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Adaptation

The Megabill’s Clean Energy Holdouts
Politics

AM Briefing: The Vote-a-Rama Drags On

On sparring in the Senate, NEPA rules, and taxing first-class flyers

Climate

AM Briefing: Heat for the History Books

On mercury rising, climate finance, and aviation emissions

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Politics

‘There’s No Good Answers’: State Lawmakers on Climate Policy Under Trump

Talking to legislators from New York, Washington, Massachusetts, and New Jersey about what’s under threat, what’s safe, and the strain of it all.

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Adaptation

Funding Cuts Are Killing Small Farmers’ Trust in Climate Policy

That trust was hard won — and it won’t be easily regained.

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FEMA headquarters.

Trump Is Still Holding Up FEMA Funds, Despite Court Order

States filed yet another motion on Monday asking the court to release urgently needed disaster relief.

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EPA Workers Wrote an Anonymous Letter to America

AM Briefing: A Letter from EPA Staff

On environmental justice grants, melting glaciers, and Amazon’s carbon credits

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Adaptation

Now Is a Really Bad Time for the Really Big One

Job and funding cuts to federal emergency programs have the nation’s tsunami response experts, shall we say, concerned.

Washington state and a wave.
<p>Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images</p>

There is never a good time for an earthquake. But as President Donald Trump and his government efficiency guru, Elon Musk, take a buzzsaw to the federal bureaucracy, they risk discovering whether there is such a thing as an especially bad time.

The 700-mile Cascadia Subduction Zone runs off the Pacific coast from southern British Columbia to northern California, and has been stuck for approximately the past three centuries. When the oceanic Juan de Fuca plate finally slips free to slide beneath the North American plate, it will cause what is ominously referred to as the Big One: a megathrust earthquake expected to be “one of the worst natural disasters” in the continent’s history. Scientists put the odds of it happening in the next 50 years at around 37%, with an upper threshold of a 9.0 magnitude earthquake or possibly even higher. As the Pacific Northwest’s former FEMA director once famously (albeit somewhat hyperbolically) told The New Yorker, when the Big One hits, “Our operating assumption is that everything west of Interstate 5 will be toast.”

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Climate

AM Briefing: U.S. Abandons a Key Climate Financing Coalition

On energy transition funds, disappearing butterflies, and Tesla’s stock slump

America’s Shrinking Climate Financing Footprint
<p>Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images</p>

Current conditions: Australians have been told to prepare for the worst ahead of Cyclone Alfred, and 100,000 people are already without power • Argentina’s Buenos Aires province has been hit by deadly flooding • Critical fire conditions will persist across much of west Texas through Saturday.

THE TOP FIVE

1. Trump administration questions aid programs about their climate ambitions

Many foreign aid programs have reportedly received a questionnaire from the Trump administration that they must complete as part of a review, presumably to help the government decide whether or not the groups should receive any more federal funds. One of the questions on the list, according toThe New York Times, is: “Can you confirm this is not a climate or ‘environmental justice’ project or include such elements?” Another asks if the project will “directly impact efforts to strengthen U.S. supply chains or secure rare earth minerals?” President Trump issued an executive order freezing foreign aid on his first day back in office. The Supreme Court subsequently ruled that aid must be released. The Times notes that “many of the projects under scrutiny have already fired their staff and closed their doors, because they have received no federal funds since the review process ostensibly began. … Within some organizations, there are no staff members left to complete the survey.”

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