increase of 4°C approaches the difference between temperatures today and those of the last ice age, when much of central Europe and the northern United States were covered with kilometers of ice and global mean temperatures were about 4.5°C to 7°C lower. And this magnitude of climate change—human induced—is occurring over a century, not millennia.”

This hotter climate is likely to have devastating consequences, such as the flooding of coastal cities, substantial reductions in crop yield, greatly increased water scarcity, major damage to seaports and the destruction of fisheries and coral reefs. Institutions that would normally support adaptation could collapse.

Not only does climate change threaten the foundation needed for human thriving, it disproportionately affects the world’s poorest nations and their most vulnerable citizens. A report by the United Nations Children’s Fund states: “The climate crisis is the defining human and child’s rights challenge of this generation, and is already having a devastating impact on the well-being of children globally.”

One billion children are deemed to be at “extremely high risk” from climate hazards like heat waves, drought and water scarcity. The majority live in less developed nations in Africa and South Asia that have contributed very little to this global problem. The ten countries where children are most at risk are responsible for only .5% of the world’s emissions.

According to the report, The Age of Consequences: The Foreign Policy and National Security Implications of Global Climate Change:

“The overwhelming message is that early steps to limit or mitigate climate change are essential, because longer-term efforts to adapt or anticipate may not be possible.”

Notably, the United States is the world’s greatest cumulative emitter, with historical emissions that are 71% more than second place China. Imagine if the Roman Empire had possessed the power to irreparably harm much of the life on earth, yet limited its concern for sustainability to just a few generations.

Furthermore, about half of the CO2 humans emit stays in the atmosphere for centuries or more. Consequently, the U.S. Fourth National Climate Assessment concludes:

“Climate change resulting from anthropogenic CO2 emissions and any associated risks to the environment, human health and society, are…essentially irreversible on human time scales.”

In his book, “A Perfect Moral Storm: The Ethical Tragedy of Climate Change,” Stephen M. Gardiner writes that, although climate change is usually discussed in scientific and economic terms, “the deepest challenge is ethical.” According to Gardiner: “What matters most is what we do to protect those vulnerable to our actions and unable to hold us accountable, especially the global poor, future generations and nonhuman nature.”

Reducing greenhouse gas emissions and funding adaptation is one of humanity’s greatest moral obligations. Even small changes in the trajectory of Earth’s warming could mean better lives for decades for many millions of people.

As the world’s most significant emitter and most powerful nation, America has a responsibility to embrace a leadership role in addressing the climate crisis.

Terry Hansen
Milwaukee, Wis.

Last year’s increase was due to an unusual amount of ocean warming, combined with meltwater from land-based ice such as glaciers.

Global sea level rose faster than expected in 2024, mostly because of ocean water expanding as it warms, or thermal expansion. According to a NASA-led analysis, last year’s rate of rise was 0.23 inches (0.59 centimeters) per year, compared to the expected rate of 0.17 inches (0.43 centimeters) per year.

“The rise we saw in 2024 was higher than we expected,” said Josh Willis, a sea level researcher at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. “Every year is a little bit different, but what’s clear is that the ocean continues to rise, and the rate of rise is getting faster and faster.”

In recent years, about two-thirds of sea level rise was from the addition of water from land into the ocean by melting ice sheets and glaciers. About a third came from thermal expansion of seawater. But in 2024, those contributions flipped, with two-thirds of sea level rise coming from thermal expansion.

“With 2024 as the warmest year on record, Earth’s expanding oceans are following suit, reaching their highest levels in three decades,” said Nadya Vinogradova Shiffer, head of physical oceanography programs and the Integrated Earth System Observatory at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

Since the satellite record of ocean height began in 1993, the rate of annual sea level rise has more than doubled. In total, global sea level has gone up by 4 inches (10 centimeters) since 1993.

This long-term record is made possible by an uninterrupted series of ocean-observing satellites starting with TOPEX/Poseidon in 1992. The current ocean-observing satellite in that series, Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich, launched in 2020 and is one of an identical pair of spacecraft that will carry this sea level dataset into its fourth decade. Its twin, the upcoming Sentinel-6B satellite, will continue to measure sea surface height down to a few centimeters for about 90% of the world’s oceans.

Read more here

Breakthrough Energy, an umbrella organization funded by Bill Gates that works on a sprawling range of climate issues, announced deep cuts to its operations in an internal memo on Tuesday.

Dozens of staff members were cut, including Breakthrough Energy’s unit in Europe, its team in the United States working on public policy issues and most of its employees working on partnerships with other climate organizations, according to three people familiar with the matter who were not authorized to speak publicly.

The change shows how Mr. Gates is retooling his empire for the Trump era. With Republicans controlling both houses of Congress and the White House, Mr. Gates calculated that the Breakthrough policy team in the United States was not likely to have a significant effect in Washington, said the people familiar with his thinking. The U.S. policy team was also one of the largest and most expensive parts of the organization.

“Bill Gates remains as committed as ever to advancing the clean energy innovations needed to address climate change,” a spokeswoman for Mr. Gates said in a statement when asked about the cuts.”

Read more here

LONDON -- British officials were concerned about possible environmental damage Tuesday and looking for answers a day after a cargo ship carrying a toxic chemical hit a tanker transporting jet fuel for the U.S. military off eastern England, setting both vessels ablaze.

Jet fuel from a ruptured tank poured into the North Sea after the Portugal-registered container ship Solong broadsided the U.S-flagged tanker MV Stena Immaculate on Monday. The collision sparked explosions and fires that burned for 24 hours. Footage filmed from a helicopter on Tuesday morning showed the fire appeared to be out on the tanker, which had a large gash on its port side.

British government minister Matthew Pennycook said it was a “fast-moving and dynamic situation.”

He said air quality readings were normal and the coast guards “are well-equipped to contain and disperse any oil spills,” with equipment including booms deployed from vessels to stop oil spreading, and aircraft that can spray dispersants on a spill.

The collision triggered a major rescue operation by lifeboats, coast guard aircraft and commercial vessels in the foggy North Sea.

All but one of the 37 crew members from the two vessels were brought ashore in the port of Grimsby, about 150 miles (240 kilometers) north of London, with one hospitalized. One crew member was missing, and the coast guards suspended the search late Monday.

U.K. Marine accident investigators have begun gathering evidence of what caused the Solong, bound from Grangemouth in Scotland to Rotterdam in the Netherlands, to hit the stationary tanker, which was anchored some 10 miles (16 kilometers) off the English coast.

The investigation will be led by the U.S. and Portugal, the countries where the vessels are flagged.

The 183 meter (596 foot) Stena Immaculate was operating as part of the U.S. government’s Tanker Security Program, a group of commercial vessels that can be contracted to carry fuel for the military when needed. Its operator, U.S.-based maritime management firm Crowley, said it was carrying 220,000 barrels of Jet-A1 fuel in 16 tanks, at least one of which was ruptured.

The company said it was unclear how much fuel had leaked into the sea.

The Solong’s cargo included sodium cyanide, which can produce harmful gas when combined with water, according to industry publication Lloyd’s List Intelligence. It was unclear if there had been a leak.

Greenpeace U.K. said it was too early to assess the extent of any environmental damage from the collision, which took place near busy fishing grounds and major seabird colonies.

Environmentalists said oil and chemicals posed a risk to sea life including whales and dolphins and to birds, including puffins, gannets and guillemots that live on coastal cliffs.

Tom Webb, senior lecturer in marine ecology and conservation at the University of Sheffield, said wildlife along that stretch of coast “is of immense biological, cultural and economic importance.”

“In addition to the wealth of marine life that is present all year round, this time of the year is crucial for many migratory species," he said.

Alex Lukyanov, who models oil spills at the University of Reading, said the environmental impact would depend on multiple factors, including “the size of the spill, weather conditions, sea currents, water waves, wind patterns and the type of oil involved.”

“This particular incident is troubling because it appears to involve persistent oil, which breaks up slowly in water,” he said. “The environmental toll could be severe.”

Read more here

Oliver Milman

Wed 12 Mar 2025 18.59 EDTFirst published on Wed 12 Mar 2025 16.21 EDT

Donald Trump’s administration is to reconsider the official finding that greenhouse gases are harmful to public health, a move that threatens to rip apart the foundation of the US’s climate laws, amid a stunning barrage of actions to weaken or repeal a host of pollution limits upon power plants, cars and waterways.

Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued an extraordinary cavalcade of pollution rule rollbacks on Wednesday, led by the announcement it would potentially scrap a landmark 2009 finding by the US government that planet-heating gases, such carbon dioxide, pose a threat to human health.

The so-called endangerment finding, which followed a supreme court ruling that the EPA could regulate greenhouse gases, provides the underpinning for all rules aimed at cutting the pollution that scientists have unequivocally found is worsening the climate crisis.

Despite the enormous and growing body of evidence of devastation caused by rising emissions, including trillions of dollars in economic costs, Trump has called the climate crisis a “hoax” and dismissed those concerned by its worsening impacts as “climate lunatics”.

Lee Zeldin, the EPA administrator, said the agency would reconsider the endangerment finding due to concerns that it had spawned “an agenda that throttles our industries, our mobility, and our consumer choice while benefiting adversaries overseas”.

Zeldin wrote that Wednesday was the “most consequential day of deregulation in American history” and that “we are driving a dagger through the heart of climate-change religion and ushering in America’s Golden Age.”

Zeldin boasted about the changes and said his agency’s mission was to “lower the cost of buying a car, heating a home and running a business”.

Environmentalists reacted with horror to the announcement and vowed to defend the overwhelming findings of science and the US’s ability to address the climate crisis through the courts, which regularly struck down Trump’s rollbacks in his first term. “The Trump administration’s ignorance is trumped only by its malice toward the planet,” said Jason Rylander, legal director at the Center for Biological Diversity’s Climate Law Institute.

“Come hell or high water, raging fires and deadly heatwaves, Trump and his cronies are bent on putting polluter profits ahead of people’s lives. This move won’t stand up in court. We’re going to fight it every step of the way.”

In all, the EPA issued 31 announcements within just a few hours that take aim at almost every major environmental rule designed to protect Americans’ clean air and water, as well as a livable climate.

The barrage included a move to overturn a Biden-era plan to slash pollution spewing from coal-fired power plants, which itself was a reduced version of an Obama administration initiative that was struck down by the supreme court.

The EPA will also revisit pollution standards for cars and trucks, which Zeldin said had imposed a “crushing regulatory regime” upon auto companies that are now shifting towards electric vehicles; considering weakening rules limiting sooty air pollution that is linked to an array of health problems; potentially axeing requirements that power plants not befoul waterways or dump their toxic waste; and considering further narrowing how it implements the Clean Water Act in general.

The stunning broadside of actions against pollution rules could, if upheld by the courts, reshape Americans’ environment in ways not seen since major legislation was passed in the 1970s to end an era of smoggy skies and burning rivers that became the norm following American industrialization.

Pollutants from power plants, highways and industry cause a range of heart, lung and other health problems, with greenhouse gases among this pollution driving up the global temperature and fueling catastrophic heatwaves, floods, storms and other impacts.

“Zeldin’s EPA is dragging America back to the days before the Clean Air Act, when people were dying from pollution,” said Dominique Browning, director of the Moms Clean Air Force. “This is unacceptable. And shameful. We will oppose with all our hearts to protect our children from this cruel, monstrous action.”

The EPA’s moves come shortly after its decision to shutter all its offices that deal with addressing the disproportionate burden of pollution faced by poor people and minorities in the US, amid a mass firing of agency staff. Zeldin has also instructed that $20bn in grants to help address the climate crisis be halted, citing potential fraud. Democrats have questioned whether these moves are legal.

Former EPA staff have reacted with shock to the upending of the agency.

“Today marks the most disastrous day in EPA history,” said Gina McCarthy, who was EPA administrator under Obama. “Rolling these rules back is not just a disgrace, it’s a threat to all of us. The agency has fully abdicated its mission to protect Americans’ health and wellbeing.”

The Trump administration has promised additional environmental rollbacks in the coming weeks. The Energy Dominance Council that the president established last month is looking to eliminate a vast array of regulations in an effort to boost the fossil fuel industry, the interior secretary, Doug Burgum, told the oil and gas conference CeraWeek in Houston on Wednesday. “We will come up with the ways that we can cut red tape,” he said. “We can easily get rid of 20-30% of our regulations.”

Read more here

GENEVA, Mar 11 – The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is calling for nominations of experts to act as Coordinating Lead Authors, Lead Authors, or Review Editors for the three key Working Group contributions to IPCC´s Seventh Assessment Report (AR7). This follows the Panel’s agreement on the outlines of the three Working Group contributions during its 62nd Session held in Hangzhou, China.

Hundreds of experts around the world in different scientific domains volunteer their time and expertise to produce the reports of the IPCC. Author teams reflect a range of scientific, technical and socio-economic expertise. Coordinating Lead Authors and Lead Authors are responsible for drafting the different chapters of the Working Group contributions to the AR7 and, with the help of the Review Editors, revising those based on comments submitted during the two rounds of reviews by experts and governments.

“Our priority for the Seventh Assessment Report is to attract the most talented individuals across the whole spectrum of scientific, technical and socio-economic research. We would like to see balanced author teams involving both established experts and younger scientists new to the IPCC. It is essential that we reflect fully the breadth and depth of knowledge on climate change and climate action” said IPCC Chair Jim Skea.

IPCC author teams include a mix of experts from different regions to ensure geographic balance. The IPCC also seeks a balance in gender, as well as between those experienced with working on IPCC reports and those new to the process, including younger scientists.

During the 60th Session of the IPCC in January 2024, the Panel agreed to continue to prepare a comprehensive assessment report and to maintain the current Working Group structure where Working Group I assesses the scientific aspects of the climate system and climate change; Working Group II looks at impacts, adaptation, and vulnerability to climate change, and Working Group III assesses the mitigation of climate change.

The outlines of the three Working Group contributions to the AR7 were developed after a comprehensive scientific scoping meeting in December 2024 in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia before the Panel considered them and agreed upon them at the end of February.

Those interested in being nominated as a Coordinating Lead Author, a Lead Author or a Review Editor should contact their relevant Focal Point. A list of Focal Points for IPCC member governments and observer organizations is available here.

Nominations are submitted through a dedicated online nomination tool by Focal Points in governments and accredited observer organizations, as well as IPCC Bureau Members.

Governments, Observer Organisations, and IPCC Bureau Members have been requested to submit their nominations by Thursday 17 April 2025 (midnight CEST).

More information on the nomination process is here and how the IPCC selects its authors is available here.

For more information, contact:
IPCC Press Office, Email: ipcc-media@wmo.int;
Andrej Mahecic, +41 22 730 8516; Werani Zabula, +41 22 730 8120.

Lydia Amazouz
Published on March 11, 2025

The growing release of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere could pose a serious threat to the future of space operations, especially in low Earth orbit (LEO). A recent study published in Nature explores the potential consequences of increased emissions on the capacity of LEO to support satellite operations. The study highlights the risks posed by space junk, climate change, and orbital debris accumulation, which, together, could disrupt one of humanity’s most valuable technological frontiers.

The research reveals that emissions have a direct effect on the thermosphere, a layer of Earth’s atmosphere located between altitudes of 85 to 600 kilometers. This region plays a critical role in satellite drag, which can either slow satellites down and cause them to re-enter Earth’s atmosphere or keep them in orbit. As emissions increase, the thermosphere shrinks, leading to reduced drag on satellites and increasing the longevity of space debris. This, in turn, exacerbates the issue of overcrowding in low Earth orbit, making it harder for new satellites to operate safely.

How Greenhouse Emissions Affect Satellite Operations

The new study shows that the effects of greenhouse gas emissions could drastically reduce the space available for satellite operations in low Earth orbit by the end of the century. The researchers modeled the situation under different emissions scenarios, and the results were alarming: By 2100, under moderate to high emissions scenarios, the capacity for satellites in altitudes ranging from 400 to 1,000 kilometers could be reduced by up to 82%. This scenario could limit the number of satellites that can operate in LEO, especially during solar minimum periods.

Greenhouse gases, primarily carbon dioxide, influence the thermosphere’s density, which plays a key role in atmospheric drag. As the thermosphere becomes less dense due to the effects of greenhouse emissions, drag on satellites decreases, allowing them to remain in orbit much longer than they otherwise would. While this may seem beneficial for operational satellites, it poses significant problems for defunct ones.

Satellites are designed to gradually lose altitude due to drag, eventually re-entering Earth’s atmosphere, where they burn up. However, as drag decreases, this natural process takes longer, leaving defunct satellites lingering in orbit and contributing to the growing debris problem. This makes the environment in low Earth orbit more hazardous, complicating the operation of new satellites and increasing the risk of collisions. As the study’s lead author, William Parker from MIT, emphasizes:

“Climate change and orbital debris accumulation are two pressing issues of inextricable global concern requiring unified action.”

The Unpredictable Future of Low Earth Orbit

The study highlights the fragility of low Earth orbit and the risks posed by increased emissions. As more satellites are launched into orbit, the problem of overcrowding becomes more serious. Currently, about 11,901 satellites are operational in orbit, with an additional 20,000 pieces of space debris. While we are far from reaching the critical point where Kessler syndrome occurs, scientists warn that continued emissions could push us dangerously close to that threshold.

The expansion of satellite constellations, such as those deployed by companies like SpaceX, adds to the challenge of managing space debris and maintaining a safe environment in low Earth orbit. Even as technological advances improve our ability to track and monitor debris, the sheer volume of objects in orbit makes collision events increasingly likely. These collisions could result in more debris, creating an uncontrollable cycle of space junk accumulation that would threaten future space operations.

As Parker and his colleagues argue in the study:

“Understanding and respecting the influence that the natural environment has on our collective ability to operate in low Earth orbit is critical to preventing the exploitation of this regime and protecting it for future generations.”

Read more here

Press Trust of India New Delhi, UPDATED: Mar 11, 2025 15:05 IST

Climate impacts are unfolding faster than expected and scientists have been surprised by the speed of temperature rise, the chief of the United Nations' climate science panel has said.

In an interview with PTI on the sidelines of TERI's World Sustainable Development Summit, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Chair Jim Skea said the world is in a worse situation than three years ago due to inaction on climate change.

"If you look back over the last, say, five years or so, I think scientists have been surprised by the speed at which temperatures have risen globally and by the very obvious nature of climate impacts we have already seen... wildfires in some parts of the world, floods and more extreme events.

"So things do appear to be happening, perhaps more quickly than people expected," he told PTI.

The year 2024 was the hottest year on record and the first with a global average temperature of 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. According to the World Meteorological Organisation, the past decade (2015-2024) was the 10 warmest years on record.

Skea said scientists are now focusing on attribution science to determine how much human activity has influenced specific climate events, with growing evidence that many would not have occurred without greenhouse gas emissions.

He said the IPCC's target of a 43 per cent emission reduction by 2030 from 2019 levels is now outdated due to inaction, meaning the actual reduction needed is even higher.

"The 43 per cent figure is now about three years old and because we have not acted in the interim, it may have changed. If you were to recalculate it using new information but the same methods, the number would likely be different. So, we really are in a worse situation than we were three years ago when that number was produced," Skea said.

The IPCC's Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) Working Group III, published in 2022, said global greenhouse gas emissions must be reduced by 43 per cent by 2030 (compared to 2019 levels) to limit the average global temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius since the start of the Industrial Revolution.

Read more here

By Idrees Ali and Phil Stewart / Reuters
March 10, 2025

WASHINGTON >> The U.S. military is canceling more than 90 studies, including some that U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth dismissed as climate change “crap.”

Military and intelligence officials have over the past decade identified potential security threats from climate change that include natural disasters in densely populated coastal areas and damage to American military bases worldwide.

“The (Department of Defense) does not do climate change crap,” Hegseth posted on X on Sunday. Hegseth took office in President Donald Trump’s new administration on January 25.

An official Pentagon account then reposted a screenshot of a story quoting Hegseth using the word and added: “Fact check true.”

The Pentagon said in a separate statement that it would be scrapping 91 social science-related studies on topics ranging from global migration patterns and climate change impact to social trends and would save $30 million in a year.

It listed as canceled studies including “Social and Institutional Determinants of Vulnerability and Resilience to Climate Hazards in the African Sahel” and “Food Fights: War Narratives and Identity Reproduction in Evolving Conflicts.”

Read more here

The Problem—Increasing Air Pollution in Cities in the mid-1900's

After World War II, economic growth, population growth, rapid suburbanization, and the closing of some public transit systems led to more reliance on personal vehicles for transportation. The number of cars and trucks in the United States increased dramatically, as did the number of highways. One result of the rapid increase of motor vehicles was air pollution, especially in cities, that had serious impacts on public health and the environment.

Historic Success of the Clean Air Act

Congress passed the landmark Clean Air Act in 1970 and gave the newly-formed EPA the legal authority to regulate pollution from cars and other forms of transportation. EPA and the State of California have led the national effort to reduce vehicle pollution by adopting increasingly stringent standards.

The U.S. vehicle pollution control under the Clean Air Act is a major success story by many measures:

• New passenger vehicles are 98-99% cleaner for most tailpipe pollutants compared to the 1960s.

• Fuels are much cleaner—lead has been eliminated, and sulfur levels are more than 90% lower than they were prior to regulation.

• U.S. cities have much improved air quality, despite ever increasing population and increasing vehicle miles traveled.

• Standards have sparked technology innovation from industry.

Read more here

By Yereth Rosen
June 9, 20208:15 PM PDT Updated 5 years ago

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Reuters) - The Trump administration on Tuesday overturned an Obama-era rule that barred hunters in Alaska national preserves from baiting bear traps or killing denning bear cubs and wolf pups or other practices that have been condemned by environmental and wildlife protection groups.

Under the new National Park Service rule, effective July 9, hunting on natural preserves in Alaska will be controlled by the state, which allows baiting of brown and black bears; hunting of denning black bears with artificial light, killing of denning wolves and coyotes, hunting of swimming caribou and hunting of caribou from motorboats.

The Obama administration had banned all those practices in National Parks.

The change stems from 2017 orders issued by then-Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke to provide greater recreational access for hunting and fishing in Alaksa, National Park Service spokesman Peter Christian said, acknowledging that the rule-change was unpopular.

“I would say the vast majority of people did believe this was a controversial move and were almost entirely opposed to us lifting the ban,” he said.

"The Trump administration has shockingly reached a new low in its treatment of wildlife. Allowing the killing of bear cubs and wolf pups in their dens is barbaric and inhumane. The proposed regulations cast aside a primary purpose of national preserves to conserve wildlife and wild places," Jamie Rappaport Clark, president of Defenders of Wildlife, said in a written statement.

State officials said the Obama-era rule was wrongheaded.

“From our perspective, the Park Service was infringing on our territory,” said Eddie Grasser, director of wildlife management for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, adding that some of the hunting practices now allowed in national preserves are part of indigenous culture.

Those practices are used by only a small number of people in a few places, Grasser said.

Another pending Trump administration rule, expected to be released on Wednesday, would overturn similar restrictions in Kenai National Wildlife Refuge.

Read more here

Ione Wells / Belém, Brazil

A new four-lane highway cutting through tens of thousands of acres of protected Amazon rainforest is being built for the COP30 climate summit in the Brazilian city of Belém.

It aims to ease traffic to the city, which will host more than 50,000 people - including world leaders - at the conference in November.

The state government touts the highway's "sustainable" credentials, but some locals and conservationists are outraged at the environmental impact.

The Amazon plays a vital role in absorbing carbon for the world and providing biodiversity, and many say this deforestation contradicts the very purpose of a climate summit.

Along the partially built road, lush rainforest towers on either side - a reminder of what was once there. Logs are piled high in the cleared land which stretches more than 13km (8 miles) through the rainforest into Belém.

Diggers and machines carve through the forest floor, paving over wetland to surface the road which will cut through a protected area.

BBC / Paulo Koba

Claudio Verequete lives about 200m from where the road will be. He used to make an income from harvesting açaí berries from trees that once occupied the space.

"Everything was destroyed," he says, gesturing at the clearing.

"Our harvest has already been cut down. We no longer have that income to support our family."

He says he has received no compensation from the state government and is currently relying on savings.

He worries the construction of this road will lead to more deforestation in the future, now that the area is more accessible for businesses.

"Our fear is that one day someone will come here and say: 'Here's some money. We need this area to build a gas station, or to build a warehouse.' And then we'll have to leave.

"We were born and raised here in the community. Where are we going to go?"

His community won't be connected to the road, given its walls on either side.

"For us who live on the side of the highway, there will be no benefits. There will be benefits for the trucks that will pass through. If someone gets sick, and needs to go to the centre of Belém, we won't be able to use it."

The road leaves two disconnected areas of protected forest. Scientists are concerned it will fragment the ecosystem and disrupt the movement of wildlife.

Prof Silvia Sardinha is a wildlife vet and researcher at a university animal hospital that overlooks the site of the new highway.

She and her team rehabilitate wild animals with injuries, predominantly caused by humans or vehicles.

Read more here

by Anna Maria Barry-Jester and Brett Murphy

ProPublica, and Le Van for ProPublica March 17, 2025, 6 a.m. EDT

In mid-February, Trump administration leaders received a desperate warning from their diplomats posted in Vietnam, one of the most important American partners in Asia.

Workers were in the middle of cleaning up the site of an enormous chemical spill, the Bien Hoa air base, when Secretary of State Marco Rubio abruptly halted all foreign aid funding. The shutdown left exposed open pits of soil contaminated with dioxin, the deadly byproduct of Agent Orange, which the American military sprayed across large swaths of the country during the Vietnam War. After Rubio’s orders to stop work, the cleanup crews were forced to abandon the site, and, for weeks, all that was covering the contaminated dirt were tarps, which at one point blew off in the wind.

And even more pressing, the officials warned in a Feb. 14 letter obtained by ProPublica, Vietnam is on the verge of its rainy season, when torrential downpours are common. With enough rain, they said, soil contaminated with dioxin could flood into nearby communities, poisoning their food supplies.

Hundreds of thousands of people live around the Bien Hoa air base, and some of their homes abut the site’s perimeter fence, just yards from the contaminated areas. And less than 1,500 feet away is a major river that flows into Ho Chi Minh City, population 9 million.

“Simply put,” the officials added, “we are quickly heading toward an environmental and life-threatening catastrophe.”

They received no response from Washington, according to three people familiar with the situation.

Instead, Rubio and Peter Marocco, another top Trump appointee, have not only ordered the work to stop, but they also have frozen more than $1 million in payments for work already completed by the contractors the U.S. hired. The company overseeing the project is Tetra Tech, a publicly traded consulting and engineering firm based in the U.S., and a Vietnamese construction firm has been tasked with the excavation work.

Then, on Feb. 26, Rubio and Marocco canceled both companies’ contracts altogether before apparently reversing that decision about a week later, agency records show. As of Thursday, the companies had not been paid.

The Trump administration has told the courts repeatedly that its process to dismantle the U.S. Agency for International Development, which manages the project’s funds, has been careful and considered. But the botched situation at Bien Hoa is a stark example of the whiplash, conflicting messages and dire consequences that aid organizations worldwide have faced since early February.

Now, after losing several weeks because of the administration’s orders, the companies are scrambling — at their own expense — to secure the Bien Hoa site before it starts raining, according to documents reviewed by ProPublica and several people familiar with the current situation.

The USAID officials who would typically travel to the air base to provide oversight have been placed on administrative leave or prevented from traveling to check on the work. They’ve also been forbidden from communicating with the Vietnamese government or the companies working at the base, sources say, though they believe that directive was lifted after the contracts were recently reinstated. The confusion has left many at both the embassy and in Washington in the dark about where the situation stands.

To ascertain the current status of the work, ProPublica hired a reporter to visit the air base on Friday.

Workers are laboring in 95 degree heat, surrounded by toxic soil. The site has a skeleton crew of less than half of what they previously had, according to workers and documents reviewed by ProPublica. Some staffers found new jobs during the suspension. People working at the site told the reporter they are worried about completing the work before the rainy season descends and are terrified the U.S. will pause the work again.

Since 2019, the U.S. government has collaborated with Vietnam’s Ministry of Defense to clean up the Bien Hoa air base and agreed to spend more than $430 million for the project. Unlike other foreign aid programs, addressing Agent Orange is more akin to restitution than charity because the U.S. brought the deadly substance there in the first place. “The dioxin remediation program is one of the core reasons why we have an extraordinary relationship with Vietnam today,” a State Department official told ProPublica, “a country that should by all rights hate us.”

With enough contaminated soil to fill about 40,000 dump trucks, the Bien Hoa air base is the largest deposit of postwar pesticides remaining in Vietnam after a decadeslong cleanup campaign. Human rights groups, environmentalists and diplomats consider the cleanup work — along with disability assistance that the U.S. has provided to Agent Orange victims across the country — to be one of the most successful foreign aid initiatives of all time.

All of that was now in peril, the officials wrote in their Feb. 14 letter to USAID officials in Washington. “What immediate actions can be taken to avert a potential life-threatening incident while still maintaining compliance with the Executive Order and the suspension directives?” the officials wrote.

U.S. officials in Vietnam grew increasingly panicked. The ambassador sent a diplomatic cable to Washington, and Congress and USAID’s inspector general each received a whistleblower complaint, multiple people told ProPublica.

“Halting a project like that in the middle of the work, that’s an environmental crime,” said Jan Haemers, CEO of another organization that previously worked in Vietnam to clean up Agent Orange in the soil. “If you stop in the middle, it’s worse than if you never started.”

Read more here

March 2, 2025 at 4:40 pm Updated March 2, 2025 at 5:40 pm
By LISA FRIEDMAN The New York Times

President Donald Trump has promised to “drill, baby, drill.” Now, he also wants to log.

On Saturday, Trump directed federal agencies to examine ways to bypass endangered species protections and other environmental regulations to ramp up timber production across 280 million acres of national forests and other public lands.

The move appears aimed at increasing domestic supply as the president considers tariffs on timber imports from Canada, Germany, Brazil and elsewhere. Environmental groups say increased logging would decimate U.S. forests, pollute air and water and devastate wildlife habitats.

And because trees absorb and store carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, cutting them down releases it back into the atmosphere, adding to global warming.

“Trump’s order will unleash the chain saws and bulldozers on our federal forests,” said Randi Spivak, the public lands policy director for the Center for Biological Diversity, an environmental group. “Clearcutting these beautiful places will increase fire risk, drive species to extinction, pollute our rivers and streams, and destroy world-class recreation sites,” she said.

As part of his executive order, Trump directed the Commerce Department to investigate whether other countries were dumping lumber into U.S. markets. The inquiry could result in tariffs on Canada, the top supplier of lumber into the United States. In 2021, the United States imported 46% of its forest products from Canada and 13% from China, according to the U.S. International Trade Commission. But the country is also a timber exporter, sending nearly $10 billion worth of forest products to Canada.

A companion directive signed by Trump said that “onerous” federal policies have prevented the United States from developing a sufficient timber supply, increasing housing and construction costs and threatening national security.

Trump called for the convening of a committee of high-level officials nicknamed the God Squad because it can override the landmark Endangered Species Act so that development or other projects can proceed even if they might result in an extinction.

The committee has rarely been convened since it was created, in 1978, through an amendment to the endangered species law to allow for action during emergencies such as hurricanes and wildfires.

Trump also directed the agriculture and interior secretaries, as well as other officials, to look for ways to streamline regulations and reduce costs for timber production and forest management.

The Endangered Species Act requires thorough assessments to ensure that activities like logging do not harm protected wildlife and their habitats. Bypassing that process has historically been reserved for small projects like trail maintenance.

But developers and the construction industry have long complained that the system is burdensome and adds to their costs, a position supported by the Trump administration.

“Our disastrous timber and lumber policies — a legacy of the previous administration — trigger wildfires and degrade our fish and wildlife habitat,” Peter Navarro, the White House senior counselor for trade and manufacturing, told reporters Friday.

“They drive up construction and housing costs and impoverish America through large trade deficits that results from exporters like Canada, Germany and Brazil dumping lumber into our markets at the expense of both our economic prosperity and national security.”

Trump’s plan follows recommendations found in Project 2025, a conservative policy blueprint published by the Heritage Foundation.

It called for increasing timber production as a way to reduce wildfire risk.

Trump has repeatedly blamed forest maintenance for wildfires in California, including the recent blazes that destroyed large parts of the Los Angeles area.

But scientists say hotter temperatures driven by climate change, combined with drought, have played a role in making wildfires bigger and more destructive. They also say that thinning can reduce the cooling shade of the forest canopy and change a forest’s microclimate in ways that can increase wildfire intensity.

Last week, Trump nominated Tom Schultz, a former lumber industry executive, to lead the Forest Service. The agency oversees about 193 million acres of national forests and public lands.

Heidi Brock, the CEO of the American Forest and Paper Association, which represents the paper and packaging industries, said the organization is reviewing Trump’s orders. “We look forward to working with the administration to provide our industry’s perspective and data on behalf of the more than 925,000 American manufacturing jobs represented by the forest products value chain,” she said in a statement.

Read more here

By Emily Mae Czachor
Updated on: March 13, 2025 / 11:52 AM EDT / CBS News

Andy Hazelton learned he'd been fired the same way everyone else did. Like hundreds of his colleagues at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, he received a mass email from the head of the agency at around 3:45 p.m. on Feb. 27 confirming his termination, effective immediately.

"They gave us 'til 5," said Hazelton, a scientist who specialized in hurricane research and modeling at the National Weather Service, the meteorological branch of NOAA responsible for weather forecasts. "That was our cutoff. And then our email access was lost later that night, too."

More than 800 employees were dismissed in February's initial sweep across NOAA, a congressional source told CBS News after the firings. And more job cuts could be coming — all as part of a federal cost-cutting initiative by the Trump administration and the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE.  

As the nation's primary hub for weather and climate information and a leading source of environmental data overseas, NOAA is considered the authority on forecasting, storm tracking and climate monitoring. Many are warning that slashing its workforce could compromise the quality and accuracy of extreme weather forecasts that guide government responses to hurricanes, wildfires, tornadoes, floods and more, often providing life-saving predictions and warnings that don't exist anywhere else. 

The job cuts "jeopardize our ability to forecast and respond to extreme weather events like hurricanes, wildfires, and floods—putting communities in harm's way," said Sen. Maria Cantwell, a Democrat from Washington state who chairs the Senate subcommittee that oversees NOAA, in a statement. One of the agency's partners, the American Meteorological Society, warned separately that "the consequences to the American people will be large and wide-ranging, including increased vulnerability to hazardous weather."

Peak tornado season is now in full swing in the United States, where wildfire and hurricane seasons typically pick up in May and June but have started sooner and stretched on longer in recent years. Natural disasters, across the board, are occurring with increasing frequency and strength because of climate change.

Hazelton's termination came about four months into his tenure as a full-time federal employee at the weather service's National Hurricane Center in Miami. On his first day, back in October, Hurricane Milton slammed into Florida's west coast, and during his time at the agency Hazelton worked on the main prediction program that provides data to inform track forecasts, hazard warnings and evacuation orders for storms like it. 

"It's hard to say for sure, but with fewer people working on upgrades to the models, and fewer people working on collecting the data that goes into these models, I think it's quite possible that the model accuracy will not have continued the improvement that we've seen over the last five, 10, 15 years for hurricanes," Hazelton said. "We may start to lose those improvements or even potentially reverse some of the skill and go backwards if we're not careful. You know, especially if these cuts continue."

The agency's modeling center, where specialists like Hazelton worked, was one of the areas hit hardest by job losses, said JoAnn Becker, the president of the National Weather Service Employees Organization, which is the union representing workers in the weather service and NOAA more broadly.

"The models are the backbone of our operations," Becker told CBS News. "They're foundational to weather forecasting."

There were already employment gaps at NOAA before the latest firings, with the union estimating that around 500 vacant positions needed to be filled at the beginning of the year. The modeling center was particularly strapped then, too. Now the department, which was previously supposed to have 57 positions staffed, will try to move forward with 32 people, Becker said.

"The brain drain from our modeling center will take years to replace, because these folks are very highly specialized," said Becker. "Over time, because of these vacancy rates in our modeling center, critical updates, say to our hurricane modeling, won't happen. No weather forecasting improvements are possible without our models."

Outside of the modeling center, Becker believes weather service offices with fewer staff will likely be stretched too thin during big storms.

"As good as we are in trying to inform the public and warn them about impending emergencies, it takes an entire office working that event to handle the workload," she said. "Because there's so much going on and the weather is evolving so quickly."

A Trump administration official told CBS News the first round of job cuts at NOAA shrunk its staff by 5% and largely spared employees with critical roles, such as weather service meteorologists. But a source at the National Weather Service had disputed that, saying some meteorologists including radar specialists were impacted, as were staff of the Hurricane Hunters crew, which fly airplanes into storms during hurricanes to help forecasters make accurate predications.

At least a significant portion of the cuts impacted workers in the "probation" period of their employment, which usually lasts 1 to 3 years after starting a full-time role, according to a NOAA source. Probationary employees aren't necessarily novices, though. A weather service source said staff with 15 years of experience at NOAA, or more, could technically be categorized that way if they were recently promoted to a higher position.

NOAA is now preparing to lose more than 1,000 additional workers in a second round of firings, sources told CBS News this week. The agency could ultimately lose about 20% of its staff along with some of the programs they work on, although it's not known which will be impacted. 

DOGE has also announced it might terminate the leases of 19 NOAA offices nationwide, including key buildings that generate vital weather forecasts and maintain radar operations. Individual offices have already paused some operations because of a lack of workers. Weather service offices in Albany, New York, Gray, Maine, and Kotzebue, Alaska, said shortly after the first wave of firings that they would stop launching weather balloons, which collect weather observations from the atmosphere and often inform the core of local forecasts, because of staff reductions. NOAA's Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory was also forced to shut down its communications services.

Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability, called the firings "shortsighted." Without a means to replace lost employees or their work, Swain told CBS News he believes the situation could quickly devolve into a public safety threat.

"These literally are the people who are responsible for issuing a tornado warning during a tornado outbreak, or a flash flood warning during a flash flood, and we've seen plenty of deadly iterations of those kinds of things in recent years," he said of NOAA staffers. "Same thing, by the way, when it comes to extreme wildfire conditions. The weather service office in L.A. was very active in the days leading up to and following the catastrophic fires just a couple of months ago."

Swain said the reduction in NOAA's workforce will make nearly every aspect of his job as a weather and climate scientist more challenging, and the firings stand to influence a broader network of industries, too. 

"It will affect every single colleague that I have, working in any type of weather or climate institution, whether it's public, private or academic," he said. "It will really affect every single American, and, frankly, many people around the world, because NOAA is the backbone for providing virtually all of the basic weather information that is needed to produce global weather forecasts, to observe and understand climate change, essentially, to predict the future, to lessen the impacts of disasters, you name it."

Swain and more than 2,500 other scientific experts signed an open letter to Congress and the Trump administration before NOAA's layoffs last month, calling for a stop to what they deemed an "increasing assault" on science conducted at U.S. agencies and institutions as earlier federal cuts hit the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Science Foundation and the Department of Energy.

"Without a strong NOAA, a cornerstone of the U.S. scientific research enterprise, the world will be flying blind into the growing perils of global climate change," read the letter, organized by the Union of Concerned Scientists, which urged Congress and the Trump administration to keep NOAA fully staffed.

Later, in a video shared to his YouTube channel the day of the NOAA firings, Swain said, "There will be people who die in extreme weather events and related disasters who would not have otherwise."

NOAA declined to comment on the layoffs. In a statement emailed to CBS News, a spokesperson for the agency said "we are not discussing internal personnel and management matters."

"NOAA remains dedicated to its mission, providing timely information, research, and resources that serve the American public and ensure our nation's environmental and economic resilience. We continue to provide weather information, forecasts and warnings pursuant to our public safety mission," the spokesperson said.

Rick Spinrad, who was NOAA's administrator during the Biden administration, is worried about the impact on the National Weather Service, saying job cuts will "most assuredly" affect the availability, frequency and accuracy of weather warnings.

"I think at some point people are going to recognize we need these capabilities for the public good, which, after all, is the role of government," he said. "The question is: how much damage will we sustain before we're able to turn around the damage that's already been done?" 

Read more here

As the Los Angeles fires quickly spread starting January 7, with wind gusts approaching 100 mph, scientists observed a 110-fold rise in airborne lead levels. This spike had receded by January 11.

he fires enabled the first real-time data on airborne lead, thanks to a pioneering air quality measurement network known as Atmospheric Science and Chemistry (ASCENT), a nationwide initiative funded by the National Science Foundation, operating in 12 sites across the US.

ASCENT measured tiny particles smaller than 2.5 micrometers in diameter (PM2.5)—small enough to enter the lungs and bloodstream.

Unlike typical wildfires that burn natural materials such as grass and trees, the Eaton Canyon and Palisades fires burned through infrastructures like homes, including painted surfaces, pipes, vehicles, plastics, and electronic equipment.

This raised concerns about the toxicity of these particles in the air, especially since many of the buildings were constructed before 1978, when lead paint was still commonly used.

Lead is a toxic air contaminant that poses significant health risks, particularly for children, who are more vulnerable to its neurodevelopmental effects.

While chronic lead exposure is well-documented, the effects of short-term spikes, like those recorded during these fires, are less understood.

“Our work through ASCENT has provided us with new insights into the air we breathe, with unprecedented levels of detail and time resolution,” says Sally Ng, a Georgia Tech professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering and earth and atmospheric sciences and the network’s principal investigator.

“Beyond the mass concentration of PM2.5 that is typically measured, we are now able to detect a wide range of chemical components in the aerosols in real time, to better understand and evaluate to what extent one is exposed to harmful pollutants.”

Investigators used several instruments to obtain hourly measurements at the ASCENT monitoring site in Pico Rivera, approximately 14 miles south of the Eaton Canyon fire, to assess atmospheric lead during the wildfires.

“Our findings showcased the importance of having real-time measurements of the chemical species that comprise particulate matter,” says California Institute of Technology PhD candidate in atmospheric chemistry and ASPIRE researcher Haroula Baliaka.

“During the LA fires, we provided the public with timely information about what they were breathing and how air quality evolved in the days that followed.”

This research appears in the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

Source: Georgia Tech

By Maryn McKenna

Farmers in Georgia’s northeastern corner woke up on Jan. 15 to discover that birds in their flock of 45,000 chickens were ill and dying. Within 24 hours, the state’s veterinary laboratory confirmed the problem was bird flu.

Within two days, the Georgia Department of Agriculture sent an emergency team to kill all infected and exposed birds, disinfect the barns, set up a 10-kilometer quarantine zone around the farm and impose mandatory testing on every poultry operation inside it. The agency also told other chicken producers to confine all their birds indoors, and ordered an immediate stop to bringing birds out in public: no exhibitions, no flea market sales.

Georgia didn’t invent this fast response. There was a checklist to follow: the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s 224-page Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza Response Plan, known as the Red Book. For 15 years, the Red Book has laid out how to detect bird flu, cull affected birds and prevent further spread. Crucially, the Red Book mandates that poultry farmers get compensation for birds that are killed by the authorities, but not for ones that have died, which encourages farmers to report outbreaks as fast as possible.

Unfortunately, bird flu is no longer confined to birds. For several years, the virus has been jumping from wild birds into wild mammals, and last March it was identified in cows for the first time. Scientists are sounding the alarm: Bird flu’s jump into an animal with which humans have such close contact is a serious warning sign. If this outbreak isn’t controlled, the virus could mutate and plunge humans into a new public health emergency.

And by all accounts, not enough is being done to control the outbreak. Unlike their peers in the poultry business, dairy farmers have no Red Book for dealing with bird flu. They have been pressured to take instruction from public health authorities, but without the support they need to make those steps bearable for their livelihood. As a result, these farmers have been hesitant to act, despite being maligned for moving too slowly. Unless something changes, the specter of bird flu’s devastation will hang over the United States indefinitely — as will the threat of other emerging diseases.

Scientists have long considered bird flu, or H5N1, a leading candidate for causing a human pandemic. Since 2003 the virus has infected at least 954 people around the world and killed at least 464 — an almost 50 percent mortality rate — mostly in people in proximity to infected birds. These have been largely one-off infections, including the first U.S. death from bird flu in January (a person over 65 with underlying health conditions). But scientists fear that bird flu could adapt to pass from one person to another, resulting in a fast-moving lethal epidemic that would resemble the world-spanning 1918 flu.

That’s to say nothing of the devastation to animals. In the wild world, avian flu has infected and killed members of at least 48 mammal species including sea lions and foxes, and has devastated wild bird populations. The current outbreak in poultry, which began in the United States in 2022, has affected more than 162 million commercial, backyard and wild birds — including roughly 10 percent of all laying chickens in the last three months. This has sent egg prices soaring. (Just ask Waffle House customers.)

Bird flu is far less dangerous to cattle, which may explain the initial muted response. According to Jamie Jonker, the chief scientific officer of the National Milk Producers Federation, bird flu infections seem to sicken 10 percent to 15 percent of cows on a farm, but kill only about 1 percent to 2 percent. Symptoms mostly resemble bad colds, though sick cows may stop producing milk. Most cows recover in four to six weeks after the infection is cleared, though some never return to productivity.

But while bird flu may be relatively mild in cows, it poses a potentially greater risk to humans. That’s because unlike birds, mammals like cows have respiratory systems more similar to humans, which could encourage mutations that make spread easier.

Editors’ Picks

Finally, at 59, a Place of Her Own

Pack Lightly, Learn the Customs, Join a Tour: Tips for Solo Women Travelers

How Can I Lower My Climate Risk When Buying a House?

That makes the arrival of bird flu on a dairy farm a slow-motion disaster. The incentives for farmers to cooperate remain dismal. Research by experts at Cornell University suggests bird flu can cost farmers up to $1,000 per cow; according to the American Association of Bovine Practitioners, this could cost a farmer operating a 5,000-cow dairy farm as much as $1 million over just a few weeks. The U.S.D.A. created a program last year to compensate farmers for losses from diminished milk production caused by bird flu. But unlike for poultry, the program doesn’t pay for dead or unproductive cattle.

“It’s a huge economic impact,” said Fred Gingrich, the association’s executive director. “The funding that’s available for this disease outbreak to dairy farmers probably covers anywhere from 10 to 20 percent of their actual losses.”

There’s a sense among dairy farmers that the country’s bird flu plans were built on poultry industry structures that don’t bear much resemblance to their own operations. Broiler chickens are deposited in a barn in the first days after they hatch, and stay in that building until they are collected for slaughter, as a batch, six to seven weeks later. Poultry losses from bird flu are covered either by the U.S.D.A. indemnity or by the corporations that supply birds to farmers to grow them under contract.

Dairy cattle, by contrast, don’t arrive and leave in herd-size batches; they move on and off farms as calves that need raising, newly pregnant heifers or cows nearing the end of their fertility. The annual turnover rate in a single herd may be 30 percent at most.

The dairy industry also includes more than 24,000 sole proprietors. For the vast majority, there are no overarching companies to cushion individual farms’ losses. The costs are being largely borne by the actual farmer, said Keith Poulsen, a professor at the University of Wisconsin School of Veterinary Medicine. He added that farmers fear finding the virus in their herds will make them unable to market their milk. (Experts caution they haven’t seen this bear out. It’s confirmed pasteurization kills any flu virus in milk.)

Fear that their herds would face the same 100 percent cull as infected poultry flocks — but without equivalent compensation — may have slowed cooperation with public health plans. Restrictions on interstate cattle movement were rolled out in April 2024, and testing of milk supplies began in December. But not all states have yet joined the U.S.D.A. testing plan.

Pressure to pick up the pace is growing. Cases are spilling over into humans: 41 of the 69 bird flu cases tallied in the country so far were linked to dairy farms. But there’s also a fear that the simmering cattle outbreak could set off a more catastrophic poultry epidemic. Michelle Kromm, a veterinary consultant who is a chair of the American Association of Avian Pathologists’ H5 influenza task force, said the poultry industry has learned how to guard against wild bird incursions. But cattle outbreaks pose new risks to nearby poultry operations: Perhaps the virus spreads through routes such as shared farm workers or equipment, or on the wind. Thus it is possible that, if not controlled, such transfers could cripple egg and chicken supplies, hurt milk production and drive dangerous mutations.

What’s becoming increasingly clear is that human health and animal health need a reconciliation. Public health responders need to adopt a more granular understanding of the vulnerabilities of all types of farmers. Agriculture needs to recognize that its cherished flocks and herds can serve as the source of devastating diseases.

The goal should be to develop response plans that can be modified for a range of pathogens, rather than responding to one disease in one species at a time. This means building better surveillance programs for emerging diseases, making big investments in rapid diagnostics and funding the research that could forecast where disease threats might surface next.

Unfortunately, such policies seem unlikely, given that the Trump administration has signaled its intent to soften its focus on infectious disease. The recent announcement by the U.S.D.A. that a second form of bird flu has surfaced in cattle underscores how diseases are already behaving in ways we can scarcely anticipate — and why repairing the relationship between public health and agriculture is so critical.

The lack of proactive measures and research thus far has left farmers in a terribly vulnerable state, Dr. Poulsen said. To effectively combat bird flu, he said, “they have to be made comfortable to raise their hands and be part of the solution.”

Read more here.

Feb 20, 2025

As the Los Angeles fires quickly spread starting Jan. 7, with wind gusts approaching 100 mph, scientists observed a 110-fold rise in airborne lead levels. This spike had receded by Jan. 11.  

The fires enabled the first real-time data on airborne lead, thanks to a pioneering air quality measurement network known as Atmospheric Science and Chemistry (ASCENT), a nationwide initiative funded by the National Science Foundation, operating in 12 sites across the U.S.  

ASCENT measured tiny particles smaller than 2.5 micrometers in diameter (PM2.5) — small enough to enter the lungs and bloodstream. Unlike typical wildfires that burn natural materials such as grass and trees, the Eaton Canyon and Palisades fires burned through infrastructures like homes, including painted surfaces, pipes, vehicles, plastics, and electronic equipment. This raised concerns about the toxicity of these particles in the air, especially since many of the buildings were constructed before 1978, when lead paint was still commonly used.  

Lead is a toxic air contaminant that poses significant health risks, particularly for children, who are more vulnerable to its neurodevelopmental effects. While chronic lead exposure is well-documented, the effects of short-term spikes, like those recorded during these fires, are less understood. 

“Our work through ASCENT,” said Sally Ng, Georgia Tech’s Love Family Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering and Earth and Atmospheric Sciences and the network’s principal investigator, “has provided us with new insights into the air we breathe, with unprecedented levels of detail and time resolution. Beyond the mass concentration of PM2.5 that is typically measured, we are now able to detect a wide range of chemical components in the aerosols in real time, to better understand and evaluate to what extent one is exposed to harmful pollutants.” 

Investigators used several instruments to obtain hourly measurements at the ASCENT monitoring site in Pico Rivera, approximately 14 miles south of the Eaton Canyon fire, to assess atmospheric lead during the wildfires.  

“Our findings showcased the importance of having real-time measurements of the chemical species that comprise particulate matter,” said California Institute of Technology Ph.D. candidate in atmospheric chemistry and ASPIRE researcher Haroula Baliaka. “During the LA fires, we provided the public with timely information about what they were breathing and how air quality evolved in the days that followed.”   

Read more here.

In New England, road salting is a necessity to keep people safe during snow or cold weather as they drive to work or take their kids to school. The amount of salt used for deicing roads and highways has increased over the years along with the year-round transportation of goods and services. The many benefits that road salting provides, however are matched by some opportunities for improvement. Road salt can contaminate drinking water, kill or endanger wildlife, increase soil erosion, and damage private and public property. Alternative methods are needed to mitigate these drawbacks.

The most common substance used for deicing roads and highways is Sodium Chloride (NaCl) or table salt known as rock salt when spread on the road because of its much larger granules. Nearly half a million tons is used annually in Massachusetts alone for winter road maintenance. Rock salt is very effective at melting snow and ice and is considered to be pretty cheap. But rock salt's low cost does not include the potential damage to property, infrastructure, or the environment. Though seemingly harmless to us, rock salt can have corrosive effects in large quantities that affects cars, trucks, bridges, and roads resulting in approximately $5 billion dollars in annual repairs in the U.S. alone. In addition, road salt can also infiltrate nearby surface and ground waters and can contaminate drinking water reservoirs and wells. High sodium levels in drinking water affect people with high blood pressure, and high chloride levels in surface waters are toxic to some fish, bugs, and amphibians. Furthermore, excess road salt accumulates on roadside areas killing roadside plants and harming wildlife that eat the salt crystals. Salty roads also attract animals like deer and moose (who love licking up the salt), increasing the probability of accidents and roadkill.

The environmental toll and long-term costs of rock salt have inspired some states to search for alternative management practices. Magnesium chloride (MgCl2)is considered to be safer than NaCl but requires twice the amount to cover the same area, making it more expensive. Calcium chloride (CaCl2) is safer for the environment but is three times more expensive than NaCL and so is typically reserved for use in vulnerable areas. Innovative solutions that limit the amount of rock salt needed are also being explored.

New technologies, such as porous pavement, are being engineered to reduce runoff from roads and have been found reduce snow and ice cover. Porous or permeable pavement allows standing water to seep through, removing water from roads that would normally go through freeze-thaw periods, thus preventing ice formation on the roads. A recent study showed that the annual median snow/ice cover on porous pavement was three times lower than that of regular pavement, and that the low amounts of ice/snow accumulating on porous pavement led to a 77% reduction in annual salt used for maintenance. Another technology gaining traction is solar roads, made up of engineered solar panels that can be walked and driven upon. This technology has the potential of converting every single road into a source of renewable energy. In addition to the added energy source, this technology could also eliminate the need for road salt by melting ice or snow through heating water in pipes embedded in the road.

Rhode Island has adopted several measures to reduce the amount of salt needed. Since 2012, the State has been applying a brine solution (23.3% salt-water solution) to the roads before a forecasted snow event. Known as anti-icing, this practice prevents the formation of frost on pavement, and its implementation has been increasing across New England. Another alternative is the use a 50/50 salt and sand mixture. The sand doesn't help to melt the snow or ice but increases traction, reducing the amount of road salt required. After the snow or ice melts, however, the remaining sand mixture gets washed away, filling catch basins or adjacent waterbodies with sediment, which then requires additional work hours and money to maintain and keep the basins clear. Currently, only a small fraction (5%) of the sand dispersed in Rhode Island is removed; the rest gets washed away into adjacent water bodies: clouding the water and making it difficult for aquatic plants to photosynthesize. Other alternatives include adding biodegradable substances like beet juice, pickle juice, and molasses to the salt solution to enhance performance. These salt additives lower the freezing point of water, slowing down the formation of ice; they also aid in traction, and make the solution stickier so less salt gets splashed off the roads and wasted.

The disadvantages of many current treatments have led to interest in new management approaches. New Hampshire has been successful in reducing road salt use through improved management practices and policy. In 2013 the State launched, the "New Hampshire Road Salt Reduction Initiative" to address the high number of waters impaired by chloride (19 water bodies in 2008, and 43 in 2012). In addition to the testing and use of many of the alternatives described in this article, the initiative recommends using other management practices and policies to reduce the use of road salt. These include upgrading equipment so that salt is spread using only "closed loop systems" which allow operators to accurately release and monitor the exact amount of salt applied, lowering speed limits during snow/ice events, and having mandatory use of snow tires during winter. Thanks to these initiatives the State has reduced the use of road salt by 20 percent and is on track to stop the rise of impaired waters due to high chloride levels.

While no perfect solution exists to keep our roads clear in winter, the number of tools available to public works departments continues to increase, allowing for a tailored approach to clear roads in an environmentally conscious manner without risking driver safety.

For more information, please reference the EPA web page on Salt in the Environment.

Read the full article by Hiroko Tabuchi (The New York Times)

"Johnson County is seeking federal assistance, saying its farmland has become dangerously contaminated with “forever chemicals” from the use of fertilizer made from sewage sludge.

A Texas county is taking steps to declare a state of emergency and seek federal assistance over farmland contaminated with harmful “forever chemicals,” as concerns grow over the safety of fertilizer made from sewage.

Johnson County, south of Fort Worth, has been roiled since county investigators found high levels of chemicals called PFAS, or per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, at two cattle ranches in the county in 2023."

By NADJA POPOVICH, LIVIA ALBECK-RIPKA and KENDRA PIERRE-LOUIS UPDATED Jan. 20, 2021

Over four years, the Trump administration dismantled major climate policies and rolled back many more rules governing clean air, water, wildlife and toxic chemicals.

In all, a New York Times analysis, based on research from Harvard Law School, Columbia Law School and other sources, counts nearly 100 environmental rules officially reversed, revoked or otherwise rolled back under Mr. Trump. More than a dozen other potential rollbacks remained in progress by the end but were not finalized by the end of the administration’s term.

“This is a very aggressive attempt to rewrite our laws and reinterpret the meaning of environmental protections,” said Hana V. Vizcarra, a staff attorney at Harvard’s Environmental and Energy Law Program who has tracked the policy changes since 2018. “This administration is leaving a truly unprecedented legacy.”

Read more here.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has put more than 160 workers who tackle pollution in overburdened communities on leave.

The employees were part of the agency’s Office of Environmental Justice, which sought to help people in areas with significant levels of pollution — including minority neighborhoods. 

EPA spokesperson Molly Vaseliou confirmed 168 staff members in the office were placed on leave since “their function did not relate to the agency’s statutory duties or grant work.”

Vaseliou also cited President Trump’s executive order that directs all federal diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) staff to be put on leave and said the EPA is “in the process of evaluating new structure and organization to ensure we are meeting our mission of protecting human health and the environment for all Americans.”

In addition to the suspensions, a tool known as EJScreen, which showed how pollution data intersected with demographic and income data, was offline as of Friday.

Studies, including those conducted by the EPA in the past, have found that Black Americans in particular face high levels of pollution, and the disparities they face are even more pronounced than disparities faced by the poor. 

Read more here

Feb. 8, 2025, 3:00 AM PST / Updated Feb. 8, 2025, 5:01 PM PST

By Evan Bush

In the brief week and a half Lee Zeldin has helmed the Environmental Protection Agency, a flurry of personnel moves have dramatically shaken up the agency — like many others — and rattled some staff members.

On the day of Zeldin’s confirmation last week, the EPA notified about 1,100 “probationary” employees who had been at the agency for less than a year that they could be terminated at any time.

Then on Thursday, the agency put 168 staffers on administrative leave; those affected worked on environmental justice issues across the EPA’s 10 regional offices and at its headquarters.

The agency this week also took down an online mapping tool called EJScreen, which had been used by federal, state and local governments to help policymakers make decisions in support of environmental justice. The term refers to the idea that people should have equitable access to clean and healthy environments and that some underserved communities have historically faced disproportionate environmental harms. A state highway agency, for example, could use EJScreen to review demographic information as it planned a roadway construction project.

Zeldin assumed his post a day after federal workers received “Fork in the Road” emails offering them buyouts to resign. Their deadline to accept the offer was Thursday night, but a federal judge put initiative on hold that day, following a legal challenge from labor unions. The program is blocked until at least Monday.

In an address to staffers viewed by more than 10,000 of them on Tuesday, Zeldin said he had a mandate to streamline the EPA and reduce waste within it.

“We have a charge from Congress to be as efficient as we possibly can with the tax dollars that are sent to us,” Zeldin said, adding that Americans were feeling “a lot of economic pain.”

His initial actions, and the shock they have given staffers, suggest that Zeldin and the Trump administration are wasting no time in dramatically remaking the EPA and redefining its purpose, abandoning an approach in which environmental harms are seen through a lens of race or socioeconomic disadvantage.

Molly Vaseliou, an Environmental Protection Agency spokesperson, said the EPA is focused on complying with President Donald Trump’s executive orders, including the order titled “Ending Radical And Wasteful Government DEI Programs.”

“The EPA is diligently implementing President Trump’s executive orders as well as subsequent associated implementation memos. President Trump was elected with a mandate from the American people to do just this,” Vaseliou said.

Several EPA staffers said a sense of fear and foreboding has quickly pervaded the agency.

“The past two weeks have been pretty horrendous,” said Marie Owens Powell, president of the American Federation of Government Employees Council 238, a union that represents about 8,500 EPA staffers. “Every day, it’s been something. It has been exhausting.”

Powell, who has worked as a storage tank inspector at the EPA, added that there had been other recent surprises, like when staffers’ preferred pronouns were removed from their email signatures without notice.

Another EPA worker, who asked that their name not be published out of fear of retribution, described the feeling as being “in limbo” or “purgatory.” 

“We’re afraid to do work that could be viewed as being out of compliance with executive orders or at all in opposition to Trump’s agenda. We want to speak up and push back, but the fear in that is palpable,” the staffer said. “We are all just waiting to see who is next.”

Vaseliou said Zeldin spent his first weeks meeting career EPA staff and visiting several disaster sites, including East Palestine, Ohio, where a train carrying chemicals derailed in February 2023 and released toxic smoke. He also went to Los Angeles, where wildfires that broke out last month torched thousands of homes, and to western North Carolina, where Hurricane Helene killed dozens.

In a news release on Tuesday, Zeldin laid out five priorities for the EPA under his leadership, including efforts to “pursue energy independence,” develop “the cleanest energy on the planet” and ensure clean air and water. Some parts of his agenda, however, diverge from the EPA’s core mission — at least as it has operated under past administrations. Those include advancing artificial intelligence, reforming permitting and bringing back automotive jobs.

Jeremy Symons, senior adviser at the Environmental Protection Network, a group of former EPA staffers, said he was concerned about the direction the agency may head, based on Zeldin’s statements.

“It’s hard to see yourself in that agenda if you’re worried about toxic pollution in your community,” said Symons, who worked at the EPA from 1994 to 2001. “It’s an alarming retreat from EPA’s mission of protecting public health and the environment, in service of a political agenda.”

Democrats in Congress appear to be gearing up for fights over the EPA’s future. Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., attempted to enter the agency headquarters on Thursday, asking for a meeting with representatives of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, who he said he believed were working at the agency.

“We just went in and asked for a meeting with the DOGE representatives, and we were denied and we were turned away,” Markey said at a news conference outside the building, where he railed against the new administration.

Vaseliou said Markey had not taken the proper steps needed to enter the headquarters and described the event as a “publicity stunt.”

A spokeswoman for Markey said Thursday that the senator had not received confirmation about whether DOGE representatives were at the EPA. However, the name of a worker whom NBC News has identified as a member of DOGE, Cole Killian, was listed in the EPA’s directory, according to multiple sources.

An email to Killian’s EPA email requesting an interview was not immediately returned. Vaseliou did not answer questions about Killian or whether he was connected to DOGE.

When asked about Markey’s concerns on Thursday, Harrison Fields, a White House deputy press secretary, said Democrats were “gaslighting” about DOGE’s mission.

“Slashing waste, fraud, and abuse, and becoming better stewards of the American taxpayer’s hard-earned dollars might be a crime to Democrats, but it’s not a crime in a court of law,” Fields said.

CLARIFICATION (Feb. 8, 2025, 8 p.m. ET): The headline on this article has been updated to clarify that the staffers have been placed on administrative leave, not laid off. Read more here