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Page Updated:
Feb. 18, 2025

• • Texas Alleges ‘Habitual Non-Compliance’ of
  Wastewater Rules at Dow Chemical Complex

  The Lawsuit, Filed by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s Office, Could Shield the Petrochemical Giant From Harsher Litigation

  
  

  Feb. 17, 2026 -The Texas Attorney General’s office filed a lawsuit Friday afternoon against Dow Chemical Co., North America’s largest chemical manufacturer, describing hundreds of water pollution violations from its industrial complex on the rural Gulf Coast in Seadrift.

  While the state’s 46-page lawsuit followed a 60-day notice of intent to sue filed in December by a local environmental activist, the lawsuit could actually shield Dow and two other companies by superseding litigation by the citizen group seeking tougher cleanup provisions under the Clean Water Act.

• • Michigan Tries a New Legal Tactic Against Big Oil

  Alleging Antitrust Violations Aimed at Hobbling EVs and Renewable Energy

  
  

  Feb. 15, 2026 -Michigan is taking on major oil and gas companies in court, joining nearly a dozen other states that have brought climate-related lawsuits against ExxonMobil and its industry peers. But Michigan’s approach is different: accusing Big Oil not of deceiving consumers or misrepresenting climate change risks, but of driving up energy costs by colluding to suppress competition from cleaner and cheaper technologies like solar power and electric vehicles.

  The strategy is risky and might run into challenges, but it could potentially be a game changer if the state can overcome initial dismissal attempts by the industry defendants, legal experts say.

• • States Target Oil Giants’ Wealth as Climate Damages Rise

  Legislators Aim to Use Climate Superfund Programs to Force Oil Companies to Help Cover the Cost of Global Warming
  
  {E&E NEWS}
  
  

  Feb. 12, 2026 -President Trump and the oil industry have sought to smother state-level climate action. But a growing number of state lawmakers, mayors and attorneys general are embracing an aggressive gambit: Going after the fossil fuel industry itself.

  State and local governments are seeking to retroactively charge the biggest fossil fuel companies billions of dollars to account for climate-fueled damage to states, such as wildfires and floods. They’re pursuing two tracks: lawsuits modeled on tobacco litigation, and climate superfund legislation based on conventional pollution cleanup.

• • The Researcher Bringing Dignity
  to Disaster Aid With Cold, Hard Cash

  It Could Have Wide-Reaching Impacts Across the Planet

  
  

  Feb. 9, 2026 -As increasingly extreme weather ravages our planet, this has become a familiar formula: Natural disaster strikes, homes and lives are destroyed, people are in need. Government or donation-funded aid workers then descend with food, temporary shelters, medicine and paperwork. Eventually they leave, and communities feel abandoned, unable to wholly rebuild.

  Miriam Laker-Oketta, a Uganda-based doctor and researcher, is attempting to redraw the often flawed disaster-aid blueprint by forgoing supplies and instead giving victims cold, hard cash. No strings attached. In doing so, she says, she hopes to inject the traditional disaster-aid models with more dignity. Instead of telling people what they need and when they need it, Laker-Oketta believes in empowering them to adapt and recover in their own way.

• • Longtime Exxon Lawyers Retreat From Oil Company’s Climate Cases

  Attorneys From the Law Firm Paul, Weiss Are No Longer Representing the Oil Company In At Least Four Lawsuits That Ask the Fossil Fuel Industry to Pay For Climate Impacts
  
  {E&E NEWS}
  
  

  Feb. 9, 2026 -The law firm that has helped Exxon Mobil notch significant victories in its battle against climate lawsuits from local governments has pulled out of at least four of the court fights.

  Exxon and Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison attorneys this month notified courts in Connecticut, Hawaii, Maine and Washington state that the firm would no longer represent the oil giant as it fights efforts by governments and individuals in those states to hold the oil and gas industry financially accountable for climate change.

  The filings did not elaborate on the reasons for the moves, but noted lawyers from other firms would remain as counsel. While rare, withdrawals from cases are not unheard of and can be made by either attorneys or clients for various reasons.

• • Federal Judge Blocks Texas Law Targeting Critics of Fossil Fuels

  A Judge Struck Down a Controversial 2021 Texas Law That Blacklisted Financial Firms For “Boycotting” Fossil Fuels
  
  {energy central}
  
  

  Feb. 8, 2026 -A federal judge (and President Trump appointee) ruled the “overly broad” law violated the First Amendment, noting it failed to provide clear standards for what actually constituted a boycott.

  The big picture: This is a blow to the anti-ESG movement—the Texas statute served as the blueprint for similar legislation in 20+ other states targeting firms like BlackRock for their climate policies.

• • Swedish Youth Sue to Force Government to Act On Climate Change

  Young Activists Are Pointing to Recent International Court Rulings Requiring Foreign Governments to Curb Planet-Warming Emissions
  
  {CLIMATEWIRE}
  
  

  Feb 5, 2026 -Swedish youth have launched a second climate lawsuit against their government, arguing the nation’s officials are failing to do their part to limit global warming.

  Their lawsuit comes just a week after a court ordered the Dutch government to do more to protect the low-lying Caribbean island of Bonaire from rising seas and other effects of a warming planet — a first-of-its-kind decision requiring a nation to take concrete climate action.

• • Should Polluters Pay For Climate Change Impacts?

  This RI Bill Could Make It Happen
  
  {The Providence Journal}
  
  

  Feb 5, 2026 -The idea behind the creation of a “Climate Superfund” for Rhode Island is simple: If you make a mess, you should clean it up.

  In the case of climate change and all its impacts, from rising seas to heatwaves to inland flooding, environmental advocates say the perpetrators are fossil fuel companies, whose products are generating greenhouse gases that are warming the planet.

• • EPA Enforcement Plunged to ‘Historic Low’

  The Trump Administration “Is Not Serious About Holding Polluters Accountable
  
  {GREENWIRE}
  
  

  Feb 5, 2026 -The Trump administration brought only 16 lawsuits against polluters for environmental violations last year, a watchgroup group reported Thursday, buttressing previously released evidence of a steep falloff in federal efforts to enforce laws meant to ensure clean air, land and water.

  That total — which the report deems a "historic low" — was far fewer than the 67 suits brought during the first year of President Joe Biden’s term in 2021 and down even further from the 86 filed in 2017, the start of President Donald Trump’s first term, according to the new Environmental Integrity Project report.

• • Amsterdam, Florence Become Latest Cities to Ban Fossil Fuel Ads

  More Than 50 World Cities
  Have Restricted Fossil Fuel Advertisements
  
  {EARTH.ORG}
  
  

  Feb 5, 2026 -The Dutch capital of Amsterdam and the Italian of Florence have approved bans on fossil fuel advertisements, joining dozens of cities worldwide that have introduced restrictions on the promotion of polluting products.

  Last month, Amsterdam’s city council passed a legally binding ban on ads for fossil fuels and meat products in a 27-17 vote, becoming the first capital city to fully prohibit such ads. The ban, set to kick in on May 1, spans high-carbon products and services like flights, petrol and diesel vehicles, gas heating contracts and meat products across all public spaces in the city, including on public transport.

• • A Secret Panel to Question Climate
  Science Was Unlawful, Judge Rules

  The Researchers Produced a Report That Was Central In a Trump Administration Effort to Stop Regulating Climate Pollution

  
  

  Jan. 30, 2026 -A federal judge on Friday ruled the Energy Department violated the law when Secretary Chris Wright handpicked five researchers who reject the scientific consensus on climate change to work in secret on a sweeping government report on global warming.

  The Energy Department issued the report, which downplayed the dangers of warming, in late July without having held any public meetings or made records available to the public. Lee Zeldin, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, then cited the report to justify a plan to repeal the endangerment finding, a landmark scientific determination that serves as the legal foundation for regulating climate pollution.

• • Dutch Govt. Violated Human Rights By Failing
  to Protect Bonaire Residents From Climate Change

  The Hague District Court Ruled That the Government Failed to Take Appropriate Mitigation and Adaptation Measures To Protect The Inhabitants
  
  {EARTH.ORG}
  
  

  Jan 7, 2026 -The case was brought by eight residents of the tiny Caribbean island in early 2024. Backed by Greenpeace, they accused the Netherlands’ government of not doing enough to protect them from the devastating impacts of climate change, such as rising temperatures and sea levels. Bonaire became special Dutch municipalities in 2010, and roughly 80% of its 26,000 residents have Dutch citizenship.

  The Hague District Court rejected the complaints brought by the individuals but admitted the claim brought by Greenpeace, which is acting on their behalf.

• • Trump’s Biggest Climate Rollback Stalls
  Over Fears It Will Lose In Court

  The Proposal is Too Weak to Withstand a Court Challenge

  
  

  Jan. 29, 2026, -Trump officials have delayed finalizing the repeal of a landmark legal opinion key to their effort to eliminating the Environmental Protection Agency’s climate rules because of concerns the proposal is too weak to withstand a court challenge, according to two people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss confidential information.

  The EPA’s 2009 “endangerment finding” concluded that greenhouse gases harm public health, establishing the basis for regulating them under the Clean Air Act. Repealing the finding would end the agency’s regulation of greenhouse gas emissions from cars and trucks.

• • Amid National Call to Make Polluters Pay, Illinois
  Lawmakers Are Prepping a Climate Change Superfund Bill

  As Climate Costs Rise and the U.S. Backslides On Action, Pressure Mounts On States to Fill the Gaps

  
  

  Jan. 28, 2026, -Illinois lawmakers plan to introduce a climate change superfund bill in the state legislature this session, the latest in a growing number of states seeking to make fossil fuel companies pay up for the fast-growing financial fallout of climate change.

  As the costs of global warming rise—in the form of home insurance premiums, utility bills, health expenses and record-breaking damages from extreme weather—local advocates are increasingly pushing states to require that fossil fuel companies contribute to climate “superfunds” that would support mitigation and adaptation.

• • Unions Sue FEMA Over Work Force
  Cuts They Say Threaten Readiness

  Recent Dismissals and Plans For Further Cuts Violate Laws Designed to Preserve the Disaster Response Agency’s Independence and Capabilities

  
  

  Jan. 28, 2026, - A coalition of unions, scientific groups and local governments filed a lawsuit on Tuesday seeking to block the Federal Emergency Management Agency from cutting its staff, arguing that, by doing so, agency leaders are violating laws mandating that FEMA maintain capabilities to respond to disasters.

  The complaint, filed in U.S. District Court in San Francisco, seeks to block the dismissals of hundreds of contract workers at FEMA that began at the start of the year. About 1,000 employees were expected to lose their jobs this month, although the agency paused the cuts last week in anticipation of a winter storm that raged across the country, according to internal FEMA emails reviewed by The New York Times.

• • EPA Wants to Eliminate One of the Few
  Ways That Tribes Can Protect Their Water

  The Agency’s Plan Would Narrow Water Quality Reviews and Make It Harder For Tribes to Enforce Treaty Rights

  
  

  Jan. 28, 2026, - Earlier this month, the Environmental Protection Agency announced a proposal to revise the Clean Water Act, specifically a section of the law that regulates water quality and limits states’ and tribes’ authority over federal projects, as well as how tribes can gain the authority to conduct those reviews. Experts say the move would dissolve one of the few tools tribes have to enforce treaty rights and hamper their ability to protect tribal citizens.

  “What the Trump administration is proposing to modify here is a really important tool for states and tribes, because it gets at their ability to put conditions on or, in extreme cases, block projects that are either proposed by the federal government or under the jurisdiction of the federal government,” said Miles Johnson, legal director at Columbia Riverkeeper, an organization that works on issues affecting the Columbia River.

• • Stretched Thin, Iowa Agency Issues Few Fines for Manure Pollution

  The State’s Environmental Agency Has the Authority to Investigate and Issue Fines For Illegal Spills, But Lacks Sufficient Staff and Resources

  
  

  Jan. 23, 2026 -Over half a century ago, Larry Stone moved to northeast Iowa, drawn by the abundant wildlife and the crisp, spring-fed streams that carve through rocky bluffs. More than half a century later, those waterways have increasingly come under threat.

  In 2017, a 10,000-head cattle feedlot was built in a nearby town at the headwaters of Bloody Run Creek after a protracted battle with citizen and environmental groups. Ever since, Stone has spent what he estimates to be hundreds of hours focusing on the Supreme Beef LLC facility and its effect on one of Iowa’s “outstanding waterways.”

• • Michigan Attorney General Sues Oil Industry Over Allegations
  of Collusion Against Electric Vehicles and Renewable Energy

  A.G. Dana Nessel Pursues a Novel Antitrust Suit Against Major Oil Companies and a Trade Group
  
  {POLITICOPRO}
  
  

  Jan 23, 2026 -Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel launched a novel antitrust lawsuit against several oil companies on Friday, alleging they acted as a "cartel" to obstruct development of electric vehicles and renewable energy.

  The lawsuit from Nessel, a Democrat, takes a different tack than many of the climate-related cases filed by other states and localities in recent years, which focused on allegations about fossil fuels sales under common law and consumer protection laws. Nessel instead based the suit in part on federal antitrust laws, the Sherman Act and the Clayton Act, as well as the Michigan Antitrust Reform Act.

• • Peaceful Protest Against Whaling in
  Iceland Lands Two Activists in Court

  Iceland is One of Three Countries That Still Permits Commercial Whaling

  
  

  Jan. 21, 2026 -At 4 a.m. on Sept. 4, 2023, two environmental activists, Elissa Phillips and Anahita Sahar Babaei, climbed aboard a pair of aging whaling vessels moored side by side in Reykjavík harbor to stop them from heading out to sea. A temporary ban on killing whales in Iceland had just been lifted and the women believed the ships’ crew would soon resume their hunt.

  “We knew it meant watching more whales being butchered unnecessarily,” said Phillips, a British citizen who, prior to boarding the vessels, had volunteered with Sea Shepherd UK, a marine conservation nonprofit now known as the Captain Paul Watson Foundation UK, documenting whale kills in Iceland.

• • Supreme Court to Decide if the Pesticide
  Roundup Is Shielded From Lawsuits

  The Case Could Affect Thousands of Claims That the Widely Used Weedkiller Causes Cancer
  
  

  Jan. 16, 2026 -AThe Supreme Court said on Friday that it would hear a case that asks whether federal law shields a pesticide manufacturer from lawsuits claiming that the weedkiller Roundup causes cancer.

  Developed by Monsanto in the 1970s, Roundup is one of the best-selling weedkillers in the world, but it has been dogged by controversy over its effects on human health. The company, which was acquired by the German conglomerate Bayer in 2018, has faced thousands of lawsuits, amounting to one of the largest waves of such litigation in U.S. history.

• • Two Courts Block Trump Administration’s
  Attempt to Halt Clean Energy Projects

  Two Judges In Separate Rulings Instructed the Trump Administration to Reinstate Clean Energy Grants and Allow an Offshore Wind Farm’s Construction to Resume
  
  {EARTH.ORG}
  
  

  Jan. 14, 2026 -On Monday, Judge Amit P. Mehta of the US District Court for the District of Columbia ruled that the administration’s decision to halt millions of dollars in clean energy grants was “unlawful” as it primarily targeted projects in Democratic-led states.

  “All the awardees (but one) were based in states whose majority of citizens casting votes did not support President Trump in the 2024 election,” Judge Mehta said. “The political identity of a terminated grantee’s state…played a preponderant role in the October 2025 grant termination decisions,” he added.

• • Supreme Court to Hear Case on Louisiana’s Eroding Coast

  Local Governments Are Suing Oil Companies Over Environmental Damage
  
  
  

  Jan. 11, 2026 -Who should pay for saving southern Louisiana’s endangered coastline?

  The Supreme Court is set to take up a sliver of that question on Monday, as the justices hear arguments in connection with more than 40 lawsuits filed by Louisiana officials seeking to hold energy companies liable for environmental damage linked to oil and gas production, some of it dating back to World War II.

• • The War Over a Weedkiller Might
  Be Headed to the Supreme Court

  Bayer Has Asked the Justices to Decide Whether Federal Law Shields Them From Lawsuits Over Its Roundup Herbicide and Cancer
  
  
  

  Jan. 9, 2026 -The Supreme Court is poised to decide whether to take up a case involving weedkillers and cancer that could effectively curtail one of the largest waves of tort litigation in American history.

  The case involves Bayer, the German conglomerate that acquired the pesticide manufacturer Monsanto in 2018. Bayer is petitioning the court for a definitive ruling on whether federal law shields the company from thousands of lawsuits claiming that its widely-used weedkiller Roundup causes cancer.

  Again.

• • In Ecuador’s Battle of Toad vs. Road, Toad Wins

  A Court Invoked Ecuador’s Rights of Nature Laws In Halting a Highway Project to Protect the Jambato Harlequin Toad, Requiring the Government to Prove Construction Won’t Drive The Species to Extinction
  
  
  

  Jan. 7, 2026 -An Ecuadorian court has blocked construction of a highway after ruling it poses an imminent and irreversible threat to the rights of a critically endangered toad, a decision that underscores the country’s unique constitutional protections for nature.

  The opinion, issued Sunday by Judge Milton Gustavo Hernández Andino of a provincial court in Pujilí, suspended all work on the planned highway, citing the risk it poses to the Jambato harlequin toad—a species found nowhere else on Earth but in the parish of Angamarca, in Cotopaxi province.

• • Louisiana Town Fights For Relief After a Billion-Dollar Oil Disaster

  Federal and State Officials Have Sued the Company Behind the Blast, But Roseland, Louisiana, Residents Say the Case Won’t Bring Relief to Their Town
  
  
  

  Jan. 3, 2026 -Four months have passed since a Louisiana oil facility burst apart, spewing a dense black sludge that drifted across homes, farms, and waterways as far as 50 miles away.

  Since then, the U.S. Department of Justice and Louisiana environmental regulators have filed a sweeping lawsuit against Smitty’s Supply, the company that ran the facility storing oil and vehicle lubricants. But residents in the majority-Black town are skeptical that they’ll benefit from the $1 billion federal lawsuit.

• • The Trump Administration Approved a Big Lithium Mine

  A Top Official’s Husband Profited
  
  
  

  Jan. 3, 2026 -A high-ranking official in the Interior Department is drawing scrutiny from ethics experts because she failed to disclose her family’s financial interest in the nation’s largest lithium mine that had been approved by her agency, according to state and federal records.

  In 2018 Frank Falen sold water from a family ranch in northern Nevada to Lithium Nevada Corp., a subsidiary of Lithium Americas, for $3.5 million. The company was planning a $2.2 billion lithium mine nearby called Thacker Pass, and lithium mining requires significant amounts of water.

• • EU’s New ‘Green Tariff’ Rules On
  High-Carbon Goods Come Into Force

  The ‘Border Adjustment Mechanism’ Aims to Create a Level Playing Field While Also Encouraging Decarbonisation
  
  
  

  Jan. 1, 2026 -The biggest shake-up of green trade rules for decades comes into force today, as companies selling steel, cement and other high-carbon goods into the EU will have to prove they comply with low-carbon regulations or face fines.

  But a lack of clarity on how the rules will be applied, and the failure of the UK government to strike a deal with Brussels over the issue, could lead to confusion in the early stages, experts warned.

• • Stingless Bees From the Amazon
  Granted Legal Rights in a World First

  Planet’s Oldest Bee Species and Primary Pollinators Were Under Threat From Deforestation and Competition From ‘Killer Bees’
  
  
  

  Dec. 29, 2025 -Stingless bees from the Amazon have become the first insects to be granted legal rights anywhere in the world, in a breakthrough supporters hope will be a catalyst for similar moves to protect bees elsewhere.

  It means that across a broad swathe of the Peruvian Amazon, the rainforest’s long-overlooked native bees – which, unlike their cousins the European honeybees, have no sting – now have the right to exist and to flourish.

• • Indigenous Groups Fight to Save Rediscovered
  Settlement Site on an Industrial Waterfront in Texas

  Flanked By a Chemical Plant and An Oil Rig Construction Yard, the Site At Donnel Point May Be the Last of Its Kind On This Stretch of Coastline, Now Occupied By Petrochemical Industries
  
  
  

  Dec. 23, 2025 -The rediscovery of an ancient settlement site, sandwiched between industrial complexes on Corpus Christi Bay, has spurred a campaign for its preservation by Native American groups in South Texas.

  Hundreds of such sites were once documented around nearby bays but virtually all have been destroyed as cities, refineries and petrochemical plants spread along the waterfront at one of Texas’ commercial ports.

• • Environmental Racism

  A Global Overview
  
  {EARTH.ORG}
  
  

  Dec. 23, 2025 -The concept of environmental racism did not originate from a policy report or a government briefing – it came from the streets. In 1982, residents of Warren County, North Carolina lay down in front of trucks carrying toxic waste to a newly approved landfill. Among the protesters was Benjamin Chavis, who later put a name to what communities across the US had been experiencing for decades: the pattern of placing hazardous sites, polluting industries, and dangerous infrastructure in neighborhoods of colour, while keeping wealthier and whiter areas safe.

  Chavis called it “racial discrimination in environmental policy-making” – a system where toxic waste facilities are deliberately sited in minority communities and where people of color are excluded from decisions that directly affect their health. His words captured something that many already knew, but few in power were willing to say out loud.

• • Texas Sues Xcel Over Panhandle Fires

  Texas Has Accused Xcel Energy of “Blatant Negligence” For Causing the State’s Largest Wildfire in History
  
  {energy central}
  
  

  Dec. 22, 2025 -Attorney General Ken Paxton alleges that Xcel ignored a contractor’s urgent warning to replace a “decayed” utility pole just three weeks before it snapped, sparking the February 2024 Smokehouse Creek Fire (which killed three and scorched over 1M acres).

  Texas is seeking a court order to legally ban Xcell from raising rates to pay for the disaster and to prohibit the company from advertising its grid as “safe” or “reliable.”

• • Countries Want Debt Relief for Conservation

  Is China Ready to Play a Role?
  
  
  

  Dec. 21, 2025 -Long drifts of mist settle between the mountain peaks in this region, almost indistinguishable from clouds. Underneath, species found only here depend on the intricacies of this high-altitude rainforest, one of the most biodiverse places on the planet.

  Like many parts of the Amazon, this fragile and abundant wilderness is imperiled—and not only by the usual dangers of development and climate change. Mounting sovereign debt has become one of the Ecuadorian Amazon’s biggest threats, pushing the government to expand oil and mining to keep public finances afloat.

• • AI and Other High-Tech Tools Are
  Reshaping the Global Fight Against Wildlife Poaching

  New Tools Are Helping Park Rangers Detect and Respond to Poaching In Real Time
  
  
  

  Dec. 19, 2025 -As anti-poaching techniques have improved over the years, poachers have increasingly used technology to evade detection by patrols and park rangers. Now, conservationists are rising to the challenge of the resulting technological arms race with innovations of their own.

  Over the past few years, researchers and conservationists have worked to develop new technology to detect and track poaching, including mobile apps, sensors, and AI. In an effort to determine which devices, strategies, and technologies are most effective, researchers assessed a suite of new developments that have been deployed or hold promise, in a recent study published in Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution.

• • Nigeria Closes Factories Linked to
  U.S. Auto Industry Amid Poisoning Inquiry

  Carmakers Have Known For Decades That Battery Recycling Was Poisoning People Abroad
  
  
  

  Dec. 18, 2025 -The Nigerian government has begun cataloging the health and environmental damage caused by factories that shipped recycled lead to the United States for use in car batteries.

  A team of scientists arrived Tuesday in the industrial town of Ogijo, Nigeria, outside Lagos, to test the soil and air for lead. Officials have shut down recycling factories in the area and are making plans to conduct blood tests on about 500 people who live nearby.

• • The Scientists Making the Case for Nature’s Rights

  A Group of Wetlands Scientists Wants the Critical Ecosystems They Study to Be Next
  
  
  

  Oct. 5, 2025 -VICTORIA FALLS, Zimbabwe—On a bright and clear day, Gillian T. Davies reached the end of a winding dirt track where armed guards waited.

  The ecologist from Massachusetts was attending an international conference on wetlands that would influence the future of the world’s fastest-disappearing ecosystems. The sessions were not going well.

• • China’s Clean Energy Investments Abroad
  Are a Boon for Climate, But...

  Human Rights and the Environment Are a Different Story
  
  
  

  Dec. 17, 2025 -The audience sat patiently through the presentations about the cluster of battery factories going up nearby. They listened to descriptions of the hazardous chemicals the plants will use, their huge water withdrawals and energy demands.

  When it came time for questions, people began shifting in their chairs and standing up, making the cramped room feel even smaller.

  What if the chemicals leak, one woman asked. What’s in it for the politicians in their “velvet chairs,” another demanded. A third warned it would be just like the Soviet era, when iron and steel plants left a polluted legacy.

• • How a Nation Famous for Marine
  Conservation Is Bankrolling Its Own Destruction

  Costa Rica’s Fuel Subsidies Are Funding Widespread Poaching and Overfishing in Supposedly Protected Waters
  
  
  

  Dec. 14, 2025 -In April 2022, a blue and white fishing boat sliced through the protected waters surrounding Costa Rica’s Isla San José at high speed. Its 75-horsepower engine churned the turquoise surface of the Guanacaste Conservation Area, a UNESCO World Heritage Site teeming with manta rays and bottlenose dolphins.

  Onboard, three fishermen were attempting to escape the law as a triple-engined Costa Rican Coast Guard speedboat closed in. Minutes later, balaclava-clad patrolmen boarded the panga and opened its coolers: 62 kilograms of red snapper, some still alive, gills gasping, was now evidence of a crime.

• • Lawsuit Seeks to Stop Oil Exploration
  in Remote Areas of the Arctic

  It Proposed Work By Conocophillips Could Threaten Delicate Ecosystems in the Largest Tract of Public Land in the U.S.g
  
  
  

  Dec. 11, 2025 -A federal lawsuit filed Thursday challenges an oil company’s new permit to explore for oil in a remote region of the Arctic in Alaska, arguing that such activity threatens the tundra’s ecosystem and the caribou herds that Native communities rely on for sustenance.

  Last month, the Bureau of Land Management approved the permit for ConocoPhillips to work in the National Petroleum Reserve, a vast expanse on Alaska’s North Slope. The lawsuit alleges that the agency fast-tracked its environmental assessment and failed to account for the harms the work could cause, such as disrupting the migration of the Teshekpuk Caribou Herd, which gives birth and raises calves in the area.

• • Greenpeace’s Fight With Pipeline Giant Exposes a Legal Loophole

  A Court Filing By a Group With Deep Ties to the Pipeline Company Energy Transfer Raises Questions About the Growing Use of Amicus Briefs in Litigation
  
  
  

  Dec. 17, 2025 -As Greenpeace and the pipeline company Energy Transfer (ET) have fought a series of bruising court battles — including one that could bankrupt Greenpeace in the United States — a little-known organization filed what’s known as a “friend-of-the-court” brief with the North Dakota Supreme Court.

  The organization, Grow America’s Infrastructure Now, or GAIN, urged the court in its November brief to prevent Greenpeace from filing a lawsuit against ET in another country. GAIN argued that Greenpeace was trying to “relitigate” its case after suffering a startling defeat in a trial in Mandan, N.D., this year, when a jury held three Greenpeace entities liable for some $670 million in damages over their role in protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline nearly a decade ago.

• • Philippines Typhoon Survivors Sue Shell
  Over Its Role in Climate Change

  Claimants Say the Oil Giant Has Known For Decades That Burning Fossil Fuel Contributes to Global Warming
  
  {THE WALL STREET JOURNAL}
  
  

  Dec. 11, 2025 -A group of more than 100 Filipinos are suing British oil-and-gas giant Shell, claiming that its historical contribution to climate change from fossil-fuel production was a significant factor in causing a supertyphoon that battered the country four years ago.

  The storm, which hit the Philippines in December 2021, caused the deaths of more than 400 people and nearly $1 billion in damage. Alongside the lives lost, hundreds of thousands were made homeless and lost their livelihoods.

• • Youth Activists Try to Protect a Climate Win in Montana

  The Young Plaintiffs, Who Won a Major Case Over Climate Change Policy In 2023, Argue That Legislators Are Illegally Ignoring the Effects of Fossil Fuels
  
  
  

  Dec. 10, 2025 -A group of young activists, who in 2023 won a landmark climate change case against their home state of Montana, are asking the state’s top court to prevent legislators from undermining their victory.

  The original case, Held v. Montana, took issue with a law that barred the state from considering the effects of climate change when approving fossil fuel projects. The plaintiffs argued the law violated the right to a stable environment guaranteed by the state’s constitution. A judge ruled in their favor after a trial in 2023, and the decision was upheld by the Montana Supreme Court the following year.

• • How China Silences Environmental Reporters Beyond Its Borders

  Journalists Who Report On the Harms Caused By China’s Overseas Infrastructure Buildout In Africa Face Intimidation, Surveillance and Police Pressure
  
  
  

  Nov, 23, 2025 -The strange number lighting up Tawanda Majoni’s phone again and again felt like a warning.

  Majoni, one of the Zimbabwe’s most respected journalists, soon learned where the calls were coming from: a federal police unit called Law and Order, notorious for abductions, torture and killings.

• • Environmental Groups Sue Trump
  Admin Over Gulf of Mexico Oil Leases

  The Lawsuit Claims the Government Failed to Conduct Required Environmental and Health Risk Reviews, Potentially Harming Coastal Communities and Endangered Whales
  
  {ET Energyworld}
  
  

  Nov. 19, 2025 -Environmental groups sued the Trump administration on Tuesday over a plan to sell oil and gas leases in the Gulf of Mexico. The groups say the sale violates a core environmental law and threatens coastal communities and endangered whales.

  The lawsuit, filed in the US District Court for the District of Columbia said the government failed to conduct reviews required by the National Environmental Policy Act, a bedrock law that has been in place for more than 50 years. The law, known as NEPA, requires the government to evaluate projects' environmental and health risks and to study alternatives.

• • Pope Leo Urges Stronger Action as UN
  Climate Summit Enters Final Week

  Pope Says World Failing to Do Enough to Fight Climate Change
  
  
  

  Nov. 18, 2025 -Pope Leo criticized world governments on Monday for failing so far to slow global warming and called for a stronger response to the threat, as countries at the U.N. climate summit in Brazil's Amazon city of Belem entered the second week of negotiations with a goal to resolve their thorniest issues ahead of schedule.

  The Pope's message reflected mounting concern about flagging international ambition and rising greenhouse gas emissions a full decade after the 2015 Paris Agreement, a landmark deal at which countries for the first time agreed to limit global warming to well within 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

• • Indigenous People, Long Sidelined
  at Climate Talks, Take the Stage in Brazil

  The Indigenous Presence is Palpable and Strong
  
  
  

  Nov. 14, 2025 -They came from the Andes in Ecuador and the Amazon rainforest in Peru. They were joined by activists from the Brazilian forests and savannas. Together, they numbered in the thousands, young and old, women and men.

  Indigenous people arrived at this year’s international climate summit in Belém, Brazil, in greater numbers than ever before. They had one unifying goal: to make sure their voices are no longer ignored when nations of the world gather to figure out how to curb rising global temperatures.

• • Fossil Fuel Projects Around the World
  Threaten the Health of 2bn People

  ‘Deep-Rooted Injustices’ Affect Billions of People Due to Location of Wells, Pipelines and Other Infrastructure
  
  
  

  Nov. 12, 2025 -A quarter of the world’s population lives within three miles (5km) of operational fossil fuel projects, potentially threatening the health of more than 2 billion people as well as critical ecosystems, according to first-of-its-kind research.

  A damning new report by Amnesty International, shared exclusively with the Guardian, found that more than 18,300 oil, gas and coal sites are currently distributed across 170 countries worldwide, occupying a vast area of the Earth’s surface.

• • Two Caribbean Islands Seek Justice
  From France for Pesticide Poisoning

  In Guadeloupe and Martinique, Where More Than 90 Percent of the Population Has Chlordecone in Their Blood, Residents Continue to Demand Financial Compensation
  
  
  

  Nov. 11, 2025 -As a kid in the French Caribbean island of Guadeloupe, Georgina Lambert spent her days playing beneath banana trees and swimming in rivers that shimmered with sunlight. She had no idea that the soil beneath her feet, the water she swam in and the air she breathed were laced with chlordecone, an extremely toxic pesticide.

  Lambert was born in 1980 near the banana plantations in southern Basse-Terre, on Guadeloupe’s fertile volcanic soil. Her father, from Haiti, had moved to the island to answer the call for plantation labor.

• • The Harsh Reality of Meat Production

  How Slaughterhouses Work
  
  
  

  Nov. 11, 2025 -It’s not exactly revelatory to say that slaughterhouses cause pain; they’re killing factories, after all. But the scope of this pain, and the number of animals and people it impacts, isn’t immediately apparent. Thanks to the specific ways slaughterhouses are run, the animals in them suffer far more than, say, wild animals who are shot and killed for food by a hunter. The negative impacts on slaughterhouse workers, too, are both extensive and largely unknown to those outside of the industry. Here is the harsh reality of how meat is made.

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