Mati Carbon has an ambitious goal: remove 100 million metric tons of CO2 from the atmosphere by 2040—and help 100 million farmers in the Global South along the way. The company, which currently operates on farms in India, and is looking to expand to Zambia and Tanzania, just got one step closer to achieving its goal. After competing in a four-year global competition that invited teams to come up with—and show a pathway to scale—a carbon removal solution, Mati was awarded the XPrize Carbon Removal, a $50 million award that will help the company scale its operation, which was announced onstage at the TIME100 Summit on April 23. Advertisement “The prize itself is really trying to develop new solutions that can complement other climate solutions,” says Nikki Batchelor, XPRIZE Carbon Removal’s executive director. “So we also always state, first and foremost, that we need to reduce emissions as dramatically as possible… but the science now shows us that we also will need to remove carbon alongside that, [and] we need to be developing and maturing those technologies and solutions now in order to have them ready by 2050 when the world will need to be operating at gigaton scale.” TIME spoke with Shantanu Agarwal and Jake Jordan, Mati’s CEO and chief science officer, about how the technology they use, known as enhanced rock weathering, could provide a scalable carbon removal practice—while improving soil health and providing life changing support for farmers around the world. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. Advertisement TIME: What is Mati Carbon aiming to do? Shantanu Agarwal: Mati Carbon has developed a revolutionary technology to scale gigaton carbon removal that builds climate resilience and provides economic empowerment to potentially more than 100 million smaller farmers in the developing economies of the world using a natural process called enhanced rock weathering. What is enhanced rock weathering and how does it fit into the broader climate fight? Jake Jordan: Rock weathering happens on Earth all the time. Rocks break down when rain and water wash over them. So what we're doing is we're pulverizing volcanic rock, we're putting it on the fields of our partnered small holder farmers. When that pulverized rock comes into contact with water and gas, it starts to break down. And unfortunately, the level of CO2 in our atmosphere is ever rising, so a lot of the gas that this rock is in contact with when it gets wet and is being broken down is CO2. When that rock interacts with that water and that CO2 at the same time, the CO2 can actually be reorganized chemically into a dissolved phase of carbon called bicarbonate, which stays in the water in the field and eventually drains into rivers, aquifers or oceans, where it can be stored for millennia. That makes it what we call durable carbon dioxide removal. Advertisement And an added bonus—when those rocks break down in the field, they're releasing all of the little goodies and nutrients that are contained in those minerals, and they end up in the farmers field, which is why, not only does our climate solution durably remove carbon dioxide, but it actually [helps] some of the most vulnerable farmers who are the most affected by climate change and the least responsible for it. So we see that as sort of a double win for us. Part of the X Prize competition involved showing that the work could be scaled to remove gigatons of carbon a year. How would Mati Carbon do this? Agarwal: For Mati carbon, that means thousands and thousands of locations, which we call “bases.” Each base is serving five to 10,000 farmers, and we want to replicate these bases across the planet, serving millions and millions of farmers. So as we have showcased in our demonstration to XPRIZE, [there are] three fully commercial bases which we have in India. And they came and diligenced one of those bases to see how the operating procedures were, how we actually serve the farmers, what the farmer effect was. We have validated and showed them [our] standard unit of scaling, how it operates, the cost, and how it can be copied and pasted across the world. Advertisement How can carbon capture stand to benefit smallhold farmers? Agarwal: The net result [is] that the farmer is getting increased productivity. In typical well-fertilized soils, we're seeing about 20-25% in increased productivity for these farmers. And in degraded soils, we’re seeing 50-70% increased productivity… So there's a huge impact for them, directly in terms of their incomes by the increased productivity, but also their ability to use less pesticide. That's game changing for these people who are living from crop to crop. Suddenly having 30% or 50% increased income means that they can pay off their debt. They can suddenly get more irrigation equipment, or better seeds. It's life changing. What comes next for Mati Carbon? Agarwal: Our company is founded on the basis of [being] farmer-first. And to that extent, we essentially structured our company as a nonprofit, and we chose not to take any equity from venture capital funds. We are essentially dependent on grants and philanthropy to really scale, and that has limited us to not being able to spread out as fast and as much as we would like to. This XPRIZE essentially gives us the wings to dream now… and really run after and achieve the full mission of being able to touch 100 million farmers in the next 15 to 20 years. Advertisement What do you hope people will take away from the work you’re doing? Agarwal: I hope this prize and what we're trying to do gives people hope and gives people direction. There are pathways possible, which help the planet and help smaller farmers and are economically viable for market driven mechanisms. I think Mati Carbon has proven that we can build a viable business with our unique business model, with our unique technology, and compete with the best of the best in the world and come out strong. I want to give that hope to the world, hope to other other competitors, other companies, other folks that we really need to solve the problems which are in front of us and can't just be denying them.

Many have grown to embrace the convenience of telehealth brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic. But now researchers have found that taking your doctor’s appointments from the couch could have another upside: it’s good for the environment. A new study, published in the peer-reviewed American Journal of Managed Care on April 22, has found the use of telemedicine could have an impact in reducing carbon emissions. The findings showed that telehealth decreased the number of cars on the road in the U.S., reducing monthly carbon dioxide emissions by the equivalent of up to 130,000 gas-powered cars. Researchers quantified nearly 1.5 million telemedicine visits in urban and rural areas between April 1 and June 30, 2023 and estimated that anywhere between 741,000 to 1.35 million of those visits were substitutes for in-person visits. Using those calculations, they determined that telemedicine use cut CO2 emissions by a range of roughly 23,500 and 52,500 tons each month during the time studied—equivalent to the emissions produced by 61,000 to 130,000 gas powered vehicles. “The health care sector contributes significantly to the global carbon footprint,” Dr. A. Mark Fendrick, the study’s co-senior author and professor of medicine and director of Center for Value-Based Insurance Design at the University of Michigan, said in a press release. The U.S. health system currently contributes almost 9% of the country’s emissions, while transportation accounts for about 29%. “Our findings suggest that the environmental impact of medical care delivery can be reduced when lower-carbon options, such as telemedicine, are substituted for other services that produce more emissions.” The health care system has not shied away from the need to lower its carbon footprint. Around the world, some clinics are reconsidering what items can be reused or recycled, as well as beginning to phase out an anesthetic known as desflurane, one bottle of which is equivalent to driving a gas car 2,200 miles.. Some limitations remain, however. The researchers of the new study say that, though the participants had sociodemographic characteristics that were similar to those of U.S. Census Bureau estimates, the findings may not represent the broader population or account for regional variations, such as seasonal trends or internet access. Telemedicine use has also fallen since the end of the COVID pandemic, which could have led them to overestimate the true amount of averted emissions in the future. All the same, the findings could help sway policies, researchers say, as Congress continues to debate the extension of pandemic-era flexibilities and Medicare waivers for the use of telehealth.

It’s axiomatic that you can’t solve a problem if you don’t admit it exists—and the best way to admit it exists is to talk about it. That’s particularly true when it comes to climate change. For more than four decades, the state of the climate has been part of the national conversation—especially when severe weather events linked to a warming world such as droughts, floods, heat waves, and hurricanes occur. Between those emergencies, climate often retreats to a secondary issue—or less. A pair of studies—one from 2015, one from 2021— found that only 35% of Americans discuss climate change even occasionally. Since 2009, respondents to surveys have been more likely to say they discuss climate “rarely” or “never” than “occasionally” or “often.” Now, a new study in PLOS Climate explores what the authors term the “climate silence” and offers insights into how to break it. Any public discussion of a political or social issue can be subject to what’s known as a "spiral of silence.” The less people hear a topic talked about, the less likely they are to bring it up themselves, which just leads to even fewer people discussing it and fewer still to raise the issue. The opposite is also true: the more that people discuss and debate a topic, the likelier it is that other people will join the conversation. In the case of climate change, the latter leads to what the researchers call a “proclimate social feedback loop.” It’s that loop—or lack of it—that the authors of the PLOS One paper were looking for. To conduct their research, they analyzed three existing studies by different research teams conducted in 2020 and 2021 in which a total of more than 3,000 people were asked for their beliefs and feelings about climate change. Across the surveys, the subjects responded to questions about whether they believe there is a scientific consensus that global warming is happening; how certain they themselves are that global warming is real; assuming they accept that it is indeed real, whether they believe humans are responsible for it; how much they worry about global warming; how much of a risk global warming poses to themselves, their families, and their communities; whether they think global warming is a bad or good thing; how much of an effort their families and friends make to combat the problem; how important it is for their family, friends, and, significantly, themselves to take such action; and how often they hear about global warming in the media. Finally, they were asked how often they discuss global warming with family and friends. What the surveys didn’t address was whether it was all of the initial variables that led to the discussions—an important measure of causation—or if they just existed side by side. The new study conducted statistical analyses of the surveys to make that determination. “Those surveys did not analyze how much the independent variables influence climate discussion,” says Margaret Orr, a PhD student in George Mason University’s department of communications and the lead author of the paper. “They just report survey results without looking at any interactions between variables.” Across the entire sample group, the researchers found that all but three of the variables led to increased discussions about climate change. Those three that sparked little or no conversation were: how convinced the respondents themselves were that climate change is happening; belief in a scientific consensus that it is; and belief that humans are causing the problem. Those are three pretty powerful factors—ones that ought to spark concern and conversation. The researchers have some idea about why they don’t. Advertisement “One potential reason for these [variables] not being significant predictors of climate discussion is the potential for indirect effects,” says Orr. Each of the three factors that don’t directly lead to climate conversations, she says, may nonetheless lead to worry, which in turn may spark conversations. The more of those conversations that happen, the better. “Previous research has shown that people are more likely to take actions if asked to do so by someone they like and respect," says Orr. “Climate conversations will help reverse the spiral of silence: the more people realize that others are concerned about climate change and support climate action, the more people will talk about it.”

In an instant, President Trump landed the most significant blow yet to the post-war trade regime last week as he announced aggressive tariffs on friends and foes alike. Even after his significant backtracking, it’s clear that the system of free flowing goods across international barriers that has defined economics globally in recent decades isn’t coming back anytime soon. In the short term, we know the international tensions will disrupt supply chains for clean energy. As my colleague wrote earlier this week, many clean energy technologies are largely made in China, where tariffs now top 100%. But perhaps a more important question for long-term climate efforts is what system of global trade will emerge from the wreckage of the past two weeks—and the next three years? Trade is already an active point of discussion in climate conversations. Even as the U.S. backs out of its own climate agenda and the European Union recalibrates climate policy in the face of populist pushback, it’s possible to envision a world where climate considerations become a key focal point in trade discussions. Discussions linking climate and trade date back decades. In theory, trade restrictions represent an easy way to get over the free rider problem that keeps countries from taking aggressive action to reduce emissions. Countries that are acting on climate change can impose restrictions or fees on products from countries that aren’t making a similar level of effort. In practice, however, imposing climate-linked trade barriers has long frightened leaders who worried that they would cause geopolitical disruption. That all changed during Trump’s first presidency. As the E.U. moved aggressively to cut its emissions, industry in the bloc began to complain that climate policy—particularly the bloc’s carbon price—put European companies at a competitive disadvantage. Trump’s first term moves to hamper trade—small by today’s standards but big at the time—created an opening for the E.U. The bloc went forward with a carbon tax on imports that took effect in 2023 for large firms in select sectors. Trump is once again stomping on trade norms, and once again he has created an opening for new considerations around climate and trade. One place where that conversation has bubbled up is right here in the U.S. As Republicans search for ways to incorporate Trump’s desire for an aggressive trade agenda into a strategic vision, some D.C. policymakers have suggested that the U.S. might impose its own carbon fee at the border. Such a measure would punish China—which relies on high-emitting coal-fired power to manufacture products—with a rationale driven by both environmental concerns and economics. Even as the U.S. has neglected to enact a carbon price, its industrial base is cleaner in many sectors than those of most other countries. Earlier this week, Republican Senators Lindsay Graham of South Carolina and Bill Cassidy of Louisiana introduced legislation that would do just that. Backers include traditional climate advocates like Ceres, a group that works with investors and companies to push decarbonization, as well as the America First Policy Institute, a think tank that promotes Trump’s agenda. The fee “is going to acknowledge the billions, if not trillions, the U.S. has spent controlling [emissions]," Cassidy said at a Capitol Hill event highlighting the new legislation this week. “China has not, which gives them an unfair advantage.” Advertisement Cassidy suggested the U.S. could partner with the E.U. and other allies to make their border standards align—though it’s unclear how that fits with Trump’s aggressive posture to typical U.S. allies. Meanwhile, a completely different conversation is happening at the nexus of climate and trade in other parts of the world—one focused on solidarity and reciprocity rather than competition. Emerging market countries (think of India and Brazil) are furious as they assess the competitive landscape and the prospect that their products may face emissions taxes. These policies, they argue, are unfair given the historic emissions from Global North countries. Moreover, a fee on carbon harms local companies, making it harder to invest in decarbonization. Instead, they insist that countries like the U.S. should impose more stringent policies on their own emissions and help pony up the funds to incentivize decarbonization in developing countries. Advertisement This issue was a key sticking point ahead of the United Nations climate conference last year in Azerbaijan; it’s safe to assume that it will come up again at this year’s conference in Brazil. When I asked Andre Correa De Lago, the Brazilian diplomat charged with leading this year’s U.N. talks, about this, he told me he hoped multilateralism could help lead to a breakthrough. “The only way of solving important issues is through cooperation,” he said. And yet we know that the U.S. won’t be participating in the November talks in any meaningful way. At that point, Trump will only be a few short months from completing the U.S. withdrawal from the Paris Agreement. Indeed, the newly fragmented world that Trump is creating could very well splinter climate standards and clean technology supply chains. Companies that want to play in different markets will need to adapt, investing in low-carbon technologies tailored to emerging border requirements. Advertisement It’s hard to know exactly what comes next. But it’s clear that a new trade agenda is afoot—and climate will be a part of it one way or another.

The Trump Administration’s wide-reaching tariffs, announced on April 2, introduced 10% tariffs on all imported goods and additional import taxes for many countries. The tariffs sent global markets plunging and is expected to have a drastic impact on U.S. consumers and industries. Despite President Donald Trump’s claim that tariffs will boost domestic production, experts say that when it comes to clean energy, the tariffs stand to drive up costs for U.S. companies that receive supplies from abroad—and throw the global supply chain into disarray. “For just the batteries and the solar panels and the wind turbines that we want to build in the United States, we're going to need international parts and components and materials for those,” says Bentley Allan, associate professor at Johns Hopkins University and co-director of the Net Zero Industrial Policy Lab. “These are not materials or components that we can just start producing ourselves on the time scales that we need in order to achieve climate goals.” Here are some of the biggest impacts the tariffs stand to have on clean energy industries. Batteries Grid batteries are facing a roughly 65% tariff that could rise to more than 80% by next year—just as the U.S. was expected to see record expansion in adoption in battery storage. In February, the U.S. Energy Information Administration projected that 18.2 GW of utility-scale battery storage would be added to the United State’s energy grid in 2025. Most lithium-ion batteries required for this, however, are imported from China; Chinese lithium-ion battery exports to the U.S. reached an all-time high of $1.9 billion in December 2024. And while battery prices are shifting downwards worldwide due to an oversupply, tariffs are expected to increase the cost in the U.S. Electric Vehicle Manufacturing In recent years, many American car manufacturers have attempted to boost their electric vehicle production after the Biden Administration set a mandate that 50% of all new car sales should be electric by 2030, and many states set their own zero-emission mandates. Trump’s tariffs, on top of other anti-EV moves by the current administration, stand to slow down this progress. The Trump Administration has kept a Biden-era policy that imposed a 100% tariff on Chinese-made EVs—all but banning their sale in the U.S. as they grow in popularity abroad. Even if a car is American made, many of the parts needed are imported from abroad. “Even though we're building our domestic manufacturing capacities as fast as we possibly can, we still are going to need to be importing, especially upstream materials,” says Allan. “Critical minerals, cathode, ingots and wafers, poly silicon, we're going to need to import those supplies, and they all just got more expensive.” Advertisement Solar Power The majority of the U.S.’s solar equipment is shipped from Southeast Asia, a region that has seen among the highest tariff rates imposed. Many U.S. developers have been stockpiling solar panels in anticipation of the tariffs, with Bloomberg reporting that the excess inventory might prevent the industry from feeling the full shock of the tariffs. But still, experts warn that domestic supply might not be able to keep up with demand—especially given that the U.S. supply chain has not been built up to meet it. “Even if we wanted to build an all in United States battery or solar supply chain, it's going to take us a long time to accumulate the expertise and the knowledge necessary in order to do that,” says Allan. “By basically creating a shock in the middle of that process, we're slowing that process down and making it more difficult to complete.” But just as the price of clean energy adoption might be on the rise, so too will the cost of fossil fuels, experts say. “To the extent that we have tariffs from countries from which we depend on for energy inputs, even if we shift towards fossil fuels, we're still going to pay the price of the tariffs through those fossil fuels,” says Antonio Bento, professor of public policy and economics at University of Southern California. Michigan, Minnesota, and New York in particular rely on Canadian energy—now expected to see a price hike with a 10% tariff. Advertisement The tariffs also stand to increase the cost of drilling—despite Trump’s “drill baby drill” mandate. “Just think of steel, aluminum, and other materials that these fossil fuel companies need in large quantities when they're drilling and transporting fuels and processing fuels,” says Michael Mehling, deputy director at MIT Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research. “The inflationary effect of tariffs is far more than just an additional cost stacked on imports. It has spillover effects.”

Wednesday was “liberation day” in the U.S. as President Trump took to the White House Rose Garden to announce tariffs on U.S. allies and competitors alike. Like clockwork, traders sold off stock in markets across the globe, and economists warned that inflation will be higher than anticipated a few months ago. The likelihood of a recession has grown. It would be understandable for a climate concerned person to fear that economic headwinds will be yet another force that slows climate action. Indeed, it’s inevitable that this chaotic moment for markets will push executives to train their eyes on stopping financial bleeding. But that doesn’t mean that businesses will deprioritize or cancel their climate programs. Over the past few years, many firms have transitioned their environmental commitments from long-shot investments or marketing schemes to financially motivated efforts with short-term returns. The economic anxiety ahead poses a crucial test. Has understanding of sustainability’s financial opportunity grown such that companies lean into their climate work, or will executives slip into thinking that climate programs are simply too expensive? The textbook first thing that businesses do in response to economic uncertainty is to protect their balance sheet to hold onto as much money as possible for a rainy day down the road. There was a time when climate programs might have seemed like easy things to cut to save money, but that’s not how things are situated today. In the years following the COVID-19 pandemic, companies very publicly doubled down on measures aimed at addressing climate change and investors poured funds into so-called ESG funds (short for environmental, social and governance). Just as the zero interest rate era fueled bold and often nonsensical investments, so too did the trillions in ESG dollars lead companies to make aggressive environmental commitments that, in some cases, were untethered from financial reality. The last few years have forced companies to get serious. Some have looked under the hood and determined that they, in fact, can’t meet their targets, leading them to backtrack. Others have doubled down with an understanding that sustainability programs can help the bottomline. Every company and every sector is different, but the most obvious value of sustainability initiatives in a moment of economic uncertainty is efficiency. Simply put: efficiency brings down costs—and emissions. The other textbook recession advice to businesses is that well-positioned firms should look for opportunities for strategic investment. Study after study has shown that strategic investment during a recession—while some competitors are cutting wantonly—positions companies to outperform when economic conditions normalize. For forward thinking firms, climate and sustainability is an area ripe for strategic investment. Companies are increasingly facing the real costs of climate change—from facilities hit by extreme weather to supply chain disruptions—which will need to be addressed. And, while the regulatory pressures have faded in the U.S., climate rules remain significant and growing in many of the key geographies around the world, meaning that multinational companies still need to pay attention to sustainability. Advertisement If this all sounds a little too optimistic, it’s worth looking at what happened during the past two economic downturns. In 2011, as the global economy was still recovering from the Great Recession, a widely cited paper from researchers at Harvard Business School found that “high sustainability” firms financially outperformed their “low sustainability” counterparts over the previous 20 years including the recent downturn. Then in 2020, as the world recovered from the COVID-induced recession, trillions flowed into funds that claimed to prioritize ESG. Of course, there is one elephant in the room that makes circumstances slightly different in this case: the economic certainty today is entirely the result of U.S. policy. In this column, I deliberately avoided trying to parse out the specific impacts of Trump’s tariff regime. While there is some good early analysis out there already, it is too soon to tell exactly how the new taxes will reshape the global clean technology supply chain—even if we know that a reshaping is inevitable. Advertisement Amid all of this, the companies that find ways to make climate action financially advantageous may not only weather this storm but emerge positioned for long-term success in a world where both climate impacts and climate solutions continue to reshape markets.

How much will AI drive up power demand in the next few years? That’s been the big question at the center of the energy and climate conversation recently. Many analysts have warned that AI-driven electricity usage is expected to more than double in the next five years as consumers and businesses find varied applications for the technology. But others urge caution: not all data centers in the planning process will ultimately be built and AI could become much more energy efficient than it is today. This is a crucial debate—but the full picture is even more complicated. Even if AI guzzles less energy than the zeitgeist suggests, a wide range of electricity demand drivers lurk just around the corner. A report released earlier this week from the International Energy Agency (IEA) gives a sense of the picture: global electricity demand grew by 4.3% last year due to a range of causes that include not just data centers but also electrification of everything from building heating to cooking, along with more air conditioning thanks to record high temperatures, among other things. “We see one very clear trend: electricity growth,” says Fatih Birol, the IEA’s executive director. Widening the aperture of the conversation around future power demand can help prevent us from fixating on a single technology (however transformative it might be), and avoid the risk of overlooking the complex interplay of factors that will shape our energy future—and the challenges and opportunities that will arise from it. To understand the nature of electricity demand growth, it’s helpful to break it down by geography. And there’s no better place to start than in emerging markets and developing countries. Electricity demand ticked up 7% in China and by more than 4% in other emerging and developing economies; meanwhile, electricity consumption in the European Union grew by about 1.5%, according to the IEA. Some of that growth is the simple product of expanding economies. More wealth means more electricity use. But a significant portion of the rising demand came from high temperatures—particularly heat waves in India and China—that pushed consumers and businesses to crank up air conditioning. Electricity usage also grew in the U.S. by about 2% last year, according to government data. Unsurprisingly, the most significant source of that growth was new data centers, but other factors contributed, too. Federal programs enacted during the Biden Administration, like the Inflation Reduction Act, have helped boost the country’s advanced manufacturing footprint. That means a wave of new facilities drawing electricity in previously unoccupied land or revitalized vacant facilities. Moreover, today’s manufacturing plants rely more on electricity than they would have a generation ago, when they might have onsite power from fossil fuels. Advertisement And then there are electric vehicles. Headlines would have you believe that EVs now face an insurmountable challenge in the U.S. market as people aren’t buying as many as expected. That may be true, but the IEA reports that sales actually continued to grow in the U.S. at greater than a 10% clip. In the coming years, increased EV penetration inevitably means greater power demand. There are a few lessons to draw from this story. For one, if you’re betting on an AI-efficiency breakthrough to save the world from an electricity crunch, you’re missing the bigger picture. Yes, we know a range of developments, like more energy efficient language models, could reduce AI’s future electricity demand, but that won’t address all of the other sources of demand. There are also some positive elements that emerge from this story. Most obviously, the IEA says that 80% of new electricity generation globally last year came from renewable energy or nuclear power. That dynamic means that emissions grew at a slower pace than the economy. “If we want to find the silver lining, we see that there is a continuous decoupling of economic growth from emissions growth,” says Birol. Advertisement That’s small consolation at a time when emissions need to not just slow down but actually decline in order to avoid some of the worst effects of climate change. But I see another opportunity that could emerge from this imminent power crunch: we may be forced to finally confront the full range of solutions available to us. Yes, power companies are eagerly trying to build natural gas to meet demand. But they’re building solar power and battery storage, too. And because neither will be enough, companies have rediscovered the value of nuclear power. In these circumstances, demand-reducing technologies like smart grids and demand response are already taking on newfound importance and companies are incentivized to find more energy efficient ways to run their business. That importance should only grow.

More than 12,000 acres have burned in North and South Carolina as wildfires continue to rage through the states’ western region. The situation has prompted emergency declarations in both states, and mandatory evacuations have been ordered in several counties. The wildfires come as many continue to recover from the devastation caused by Hurricane Helene just six months ago. The category 4 storm killed more than 100 people in North Carolina and over 50 in South Carolina. This week’s blazes were in part fueled by downed timber from the hurricane, coupled with wind and dry conditions. Associa Cares Associa Cares was created to help families and communities in the wake of disasters. The organization aims to provide direct financial relief to those impacted and has already earmarked $100,000 to support individuals and families affected by the recent wildfires across North and South Carolina. American Red Cross The American Red Cross has been providing emergency assistance and disaster relief for over a century. The organization has opened an evacuation shelter in South Carolina and is supporting several shelters in North Carolina. While it says it no longer is in need of supplies to help wildfire survivors, the organization is still accepting monetary donations. World Central Kitchen World Central Kitchen, the nonprofit food relief organization founded by celebrity chef José Andrés, is often on the ground providing meals for victims and first responders of disasters around the world. The organization is currently in North Carolina providing meals for first responders. South Carolina Voluntary Organizations Active in Disaster (SCVOAD) South Carolina Voluntary Organizations Active in Disaster, an offshoot of National Voluntary Organizations Active in Disaster, is an association of groups that help provide services to communities affected by disaster. The South Carolina Emergency Management Division “ways to help” webpage directs individuals to make monetary donations to SCVOAD, and contact them for volunteer opportunities. City of Walhalla Fire Department The city of Walhalla's fire department has posted a list of needed items for the 400 first responders combating fires in South Carolina. The department asks that the requested items, which range from eye drops to safety goggles, are delivered by Friday, March 28.

The U.S. intelligence community published its 2025 annual threat assessment on March 25. Missing from the document was any mention of climate change—marking the first time in over a decade that the topic has not appeared on the list. "What I focused this annual threat assessment on, and the [Intelligence Committee] focused this threat assessment on, are the most extreme and critical direct threats to our national security," Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard said in response to questioning on the removal during a Senate Intelligence Committee. Gabbard said she “didn’t recall” instructing the intelligence community to avoid mentioning climate change in the report. But the change comes amid the Trump Administration’s continued push for a deprioritization of climate change in the federal agenda. The U.S. government has considered climate change a global security threat for at least three decades. Academic reports at the Naval War College included environmental stressors and climate change in the 1980s, says Mark Nevitt, associate professor of law at Emory University. On the federal level, climate change was first acknowledged as a national security threat by President George W. Bush in August 1991, and the U.S. national security community first listed the issue as a threat in 2008. The issue has typically been included on the annual threat assessment list because of its destabilizing impact—both domestically and abroad. “The annual threat assessment is projecting forward about where the areas of concern and the areas of competition [are], and where the U.S. national security sector should be focusing its attention,” says Nevitt. “Because climate change is just destabilizing different parts of the world, through extreme weather, through droughts, through sea level rise…the intelligence community wants to be ready for future conflicts and future areas of competition.” Climate change is often referred to as a “threat multiplier” by the intelligence community, because it aggravates already existing problems, while also creating new ones. “It takes things that we were already worried about, like extremism or terrorism, and exacerbates the scale or nature of those threats,” says Scott Moore, practice professor of political science, with a focus on climate and security, at the University of Pennsylvania. “If you have these intensified climate change impacts, they place stress on things like food systems, and worsen already existing tensions within countries.” Climate migration, for example, is on the rise around the world—more than half of new internal displacements within countries registered in 2023 were caused by weather related disasters, according to the Migration Data Portal. “Mass migration leads to a lot of political and social tensions as well as border issues,” says Karen Seto, professor of geography and urbanization science at the Yale School of the Environment. “That … could affect national security, because it could destabilize an entire region.” One study from the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that extreme weather is contributing to migration into the United States through the southern border—with more migrants from agricultural regions in Mexico settling in the United States following extreme drought. Advertisement Such displacement can have major impacts on people's lives and livelihoods, experts say—especially in already fragile regions. “If you have, for example, a really extreme and intensified drought in a country in which extremist ideologies are percolating, these climate change impacts may make it more likely that people are going to stop farming, or might migrate to cities where they may face difficult employment prospects, be socially dislocated and may be more vulnerable to extremism or engaging in some type of violence,” says Moore. On a domestic level, considering climate change helps the U.S. military ensure that infrastructure is built to withstand extreme weather events—and respond to national disasters both domestically and abroad. “You need the National Guard, the Coast Guard, the U.S. military, to basically help out their community when there's an extreme weather event,” says Nevitt. As extreme weather events intensify with climate change this could strain military resources and put more lives at risk if the military does not prepare to address the threat. Advertisement Infrastructure within the U.S., like energy and internet grids, also need to be fortified. If regions were to lose power in the case of an extreme weather event, the networks could be vulnerable to attack. “Our energy grid is highly at risk, and we've seen wildfires happening across the country, and so these could again be threat multipliers," says Seto. “I think the national security risk is that we are not ready to respond to any threats from foreign agents that may take advantage of the weaknesses that we might have.” Showing that the climate crisis is a priority is also necessary to maintain the United States’s diplomatic strength—especially in regions that see climate change as a top concern. “Other countries, in particular countries that are very significant for the U.S. defense posture, like the Pacific Island countries, really care about climate change a lot. They want to hear what the United States is willing to do to help them deal with climate change,” says Moore. “And so when you have the instructions to essentially ignore climate change, or in an extreme version almost censor mention of climate change, that's going to have a harmful effect on diplomatic engagement with some pretty important countries.” Advertisement And experts say that removing climate change from the list—and deprioritizing the issue writ large—is only going to leave the U.S. more vulnerable. “This is going to make the administration and national security sector less nimble, because they might not have the people, the plans, the policy, [and] capacity in place when disaster inevitably strikes,” warns Nevitt. “You can't just wish climate change away.”

Each year TIME honors individuals whose actions have had an indelible impact on global efforts to address one of the most pressing crises facing our planet: climate change. This year marks TIME’s third annual Earth Awards, and the stakes couldn’t be higher. In 2024, the planet breached 1.5°C of warming above pre-industrial temperatures, an ominous milestone—and a reminder of the urgency with which the world must tackle this challenge. And although climate action faces headwinds from the rising tide of populist politics around the world, this year’s group of honorees remain steadfast in championing sustainability and shaping a greener future. There is the Environmental justice leader Catherine Coleman Flowers, who has a legacy of advocating for marginalized communities, particularly Black and rural families affected by untreated sewage. She has gone on to work with Democrats and Republicans alike in an effort to bring about lasting change. Alongside, we honor Jay Inslee, the Governor of Washington from 2013 to 2025, and a leader in local climate action. As co-founder of the U.S. Climate Alliance he has brought together two dozen states to drive progress towards a clean economy. There is former New York Mayor and U.N. Special Envoy Michael Bloomberg, who is steadfastly dedicated to supporting innovative solutions. In January, when President Donald Trump announced the U.S. would withdraw from the Paris Agreement, Bloomberg Philanthropies stepped up to coordinate an effort to continue funding the nation’s climate goals. In Ghana, chef Selassie Atadika, the founder of Midunu—an experiential restaurant that highlights the region’s culinary heritage—and Midunu Chocolates, uses her food to advocate for sustainable agriculture and showcase the power of the African kitchen. In 2024 she was announced as Yale's inaugural Global Table Fellow in an effort to highlight the connection between sustainability, health, and culture. Back in the U.S., Former Tennessee Republican Senator Bill Frist is calling for climate change to be recognized as a public health crisis. He serves as the global chair of The Nature Conservancy which last year launched the Senator Bill and Tracy Frist Initiative for Planetary Health. And actor Rainn Wilson is on a mission to better communicate the urgency of the climate crisis. With that goal in mind, in 2022 he co-founded Climate Basecamp, an organization that brings scientists and trendsetters together to make talking about the reality of climate change more accessible.