Election and policy inaction
Nature Climate Change, Published online: 08 September 2025; doi:10.1038/s41558-025-02433-8
Election and policy inaction
Nature Climate Change…
Your home has a 1 in 4 chance of being at severe risk from extreme weather
This story is part of The Disaster Economy, a Grist series exploring the often chaotic, lucrative world of disaster response and recovery. It is published with support from the CO2 Foundation.
Extreme weather disasters — made larger, longer, and more intense by climate change — are taking an heavier toll on the possession that many Americans consider to be their most important asset: the home.
A slew of big events, from deadly wildfires in California and Oklahoma to tornadoes in Missouri and Kentucky to floods in Texas, have already destroyed some 63,000 residential buildings and other structures so far this year and caused more than $ 20 billion in direct damage. That’s in addition to an unending parade of smaller extreme weather events.
These compounding extremes aren’t just being felt by homeowners — they’re changing the financial calculus that …
Comment: NSAC Responds to Termination of Regional Food Business Centers
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Laura Zaks
National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition
press@sustainableagriculture.net
Comment: NSAC Responds to Termination of Regional Food Business Centers
Washington, DC, July 15, 2025 – The National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (NSAC) issued the following comment, attributable to Hannah Quigley, NSAC Policy Specialist, in response to the termination of cooperative agreements with Regional Food Business Centers.
…“About a month after the Trump administration released the Farmers First agenda, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) has made yet another decision to prematurely end multi-year agreements that are effectively serving the small family farms the administration claims to be the focus of their agenda. The recent termination of agreements with twelve Regional Food Business Centers comes as another blow to rural communities who benefit greatly from USDA business development resources. The President’s budget has also proposed eliminating funding for
Moving beyond projects to achieve transformative adaptation
Nature Climate Change, Published online: 03 September 2025; doi:10.1038/s41558-025-02414-x
Projects are not delivering the transformative change needed for climate change adaptation. This failure is due in part to the delivery of adaptation as projects, but there are viable alternatives that can better address the underlying and structural causes of vulnerability.
Nature Climate Change…
Trump administration gives coal plants and chemical facilities a pass
For Donna Thomas, smokestacks are a typical sight from her home in Fort Bend County, Texas. Since she was a child, she has seen the coal and natural gas-powered W.A. Parish Generating Station puff clouds of haze during the day and light up brightly at night. The facility — which has been around since 1958 — is both part of the background and all she thinks about.
Thomas is not alone. For decades, residents have expressed concerns over the pollution emitted from the Parish coal plant — a separate facility from the natural gas plant — and called for its closure. The plant, located about 30 miles southwest of downtown Houston, is ranked by Texas environmental regulators as one of the worst polluters in the state for certain hazardous emissions. These include mercury, a toxic heavy metal particularly harmful for …
Improving the IPCC–UNFCCC relationship for effective provision of policy-relevant science
Nature Climate Change, Published online: 28 August 2025; doi:10.1038/s41558-025-02412-z
IPCC assessments are of limited use to the UNFCCC policy process due to misalignment and lack of relevance, with the situation further exacerbated by the UNFCCC’s weak scientific uptake mechanisms. The interface between the IPCC and the UNFCCC urgently needs to be reformed to facilitate a more effective science–policy connection.
Nature Climate Change…
USDA Staffing Crisis: Mass Departures Undermine Local Ag Support
On July 24, 2025, US Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins released a memo (SM-1078-015) describing the planned reorganization of the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) staff. This reorganization plan was drafted without any consultation with farmers or other stakeholders. While the reorganization plan does not directly include planned layoffs or reductions in force (RIF), USDA has already lost at least 18,000 staff since January 2025. If the reorganization moves forward as planned, it will likely result in the loss of thousands more staff.
After swift bipartisan pushback to the proposed reorganization, USDA opened an impromptu and unofficial public comment opportunity. The National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (NSAC) encourages organizations and individuals to submit their comments, questions, and concerns regarding the reorganization to USDA at reorganization@usda.gov by August 31, 2025. NSAC also notes our concern that the …
20 years after Katrina, New Orleans’ levees are sinking and short on money
It has been 20 years since New Orleans’ faulty levee system failed during Hurricane Katrina, causing a flood that claimed almost 2,000 lives and inflicted more than $ 150 billion in economic damage. The catastrophe was so bad that some doubted the city could continue to exist at all — the U.S. House speaker at the time declared that rebuilding New Orleans “doesn’t make sense” and that much of it “could be bulldozed.”
Rather than just patch up the damage, which would have left one of the country’s most iconic cities exposed to every future storm, the federal government doubled down on flood protection, building a new $ 14.4 billion levee system that ranks as one of the most sophisticated anywhere in the world.
Over the course of a decade, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers rebuilt and expanded almost …