White House Budget Would Slash Funding for NOAA Climate Research
https://www.ecowatch.com/white-house-budget-noaa-climate-research-funding.html
The Trump administration plans to eliminate the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)’s research arm, close climate and weather labs and slash the budgets of several NOAA offices, internal documents said.
If Congress approves the plan, funding for NOAA’s Oceanic and Atmospheric Research (OAR) office would be drastically reduced from $485 million to $171 million, reported The Guardian.
Retired OAR Director Craig McLean told The Guardian the cuts would “compromise the safety, economic competitiveness, and security of the American people.”
One document stated all budgets for weather, ocean and climate labs would be emptied, with that level of funding resulting in OAR being “eliminated as a line office.”
“The elimination of NOAA’s research line office and all of its research capabilities is a crushing blow to the ability of our country to protect our citizens and also to lead the world,” said former NOAA Administrator Rick Spinrad, who called the recommendations “extraordinarily devastating.”
Under the proposed reductions, more than $324 million would be cut from the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), with instructions for the agency to follow administration priorities in its work to “unleash American energy.”
Grants for habitat restoration, conservation and species recovery, as well as the fisheries grant program, would all lose their funding.
The uncertainty at NOAA has been felt all over the world, as researchers from other countries become more concerned about potential interruptions to crucial climate data from the many NOAA Earth-observing missions, Inside Climate News reported.
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Article continues at https://www.ecowatch.com/white-house-budget-noaa-climate-research-funding.html
Trump Signs ‘Breathlessly Stupid’ Orders to Boost Polluting Coal Industry
Original article by Eloise Goldsmith republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).
“Coal is a disaster for our health, our wallets, and the planet,” said one environmental lawyer.
U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday signed multiple executive orders that aim to boost the coal industry, a move that critics denounced as “reckless” and “breathlessly stupid” even before the orders were officially unveiled.
Among the orders signed Tuesday, Trump directed U.S. Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum to acknowledge the end of a moratorium that had halted new coal leasing on public lands and to prioritize coal leasing and related activities, and also directed U.S. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright to determine whether coal used in steel production can be considered a “critical material.” According to Reuters, permitting this classification would pave the way for the administration to use emergency powers to boost production.
Trump also paused environmental regulation imposed under former President Joe Biden that applied to certain coal-burning power plants thereby purportedly “safeguarding the nation’s energy grid and security, and saving coal plants from closure.”
Additionally, one order directed the “Energy Department to develop a process for using emergency powers to prevent unprofitable coal plants from shutting down in order to avert power outages,” according to The New York Times, a move that may face court challenges.
Jill Tauber, vice president of litigation for climate and energy at the green group Earthjustice, said Tuesday: “Coal is a disaster for our health, our wallets, and the planet. President Trump’s efforts to rescue failing coal plants and open our lands to destructive mining is another in a series of actions that sacrifices American lives for fossil fuel industry profit. Instead of investing in pollution, we should be leading the way on clean energy.”
“The only way to prop up coal is to deny reality, and the reality is that people no longer rely on coal because it’s expensive, unreliable, and devastating to public health,” said Julie McNamara, an associate policy director with the Union of Concerned Scientists, in a statement on Tuesday.
“Instead of supporting the economy-boosting clean energy transition that maintains widespread public support across the country, President Trump is relentlessly attempting to tear it down.”
Trump has vowed to support what he calls “beautiful, clean coal,” though the industry has been in decline for years. Coal-fired electricity generation has dropped from 38.5% of the country’s generation mix in 2014 to 14.7% in 2024, according to a 2025 factbook from BloombergNEF and the Business Council for Sustainable Energy. Coal is also the dirtiest fossil fuel.
The executive order builds on previous moves by the Trump administration. Last month, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin announced an effort to rollback a host of EPA regulations, including some that will impact coal producers.
On the first day of his second term, Trump declared a “national energy emergency” intended to help deliver on his campaign pledge to “drill, baby, drill.” That emergency defined energy to include oil, natural gas, uranium, coal, biofuels, geothermal, flowing water, and critical minerals—but it omitted solar and wind.
Reporting earlier Tuesday indicated that Trump would sign an order invoking presidential emergency authority to force coal-fired power plants to stay open.
In a statement released in response to that reporting, Tyson Slocum, energy program director at the watchdog Public Citizen, said: “Reviving or extending coal to power data centers would force working families to subsidize polluting coal on behalf of Big Tech billionaires and despoil our nation’s public lands.”
“Coal kills. In the last two decades, nearly half a million Americans have died from exposure to coal pollution,” said Ben Jealous, executive director of the environmental organization the Sierra Club in a statement on earlier on Tuesday, also in response to reports that executive orders were forthcoming.
In another move that generated swift criticism, Trump signed an executive order on Tuesday directing U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi to investigate state policies that are aimed at confronting the climate crisis and to take action to stop enforcement of those laws.
According to The Washington Post, it is unclear what authority would the agency would rely on. The order specifically calls out state climate superfund laws in New York and Vermont.
“President Trump’s executive order weaponizes the Justice Department against states that dare to make polluters pay for climate damage,” said Cassidy DiPaola, communications director of Make Polluters Pay—a campaign to build public support for climate litigation—in a statement on Wednesday.
“This is the fossil fuel industry’s desperation on full display—they’re so afraid of facing evidence of their deception in court that they’ve convinced the president to launch a federal assault on state sovereignty. We are watching corporate capture of government unfold in real time,” DiPaola added.
Original article by Eloise Goldsmith republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).
Attacking the poor destroys economies. Trump’s tariffs threatens global economy
Donald Trump is repeating the same mistakes of short-lived former UK Prime Minister Liz Truss. It’s not a few uber-rich individuals that maintain economic health, concentrating wealth is unhealthy. The rich wouldn’t be rich if they were willing to spend their money. It is the poor that are forced to spend to survive, they have no choice. Making the poor poorer to make a tiny minority richer is counter-productive as markets globally are showing.
Additionally, Trump is a sullen, arrogant bigot unwilling to recognise the overwhelming urgency of climate action. Even marine mammals recognise this.
Luton airport expansion approved by government
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cy4vg2d9v7no
London Luton Airport hopes to almost double annual passenger numbers to 32 million by 2043 after the government approved expansion plans, including a new terminal.
It came despite the Planning Inspectorate recommending Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander rejected them over environmental concerns.
Luton Rising, the airport’s owner, said the decision could bring “significant economic, employment and social benefits for our town”.
However, environmental campaigners said “with climate change worsening, the last thing any of us need is 70,000 more aircraft a year”.
Luton was the UK’s fifth busiest airport last year, with 16.9 million people travelling on 132,000 flights.
The expansion plans involve building a new terminal, new taxiways and increasing capacity in the existing terminal, from its current 18 million passengers a year.
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A spokesman for Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said he was “pleased” with the decision.
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Article continues at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cy4vg2d9v7no
