We’re six weeks into the wildest presidential administration certainly of my lifetime and likely in modern U.S. history. From day one, energy has been a top theme. And, yet, the new Trump Administration hasn’t been the primary focus of my writing. There are several reasons for that. For one, I think it’s important to highlight that things are happening in spite of Trump. The global picture, while complicated, is far more promising than the domestic one. And, in the private sector, many companies are continuing their decarbonization initiatives. Advertisement 00:09 03:00 Read More But there’s perhaps another more fundamental reason: it’s really hard to speak definitively about what’s happening in Washington and what the implications will be for the future of climate. President Trump entered office with bold declarations. Many of those statements and policy moves will have concrete, devastating consequences for climate efforts; others are exaggerated or even meaningless. On the heels of his address to Congress this week, where he once again declared energy a top priority, I figured it’s the right time to take a first stab at identifying the signal in the noise. A month and a half into Trump’s second term, there is no question that this administration will dramatically set back efforts to decarbonize the global economy, but dire warnings that clean energy is over and fossil fuels now reign supreme overstate reality. Politics and policy shape energy markets, but they do not control them. To dismiss the energy transition because Trump does would be to make a severe miscalculation. One of the biggest gaps between rhetoric and reality comes with Trump’s “drill baby drill” promise. Trump has promised to expand the country’s oil and gas production with an eye to economic growth and lower prices. To do that, he’s said the federal government will open wide swathes of land to drilling and promised to expedite approvals for fossil fuel infrastructure. There are a few key challenges to such a vision. Most importantly, even as Trump puts his finger on the scale, the market and simple economic questions will determine the appetite for new oil and gas drilling. In recent years, companies have been reluctant to make big, risky investments in new drilling, and it’s hard to imagine what Trump could do to change that. A core piece of his fossil agenda is his day one executive order declaring what he calls an “energy emergency.” The order promises to accelerate federal approvals for energy projects across the country—excluding wind and solar. But many questions remain. For one, the order is likely to be litigated at every turn in its implementation. “There are obstacles built into the system that only Congress can really remove,” said Michael Catanzaro, who served as an energy and environmental policy advisor at the first Trump White House and is now CEO of public affairs firm CGCN Group, at a Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) discussion I moderated this week. Advertisement And many analysts have said that whatever authorities are ultimately activated are likely to be used to improve the country’s electric grid and accelerate transmission—something that’s actually helpful for the energy transition because renewable energy is often located in remote places requiring long-distance wires to get to the grid. Let’s be clear. While some of Trump’s claims are often overstated or murky, there are other moves that will represent decisive setbacks to climate and clean energy efforts. The offshore wind sector comes to mind. That’s not only because Trump has a particular hatred for the electricity source but also because in general offshore wind farms require a greater number of and more complex federal permits than those needed for many other renewable energy projects. Attacks on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) threaten to undermine critical weather and climate data that companies use to make essential business decisions. Efforts to address environmental justice have been wrapped together with the much-maligned DEI, and it’s safe to say that such issues are no longer a concern of the federal government. And the administration is reportedly planning to target the Environmental Protection Agency’s “endangerment finding,” a scientific document that provides the legal basis for the agency to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. If Trump succeeds in nixing it, the move would eliminate the foundation of much of the U.S. regulatory regime around climate change. And, of course, a big test will come with the fate of the clean energy tax incentives in the Inflation Reduction Act. The list could go on and on. Advertisement So how do all of these variables shake out for the U.S. emissions trajectory? At this stage, it’s hard to know. A climate modeler faces the same challenges I do when trying to paint an accurate picture, only multiplied. But the truth is that factors outside of Washington are likely to play a significant role shaping the near-term future of U.S. emissions, most importantly the country’s rapidly growing electricity demand that is coming in large part as a result of data center expansion. Developers of these projects are racing to get electricity—often zero-emission but increasingly gas powered because it’s easier to get. “We are going to see a continuation across the board in the development of energy,” former Energy Secretary Ernie Moniz said at an American Council on Renewable Energy event last week. “It's a reality that most of the new capacity added has been renewables, second natural gas. I don’t see how that’s going to change.” Advertisement And then there are the knock-on effects around the rest of the world. Trump’s moves will inevitably inspire other like-minded countries to do the same. “There are lots of changes taking place, hard to keep up for everyone,” says Alice Hill, senior fellow for energy and the environment at CFR. “But I think it's clear that the world, as a result of President Trump's [decisions], is taking a step back on cutting its emissions.” We’ve already seen pullback in places like Argentina and Indonesia. But there’s another way to think about the implications of Trump’s rollbacks in a global context. The U.S. represents about 12% of global emissions—the second highest share after China. That’s significant, but the U.S. is just a small piece of the puzzle. Whether other countries can find a way to put the puzzle together without the U.S. is another question entirely.

You could be forgiven for not noticing that last month was the planet's third warmest February on record. That’s because local temperatures plunged during the third week of February 2025, shattering records across the plains, the Gulf of Mexico, and the East Coast. Baker, Mont., saw a low of -22°F, its coldest day since 2009. Bismarck, N.D., fell to -39°F, six degrees from its all-time coldest day. The cause of the week-long deep freeze? A polar vortex collapse. Now, meteorologists are calling for another collapse in the middle of March, one that could plunge the U.S., Canada, and parts of Europe into a bitterly cold spell just days before the official arrival of spring. So what is a polar vortex collapse and why does it affect weather so dramatically? As the National Weather Service explains, the polar vortex is an area of low pressure and cold air that exists over both of Earth’s poles 10 to 30 miles above the surface. The term vortex is used to indicate that the air flows in a counterclockwise direction. Both polar vortexes are present year-round, but they weaken in the summer and strengthen in the winter, governed by rising and falling seasonal temperatures. South of the Arctic’s polar vortex is the jet stream, a river of west to east air that flows five to nine miles above ground, and helps keep the pole’s cold air confined to the Arctic. When the vortex weakens—which it does on occasion—the jet stream becomes wavy, bulging south and allowing Arctic air to flow down across North America and Eurasia, causing temperatures to plummet across the affected areas. More dramatic than a weakened vortex is a collapsing vortex. That occurs when a layer of Arctic air 10 to 30 miles above the surface warms by 50°F or more over a period of just two days, a phenomenon known as a sudden stratospheric warming (SSW). The SSW more powerfully weakens the polar vortex, slowing the spin that keeps frigid air at home in the Arctic and allowing it to spill southward. An SSW led to the bitter, snowy conditions in February, and weather models predict that another one is already forming and could result in a collapse as early as next week and as late as early April. Whether climate change is playing a role in the twin collapses—with increasing global temperatures leading to rising stratospheric temperatures—is unclear. Meteorological records of stratospheric temperatures reach back only to the 1950s, making for a spotty dataset. How long the coming collapse will last is uncertain, depending entirely on how strong and enduring the SSW is. The atmospheric warming may cause the vortex to become stretched or displaced off of its pole-centric position. But on occasion it can cause the vortex to split entirely in two. That, meteorologists warn, could lead to a cold spell that lasts weeks. “The polar vortex has been particularly strong and stable the past few weeks. That has kept the coldest of Arctic air largely confined to the North Pole,” says Mike Bettes, meteorologist with the Weather Channel. “Longer range models indicate there may be a rapid weakening of the polar vortex beginning in mid-March. Because there is typically a lag in how the near-surface atmosphere responds to the polar vortex, this would mean unusually cold temperatures affecting parts of North America and Eurasia at the end of March and beginning of April.”

Since taking office, President Donald Trump has been implementing a slew of actions and executive orders that stand to have wide-reaching impacts on climate policies. During Trump’s first term, the administration put climate on the back burner—rolling back more than 125 environmental rules and policies. When former-President Joe Biden took office, he led the U.S. forward on climate action, signing the Inflation Reduction Act, the largest federal climate change investment in American history. Now, the Trump administration stands to dismantle much of the momentum it has inherited—curbing progress to reduce fossil fuel emissions, the largest contributor to climate change, just as the world surpassed 1.5°C of warming in 2024—the hottest year on record. Columbia University’s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law’s “Climate Backtracker,” has logged nearly 100 efforts to scale back or eliminate federal climate mitigation and adaptation measures since the administration took office at the end of January—ranging from boosting fossil-fuel production to withdrawing the U.S. from the Paris Climate Accords. Here are some of the major ways the Trump Administration is undoing climate action. Fast-Tracking Deep-Sea Mining On April 24, the Trump Administration moved forward with an executive order aimed at boosting the highly controversial practice of deep-sea mining. The order side-steps ongoing international efforts to regulate the practice, and would allow companies to approve licenses in the high seas, an area typically overseen by an intergovernmental agency, the International Seabed Agency (ISA). The U.S. never signed a U.N. treaty, overseen by the ISA, that governs the seabed, though has in the past respected it. There are currently no approved commercial-scale deep-sea mining projects anywhere in the world, and many countries have called for a moratorium until the environmental impact is better understood. Blocking State Climate Laws In addition to rolling back federal climate action, the Trump Administration has taken action to block the enforcement of state level climate measures. In an April 8 Executive Order, the White House directed the Attorney General to identify all state and local laws on addressing climate change, ESG initiatives (short for environmental, social, and governance), environmental justice, and carbon emissions—and make moves to block them. Many state leaders have reaffirmed their commitment to addressing climate change in the wake of the Trump Administration’s regressions. New York governor Kathy Hochul and New Mexico governor Michelle Lujan Grisham, who co-chair the U.S. Climate Alliance, have said they will not be deterred. "We will keep advancing solutions to the climate crisis that safeguard Americans' fundamental right to clean air and water, create good-paying jobs, grow the clean energy economy, and make our future healthier and safer,” they said in a joint statement. Ramping up Oil and Gas Production On Feb. 14, Trump signed an executive order to create a new “National Energy Dominance Council,” aimed at increasing the country’s oil and gas production. Trump’s “drill, baby, drill” approach is meant to lower energy prices and increase supply of fossil fuels. The country’s oil and gas production, however, already reached record highs under the Biden administration, according to the Center for American Progress. And some experts have warned the moves may actually harm some refineries and raise gas prices. In response to Trump’s declaration of a national energy emergency, the Department of Interior said on April 23 that it would implement emergency permitting processes to accelerate approval times for energy and mining projects on federal lands. EPA Deregulation On March 12, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lee Zeldin announced 31 actions aimed at rolling back a number of significant environmental regulations, in what the agency called "the most consequential day of deregulation in U.S. history." The list of targets includes reconsidering restrictions on carbon dioxide emissions from power plants, rolling back vehicle emission standards meant to accelerate a transition to EVs, and pushing to challenge a 2009 finding that greenhouse gasses like carbon dioxide and methane are a threat to public health. In a video announcing the actions, Zeldin refashioned the goals of the EPA, saying the agency’s actions would help lower costs and make purchasing cars or heating homes more affordable to Americans. “Today the green new scam ends as the EPA does its part to usher in the golden age of American success,” he said. More Logging in National Forests On March 1, the President signed an executive order to increase timber production across 280 acres of national forests and federal land. In the executive order, Trump said that “heavy-handed Federal policies” have “prevented full utilization” of the country’s timber resources. The move appeared to be an attempt to boost domestic production ahead of imposing tariffs on foreign countries. (In 2023, the U.S. was the largest importer of wood products in the world, importing $24.8 billion worth from Canada, China, Brazil, and others.) Logging drastically impacts a region’s biodiversity—causing wildlife to lose their habitat and food sources and produces harmful greenhouse gas emissions. The order also directed federal agencies to look for ways to bypass endangered species protections and other environmental regulations, putting the fate of many of the nation’s long protected ecosystems at risk. NOAA Staff Cuts More than 600 workers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, were laid off on Feb. 27 as part of the Trump Administration’s efforts to cull the federal workforce. The move stands to have profound impacts on the country’s ability to protect public safety during extreme weather events that are only increasing in frequency as the planet warms. NOAA is a vital data resource on everything from hurricanes to drought, which weather forecasters, local authorities, farmers, and others around the country rely on. The agency’s weather alerts are also an essential warning system allowing communities to protect themselves from extreme weather. Last year, NOAA recorded 27 weather and climate disasters with at least $1 billion in damages, the second highest number since the agency began tracking the numbers in 1980. In mid-March, NOAA announced it would lay off an additional 1,000 workers or more, less than a month after its first round of cuts as part of the Trump Administration’s efforts to cull the federal workforce. Withdrawing From Paris Accords One of the administration’s first moves on the first day of Trump’s presidency, was to begin the process of withdrawing the United States from the Paris Agreement. The pact, which was signed by nearly 200 countries in 2015, aimed to curb long-term global warming to 2.7°F (2°C) above pre-industrial levels or keep temperatures below 3.6°F (1.5°C) above pre-industrial levels. The move did not come as a surprise—during his first administration, Trump also withdrew the U.S. from the agreement, though Biden rejoined upon taking office. “In recent years, the United States has purported to join international agreements and initiatives that do not reflect our country’s values or our contributions to the pursuit of economic and environmental objectives,” President Trump said in an executive order. “Moreover, these agreements steer American taxpayer dollars to countries that do not require, or merit, financial assistance in the interests of the American people.” The move weakens the U.S. position and reliability when it comes to international climate negotiations. In a November interview with the Guardian, U.N. Secretary General António Guterres likened a potential U.S. withdrawal to losing a limb or organ. “The Paris Agreement can survive, but people sometimes can lose important organs or lose the legs and survive. But we don’t want a crippled Paris Agreement. We want a real Paris Agreement,” he said. In early March, the U.S. also withdrew from the International Partners Group, an agreement which had rich countries allocate money to the green energy transition in South Africa, Indonesia, Vietnam, and Senegal, as well as the board of the Loss and Damage Fund, which is dedicated to helping developing countries weather climate disasters. Evaluating FEMA The president signed an executive order on Jan. 24 calling for an assessment of the effectiveness of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), the nation’s main arm for disaster recovery. While visiting Hurricane Helene victims in North Carolina on Jan. 24, he proposed “getting rid” of FEMA, a move that could impact the country’s ability to recover from extreme weather events that are becoming more intense and frequent due to climate change. The appointed council, which will include the Secretary of Homeland Security and the Secretary of Defense, will have one year to evaluate “the existing ability of FEMA to capably and impartially address disasters occurring within the United States.” The Trump Administration and its newly created Department of Governmental Efficiency (DOGE) proposed sweeping cuts to many federal agencies, including the EPA. At the beginning of February, the agency told more than 1,000 “probationary” employees, those who had been working for the agency for less than a year, that they could be fired immediately, according to NBC News. The agency has since “terminated” nearly 400 employees, according to The Hill. The reduction of staff could impact the organization's speed and ability to respond to crises—like tackling environmental health risks or implementing regulations. Banning Paper Straws Trump signed an executive order on Feb. 10 ending the use of paper straws by the federal government, calling them “nonfunctional” and urging the Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy and “relevant agencies” to “issue a national strategy to end the use of paper straws” within 45 days. The move, while considered largely symbolic, undoes part of a Biden Administration initiative aimed at phasing out the use of single-use plastics, such as plastic straws and water bottles, from all federal operations by 2035. Pausing Electric Vehicle Adoption In 2021, the Biden Administration set a goal to have EVs make up half of all new cars sold by 2030, a move which President Trump revoked upon returning to power. The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) also released a memo on Feb. 6 saying that the Department of Transportation was reviewing the implementation of the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) Formula Program. The move froze roughly $3 billion dollars in funding that was allocated to expand the network of electric vehicle charging stations across the country, according to Atlas Public Policy. According to the most recent EPA data, in 2022 transportation was the largest source (28%) of emissions in the U.S. Decarbonizing this sector would go a long way to reducing the country’s carbon footprint.

Extinction is typically for good. Once a species winks out, it survives only in memory and the fossil record. When it comes to the woolly mammoth, however, that rule has now been bent. It’s been 4,000 years since the eight-ton, 12-foot, elephant-like beast walked the Earth, but part of its DNA now operates inside several litters of four-inch, half-ounce mice created by scientists at the Dallas-based Colossal Laboratories and Biosciences. The mice don’t have their characteristic short, gray-brown coat, but rather the long, wavy, woolly hair of the mammoth and the extinct beast’s accelerated fat metabolism, which helped it survive Earth’s last ice age. Both traits are the result of sophisticated gene editing that Colossal’s scientists hope will result in the reappearance of the mammoth itself as early as 2028. “The Colossal woolly mouse marks a watershed moment in our de-extinction mission,” said company CEO Ben Lamm in a statement. "By engineering multiple cold-tolerant traits from mammoth evolutionary pathways into a living model species, we've proven our ability to recreate complex genetic combinations that took nature millions of years to create." Colossal has been working on restoring the mammoth ever since the company’s founding in 2021. The animal’s relatively recent extinction—just a few thousand years ago as opposed to the tens of millions that mark the end of the reign of the dinosaurs—and the fact that it roamed the far north, including the Arctic, means that its DNA has been preserved in multiple remains embedded in permafrost. For its de-extinction project, Colossal collected the genomes of nearly 60 of those recovered mammoths. Recreating the species from that raw biological material is relatively straightforward in principle, if exceedingly painstaking in practice. The work involves pinpointing the genes responsible for the traits that separate the mammoth from the Asian elephant—its close evolutionary relation—editing an elephant stem cell to express those traits, and introducing the stem cell into an elephant embryo. In the alternative, scientists could edit a newly conceived Asian elephant zygote directly. Either way, the next step would be to implant the resulting embryo into the womb of a modern-day female elephant. After 22 months—the typical elephant gestation period—an ice age mammoth should, at least theoretically, be born into the computer-age world. Advertisement But speedbumps abound. The business of rewriting the genome takes extensive experimentation with hundreds of embryos to ensure that the key genes are properly edited. The only way to test if they indeed are is to follow the embryos through gestation and see if a viable mammoth pops out; the nearly two years it would take for even a single experimental animal to be born, however, would make that process impractical. What’s more, Asian elephants are highly social, highly intelligent, and endangered, raising intractable ethical obstacles to experimenting on them. Enter the mouse, an animal whose genome lends itself to easy manipulation with CRISPR—a gene-editing tool developed in 2012, based on a natural process bacteria use to defend themselves in the wild. What’s more, mice need only 20 days to gestate, making for a quick turnaround from embryo to mouse pup. In the current experiment, researchers identified seven genes that code for the mammoth’s shaggy coat—identifying distinct ones that make it coarse, curly, and long. They also pinpointed one gene that guides the production of melanin—which gives the coat its distinctive gold color—and another that governs the animal’s prodigious lipid metabolism. Relying on CRISPR, they then took both the stem cell and zygote approach to rewriting the mouse’s stem cell to express those traits. The next steps involved more than a little hit and miss. Advertisement Over the course of five rounds of experiments, the Colossal scientists produced nearly 250 embryos. Fewer than half of them developed to larger, more-viable 200- to 300-cell embryos, which were then implanted in the womb of around a dozen surrogate females. Of these, 38 mouse pups were born. All of them successfully expressed the gold, woolly hair of the mammoth as well as its accelerated lipid metabolism. The Colossal scientists see the creature they’ve produced as a critical development. "The woolly mouse project doesn't bring us any closer to a mammoth, but it does validate the work we are doing on the path to a mammoth,” Lamm tells TIME. “[It] proves our end-to-end pipeline for de-extinction. We started this project in September and we had our first mice in October so that shows this works—and it works efficiently.” There’s plenty still to accomplish. A mammoth is much more than its fur and its fat, and before one can lumber into the twenty-first century, the scientists will have to engineer dozens of other genes, including those that regulate its vasculature, its cold-resistant metabolism, and the precise distribution of its fat layers around its body. They would then have to test that work in more mouse models, and only if they succeed there try the same technique on an elephant. Advertisement "The list of genes will continue to evolve,” says Lamm. “We initially had about 65 gene targets and expanded up to 85. That number could go up or down with further analysis, but that's the general ballpark for the number of genes we think we will edit for our initial mammoths.” Colossal scientists see all of this work as just a first step in developing a more widely applicable de-extinction technology. In addition to the mammoth, they would also like to bring back the dodo and the thylacine—or Tasmanian tiger. “Our three flagship species for de-extinction—mammoth, thylacine, and dodo—capture much of the diversity of the animal tree of life,” says Beth Shapiro, Colossal’s chief science officer. “Success with each requires solving a different suite of technical, ethical, and ecological challenges.” Advertisement The work can’t start soon enough. The company points to studies suggesting that by 2050 up to 50% of the Earth’s species could have been wiped out, most of them lost to the planet’s rapidly changing climate. The Center for Biological Diversity puts the figure at a somewhat less alarming 35%, but in either case, the widespread dying could lead to land degradation, loss of diversity, the rise of invasive species, and food insecurity for humanity. Arresting climate change and the loss of species that will result is a critical step away from that brink, but one that policymakers and the public are embracing only slowly. Restoring the species that will vanish—or fortifying the genetic heartiness of those that are endangered to help them adapt to a changing world—is one more insurance policy against environmental decline. “We do not argue that gene editing should be used instead of traditional approaches to conservation, but that this is a ‘both and’ situation,” says Shapiro. “We should be increasing the tools at our disposal to help species survive.”

It does not take long at lunch with Andrew Forrest for him to start seeming less like an Australian mining billionaire and more like a climate activist–meets–zealous prosecutor. His rugged features quickly appear not to reflect the arid expanse of Western Australia’s Pilbara region, home to the core operations of his $38 billion Fortescue iron-ore business. Rather, they appear the result of a succession of high-stakes court battles. When we meet at a luxurious Paris brasserie, he speaks passionately about a client that he’s been representing for several years: the planet. His case? Corporate bosses must act now—and act fast—to tackle climate change, an argument he delivers with force and the unrivaled credibility that comes from decades in the carbon-spewing industry. Then, his soup turning cold, he grabs me by my lapels and rattles off the facts as he sees them: fossil-fuel industry executives are “culprits,” doing all they can to resist a transition to a cleaner economy. In other heavy industries, bosses have been “lazy” and shortsighted, focused on quarterly returns while the world burns. It’s time for businesses to stop talking about long-term targets, he tells me, and completely ditch fossil fuels in the coming years rather than in the coming decades. “If you think you can’t go green, then you’re right,” he says of his industry colleagues. “It’s time for you to get off the stage and learn from someone with more talent, more conviction, or initiative than you who can lead your company.” Critically, this isn’t simply talk. At Fortescue, the mining behemoth he founded in 2003, Forrest has begun just such a transformation: he’s building renewable-energy projects, purchasing a fleet of electric mining trucks, and trying to catapult green hydrogen to market. “It’s about character. It’s about leadership,” he says. Central to Forrest’s pitch is a cutting dismissal of the corporate fixation on quarterly returns. His preferred yardstick is the medium term—a long enough time period to make meaningful change but soon enough so that he will actually be around to judge the results. Fortescue’s $6 billion green investment, for example, is meant to transform his company into an environmentally friendly powerhouse by 2030. “We’re taking long-term bets, which accrete value on the way,” he says. “I make it sound simple, but it is actually pretty simple.” And then, just as quickly as he had begun, our lunch still unfinished, he stops himself almost midthought: “Is this enough to start?” With his opening argument delivered and a slap on the back, he’s gone in a flash—off to his plane, which was waiting to whisk him to Munich for an engagement with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. That was last February. In the year since, I’ve watched Forrest take his argument global, traveling with him to Las Vegas, where he announced a $3 billion investment in electric mining trucks, and catching him at conferences in New York and Switzerland where he cajoled other executives to come aboard his climate quest. The image that emerged is of a rare private-sector voice literate in both climate science and financial markets—and one willing to make the business case for climate to any audience. "If we want to solve the climate crisis, we need more leaders in business to act with the same dogged determination and sense of purpose as Andrew," says Al Gore, the former U.S. vice president who won a Nobel Peace Prize for his climate work. The biggest challenge for Forrest isn’t one of technical feasibility. If all goes according to plan, actually decarbonizing Fortescue will be the easy part. To succeed, he must convince investors, employees, and, perhaps most importantly, other CEOs that going green is worth the risks—financial, reputational, and otherwise. The task couldn’t come at a more important time. A wave of populist sentiment has led political leaders to take a step back on climate action even as the effects of a warming planet become ever more apparent—and grow ever more dire. It is a complex needle to thread: companies can act on their own, of course, but to do so they need to be sure they will make money. If he succeeds, Forrest and his project to transform Fortescue, where he serves as chairman, would become more than a forceful case for saving the planet—they would become a powerful case study for generating financial dividends by decarbonizing. Failure, on the other hand, would discourage other business leaders already nervous about the current political climate. “The dangerous part about what we’re doing is that if we’re not successful, the inspiration for thousands of other companies won’t be there,” he says. “And if we lose money on this in the long term, people say, well, that’s philanthropy.” Forrest’s tale begins with a warning: “It’s not a pretty story.” We’re sitting at the dining table of his company jet en route to Las Vegas from New York last September, and I’ve just asked him to recount the story of how he became a climate advocate. Between bites of chicken wings, he rewinds the clock to 2016. He was hiking in a remote part of Australia known as the Kimberley when he fell off a cliff into a gorge. In gory detail, he described how his leg was reversed, stuck pointing in the opposite direction, when someone pulled him out of the water. He survived, but it would take years to recover. Forced to take a break from his hectic day-to-day CEO life, he decided to pursue a Ph.D. in marine ecology. That opened his eyes to the alarming realities of how climate change is harming the oceans: the acidification that is killing marine ecosystems and the looming risk that oceans will not continue absorbing carbon at the same rates, meaning faster growth of carbon in the atmosphere. He says that the deeper understanding steered him to “do everything we can to stop global warming.” It was, in short, a sort of Damascene conversion, transforming a mining industry veteran into a climate campaigner. Since then it’s been a whirlwind. The Minderoo Foundation, founded in 2001 and co-led by Forrest and his wife from whom he is separated, has come to fund everything from efforts to address lethal humidity to climate migration. And he has committed deeply to the cause of protecting the oceans. While many of his billionaire counterparts buy yachts to party, Forrest bought one and turned it into a research vessel for ocean scientists. M. Sanjayan, the CEO of Conservation International, talked to Forrest as he fundraised for a new initiative aimed at protecting 5% of the world’s oceans. In their phone conversation, Forrest realized that he was soon going to fly over Sanjayan’s office in Washington, D.C., so he directed the plane to land. A few hours later they had dinner near the airport, and Forrest became a top contributor to the $125 million initiative. “He’s just larger than life,” says Sanjayan, reflecting on that first meeting. Forrest’s biggest climate initiative, though, is what he’s doing with his own company. Under the mantra of Real Zero, a play on the increasingly controversial phrase net zero, Forrest has said his company will ditch fossil fuels in its land-based operations entirely by 2030. To make it happen, in 2022 the company launched a $6.2 billion capital investment plan to decarbonize its primary mining operations in Australia’s Pilbara region. That money has funded everything from efficiency to renewable energy generation. When we arrived in Vegas, I saw the unveiling of the effort’s crown jewel. Shortly after entering the Las Vegas convention center, the exhibition area turned dark. Triumphant music blared as drummers and dancers performed. The curtain dropped to reveal a massive electric mining truck capable of hauling 240 metric tons of material. In Forrest’s phrasing, his plane could fit inside the truck’s bed. It wasn’t hyperbole: even at my height of 6 ft. 3 in., I had to look up to see the top of one of the truck’s tires. Forrest said Fortescue, which partnered with a Swiss manufacturer called Liebherr to develop the trucks, had already placed an order for 360 vehicles. The deal, valued at nearly $3 billion, sent shock waves across the industry. “It’s metamorphic for Fortescue, and it’s a turning point for the world mining industry,” Forrest tells me. “Shareholders are going to say this company’s going green and saving us money.” The cost savings switching from diesel fuel to electric mobility is expected to total in the hundreds of millions of dollars annually. The work has garnered the praise of big wigs in the climate community. In New York, I watched as Forrest traded compliments with leading climate scientists; in Davos, I sat in as he convened the likes of Gore and former U.S. climate envoy John Kerry. “This guy is willing to make really big bets, and sometimes they pay off, and probably more often than not, they pay off,” says Sanjayan. “I’m glad he’s making it on something that could be transformative for the planet.” Yet many remain skeptical—and it’s easy to understand why. Mining is one of the dirtiest industries, contributing upwards of 5% of global carbon emissions. And then there are the local effects, including air pollution that harms nearby communities and concerns about land-use rights given mining often happens on Indigenous land. Forrest’s penchant for spectacle and disarming warmth can be helpful in making the climate case—but it has also raised some eyebrows in the wider environmental community. He’s the type of person who will greet you cheerfully, no matter who you are. In January, at the World Economic Forum annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, a right-wing provocateur chased him down to press him for an interview. Forrest gracefully put his arm around him and disarmed him, saying, “Get rid of that mic, and I’ll talk to you. I quite like what you’re doing.” He jumps on Fox News, keen to make his case even to the most incredulous of audiences. When we arrived in Vegas, Gene Simmons, the rock star and KISS front man, was there to greet him. From Vegas, Simmons joined Forrest on some TV hits to Australia. At the 2023 U.N. climate conference in Dubai, where companies rented out hotel ballrooms and event spaces to promote their climate programs, Forrest brought Fortescue’s 246-ft. ammonia-powered ship to the harbor and invited dignitaries on board for cocktails. Indeed, the man is so amiable, so good at making a splash, that it forces you to pause and ask, “What’s the catch?” When Forrest wanted to endorse an organization pushing for a “fossil-fuel nonproliferation treaty,” the organization’s leaders were unsure how the backing of a mining boss would be received. So they commissioned a study of Fortescue’s climate and environmental practices, assessing its plans and performance against 63 criteria, including its impact to local communities, laid out by the U.N. The report found the company to be exceptional, with quibbles so minor that explaining them here would require a crash course in the dense lexicon of climate reporting. “He’s the real deal,” says Tzeporah Berman, who runs the treaty initiative. If you follow Forrest around long enough, you’ll notice he returns to some of the same arguments and language. In settings with other business leaders, he likes to cite his company’s financial returns. “For those who don’t know me, my name is Andrew Forrest,” he said at a September climate forum. “I founded a company which has Australia’s highest shareholder return in history.” For climate advocates, Forrest citing his mining company’s financial performance might sound a bit crass coming from a billionaire who hops around the world on a private plane. But the message is a critical one: Forrest’s financial credentials signal credibility to the private sector. And it is precisely what makes Forrest so unique among his peers. Not only does he articulate a financial case for decarbonizing an industrial company, but he also emphasizes it will happen in the next five years. That’s not a goal, he says, but a hard deadline. He has told facilities managers that if they haven’t figured out how to ditch fossil fuels on-site by 2030, he will shut down their plants. And he has parted ways with many senior executives who paid lip service to his climate ambition but didn’t feel committed to executing it. “We had people that said they were for going green,” he tells me, “but actually thought it was the dumbest idea ever.” Let’s just be clear here. The 2030 deadline puts Fortescue in a class of its own. Apart from big technology firms (which are easier to decarbonize), large industrial companies that have engaged in the climate conversation have set mid-century targets. And it’s assumed these targets will be met with some reliance on offsets, where companies pay others to cut emissions rather than doing it themselves. Fortescue will not use offsets, Forrest says. And when I ask him what Fortescue will look like in 20 years, he rejects the question out of hand. “Twenty years, it’s really someone else’s problem,” he says, so brusquely that he later apologetically acknowledges his harsh tone. Making such a bold commitment to climate at a publicly traded company requires a bullish financial case, and there are several components to his argument. For his electrification drive—think of the mining trucks or mining-site operations—the promise is savings as the up-front cost reduces fuel usage over the long term. It also brings with it a knock-on financial benefit: creating “green iron ore” and “green steel” will give Fortescue a leg up selling its product, as its customers look to decarbonize their own products. And doing the legwork now in developing this technology will create a new revenue stream for the company as it sells it to others. The most significant of those technologies is green hydrogen, a fuel created by splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen using an electric current powered by renewable energy; this green fuel can replace fossil fuels in heavy industry and transportation. The company is spending hundreds of millions of dollars a year to build out green-hydrogen production facilities in Australia, the U.S., Norway, and Brazil. More than any of his other green ambitions, its Fortescue’s hydrogen goals that attract the most attention of investors. Over the past five years, the hydrogen sector has been on a rollercoaster ride as companies committed billions to mega projects designed to bring green hydrogen to market. But a series of hiccups—from a lack of infrastructure to support it to policy challenges—have led companies to rethink their investments. Fortescue is not immune. Last year, the company laid off 700 workers as it downscaled its hydrogen ambitions. Many climate activists interpreted the hydrogen pullback as evidence that Forrest lacks sincerity. And yet, for better or worse, there is perhaps no better way to convince the financial community of a commitment to delivering a return than layoffs and reorganization. So how does the market assess Fortescue’s climate goals? In finance lingo, Fortescue has a price-to-earnings ratio similar to, if slightly below, those of its mining peers. That’s a standard metric that financial analysts use as a shorthand to assess the growth prospects of a publicly listed business. Fortescue does a little better than its peers on the price-to-net-asset-value ratio, a key mining-industry metric because it shows how much investors are valuing the core assets of a company, in this case mines. But there’s little to show that the company’s climate commitment is responsible for its financial performance. On earnings calls, analysts probe Fortescue executives about various green initiatives, but the traders whose actions determine the stock price are more concerned that they will make a profit in the short term. “The main thing driving share prices of mining stocks at the moment is their payouts,” says James Whiteside, head of corporate, metals and mining at Woods Mackenzie. And therein lies what is perhaps Forrest’s biggest challenge—more than the state of the hydrogen business, more than the staff turnover. To persuade executives to spend billions on bold bets to take their companies green, they will want to know that their valuations will be rewarded. And, right now, the market seems unsure, to put it mildly. You might even say it seems uninterested. When I last caught up with Forrest in January, the global mood around climate had shifted dramatically since we first met a year prior. Donald Trump was back in the White House, and the private-sector enthusiasm around all things climate—already tapering last year—had become even more muted. Driving down the promenade in Davos, Forrest betrayed some frustration with his counterparts who have used the zeitgeist shift as cover to change course. At many firms, climate and ESG—short for environment, social, and governance—strategies were being rebranded using more palatable terms like resilience or energy security, even as the core of the work continues. At others, those commitments have been walked back entirely to save money and face. “It’s letting the wolves out of the cages who never wanted to do anything for the climate anyway, and they’re saying that they now don’t have to,” he says. “Well, all right, let’s just see how that works out for you.” Forrest remains defiant. If the Republican-controlled government in Washington nixes clean-technology tax incentives, “you’ll see hundreds of billions of dollars extracted out of the U.S. economy, including ours,” he tells me. And he has the backing of political leaders in Australia, where Fortescue is headquartered. “It’s absolutely critical,” says Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese of Forrest’s climate efforts. But, while policy shifts may change the dynamics of specific projects, the direction of travel won’t change. Fortescue’s plan is rooted in sound economics, he says, and that’s not changing. “We’re staying the course,” he tells me. “Real zero is completely bankable.” No matter what President Trump does, global markets are changing, increasingly favoring products that are cleaner and resilient to climate risks—whether they are created by the physical world or by our response to them. But assessing the speed of those changes—and then shifting your business to reflect that speed—is a very challenging task even for the most climate-savvy executive. Forrest’s bet is that being first will pay huge dividends. It’s a simple concept, but few have been bold enough to spend billions to test it. For the sake of the planet and everyone who lives on it, let’s hope he’s right.

Germany has long been considered a global leader on climate change and the clean energy transition. In its landmark Climate Action Law adopted in December 2023, the country aimed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 65% by 2030 and reach climate neutrality by 2045, along with setting annual emission budgets for various sectors until 2030. Former chancellor Angela Merkel was often referred to as the "climate chancellor" for her efforts to tackle emission reduction on the international level. And climate was an important issue for voters choosing her replacement in the 2021 German election. But as Germans prepare to head to the polls on Feb. 23 for a snap election, climate is not quite as important a factor as it used to be, says Marc Weissgerber, executive director of climate think tank E3G. “”From the voter's perspective, the priority is not as big anymore,” he says. According to a January survey by Deutschlandtrend, immigration and the economy were cited as the biggest concerns for voters, with only 13% of those surveyed mentioning environmental and climate protection—similar to the top concerns in the U.S. elections last fall. Resetting priorities Reflecting this shift in public opinion, politicians are turning away from climate too. On the far right, there is the Alternative fuer Deutschland (AfD), which is second in national polls. It has questioned the legitimacy of climate change and, much like President Trump on this side of the Atlantic, has called for Germany to withdraw from the Paris Climate Accords. But the AfD, whilst pre-election surveys suggest it could perform well, trails the center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU), whose leader Friedrich Merz could end up as the German chancellor, according to polls. And Merz, although less vehemently anti-climate than the AfD, has nonetheless promised to move away from previous governments' environmentally-focused policies, which aimed to use climate spending as a way to boost the economy. Instead, he wants to prioritize the country’s economic and industrial strength. While on the campaign trail, he said that the economic policy of recent years had been geared “almost exclusively toward climate protection,” according to Politico. “I want to say it clearly as I mean it: We will and we must change that.” Analysts say Merz’s comments reflect how the country’s green energy goals are increasingly seen as out of step with goals to boost economic growth. Germany’s manufacturing industry, for example, which has propelled its economy for decades, is on the decline. “Climate action is taking a back seat compared to industrial action, as Germany pushes to reposition its economic and industrial model,” says Olivia Lazard, senior research fellow at Carnegie Europe. “The prices of energy and material consumption have risen in Germany, which creates a lot of economic anxiety and political economic polarization.” A costly transition Behind the shift is a reality that politicians in several countries have been grappling with: the adoption of green energy has come at a cost for Germany that many now see as too high. In April 2024, Germany’s Federal Network Agency, which regulates the country’s energy supply networks, announced that the cost of the country’s transition to renewable energy, an estimated 450 billion euros ($498.4 billion USD), would be passed on to consumers through their energy bills. This comes as Germans continue to pay high prices for fossil fuels in the wake of Russia’s war on Ukraine—as of last fall, German households were paying 74% more for gas than before the war. And natural gas— which was meant to be a bridge towards decarbonization given that it produces less CO2 than coal or oil— was harder to access. “It sort of sent the German narrative and the political mobilization and economic mobilization for the climate fight into disarray, not out of unwillingness to do so, but out of difficulty from an industrial and economic capacity,” says Lazar. As a result, the green transition has been losing favor with voters—many of whom are feeling pinched by the rising cost of living. “They have taken an aggressive stance to move away [from fossil fuels], but it's not always proven cost effective, and cost for most people is the key.” says Robert Orttung, a professor of sustainability and international affairs at the George Washington University. Beyond Berlin The possibility of a change in the German government’s priorities matters well beyond Berlin, with experts warning the impact could be felt globally. Germany has the largest economy in Europe and has, in past years, more than exceeded its climate financing goals for poorer countries. Now, with the U.S. pulling out of the Paris Accords and rolling back climate initiatives under the Trump administration, Germany could establish itself as a leader on the climate front. But if it steps back as well, the repercussions could be felt across Europe. “It would certainly have a huge impact if Germany falters,” Lazzard says. Take for example what is one of the world’s key climate initiatives: the so-called Loss and Damage fund, established during the 2022 climate summit in Egypt, known as COP27, to help lower-income countries recover from natural disasters. A key priority of last year’s annual climate summit, COP29, was to get wealthy nations to commit more money to support the fund. Germany pledged 94 million Euros ($100 million USD) to the fund in Nov. 2023, but the total $700 million put forward by wealthy nations by the end of COP29 “doesn’t come close” to meeting demand, according to U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres. With the Trump Administration pulling back from funding climate initiatives, other high-income countries might be tasked with filling in—though many are uninclined to do so as they face down the same budgetary and populist pressures as Germany. “Whether the Germans and the Europeans in general are willing to step up and really start to pay more for this kind of policy is going to be a big question mark,” says Orttung.

News about how investors are responding to climate change can look pretty grim these days. Opportunities in AI have taken up a lot of the oxygen—and capital—in the financial sector, and the Trump Administration’s move to rip up anything climate related has pushed some investors to turn their backs on climate deals. If these developments have you down, consider looking to Tom Steyer for a pick-me-up. Steyer, known by many as a 2020 presidential candidate, has since returned to his finance roots—this time as an investor focused on climate change. When we caught up earlier this month at his office in San Francisco, he brushed aside questions about how the new Trump Administration, and the broader climate pullback it has inspired, might challenge his business. He’s focused on economics, and in his telling the financial side of the equation remains solid. “I would say the numbers about the ability to make this transition are much better than expected,” he tells me, citing the continued record deployment of clean energy technologies. “The rhetoric moves back and forth, but ultimately the facts drive home reality.” His firm, Galvanize Climate Solutions, has focused in three categories: equities, real estate, and venture and growth. In those areas, the Galvanize team looks for investments that advance the climate cause while generating above market returns—all without relying on policy support from Washington. “This is going to happen if, in fact, we win in the marketplace,” he says. “We're not getting subsidies, we're not getting free money from the government, and we're not counting on anybody being nice.” Take real estate. Galvanize pairs general expertise on the real estate sector with knowledge of the financial opportunities that can come from decarbonizing real estate assets—think of lower costs as a result of energy efficiency and on-site renewable energy. That in turn drives up the price of the asset. “It's just understanding technology, understanding costs, understanding buildings and real estate markets,” he says. Steyer is not the only investor sticking with climate, though few are likely to be as full throated in still making their case or as steadfast in their determination. Some big financial institutions have insisted they will continue to pursue deals that advance the climate agenda when the economics pencil out. But there’s no question that the general enthusiasm that made anything climate-related hot a few years ago has dissipated—and troublingly for climate advocates, the enthusiasm was already waning before the Trump Administration took office in January. A report from PitchBook, which tracks private-market investment data, found that total venture funding for climate-tech fell for the third year in a row last year with funding down more than 17% from the year prior. In the public markets, U.S. ESG funds experienced outflows every quarter last year, according to a report from investment research firm Morningstar. And yet Steyer argues that the zeitgeist shift around sustainable investing makes this a great time to be a climate investor. At the core of Steyer’s argument is an assessment of the supply and demand for capital. Right now, he says, there are more investment-grade opportunities in climate and decarbonization than capital available to make those investments. This, he argues, translates into a wide range of opportunities to pick from and better deal terms for investors willing to take the leap. “From the standpoint of an investor, that's a good thing,” he says. “From the standpoint of the country or the world, that's probably not a good thing.” Over the years, I’ve had a chance to chat with Steyer on several occasions, especially during his political phase. And yet this feels like his most important environmental work. When it comes to convincing the private sector to stick with climate, he tells me, “success is the best argument.”

It’s around this time of year that Jill Tacon’s nose begins to twitch. Having lived in the Mount Eliza neighborhood south of Melbourne for over 50 years, the retiree is all too familiar with the early signs of approaching wildfires, known as “bushfires” locally. “My nose is super alert in summer,” she tells TIME. “I really look for the smell of burning. I also look at the sky to see if there is any smoke in the vicinity.” That diligence paid dividends just three weeks ago when Tacon, 77, was out walking her Australian Kelpie and stumbled upon a fire by a nearby creek. She backed up, warned her neighbors, and Victoria state’s Country Fire Authority (CFA), which was fortunately holding a training session nearby, sent two trucks to put out the blaze before it could spread. “They think perhaps it was a spark from a power line,” Tacon says of the fire’s cause. “We don’t really know. But it just reminded us that we are now in a very dry period of summer and we should rehearse in our minds what we need to do if there is a fire.” It’s something plenty of Americans are also mulling following the firestorm that swept through Los Angeles County’s Pacific Palisades and Altadena neighborhoods last month, razing more than 16,000 buildings, generating 4.5 million tons of debris, and causing some $275 billion of damage. As the complex cleanup and recovery process gets underway, the debate about how to instill resilience and preparedness to fend off future catastrophes is heating up. Australia’s experience battling bushfires offers invaluable context for the Golden State—and the wider U.S.—as rising global temperatures render increased fire risk the new normal. Even against the background of the L.A. carnage, Australia’s experience is undeniably more acute. Back in 2019, wildfires torched 83 million acres of Australia, an area twice the size of Florida. Before the recent L.A. blazes started, the Grampians National Park just west of Melbourne—a vast expanse of sandstone mountains teeming with echidnas and wallabies—was already ablaze, and it continues to burn today, with at least 271,000 acres lost to the flames. (By comparison, wildfires across the U.S., including in L.A. County, have burned 77,224 acres so far in 2025.) Moreover, the Grampians blaze is just one of 10 bushfires currently raging in the state of Victoria, out of more than 40 across the antipodean nation of 27 million. The threat is severe and constant; on Jan. 27, a dry lightning strike sparked a bushfire in Victoria that, fueled by strong winds, devoured 170,000 acres in just six hours. “It’s a pretty busy fire season,” CFA Victoria Deputy Chief Officer Alen Slijepcevic says with a shrug in his new Melbourne offices. Why the L.A. wildfires were so destructive has also become a political football in the U.S. Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom has said a warming planet was a contributing factor, while President Donald Trump—who has previously called climate change “an expensive hoax”—has blamed “gross incompetence” regarding state water and forestry mismanagement. When it comes to the climate change debate, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is in no doubt, pointing to how parts of Australia’s eastern state of New South Wales that were “essentially rainforest” burned this year for the first time in centuries. “You can’t say that every event is because of climate change,” Albanese tells TIME. “But what the science told us was that there would be more events, more frequent, and more intense. And that’s what’s playing out.” Still, there is plenty that people can do. Wildfires need four elements to spread: sufficient plant biomass to act as fuel; dry enough conditions to allow that fuel to ignite; wind or a slope to spread the fire; and lastly some form of ignition, whether a spark, discarded glass bottle focusing sunlight, lightning strike, or myriad other causes. What’s changed over the last few decades as the planet heats up is the availability of dry fuel, with parched winters meaning that burning season in Victoria now begins roughly a month earlier than the mid-1990s, and it also stretches farther into the autumn. “Ignitions aren’t necessarily linked to climate change, but fuel availability definitely is,” says CFA senior researcher Nick McCarthy. “If we’ve got 25-50% more time when that fuel is available, then we are going to have more fires.” A longer burning season also curtails the time available for prevention work. In the winter, the CFA conducts prescribed burning to clear high-risk areas before they have the chance to ignite naturally and threaten communities. It’s a technique also used in northern Californian forests, though, critically, not often in the state’s south due to a prevalence of protected chaparral scrub—low trees and bushes that thrive in hot, dry conditions—as well as dense residential areas. In addition, vegetation dries first in California’s inland valleys, which may already suffer from wildfires—occupying limited firefighting resources—by the time wetter coastal areas are even ready for prescribed burning. However, less time to prepare terrain means efforts must instead focus on mitigation and adaptation. “The world’s left it too late not to worry about adaptation,” Australian Climate Minister Chris Bowen tells TIME in his parliamentary office in Canberra. “It is now the case that every type of natural disaster is more frequent and severe because of climate change, and these natural disasters are increasingly unnatural because they’re being caused by human activity.” Much like in the U.S., if someone does spot a bushfire, the usual response is to dial 000, Australia’s equivalent to 911. The CFA then dispatches resources depending on the reported size, location, nature, and assets around—human habitations, livestock, as well as protected flora and fauna. Typically, a computer simulation is run to predict the spread over six hours if minimal suppression occurs. Problems arise if there are multiple contingencies that all require attention at once. “Then it becomes a numbers game,” says Slijepcevic. When a big blaze occurs, multiple assets are dispatched, including trucks, bulldozers, and aircraft to douse the flames. In extremely inaccessible areas, helicopters may drop firefighters with dry tools like rakes to impede the fire’s spread. Of course, tackling blazes early and efficiently is key and relies on the diligence of the local community—a trait baked into Australian life and that will now likely become more prevalent in the U.S. The availability of firefighting equipment also became politically charged in the wake of the L.A. fires. But Slijepcevic insists that no number of aircraft could have helped given the ferocity of California’s Santa Ana winds. “When you have 140 kph [87 mph] winds, nothing will fly,” he says. “Even if they can fly, they will never hit the targets, because the [water] will go sideways.” Still, there are ways to be better prepared. Whereas across the U.S. there are 29,452 individual fire departments which recruit, train, and dispatch firefighters, the CFA has an army of 30,000 volunteers across Victoria who all undergo standardized training and can be assigned centrally to enhance coordination and reduce deployment times. “That means our ability to scale is really significant,” says McCarthy. Education and awareness are also key. Every year, the CFA holds regular outreach events with schools and the community to familiarize regular folk with the telltale signs of impending fires, how to get relevant information from official sources, and the appropriate risk mitigation tactics. (California’s Department of Forestry and Fire Protection has for decades provided regularly updated and enhanced wildfire reporting and information resources via fire.ca.gov, whose traffic according to Similarweb soared by over 3,500% from December to January.) For homeowners, advice includes ensuring lawns are cut short, overhanging branches are trimmed back, and gutters are cleared of leaves. Something as innocent as spreading woodchips on flowerbeds or piling firewood by a back wall can be calamitous when burning leaves and bark are floating overhead. (Tacon says she also swapped out her old thin windows for thicker glass which can withstand higher temperatures.) Ultimately, any structure just needs one weak link for fire to spread. “It could just be a doormat that catches an ember,” says Slijepcevic. Still, apart from adaptation, Slijepcevic says that urban planning “is the only proactive lever that we have.” The impetus for Los Angeles County now is to ensure that fire-proof materials are used in construction, meaning no wood shingle roofs, installing sprinkler systems linked to independent water sources, and only planting fire-resistant trees. (In Australia, oil-rich native eucalyptus are fantastic for wildlife including Koalas but disastrous for fires.) Adequate setbacks must be enforced both between buildings and vegetation as well as between buildings themselves. The fact that the L.A. County fires predominantly spread house-to-house is evidence that building codes were sorely inadequate. “Most of the risks that we’re dealing with now are land use planning decisions over the last 200 years,” says Slijepcevic. “So there are obviously things that can be done now to rebuild California to different standards.” It’s also notable that Australia has changed its advice for at-risk residents. Following the apocalyptic Ash Wednesday bushfires that swept southern and western Australia in 1983, investigators realized that most of the 75 fatalities perished in late-stage evacuations. Thereafter, they developed a “prepare, stay and defend, or leave early” protocol. But then came the 2009 Black Saturday bushfires, which remain the nation’s deadliest. Many of the 173 fatalities died trying to protect their homes. Ever since, the advice has changed to simply “leave early.” (In California, current advice similarly focuses on instilling resilience into homes before wildfire season but escaping early if a blaze does approach.) The reason is clear. “Nobody knows how they will react when the fire arrives,” says Slijepcevic. “It’s really frightening, it sounds like a jet flying next to your ear, there’s confusion, no visibility. Even experienced firefighters have different reactions when it comes to something like that.” Similarly, most of the L.A. wildfire victims died either at home or attempting to flee too late. (Albeit some were physically impaired and sadly unable to leave.) Of course, the instinct to stay and defend one’s home and life’s possessions is very natural, though Slijepcevic—who like McCarthy spent last summer seconded to fire departments across North America—notes that in his experience people in the U.S. “actually leave earlier and quicker than they necessarily do in Australia.” Still, the question both in Australia and the U.S. is whether the rising cost of insurance and growing band with uninsured or uninsurable homes will shift value judgements. After all, losing your home to rebuild again is a vastly different proposition to losing everything period. “The events of California will definitely ripple across the insurance industry around the world,” says Slijepcevic. “The cost of insurance will go up here and then potentially the actions that people undertake [in the event of a fire].” Tacon, for one, has already seen her insurance premium jump by around $600 last year to almost $2,000 annually. Still, she is under no illusions about the correct course of action should the worst occur. Whereas before 2009 she and her husband would fill buckets and bathtubs with water upon reports of a nearby bushfire, today they have a box packed ready with all important family papers and a few mementos. She regularly checks the state emergency app for any fires within a 25 km (15 mi) radius and has mapped out the best route to a designated safe assembly ground at a nearby football field. Of course, L.A. has advised residents to pack “go bags” and make escape plans in the event of fires for many years. Climate change means that Californians may have to follow Australia’s lead and take such steps much more seriously. “You just accept that if a fire comes through that you’re going to lose a lot of memories,” Tacon says. “But you don’t want to lose your life.”

On the day I spoke by phone with André Corrêa do Lago, the newly appointed head of this year's United Nations climate conference, countries worldwide faced a deadline to publish new plans to tackle climate change. By that evening, only 13 had done so. It’s a startling number. The deadline applied to all 195 nations signed up to the Paris climate agreement. And it underscores the uphill challenge facing Corrêa do Lago, a Brazilian diplomat who previously served as the country’s chief climate negotiator. His job: to help foster collaboration and bring about fresh agreement in a world riven by populist nationalists intent on driving climate change down the global priority list. “I naturally believe very much in multilateralism, and we believe that the only way of solving important issues is through cooperation,” Corrêa do Lago told me from Rio de Janeiro, as he prepares to host what will be the thirtieth such meeting—hence the name COP30—in the Amazonian city of Belém this November. “But the international context is quite complex.” Central to the “complex” road ahead for him is the U.S. and the new Trump Administration, which he diplomatically called “challenging.” Back in power in Washington D.C., Trump has once again initiated the process to withdraw the U.S. from the Paris Agreement, and it remains unclear what presence—if any—the country will have at UN climate talks. “We have to wait a little to see some of the directions that these policies are going to take,” Corrêa do Lago says of the U.S. He does however remain optimistic about preventing further withdrawals from the Paris accord. Unlike traditional treaties, he notes, Paris relies on voluntary commitments rather than enforcement mechanisms. While some critics view this as a weakness, he argues it actually discourages withdrawal: countries gain little by leaving but risk facing trade barriers from climate-conscious partners. He has previously said that Argentina withdrawing from the Paris Agreement would threaten the joint trade deal between the European Union and Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay. Indeed, trade is a key area of contention. Many developing and emerging market countries have expressed concern over the European Union’s measure to charge a carbon fee on certain imports. U.S. tariffs, and the threat of more to come, on longtime allies and rivals have also put a spotlight on the topic. Thus far, trade has played a largely peripheral role in UN climate negotiations, though last year Brazil and others sought to elevate it on the agenda. Corrêa do Lago cited it very early in our conversation as a key point of contention for countries and said that “starting to build some consensus on some of the issues of trade” would be “extremely important.” Underlying such concerns is what for proponents of global action on climate change, such as Corrêa do Lago, is a sobering reality: the costs of climate policy, both real and perceived, have slowed progress in many places as voters turn to populist politicians who oppose multilateral action–and in some cases, outright deny the realities and consequences of a changing climate. To help keep momentum alive, Corrêa do Lago says he wants to refocus attention on not just solving the climate conundrum, but also, in a sense, selling its benefits. “This transition has to be dealt with in a rational way,” he says. “There are challenges for many sectors, and it can even eliminate many jobs… we have to make sure that we can convince people that this can bring very positive impacts.” Convincing people–and convincing companies Part of that involves courting what has become an increasingly important constituency for climate leaders: the private sector. The role of business has become ever more prominent at UN climate conferences in recent years as the focus of climate talks has shifted to implementation. And Corrêa do Lago says there will be a substantial role for the private sector this year, too. “We want to focus on solutions,” he says. “And probably most of the solutions come from the private sector.” The first challenge here will be making the private sector feel welcome–quite literally. Choosing Belém to host the conference—a remote city with limited accommodations and infrastructure—has led some beyond Brazil to ask whether the city will be able to support a big corporate turnout. Corrêa do Lago reassured companies that the hosts would facilitate the presence of industry. “We want the private sector to have an absolutely central role,” he says. “And we will make sure that the private sector will have accommodations and will be very welcome.” Nonetheless, he acknowledged that the location would make the COP different from many of recent predecessors. “The symbolism of doing the COP in the Amazon, President Lula believes and I totally agree, is much more important than the infrastructure difficulties that may arise from it,” he says. The COP president job is a slog. For the next several months, Corrêa do Lago will hit the road traveling around the world to meet with key stakeholders sounding out positions and trying to build consensus. And yet the job has never been more urgent with global temperatures topping the 1.5°C goal laid out by the Paris Agreement and a slew of devastating climate linked events signaling the future we have in store.

With much of the U.S. blanked in snow this week, many might be wondering what our warming climate means for the future of our winters. The impacts of climate change might be far more noticeable during the summer—in 2024 the U.S. had its fourth hottest summer on record. But rising global temperatures are changing winters too. And people are noticing; 66% of Americans think global warming is affecting weather in the United States, according to a fall 2024 survey released this month by the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication. “The existence of winter doesn't disprove climate change,” says Stuart Evans, assistant professor of geography at the University of Buffalo. “Climate change is a long term trend that makes winter warmer, but it's not erasing the occurrence of winter.” Here’s how winters are impacted by climate change: How will snow storms be impacted by climate change?? Most of the U.S. can expect to see more winter precipitation due to climate change, whether that be rain or snow, says Evans. “A warmer atmosphere will carry more moisture,” he explains. This means that more of that moisture will be released as precipitation. A slightly warmer but still below freezing temperature can also produce more snow than during extreme cold, so some areas might see more snow as temperatures rise. Some places will also see unique changes. For example, storm systems are shifting to different regions, says Chris Forest, professor of climate dynamics at Penn State University. “We're seeing a lot more developments that are not occurring to our west, but they're occurring to the Northwest,” he adds. As a result, he says, the rain that would previously drop over the west is now falling as snow over the Great Plains. In some places—like Michigan or New York—“lake effect snow” might also become more common. The phenomenon occurs when warmer temperatures prevent the lakes from freezing over, causing the warmer water to evaporate into passing cold fronts and fall down as snow. What parts of the country will be most affected? Most of the country will be affected—in fact, many people already are. In the U.S., 283 million people—about 85% of the population—experienced at least one winter day with warm average temperatures last winter, according to Climate Central’s 2024 Climate Shift Index. The impact will look differently depending on where in the country you are. The west coast is seeing warmer, drier winters than 20 years ago, while the Mid-West has fewer days below freezing, says Forest. “Twenty or 30 years ago, we wouldn't have had as many of these contrasts of the warm West with the cold East,” says Forest. One fall 2024 study in the journal npj Climate and Atmospheric Science found that overall winter precipitation and extreme weather events will increase across most of the country. The Northeast and Midwest are expected to see the greatest change, while the southern Great Plains—including Texas and Oklahoma—will see more frequent extreme dry events instead. Will winters get shorter with climate change? Yes. “Winters will get shorter everywhere, simply because there will be fewer days below freezing, or fewer days of frost, or whatever the metric of winter that you want to use,” says Evans, who notes that, though some places will warm faster than others, within the U.S. those differences will be modest. For some, this might be a welcome change. “If you think that winter is cold and unpleasant and you like it when it's warm, well then winter’s gonna get better,” says Evans. But for others dependent on snow or cold temperatures—whether for sports or agriculture—this change likely isn’t good news. What are the consequences of warmer winters? Warmer, shorter winters will have a noticeable impact. A shorter winter could have big impacts on U.S. agriculture produced in the Midwest. “Snowfall is probably the most important thing, because it's supplying water for the Great Plains during the winter time,” says Forest. “Midwestern states are primarily agriculture, and therefore the water that's coming in is a necessary necessity to have in order to make sure that our crops are growing.” Milder winters can also put crops at greater risk for pests and diseases that thrive at warmer temperatures. Stone fruits, walnuts, and almonds produced in California’s Central Valley are already at risk. Plants and animals that have evolved to acclimatize to intense, cold periods might find it challenging to adapt. Polar bears might lose their habitats as snow melts earlier, while insects and animals might lay eggs earlier as they take seasonal cues from the warmer weather. Meanwhile, infrastructure might not be prepared for heavy snowstorms—especially as storms spread to places that might not be accustomed to snow—as we saw earlier this year, when a snowstorm shut down the roads, highways, and bridges in Florida, as most cities lacked snowplows to remove the snow. “We need to be ready,” says Forest.