Democratic-led coalition says gutting key protections will set US back decades and worsen climate crisis
States and cities sued the Trump administration on Thursday for repealing rules that limit planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions from power plants fueled by coal and natural gas.
Twenty-one states, led by New York, are challenging the Environmental Protection Agency’s power plant rule. The Democratic-led coalition also includes Pennsylvania’s governor, the District of Columbia, New York City, Chicago and the city and county of Denver. They argue that “gutting one of the country’s most significant climate protections” will set the nation back decades and worsen the climate crisis.
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Breaking Waves: Ocean News
10/01/2026 - 10:00
Exclusive: Climate Change Authority chair says planning commission did not account for climate-related economic damage in NSW
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A senior Albanese government climate adviser has challenged the state approval of the largest coalmining development in New South Wales’s history, arguing “climate change isn’t someone else’s problem”.
Matt Kean, the chair of the Climate Change Authority and a former NSW treasurer and energy minister, questioned why the state Independent Planning Commission had not weighed the economic cost of climate change caused by burning the coal from the Hunter Valley Operations mine before giving it the green light to run until 2045.
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10/01/2026 - 08:00
As the midterms approach, Americans’ digestive health has become a bizarre talking point
Donald Trump seems to spend an unusual amount of time thinking about toilets.
Back in 2019, he bizarrely claimed: “People are flushing toilets 10 times, 15 times as opposed to once.” He repeated this claim at a Michigan rally the following year. “Ten times, right, 10 times,” Trump complained. “Not me, of course not me, but you,” he added while pointing at an unfortunate audience member.
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10/01/2026 - 07:00
Records show Vineland facility in New Jersey emitted health-harming pollution before regulators stepped in
DataOne, the Microsoft-linked New Jersey datacenter recently hit with a $1m fine for running unpermitted generators, emitted large amounts of health-harming air pollution for nearly a year before state regulators stepped in, according to public records obtained by Floodlight.
The Vineland facility’s 62 gas-fired generators became public in August after a Floodlight/Guardian visual investigation found them operating without permits. The New Jersey department of environmental protection last week fined the company over the fleet but did not disclose how long the generators had been operating nor how much air pollution they had released into the surrounding community over the past year.
This story is from Floodlight, a non-profit newsroom that investigates the powers stalling climate action. Sign up for Floodlight’s newsletter here
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10/01/2026 - 06:30
Gavin Newsom says Trump is a ‘gift’ to the climate cause for dispelling notions of fossil fuel energy security
Send us your questions about how the Iran war will affect US voters in the midterms
Of all the epithets hurled at Donald Trump since he became US president, perhaps the most unusual was delivered last week – that he is, in fact, some sort of environmentalist.
Trump is the “greatest gift” to the environmental movement, argued Gavin Newsom, California’s governor, due to the fallout from the US-Israel war on Iran.
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10/01/2026 - 04:20
Our wildlife series Young Country Diary is looking for articles written by children, about their autumn encounters with nature
Once again, the Young Country Diary series is open for submissions! Every three months we ask you to send us an article written by a child aged 8-14.
The article needs to be about a recent encounter they’ve had with nature – whether it’s a hedge full of berries, a beetle on the move, or a nervous deer.
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10/01/2026 - 00:00
Some rivers are receiving more rain than before but have lower water flow, according to a study
More rain and snow equals more water in rivers, right? Not necessarily. A new study shows that, despite receiving more rainfall than they used to, river water levels are falling because of changes in climate.
Global heating is intensifying the hydrological cycle, making wet regions wetter and dry regions drier, but how is this affecting river flow? Researchers from the Pennsylvania State University, in the US, have analysed precipitation and river flow records in more than 10,000 rivers between 1951 and 2020. In nearly one-third of rivers, they found that flow trends did not match with the changes observed in rainfall and snow.
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09/30/2026 - 23:00
Alpine regions in Europe experiencing extreme glacier collapse due to heat-trapping effects of fossil fuel pollution
Switzerland has lost almost one-fifth of its ice in just five years, research has found, in a dramatic reshaping of the Alpine country whose big white glaciers have been reduced to moonlike rock deserts, scientists say.
Swiss glaciers shrank by 5.5% in the first eight months of 2026, according to an annual monitoring report, after a summer of scorching heatwaves that followed a winter with little snow. The reduction in ice volume falls just shy of the record set in 2022 and brings the total loss of glacier ice since 2021 to 19.4%.
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09/30/2026 - 22:00
The global climate phenomenon has triggered devastating infernos in the ape’s Indonesian heartlands, with long-term effects on the animals still unknown
The mother’s hands were peeling from walking on the torched ground. Her eight-month-old baby, which clung to her side, was dehydrated and thin. The pair, named Mama Abu and Abu (“ash” in Indonesian), were found in an oil palm subsidiary estate, rescuers say.
The orangutan pair were saved last month from wildfires that are devouring Indonesia’s forests and peatland, unleashing thick smog, and destroying the habitat of some of the planet’s most vulnerable species.
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09/30/2026 - 22:00
There is no greater treachery than this failure to face up to the climate crisis. How can we now fend off despair?
The Independent Planning Commission’s published reasons for approving the largest coalmine in New South Wales history in the context of mounting death, disaster and despair brought on by global heating reads like a hostage statement.
In its decision, the commission accepts that the extension of the Hunter Valley Operations’ mine for a further 19 years – resulting 809m tonnes of greenhouse gas pollution – will materially worsen global warming. The panel members cite CSIRO’s finding that climate change is having a growing effect on the lives and livelihoods of all Australians and that the severity of that impact “will depend on the speed at which global greenhouse gas emissions can be reduced”. They reject the idea that keeping HVO’s coal in the ground would make no difference to global warming.
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