Similar laws have passed at the state level in Utah and Tennessee

Secret memos obtained by The New York Times illuminate the origins of the court’s now-routine “shadow docket” rulings on presidential power.

The whole shift to rulings with big impact and no reasoning was because the Republicans desperately wanted to stop climate regulations:

By a 5-to-4 vote along partisan lines, the order halted President Barack Obama’s Clean Power Plan, his signature environmental policy. They acted before any other court had addressed the plan’s lawfulness. The decision consisted of only legal boilerplate, without a word of reasoning.

The whole thing is absolutely insane:

Even as they debated the Obama plan’s possible burden on the power industry, in the entire chain of correspondence obtained by The Times, not a single justice, conservative or liberal, mentioned the dangers of a warming planet as one of the possible harms the court should consider.

Even though those harms cost far more than Obama's Clean Power Plan did — it would have on net saved money.

Sorry, no archived copy on this one. You'll need to clear reuters.com cookies and reload.

The remarkable catalog of dates is one of the longest-running records of climate change. Its creator died, setting off a search for a successor.

The paper is here

The companies had asked the justices to clear the way to move environmental lawsuits out of state courts, to friendlier federal venues.

...

the case has been closely watched by litigants in other climate lawsuits because state courts are generally thought to be more receptive to people who sue over damages caused by climate change, including climate activists and state officials.

Climate is now a verboten topic in the Pentagon, but the battle against storms, fires, floods and rising seas hasn’t stopped.

By diverting food crops into fuel and inflating demand for grain and vegetable oil, Trump’s jacked-up mandates will increase food prices, food shortages, and food insecurity. They’ll also accelerate deforestation and greenhouse gas emissions, inducing the world’s farmers to clear tens of millions of acres of new fields to exploit the higher prices for their crops. At the same time, they’ll inflate demand for fertilizer that’s already in short supply because of the Iran war, further increasing global food prices as well as corn-country pollution.

At the Heartland Institute’s annual climate conference, fossil fuel allies warn MAHA’s push on regulating chemicals and plastics could threaten the oil industry — exposing a growing rift inside Trump’s base.

From rainwater harvesting to tree nurseries, communities in Medellín are taking steps to increase their landslide and flooding resilience

Santa Marta conference born out of frustration at Cop summits, where renewable progress has been stalled by major polluters

The key problem with the UN COP process is that it can only act by consensus, which in practice is usually treated as requiring unanimity. So you can Saudi Arabia or the US to block any meaningful shift away from fossil fuels.

cross-posted from : https://lemmy.zip/post/62706695

Microsoft and DigitalEurope, a lobby group whose members include Amazon, Google and Meta, secured a secrecy provision in EU law to block public access to critical information on data centres’ environmental impact, Investigate Europe can reveal.

is another example of industry “ramping up their lobby efforts to shape EU legislation”, said Bram Vranken, who researches the area for Corporate Europe Observatory, an NGO in Brussels. He said he had never seen such a striking example of changes to EU law.

“The fact that the Commission copy-pasted a Microsoft amendment is shocking,” Vranken said. “Who does the Commission really represent: Big Tech or the public interest?”

Legal experts say the clause goes against the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights and the Aarhus Convention, which grants public access to environmental information such as emissions data.

Faith Presbyterian Church planted a 200-square-foot rain garden and converted part of its parking lot into a small forest. Instead of rushing through pipes and directly into local waterways, rainwater flowing off the church roof tarries in the garden, pollutants filtered by native plants as it works its way underground.

It’s an example of using natural solutions to withstand climate impacts, as stormwater systems engineered for the weather of the past increasingly fall short. And even when those systems work well, they don’t offer all the benefits of green space.

Making this work in a meaningful way takes something at the scale of the Chinese Sponge City approach, not just doing one or two properties by choice.

A new study shows that a specific type of silicone, the so-called methylsiloxanes, is widely present in the atmosphere across diverse environments. Also, concentrations appear to be much higher than expected. According to the researchers, this raises concerns about their potential—yet poorly understood—effects on human health and the climate. Methylsiloxanes are commonly used in industry, transportation, cosmetics, and household products. The study was supervised by Utrecht University and the University of Groningen, and the results are published in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics.

cross-posted from: https://mander.xyz/post/50630116

Under the public prosecution of the prosecutors of the Specialised Environmental Prosecutor’s Office of the Kherson Regional Prosecutor’s Office, the court found the so-called “director” of the “Askania-Nova” biosphere reserve guilty. The court convicted him of collaboration and violation of the laws and customs of war, committed in conspiracy by a group of individuals.

A total of seven reserve-protected animals were removed from Askania-Nova as a result of the illegal transfer. Following the Russian occupation of Askania-Nova, a UNESCO-protected biosphere reserve was unlawfully re-registered under Russian law, and the legitimate Ukrainian administration was replaced. On 1 December 2023, the new administration illegally transferred the reserve’s animals, including rare and endangered animals (which remain Ukrainian property despite the illegal re-registration), to Russian-controlled zoos. Among the animals at issue were Chapman’s zebras, American bison, Przewalski’s horses, and one of David’s deer, the last of which died during the transfer.

The court found the accused Dmytro Mesheryakov guilty, who was the Russia-appointed head of Askania-Nova, and was responsible for organising the transfer of protected animals in violation of international law. He was sentenced to 15 years of imprisonment with confiscation of property. He was also banned from holding positions in government bodies local self-government, and working in the field of public services for 15 years.

“This is a landmark development: for the first time, a court has clearly signalled that environmental war crimes will not go unpunished and accountability for environmental damage is inevitable” – mentioned Nataliia Pavlovych, Deputy Lead of the Environmental Mobile Justice Team.

...

Web Archive link

Summary: Chinese battery companies are expanding production capacity to 900 GWh per year, mainly for Battery Energy Storage.

Chinese battery makers announced plans in early 2026 to add over 600 GWh of new production capacity for the energy storage system (ESS) market, with the total buildout reaching 900 GWh annually once complete — roughly ten times the 58 GWh installed across the entire US in 2025.

Around 70% of the new capacity will serve the ESS market, with the remaining 30% going to EVs. The 19 Chinese producers tracked by GGII are investing a combined 180 billion yuan ($26.3 billion) in new lithium-ion factories.

The expansion is being driven by surging demand linked to AI data centre growth and global decarbonisation, with global ESS battery demand already up 79% year-on-year to 550 GWh in 2025, where Chinese firms hold over 80% market share.

CATL alone is investing 20 billion yuan in a single zero-carbon production hub in Fujian capable of delivering up to 200 GWh annually. However, Chinese regulators have begun intervening, convening major battery makers to address concerns about irrational price competition and overcapacity.

In a setback for federal efforts to thwart climate litigation, the judge ruled that the suit, which tried to block the state from suing oil companies, was too speculative.