Climate crisis is making it harder for insurance companies to operate, with many pausing or withdrawing policies
Homeowners in the United States are facing an enormous financial crunch due to the climate crisis, with many struggling to find insurance or even dropping premiums that are soaring due to a mounting toll of wildfires, hurricanes and other disasters, new federal government data shows.
The figures, the most comprehensive numbers ever released by the US treasury department on the issue, show insurance premiums are increasing quickly across the country, with people living amid the greatest climate-driven risks experiencing the steepest rises of all. In the four years to 2022, people living in the top 20% riskiest places for such perils paid, on average, 82% more than those in the 20% lowest climate risk zip codes.
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01/22/2025 - 05:54
António Guterres issues warning at Davos, days after Donald Trump pulled US out of Paris climate agreement
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The world’s addiction to fossil fuels is a “Frankenstein’s monster sparing nothing and no one”, the UN secretary general, António Guterres, told leaders at the World Economic Forum in Davos on Wednesday.
“Our fossil fuel addiction is a Frankenstein’s monster, sparing nothing and no one. All around us, we see clear signs that the monster has become master,” Guterres said in a speech days after 2024 was revealed to have been the hottest year on record and Donald Trump began his second term as US president by pulling the country out of the Paris climate agreement and pledging to “drill, baby, drill” for more oil and gas. The fossil fuel industry gave $75m (£60m) to Trump’s campaign.
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01/22/2025 - 05:39
Experts say UK should stop biomass burning as electricity sector decarbonisation by 2030 can be achieved without it
The UK should stop burning wood to generate power because it is not needed to meet the government’s target of decarbonising the electricity sector by 2030, according to analysis.
Ed Miliband, the energy security and net zero secretary, is expected to make a decision soon on whether to allow billions of pounds in new public subsidies for biomass burning, despite fierce opposition from green groups.
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01/22/2025 - 03:05
Fifty-one sites in NSW have significant PFAS contamination requiring continued monitoring and remediation, EPA tells Senate inquiry
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Experts and water providers have called for a broad ban on so-called “forever chemicals” at a Senate inquiry into PFAS, warning of environmental harm and increasingly costly removal.
The Water Services Association of Australia’s executive director, Adam Lovell, said a ban should be imposed on PFAS in non-essential consumer products. “We need to reduce now, as much as possible, how much PFAS is in the environment.
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01/22/2025 - 01:00
Juan Guillermo Garcés had a brush with death while burning jungle for cattle pasture – now he runs a nature reserve in Colombia where more than 100 new species have been discovered
Words and photographs by Anastasia Austin and Douwe den Held
Juan Guillermo Garcés remembers coming face to face with death at age 17. Smoke filled the air, choking his lungs. The temperature rose and Garcés struggled to see through the haze. Panic set in as he watched monkeys, snakes, lizards and birds desperately trying to escape the flames surrounding them.
Garcés and his brother started the fire that nearly killed them to clear a large stretch of land. But when the wind suddenly changed direction, they found themselves locked in. The brothers survived, but the fire destroyed the little remaining patch of virgin forest on the family’s 2,500-hectare (6,200-acre) ranch, nestled along Colombia’s Magdalena River. Experiencing firsthand what the animals and plants endured was a turning point for Garcés.
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01/21/2025 - 22:00
New report says more than 30m hectares burned, 79% more than in 2023, after country saw worst drought on record
After enduring its worst drought on record in 2024, Brazil closed the year with another alarming milestone: between January and December, 30.86m hectares of wilderness burned – an area larger than Italy.
The figure published in a new report is 79% higher than in 2023 and the largest recorded by Fire Monitor since its launch in 2019 by MapBiomas, an initiative by NGOs, universities and technology companies that monitors Brazil’s biomes.
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01/21/2025 - 16:41
Climate negotiator André Aranha Corrêa do Lago given top job, bypassing Brazilian environment minister Marina Silva
Brazil has announced the top team for the next UN climate summit, which will be hosted in Belém this November, bypassing the country’s environment minister, Marina Silva, in favour of a veteran diplomat for the crucial role of president of the talks.
The experienced climate negotiator and secretary for climate, energy and environment, André Aranha Corrêa do Lago, will preside over the Cop30 summit, which is expected to draw scores of world leaders to Brazil – though not Donald Trump, who soon after his inauguration on Monday ordered the US’s withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement.
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01/21/2025 - 13:50
Pollution aside, the problem with expanding Heathrow lies in the disruption and delay inevitable in such a complex project
Get ready for another season of that interminable saga, Heathrow’s third runway. There was a lull during the Covid pandemic when the airport’s owners, despite winning permission from the supreme court in 2020 to submit a planning application, cooled their jets while they waited for passenger numbers to recover. Now the whole thing is back, courtesy of Rachel Reeves. The chancellor is reported to be preparing to use a speech next week to declare support for a third runway at Heathrow alongside wider airport expansion in the south-east.
The best form of airport expansion is none at all, environmentalists (some of them in the cabinet) will argue, but it looks as if Reeves has dismissed those objections in the name of economic growth. A £1.1bn investment in Stansted, to enable it to grow its annual capacity from 29 million passengers to 43 million, was welcomed by the government last year.
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01/21/2025 - 13:00
Marine scientists highlights the complex interplay between heat stress, disease onset and coral mortality. They found that 66 percent of the colonies were bleached by February 2024 and 80 per cent by April. By July, 44 percent of the bleached colonies had died, with some coral genera, such as Acropora, experiencing a staggering 95 percent mortality rate.
01/21/2025 - 09:00
Cost of fixing ‘forever chemical’ pollution should be borne by manufacturers and polluters, not governments and consumers, expert tells Senate inquiry
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A water quality expert says the Australian government should expand a planned ban of PFAS as a New South Wales Indigenous community called for funding for blood tests for people living on “poisoned” land.
PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances), a group of several thousand synthetic compounds, are found in a wide variety of products including waterproof fabrics, food packaging, hygiene products and firefighting foam. They are sometimes referred to as “forever chemicals” because they are slow to break down and persist in the environment for extended periods.
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