Climate change

Inside Climate News - Rachel Morello-Frosch, an environmental-health disparities expert at the University of California, Berkeley, and co-author on the study, has spent the past several years evaluating climate pollution’s likely impacts on low-lying industrial regions and vulnerable populations. 

Burning fossil fuels makes flooding not only more destructive, by destabilizing the climate and supercharging waves, storms and high tides, but also more dangerous, by releasing toxic substances like petroleum and untreated sewage in the path of roiling floodwaters.

Morello-Frosch worries that toxic floodwaters are more likely to imperil low-income communities of color like Richmond because decades of discriminatory housing, lending and employment practices have left residents stuck living near polluting industries without the means to mitigate harm when disaster strikes. 

To help communities and policymakers prepare for future threats, the research team conducted the first national assessment of unequal risks from flooded hazardous sites related to sea level rise. Of nearly 48,000 U.S. facilities that store, handle, produce or release harmful substances, they identified 5,500 that are likely to experience a 1-in-100-year flood event—that is, an uncommonly large flood that has a 1 percent chance of happening in any year—by 2100. Nearly 3,800 sites are likely to flood by 2050. 

Curbing emissions would spare a few hundred sites by 2100, the team found. But past climate pollution has “locked in” projected flood risks over the short term. 

“Over 5,000 facilities are projected to be at risk of a 1-in-100-year flooding event in 2100 if we don’t do anything, and we just learned that we’re failing to meet the 1.5 degree Celsius benchmark,” said Morello-Frosch, referring to the Paris Agreement target to avoid potentially irreversible effects of climate change.

About two dozen coastal states plus Puerto Rico are likely to see at least some hazardous facilities flood. But the vast majority of at-risk facilities are concentrated in just seven states. Topping the list is Louisiana, with its dense concentration of oil and gas wells, followed by Florida, New Jersey, Texas, California, New York and Massachusetts. 

Inside Climate News reviewed temperature studies of heat conditions at Auburn University, the University of Alabama and Mississippi State University, and collected its own temperature measurements during two games in October, one at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa and the other at University of Alabama at Birmingham. 

An Inside Climate News analysis of data from inside these southern stadiums found that temperatures can spike for hours, from 10 to 16 degrees Fahrenheit higher than outside heat, depending on the venue. Concrete surface temperatures in seating areas of the Tuscaloosa stadium measured over 130 degrees Fahrenheit.

Those high temperatures had consequences. Auburn University averaged well over 100 emergency calls per game in 2024, with the majority being heat-related. Halfway through the 2025 season, Alabama was averaging 60 to 65 medical calls per game, with 50 to 75 percent of calls during day games related to heat, according to interviews with medical personnel, though university officials provided lower numbers. 

NBC News - As representatives from nearly 200 nations wrapped up talks at the United Nations' COP30 climate summit, where the U.S. was not in attendance, the Trump administration introduced a series of proposals to roll back environmental protections and encourage fossil fuel drilling.

The U.N. Climate Change Conference ended yesterday in the Brazilian city of Belém, where delegates gathered to hammer out a roadmap to phase out fossil fuels, boost climate action and limit global warming.

For the first time in the summit's history, the U.S. — one of the top emitters of greenhouse gases — did not send a delegation. Instead, the Trump administration announced a plan to open up new oil drilling off the coasts of California and Florida for the first time in decades and proposed rule changes to weaken the Endangered Species Act and limit the Environmental Protection Agency's authority to protect wetlands and streams.

THE STORY