Heatwave attribution in seconds
Nature Climate Change, Published online: 24 December 2025; doi:10.1038/s41558-025-02532-6
Heatwave attribution in seconds
Nature Climate Change…
Release: Congressional Members Reintroduce Legislation that Creates Fairer Competition, Advances Environmental Health, and Protects Workers
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Laura Zaks
National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition
press@sustainableagriculture.net
Tel. 347.563.6408
Release: Congressional Members Reintroduce Legislation that Creates Fairer Competition, Advances Environmental Health, and Protects Workers
Washington, DC, December 15, 2025 – Representatives Alma Adams (D-NC-12), Zoe Lofgren (D-CA-18), Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC), Jim McGovern (D-MA-2), Nydia Velázquez (D-NY-7), Rashida Tlaib (D-MI-12), Cleo Fields (D-LA-4), Jill Tokuda (D-HI-2), André Carson (D-IN-7) and Senators Ed Markey (D-MA), Peter Welch (D-VT), Adam Schiff (D-CA), Alex Padilla (D-CA), and Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) introduced the Enabling Farmer, Foodworker, Environmental, and Climate Targets through Innovative, Values-aligned, and Equitable (EFFECTIVE) Food Procurement Act in the House. The bill offers an alternative approach to making food purchasing decisions, and a better way to spend public dollars on food.
…“Every year, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) spends billions on food purchases with a concentrated few
What happens when disaster recovery becomes a luxury good
Every year at the Oscars, attendees leave with gift bags so elaborate they have to be reported as income to the IRS. Luxury skincare, personal training sessions, designer apples that never brown, and extravagant trips are standard issue. But in 2025, Academy Award guests also received a grimmer gift: a yearlong subscription to a white-glove disaster recovery service called Bright Harbor, which has grown popular in the wake of the wildfires that devastated Los Angeles last January.
If your house is destroyed in a fire or flood, the basic logistics of righting your upturned life understandably consume your full attention, even if you’re a movie star. Under this level of stress, navigating the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s byzantine requirements for recovery assistance quickly becomes “a full-time job,” according to Bright Harbor’s chief growth officer, Emily Bush. “We help you understand …
Green industrial policy is not enough for net-zero decarbonization
Nature Climate Change, Published online: 22 December 2025; doi:10.1038/s41558-025-02514-8
Both green industrial policy (‘carrots’) and carbon pricing (‘sticks’) are seen as important instruments for decarbonization, but the sequencing strategy matters. Researchers now demonstrate that carrots alone — without sticks — are unlikely to reach long-term net-zero targets in the USA.
Nature Climate Change…
Ford is retreating from EVs — but embracing grid batteries
Ford, a century after it launched the modern automotive era, has given up on its early ambitions to charge into the electrified future.
The company announced that it will delete nearly $ 20 billion in book value to extricate itself from its EV investments, an eye-popping loss that amounts to one of the biggest corporate impairments ever.
The company, of course, views it differently: The move is a “decisive redeployment of capital,” it said on Monday, as it rolled out a string of related strategic changes alongside the write-down.
The pivot hits particularly hard in the southeastern Battery Belt, where Ford had invested in multibillion-dollar BlueOval plants to produce batteries and electric vehicles. The EV battery facility in Glendale, Kentucky, will lay off about 1,600 employees, and the local outlet Memphis Commercial Appeal reported that a Ford factory in Tennessee will …
Chaos, Collaboration, and Courage: A Look Back at 2025
A Year Like No Other
As 2025 comes to a close, we find ourselves reflecting on a year that reshaped the food and farm policy landscape: from major disruptions in federal agencies to stalled policymaking in Washington, farmers and communities continue to feel the impacts. The historic government shutdown this fall was just the most recent situation to put our food and farm system under strain. Stable federal programs are critical for farmers and families across the country, and funding delays and terminations, shifting agency decisions, and the loss of experienced staff at USDA have created hardship for millions, especially those who already faced systemic barriers to accessing USDA programs and services.
At NSAC we are always guided by our members and the federal policy priorities we set together – this year those included …
Oh, great: Rat populations are surging as cities heat up
Rats are in many ways better adapted to cities than the humans that built them. While urbanites struggle with crowds, sparse parking spaces, and their upstairs neighbors stomping around at 4 a.m., rats are living their best lives. Huddled safely underground, they pop up at night to chew through heaps of food waste in dumpsters and hot dogs left on stoops.
Now scientists have found yet another gnawing advantage for rats. A study published on Friday in the journal Science Advances found that as temperatures climb in cities, rat populations are growing, even as city dwellers suffer. “In cities that have experienced the fastest warming temperatures, they tended to have faster increases in their rat numbers as well,” said Jonathan Richardson, an urban ecologist at the University of Richmond and lead author of the paper. “Females will reach sexual …
We’re all at risk if Trump dismantles this legendary lab
You may not know it, but you’ve benefited from the National Center for Atmospheric Research.
For more than half a century, the federally funded lab has been instrumental in the development of weather models that have improved the forecasting of extreme events like hurricanes, thus saving lives. Your go-to weather app can predict the future thanks in large part to the lab, also known as NCAR. Its researchers also study atmospheric pollutants like wildfire smoke by flying planes through plumes, helping protect public health. More broadly, NCAR has been a towering leader in the advancement of climate science, gathering reams of data and developing sophisticated models of Earth systems.
That last bit is why Russell Vought, director of the White House’s Office of Management and Budget, announced that the Trump administration plans to dismantle the operation. “This facility …