#climate-distress

#climate-distress

When lives are assigned a higher dollar value, stricter pollution standards tend to clear the 'economic efficiency' sniff test, resulting in cleaner air. But that improved air quality comes at the expense of America's industrial industries, which have to invest in pricey systems to reduce the amount of these pollutants they spew down to acceptable levels.

Air pollution is the second-largest risk factor for early death globally. Traditionally, our response has focused on reducing the levels of pollution people breathe, but this is only part of the story.

The study highlights how rapid Arctic warming increases the frequency of extreme weather events, particularly concurrent heatwaves across Europe and eastern Asia.

The UK Health Security Agency reported around 1,504 heat-associated deaths in England during summer 2025, roughly half the predicted 3,039, despite the season being the warmest on record.

We created Earth in Action to provide a lens into what's happening on our planet, as it happens. Whether it's something typical, like the current air temperature, or an extreme event like a major dust storm, we wanted to provide an opportunity for people to see them.

As the rust expands, it weakens the rock and helps break it apart. It's a very red part of the country, it's got that rusty hue, so you get that color getting whipped up with the strong winds.

It was 6am. London. A few days before Christmas. My four-year-old is singing at the top of her lungs and charging around my parents' house on a hunt for the perfect crayon. There is nothing particularly unusual about this scene except for the fact that the crayon in question was for Greta Thunberg. The world's most well-known activist needed a writing tool and my daughter, O, was on the case.

Covering Climate Now was formed in 2019 in response to the climate silence that then prevailed in much of the press, especially in the United States. Over the years that followed, hundreds of newsrooms joined our effort, and press coverage of the story began to reflect the scale of the crisis. Newsrooms beefed up their climate reporting teams; they confronted misinformation that sought to play down the problem; they thought creatively about how to find the climate connection on every beat.

"Let's be realistic." That's the advice coming from a growing number of voices in climate circles in the United States. In October, billionaire Bill Gates argued that a global temperature rise of 2 degrees Celsius is unavoidable and not a " super bad outcome"-a view unlikely to be shared by the millions of people whose homes would be destroyed by the resulting killer storms and rising seas.

There's no hand-waving about how 'We want to cooperate on climate,' " oil historian and S&P Global vice chairman Dan Yergin said in an interview. "It's, 'We're slamming the door on that issue.' " "We've gone from over-indexing it to zero-indexing it.

The physical nature of the project was inspiring and fun for everyone and also contained within it a kind of message. If we are going to change the direction of our climate we are going to have to do it for real too - in the real world, by doing real stuff.

When the category-5 storm Hurricane Melissa struck Jamaica in October, its path crossed communities that had varying levels of preparedness. Many with maintained coastal protections, upgraded drainage and reliable early-warning systems had power and water restored in days. Others were immobilized for weeks.

When Storm Dennis hit the UK in 2020, a wall of dirty, frigid water from a tributary of the Taff threw Paul Thomas against the front of his house in the south Wales village of Ynysybwl. He managed to swim back into his home before the storm surge changed direction, almost carrying him out of the smashed-in front door. I was holding on to downpipes to stop myself being dragged out again.