#climate-change

#climate-change

Timothy Morton is one of the authors leading the new wave of environmentalism. The British thinker, whose latest work is provocative and extremely personal, takes it as a point of fact that the destruction of the planet is in process. Admired by the singer Bjork and Hans Ulrich Obrist, the artistic director of the modernist London gallery Serpentine, Morton comes across as a punk creative, one who has kept up the fight against preconceived thinking.

The fact of the matter is, the ones that add a nice earthiness to a pasta cream sauce look entirely too similar to the ones that leave you curled up and dying in agony for me to trust any forager's eye test, a point driven home by California's ongoing epidemic/outbreak of mushroom poisoning cases, which in less than two months has left three dozen people sickened and resulted in multiple fatalities.

Green iguanas (Iguana iguana) are not native to the U.S. but were brought to Florida in the 1960s, where they have, for the most part, flourishedexcept, that is, when temperatures have dropped below 50 degrees F (10 degrees C). These chilly conditions can cause a cold shock in the lizards. And because the iguanas tend to sleep in trees, getting cold shocked can sometimes cause the animals to fall from the skies in an infamous Florida phenomenon.

Meanwhile, signs that the planet's health is worsening are unmistakable. Last year was among the warmest on record globally, with average temperatures far above long-term baselines and heat driving more extreme weather worldwide. In 2025, brutal heatwaves baked much of the Indian subcontinent with temperatures near 48 °C, stressing health systems and agriculture across India and Pakistan. Europe and the Mediterranean faced record wildfires and prolonged heat, forcing tens of thousands to evacuate and worsening drought conditions.

In rural Mexico, climate change doesn't just bring more frequent and extended droughts or increasingly unpredictable rain. It also reveals the fractures beneath the surface: the corruption, the inequality and the everyday barriers that shape who benefits and who is left behind. When the government tries to address a big challenge like water scarcity, the underlying problems rise with it, making clear that climate adaptation isn't only about technology or policy. It's about the systems that determine who gets access in the first place.

President Donald Trump started his second term with his sights set on Greenland. Though the island is not for sale, the president emphasized Greenland's importance to U.S. national security. Left unspoken: A U.S. takeover could weaken the country's mining laws and ban on private property, aiding Trump donors' plans to profit from the island's mineral deposits and build a libertarian techno-city.

Since the 1990s, American homes have been systematically underinsured in the event that they are completely destroyed. Study after study shows that, counter to the public's understanding, many home insurance policies are not required to cover total replacement of homes. The trend, though decades old, has been somewhat hidden. But climate-driven events that cause massive destruction, especially wildfires, are revealing just how pervasive and severe the problem has become.

In the small town of Chipaya, everything is dry. Only a few people walk along the sandy streets, and many houses look abandoned some secured with a padlock. The wind is so strong that it forces you to close your eyes. Chipaya lies on Bolivia's Altiplano, 35 miles from the Chilean border. The vast plateau, nearly 4,000 metres above sea level, feels almost empty of people and animals, its solitude framed by snow-capped volcanoes. It raises the question: can anybody possibly live here?

If they survived the summer and reached adulthood, they would become some of the fastest land animals on Earth. Adult pronghorn, a bit smaller than deer, can run seven miles in just 10 minutes, achieving short bursts of nearly 60 mph, much faster than horses or wolves. With their long thin legs and oversized hearts and lungs, they are built to cover ground in the wide-open sagebrush basins of Wyoming, my home state.

The Trump administration announced last week that it wants Americans to consume more protein, churning out a colorful illustration of an inverted food pyramid that prominently features a big, red steak, a wedge of cheese, and a carton of whole milk at the top and claiming it's "ending the war on protein." It may seem like another example of cartoonish propaganda from an administration that essentially runs on memes, but don't be fooled: It signals a marked turn from previous advice that encouraged Americans to limit high-fat sources of protein like red meat and whole milk for their health, which can incidentally also curb planet-heating pollution from the beef and dairy industries.

Jonathan Rinderknecht, a 29-year-old occasional Uber driver who used to live in Pacific Palisades, was charged with three felonies by federal prosecutors in October, who claim he was in the neighborhood in the early hours of New Year's Day. According to a federal complaint, Rinderknecht allegedly used an open flame likely a lighter to start a small blaze that grew to about 8 acres (3.2 hectares) before firefighters rushed to the area and extinguished it. That blaze was known as the Lachman fire.

Every winter in the Ladakh region in northwest India, the two roads that connect the small villages in the Zanskar Valley with the rest of the country close, are overwhelmed by snow. But for centuries, locals have had a workaround: a road of ice formed by the frozen Chadar River. A week-long trek in frozen temperatures connects them to the outside world.

Flooded ponds are starting to shrink and green grasses are reaching skyward, making jaguars, tapirs, and crab-eating foxes easier to spot as they seek out water. Palm fronds shroud a jaguar just 10 feet from our idling safari vehicle. As she bites into the hind leg of an unlucky cow, a loud snap sounds through the thick air. Lucas Nascimento Morgado, a young biologist who works for an NGO called Onçafari in these parts, grins giddily: "This is a special sighting, my friends."

It's been an adventurous three decades for The World and we're glad to have you with us as we celebrate our 30th anniversary. In this special New Year's show, we highlight some of our reporting over the years. We bring you a discussion with Neil Curry, who helped create the show and was The World's first executive producer, as well as a conversation with our reporters Matthew Bell and Shirin Jafaari, who discuss how their coverage of major global news evolved after 9/11.

Writing on New Year's Day 2026, I feel the need to try to make some sense of the worst year of my 73-year life. I don't mean worse personally. My close family and I live in the relative safety and affluence of London, England, and we are all healthy and have fulfilling jobs. I mean, worst in the global sense.

recent scientific studies have recorded an average annual rise of seven millimeters over the past two decades. This is the second-highest sea level rise in the entire Caribbean, surpassed only by areas in southern Haiti. The underlying story is the same: greenhouse gas emissions have accelerated the melting of the polar ice caps. Consequently, the coastlines in some of these locations begin to subside in a geological process that poses a threat and a source of anxiety for residents.

A big rig overturned this morning on the Southfront Road on-ramp to eastbound I-580 in Livermore. As of 8:30 am, there was no estimate for when the on-ramp would reopen. [CHP-Dublin/X] Firefighters tamped down a fire early Tuesday at a warehouse in East Oakland. The fire began around 3:30 am on 44th Avenue and San Leandro Street. [NBC Bay Area] Scientists say that 2025 was such a hot year globally that it pushed the three-year temperature average past the 2.7-degree (1.5 degrees Celsius) threshold set in the 2015 Paris Agreement.

The world's leading climate scientists on the United Nations's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) on Monday released the final part of their sixth assessment report, warning again of human-induced climate change causing increasingly irrevocable damage to the world and its ecosystems. This report is a clarion call to massively fast-track climate efforts by every country and every sector and on every timeframe. Our world needs climate action on all fronts: everything, everywhere, all at once," said UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres.

The crumbling cliff edge is just metres away. An automatic blind, which I can operate without getting out of bed, rises to reveal an ocean view: the dramatic storm-surging North Sea with great black-backed gulls circling nearby and a distant ship on the horizon. A watery gold sunrise lights the clouds and turbulent grey water. I'm the first person to sleep in the new Kraken lodge at Still Southwold, a former farm in Easton Bavents on the Suffolk coast.

Coastal villages around Toliara, a city in southern Madagascar, host tens of thousands of the semi-nomadic Vezo people, who make a living from small-scale fishing on the ocean. For centuries, they have launched pirogues, small boats carved from single tree trunks, every day into the turquoise shallows to catch tuna, barracuda and grouper. We rely solely on the ocean, says Soa Nomeny, a woman from a small island off the south-west coast called Nosy Ve.

I do this newsletter every week on Substack called The Crucial Years, which, I think because it's free, has turned into the largest newsletter of its kind around climate and energy and the environment. It means that I get to keep track of all the things that are happening on a weekly basis around the world. About 36 months ago, if you were paying attention, you couldn't help but notice this sudden spike beginning. We'd finally hit the steep part of the S curve.

We hold in our thoughts the millions of people worldwide who are enduring the devastating impacts of interconnected crises of climate change, war, conflict, and displacement, the many families this Christmas who will sadly experience fear, uncertainty, or profound loss,