Atmosperhic CO2 Is at an 800,000-Year High

Current conditions: More than 2 million people are under blizzard warnings across the Midwest • A landslide is suspected of rupturing an oil pipeline in northwest Ecuador, triggering an environmental emergency • Beaches are closed in South Australia due to a dangerous microalgal bloom, which officials believe could be caused by the combination of unusual hot and dry weather, low wind, and low tides.

THE TOP FIVE

1. Judge temporarily blocks EPA’s efforts to claw back climate grants

A U.S. district judge issued a temporary restraining order yesterday blocking the Environmental Protection Agency from taking back billions of dollars in climate grants issued to a handful of nonprofits under the Inflation Reduction Act’s Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund. Under the order, Citibank, where the funds are held, cannot transfer the money out of the nonprofits’ accounts because doing so would cause them “imminent harm.” The nonprofits in question – Climate United Fund, Coalition for Green Capital, and Power Forward Communities – received about $14 billion of more than $20 billion awarded for clean energy and climate solutions. The Trump administration’s EPA, led by Lee Zeldin, has frozen and attempted to claw back the funds, accusing the Biden administration of approving them hastily and without oversight, and accusing the nonprofits of “fraud, waste, and abuse.” Several of the grantees have sued the EPA and Citibank. In her decision, Judge Tanya Chutkan of Washington, D.C., said “there are serious due process concerns” about the EPA’s actions.

2. Key takeaways from WMO’s ‘State of the Global Climate’ report

The World Meteorological Organization’s annual “State of the Global Climate” report is out today. It’s packed full of numbers from 2024 that tell an alarming story:

• Atmospheric carbon dioxide levels are now at their highest point in 800,000 years.
• The average global temperature last year was 1.55 degrees Celsius (2.79 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels.
• The ocean was the hottest it’s ever been in the 65-year observational record, and the ocean is warming more than twice as fast now as it was between 1960 and 2005.
• There were 151 “unprecedented” extreme weather events in 2024, causing the highest number of new displacements of humans since 2008.
• Sea levels are rising at double the rate seen in 1993.
• The world’s glaciers have lost more mass over the past three years than in any other three-year period on record.

“WMO and the global community are intensifying efforts to strengthen early warning systems and climate services to help decision-makers and society at large be more resilient to extreme weather and climate,” said WMO Secretary-General Celeste Saulo. “We are making progress but need to go further and need to go faster. Only half of all countries worldwide have adequate early warning systems. This must change.”

3. SBTi maintains 1.5C goal for corporate sustainability standards

The Science Based Targets initiative, an influential nonprofit authority on best practices for corporate sustainability, published a draft proposal for its revised Net Zero Standard yesterday. It “requires that net-zero targets across all scopes (1, 2 and 3) be aligned with pathways limiting global warming to 1.5°C with no or limited overshoot.” In other words, companies that want an SBTi seal of approval can’t abandon the goal of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, even as the world comes off its first year of average global temperatures above this threshold. “The finance industry is already abandoning voluntary initiatives intended to align their businesses with 1.5C,” noted Bloomberg, “with the Net-Zero Banking Alliance now virtually wiped off the map in North America.”

Companies were hoping the new standard would give direction as to whether they should be buying carbon removal in the near-term. But as Heatmap’s Emily Pontecorvo explains, in the section on carbon removal, SBTi described several potential approaches, none of which appears to be particularly ambitious. Feedback on the draft is due by June 1, after which the group’s technical department and expert working groups will refine it. SBTi expects companies to begin using the new standard to refine their targets in 2027.

4. Court dismisses legal challenge to NYC’s building electrification rules

A court has dismissed a legal challenge against New York City’s Local Law 154, which sets strict carbon dioxide limits that effectively ban fossil fuel-based space heating, hot water systems, cooking ranges, and clothes dryers in new buildings and buildings being gutted for renovation. Some industry groups and a plumber labor union challenged the law, claiming it “preempted” national energy-efficiency standards. The court disagreed, finding the law “regulates, indirectly, the type of fuel that a covered product may consume in certain settings, irrespective of that product’s energy efficiency or use.”

“This ruling is a major victory for local democracy and New York City residents who deserve healthy air and climate protection,” said Daniel Carpenter-Gold, staff attorney on the Climate Justice Team at the Public Health Law Center. “The court has affirmed that cities have the legal authority to address the use of fossil fuels in buildings, a major contributor to both climate change and air pollution.”

5. BYD unveils five-minute EV charging

Chinese auto giant BYD claims to have developed technology that can charge an electric vehicle for 250 miles of range in just five minutes, or about the same amount of time it takes to fill up a gas-powered car. The Super e-Platform “can achieve a charging power of one megawatt and a peak charging speed of two kilometers per second,” Bloomberg explained, “making it the fastest system of its type for mass-produced vehicles.” The claims boosted the company’s shares on Tuesday. Over the last year, the Tesla rival’s stock has gained 85%.

THE KICKER

The area of land covered by monarch butterflies wintering in Mexico this year has doubled compared to 2024, indicating a possible rebound for the iconic insects.