“President Trump said on Wednesday that the United States would withdraw from the bedrock international agreement that forms the basis for countries to rein in climate change,” the New York Times reports.

“The agreement, which has been in place for 34 years, counts all of the other nations of the world as members.”

New York Times: “The environmental rollbacks came one after the next this week, potentially affecting everything from the survival of rare whales to the health of the Hudson River…”

“If the Trump administration’s proposals [to narrow the Clean Water Act, change the Endangered Species Act and expand offshore oil and gas drilling] are finalized and upheld in court, they could reshape U.S. environmental policy for years to come, environmental lawyers and activists said.”

“Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva called late Wednesday for a global winding-down of fossil fuels — and said he hoped to someday get the U.S. behind it,” Politico reports.

Said Lula: “We must reduce greenhouse gas emissions. If fossil fuels emit too much, we must begin thinking about how to live without them.”

He said he hoped “one day to convince the president of the United States that the climate crisis is serious, that green development is necessary.”

“The Trump administration on Thursday announced a plan to allow oil and gas drilling in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, one of the largest remaining tracts of pristine wilderness in the United States,” the New York Times reports.

“The decision was the latest twist in a long-running fight over the fate of the refuge’s coastal plain, an unspoiled expanse of 1.56 million acres that is believed to sit atop billions of barrels of oil but is also a critical habitat for polar bears, caribou, migratory birds and other wildlife.”

Floodlight News: “For decades, the Pentagon viewed climate change as a national security threat — not for environmental reasons, but because it undermined operations and readiness… Now the Trump administration is dismantling that approach. Pentagon leaders have cut climate research funding and abandoned adaptation plans.”

Said Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth: “The Department of Defense does not do climate change crap.”

Sen. Brian Schatz (D-HI) said that his party needed to change the way it talked about climate change if Democrats hoped to win over new voters, the New York Times reports.

Said Schatz: “You could talk about the planetary emergency and mitigation and adaptation, and you could throw in some environmental justice rhetoric, and by the time you’re done talking, people think you don’t care about them.”

Instead, he said, policymakers who care about climate change need to be “recapturing momentum with regular people who are watching their utility bills spike like a hockey stick.”

“China, the world’s largest carbon polluter, announced at the United Nations on Wednesday that it intended to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by at least 7 percent to 10 percent over the next 10 years, the first time Beijing has made such a strong commitment to halt global warming,” the New York Times reports.

Chinese president Xi Jinping made the announcement by video, saying: “Green and low carbon transition is the trend of our time.”

In an apparent reference to the United States, Xi added: “Some countries are against it.”

“The Department of Defense has quietly delayed its cleanup of harmful ‘forever chemicals’ at nearly 140 military installations across the country,” the New York Times reports.

“The Pentagon has been one of the most intensive users of these chemicals, which are also known as PFAS and are a key ingredient in firefighting foam. For decades, crews at U.S. military bases would train to battle flames by lighting jet-fuel fires, then putting them out with large amounts of foam, which would leach into the soil and groundwater.”

“Green groups stunned by the Trump administration’s rapid-fire dismantling of their environmental victories are still debating how to fight back — and torn between two contrasting strategies,” Politico reports.

“One set of activists is urging the environmental movement to join a broader anti-billionaire campaign led by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), which accuses the Trump administration of attacking democracy to benefit the very wealthiest Americans.”

“Others want to double down on the Biden administration’s portrayal of climate action as a pocketbook issue — contending that Republican attacks on investments in electric vehicles, wind farms and other clean energy technologies will wipe out jobs and burden consumers with higher costs.”

New York Times: “The most conspicuous retreat, of course, has been the United States under President Trump, who first announced his intention to withdraw from Paris way back in 2017 with a ceremony in the Rose Garden. Trump has celebrated his return to office by utterly dismantling his predecessor’s signature climate bill, the Inflation Reduction Act, and vowing to stop all approvals for new renewable projects (not to mention paving over that same garden). But this is not just a story about Trump. When Paris was forged, the United States was a trivial exporter of natural gas, and it was still illegal to ship American oil abroad. Even before Trump’s second inauguration, the country had become the world’s largest producer and exporter of refined oil and liquid natural gas.”

“And neither is it a story particular to America. The retreat from climate politics has been widespread, even in the midst of a global green-energy boom. From 2019 to 2021, governments around the world added more than 300 climate-adaptation and mitigation policies each year, according to the energy analyst Nat Bullard. In 2023, the number dropped under 200. In 2024, it was only 50 or so. In many places — like in South America and in Europe — existing laws have already been weakened or are under pressure from shifting political coalitions now pushing to undermine them.”

“A federal appeals court is allowing the Trump administration to terminate $16 billion in grants awarded by the Biden administration to combat greenhouse gas emissions,” ABC News reports.

“The Trump administration has fired at least seven Environmental Protection Agency employees for signing a letter nearly two months ago criticizing the agency’s leadership,” the Washington Post reports.

“The move to terminate several staffers marks an escalation in the administration’s effort to clamp down on dissent within the federal bureaucracy.”

“In the Biden administration, the American environmental movement reached what many of its supporters considered an apex. Congress passed the largest ever federal law to combat climate change. Coal-burning power plants were shutting down. Hundreds of billions of dollars of federal investment in renewable energy, batteries and electric vehicles was beginning to flow,” the New York Times reports.

“But in just months, President Trump has attacked much of that work.”

“The Biden-era climate law, known as the Inflation Reduction Act, is in tatters. The White House is trying to revive coal, the dirtiest fossil fuel, while boosting oil and gas and hindering solar and wind power. And it is weakening or trying to scrap environmental policies and regulations, some dating to 1970.”

“The abrupt reversal in fortunes has led to a moment of crisis for the environmental community.”

“NASA is planning to decommission premier satellite missions that gather information on planet-warming pollution and other climate vital signs beginning as soon as October,” CNN reports.

“The destruction of the satellites — which will be abandoned and allowed to eventually burn up in a fiery descent into Earth’s atmosphere — marks the latest step by the Trump administration to scale back federal climate science.”

NPR: Why a NASA satellite that scientists and farmers rely on may be destroyed on purpose.

“As the planet gets hotter and its reservoirs shrink and its glaciers melt, people have increasingly drilled into a largely ungoverned, invisible cache of fresh water: the vast, hidden pools found deep underground,” ProPublica reports.

“Now, a new study that examines the world’s total supply of fresh water — accounting for its rivers and rain, ice and aquifers together — warns that Earth’s most essential resource is quickly disappearing, signaling what the paper’s authors describe as ‘a critical, emerging threat to humanity.’”

“President Trump’s first term provoked the movement for a Green New Deal. His second term may have killed it,” Axios reports.

“Democrats aren’t explicitly disavowing the Green New Deal, but they’ve abruptly stopped talking about it as they scramble to find new ways to talk about climate change.”

“President Donald Trump’s administration on Tuesday proposed revoking a scientific finding that has long been the central basis for U.S. action to regulate greenhouse gas emissions and fight climate change,” the AP reports.

“The proposed Environmental Protection Agency rule would rescind a 2009 declaration that determined that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare.”