You’re out of free articles.
Log in
To continue reading, log in to your account.
Create a Free Account
To unlock more free articles, please create a free account.
Sign In or Create an Account.
By continuing, you agree to the Terms of Service and acknowledge our Privacy Policy
Welcome to Heatmap
Thank you for registering with Heatmap. Climate change is one of the greatest challenges of our lives, a force reshaping our economy, our politics, and our culture. We hope to be your trusted, friendly, and insightful guide to that transformation. Please enjoy your free articles. You can check your profile here .
subscribe to get Unlimited access
Offer for a Heatmap News Unlimited Access subscription; please note that your subscription will renew automatically unless you cancel prior to renewal. Cancellation takes effect at the end of your current billing period. We will let you know in advance of any price changes. Taxes may apply. Offer terms are subject to change.
Subscribe to get unlimited Access
Hey, you are out of free articles but you are only a few clicks away from full access. Subscribe below and take advantage of our introductory offer.
subscribe to get Unlimited access
Offer for a Heatmap News Unlimited Access subscription; please note that your subscription will renew automatically unless you cancel prior to renewal. Cancellation takes effect at the end of your current billing period. We will let you know in advance of any price changes. Taxes may apply. Offer terms are subject to change.
Create Your Account
Please Enter Your Password
Forgot your password?
Please enter the email address you use for your account so we can send you a link to reset your password:
Here’s what we know so far, including what’s changed since last year.
The Biden administration announced final new emissions standards for cars on Wednesday, significantly curtailing both the carbon dioxide and the toxic soot and chemicals that spew from the tailpipes of the nation’s light- and medium-duty vehicles.
With that, Biden is checking off one of the two most important pieces of unfinished climate business he has left on his first term to-do list. The rules tighten pollution limits gradually over six years, beginning in 2027. In concert with other Biden policies including consumer tax credits for electric vehicles purchases, initiatives to build out charging infrastructure, and support for domestic manufacturing, the standards will help accelerate the transition to electric vehicles that is already well underway.
Transportation is responsible for more planet-warming emissions than any other part of the U.S. economy. To get the country on the path of reaching net zero emissions by 2050, as Biden has set out to do, curbing car emissions is unavoidable.
When the rules were originally proposed last year, we wrote that they would “roughly halve carbon pollution from America’s massive car and truck fleet, the world’s third largest, within a decade.” That’s still broadly the case, even though the final version features one big change: Automakers will now have more time to cut emissions from their fleets. They will still have to achieve the same standard in 2032 as what was originally proposed, but they can transition to it more slowly.
Ahead of the official release, senior administration officials downplayed the significance of the slower rollout. They argued that giving automakers, dealers, and labor unions more time in the near-term would make for a sturdier rule, and that the cumulative emissions benefits of the final standard converge with the original proposal. At a White House event on Wednesday, members of the president’s climate team built on that message, framing the new rules not as a government mandate but rather as a tool to give consumers more of what they already want. “We are witnessing a technological revolution driven by the markets,” Environmental Protection Agency administrator Michael Regan proclaimed.
Also speaking at the event was John Bozzella, head of the Alliance for Automotive Innovation, which represents most U.S. automakers, including the Big Three. Bozzella praised the administration for heeding the industry’s concerns over the original proposal’s rapid phase-in and said the new rules were “much improved” from what had initially been proposed. “Pace matters to automakers,” he said. “It certainly matters to consumers.”
The full rule was released mid-day Wednesday, and we’re digging through it to find out exactly what else has changed. But here’s what we know so far.
The rules strengthen greenhouse gas emission limits, in terms of grams of CO2 per mile, that automakers will have to adhere to, on average, across their product lines. They also tighten limits on dangerous pollutants, including particulate matter — the tiny bits that make up soot — and nitrogen oxides.
This chart shows how the cuts in the final rule compare to those proposed in the draft rule. The version released last April required automakers to make steeper reductions to carbon emissions in the first three years, while the final rule allows for a more gradual reduction.
No. They are what’s called technology-neutral standards, meaning that automakers have options for how to comply with them. Since automakers have to meet the emissions targets on average across their fleets, rather than for each vehicle, it’s likely they’ll produce a range of options in 2032, including plug-in hybrids, regular hybrids, and even some gas cars with improved efficiency — though their fleets will probably have a much higher proportion of EVs than they do now.
While that generally hasn’t changed from the preliminary rule, the Biden administration’s messaging around it has.
When it released the initial proposal, the EPA emphasized that the least-cost path to achieving the standards would be for about two-thirds of new vehicles sold in 2032 to be electric. Although this was just one potential scenario, it was widely interpreted as a target or even a mandate — particularly by Biden’s political opponents.
On Tuesday, administration officials said that the two-thirds finding had been based on limited data. The EPA now estimates that EVs may make up anywhere between 30% and 56% of new light-duty sales from model years 2030 to 2032.
By 2032, the light-duty fleet on offer from automakers will emit half as much carbon as vehicles on the market in 2026.
The EPA estimates that these rules will avoid 7.2 billion metric tons of carbon from 2027 to 2055, which accounts for the vehicles’ full lifetime on the road. That’s slightly less than the 7.3 billion metric tons the initial proposal would have avoided.
The rules will change the mix of vehicles sold by automakers, encouraging dealers to sell more hybrid, plug-in hybrid, and battery electric vehicles. They’re also expected to save Americans roughly $62 billion in fuel costs and avoided maintenance costs, since the EPA assumes that EVs are still cheaper to operate and maintain. On average, a consumer will save about $6,000 over the lifetime of a 2032 vehicle compared to one sold in 2026, according to the agency.
The tailpipe rule will likely increase the cost of building each vehicle, which could translate into higher prices for consumers. However, state and federal tax incentives — as well as the cheaper cost of operating and fueling EVs — will offset that increase.
The rules are projected to deliver major health and environmental benefits to the public. The EPA estimates they will produce $37 billion in benefits from improved public health and climate mitigation, including avoided hospitalizations and premature deaths.
This is what the EPA was created to do — use the best available science to protect human health and the environment. But even after decades of improvements in air quality, there is still a lot of room for improvement. More than one third of the population still live in places with unhealthy levels of ozone or particulate pollution, according to The American Lung Association’s most recent “ state of the air” report. The risks are deeply unequal, with people of color making up half of those exposed. The report also noted that climate change is making it harder to protect people, as heat, drought, and wildfires increasingly lead to spikes in these pollutants. Altogether, ozone and particulate matter are responsible for more than 60,000 premature deaths annually, according to the Health Effects Institute, a nonprofit, independent research organization funded by the EPA and automakers.
Officials stressed that EV sales are already shattering analyst predictions, prices are dropping, and product availability is growing. They see this rule as part of a larger ecosystem of policies — including those in the Inflation Reduction Act, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, and the CHIPS and Science Act — that are revitalizing American manufacturing and creating jobs while also contributing to the global fight against climate change. The EPA’s press release notes that companies have announced more than $160 billion in domestic clean vehicle manufacturing, and that the auto manufacturing sector as a whole has added more than 100,000 jobs since Biden took office.
The administration is also, perhaps less loudly, selling the pollution standards as a path to freedom from fossil fuels. During the press call Tuesday, a senior administration official said the rules would enable consumers to break loose from the oil industry’s grip on how we get around and how much it costs us.
The new rules kick in for cars in model year 2027, which will go on sale in 2026 and are being designed right now. Although the Biden administration has suggested that the new rules have won the support of the car industry — including automakers, labor unions, and dealerships — it could still face a court challenge from attorneys general in Republican-controlled states. Republican officials have repeatedly sued to block the Biden administration’s climate policies.
It’s unclear how the Supreme Court would respond to such a challenge. Although the Court has long backed the EPA’s ability to limit climate pollution from cars and trucks, its hard-right majority has recently rolled back what were once thought to be bedrock environmental laws. In this term alone, the Court seems likely to restrict the EPA’s ability to regulate toxic air pollution while sweeping away a central legal doctrine of environmental regulation.
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to reflect the White House event announcing the new rules.
Log in
To continue reading, log in to your account.
Create a Free Account
To unlock more free articles, please create a free account.
Though it might not be as comprehensive or as permanent as renewables advocates have feared, it’s also “just the beginning,” the congressman said.
President-elect Donald Trump’s team is drafting an executive order to “halt offshore wind turbine activities” along the East Coast, working with the office of Republican Rep. Jeff Van Drew of New Jersey, the congressman said in a press release from his office Monday afternoon.
“This executive order is just the beginning,” Van Drew said in a statement. “We will fight tooth and nail to prevent this offshore wind catastrophe from wreaking havoc on the hardworking people who call our coastal towns home.”
The announcement indicates that some in the anti-wind space are leaving open the possibility that Trump’s much-hyped offshore wind ban may be less sweeping than initially suggested.
In its press release, Van Drew’s office said the executive order would “lay the groundwork for permanent measures against the projects,” leaving the door open to only a temporary pause on permitting new projects. The congressman had recently told New Jersey reporters that he anticipates only a six-month moratorium on offshore wind.
The release also stated that the “proposed order” is “expected to be finalized within the first few months of the administration,” which is a far cry from Trump’s promise to stop projects on Day 1. If enacted, a pause would essentially halt all U.S. offshore wind development because the sought-after stretches of national coastline are entirely within federal waters.
Whether this is just caution from Van Drew’s people or a true moderation of Trump’s ambition we’ll soon find out. Inauguration Day is in less than a week.
Imagine for a moment that you’re an aerial firefighter pilot. You have one of the most dangerous jobs in the country, and now you’ve been called in to fight the devastating fires burning in Los Angeles County’s famously tricky, hilly terrain. You’re working long hours — not as long as your colleagues on the ground due to flight time limitations, but the maximum scheduling allows — not to mention the added external pressures you’re also facing. Even the incoming president recently wondered aloud why the fires aren’t under control yet and insinuated that it’s your and your colleagues’ fault.
You’re on a sortie, getting ready for a particularly white-knuckle drop at a low altitude in poor visibility conditions when an object catches your eye outside the cockpit window: an authorized drone dangerously close to your wing.
Aerial firefighters don’t have to imagine this terrifying scenario; they’ve lived it. Last week, a drone punched a hole in the wing of a Québécois “Super Scooper” plane that had traveled down from Canada to fight the fires, grounding Palisades firefighting operations for an agonizing half-hour. Thirty minutes might not seem like much, but it is precious time lost when the Santa Ana winds have already curtailed aerial operations.
“I am shocked by what happened in Los Angeles with the drone,” Anna Lau, a forestry communication coordinator with the Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation, told me. The Montana DNRC has also had to contend with unauthorized drones grounding its firefighting planes. “We’re following what’s going on very closely, and it’s shocking to us,” Lau went on. Leaving the skies clear so that firefighters can get on with their work “just seems like a no-brainer, especially when people are actively trying to tackle the situation at hand and fighting to save homes, property, and lives.”
Courtesy of U.S. Forest Service
Although the Super Scooper collision was by far the most egregious case, according to authorities there have been at least 40 “incidents involving drones” in the airspace around L.A. since the fires started. (Notably, the Federal Aviation Administration has not granted any waivers for the air space around Palisades, meaning any drone images you see of the region, including on the news, were “probably shot illegally,” Intelligencer reports.) So far, law enforcement has arrested three people connected to drones flying near the L.A. fires, and the FBI is seeking information regarding the Super Scooper collision.
Such a problem is hardly isolated to these fires, though. The Forest Service reports that drones led to the suspension of or interfered with at least 172 fire responses between 2015 and 2020. Some people, including Mike Fraietta, an FAA-certified drone pilot and the founder of the drone-detection company Gargoyle Systems, believe the true number of interferences is much higher — closer to 400.
Law enforcement likes to say that unauthorized drone use falls into three buckets — clueless, criminal, or careless — and Fraietta was inclined to believe that it’s mostly the former in L.A. Hobbyists and other casual drone operators “don’t know the regulations or that this is a danger,” he said. “There’s a lot of ignorance.” To raise awareness, he suggested law enforcement and the media highlight the steep penalties for flying drones in wildfire no-fly zones, which is punishable by up to 12 months in prison or a fine of $75,000.
“What we’re seeing, particularly in California, is TikTok and Instagram influencers trying to get a shot and get likes,” Fraietta conjectured. In the case of the drone that hit the Super Scooper, it “might have been a case of citizen journalism, like, Well, I have the ability to get this shot and share what’s going on.”
Emergency management teams are waking up, too. Many technologies are on the horizon for drone detection, identification, and deflection, including Wi-Fi jamming, which was used to ground climate activists’ drones at Heathrow Airport in 2019. Jamming is less practical in an emergency situation like the one in L.A., though, where lives could be at stake if people can’t communicate.
Still, the fact of the matter is that firefighters waste precious time dealing with drones when there are far more pressing issues that need their attention. Lau, in Montana, described how even just a 12-minute interruption to firefighting efforts can put a community at risk. “The biggest public awareness message we put out is, ‘If you fly, we can’t,’” she said.
Fraietta, though, noted that drone technology could be used positively in the future, including on wildfire detection and monitoring, prescribed burns, and communicating with firefighters or victims on the ground.
“We don’t want to see this turn into the FAA saying, ‘Hey everyone, no more drones in the United States because of this incident,’” Fraietta said. “You don’t shut down I-95 because a few people are running drugs up and down it, right? Drones are going to be super beneficial to the country long term.”
But critically, in the case of a wildfire, such tools belong in the right hands — not the hands of your neighbor who got a DJI Mini 3 for Christmas. “Their one shot isn’t worth it,” Lau said.
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to reflect that the Québécois firefighting planes are called Super Scoopers, not super soakers.
Plus 3 more outstanding questions about this ongoing emergency.
As Los Angeles continued to battle multiple big blazes ripping through some of the most beloved (and expensive) areas of the city on Friday, a question lingered in the background: What caused the fires in the first place?
Though fires are less common in California during this time of the year, they aren’t unheard of. In early December 2017, power lines sparked the Thomas Fire near Ventura, California, which burned through to mid-January. At the time it was the largest fire in the state since at least the 1930s. Now it’s the ninth-largest. Although that fire was in a more rural area, it ignited for some of the same reasons we’re seeing fires this week.
Read on for everything we know so far about how the fires started.
Six major fires started during the Santa Ana wind event last week:
Officials are investigating the cause of the fires and have not made any public statements yet. Early eyewitness accounts suggest that the Eaton Fire may have started at the base of a transmission tower owned by Southern California Edison. So far, the company has maintained that an analysis of its equipment showed “no interruptions or electrical or operational anomalies until more than one hour after the reported start time of the fire.” A Washington Post investigation found that the Palisades Fire could have risen from the remnants of a fire that burned on New Year’s Eve and reignited.
On Thursday morning, Edward Nordskog, a retired fire investigator from the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department, told me it was unlikely they had even begun looking into the root of the biggest and most destructive of the fires in the Pacific Palisades. “They don't start an investigation until it's safe to go into the area where the fire started, and it just hasn't been safe until probably today,” he said.
It can take years to determine the cause of a fire. Investigators did not pinpoint the cause of the Thomas Fire until March 2019, more than two years after it started.
But Nordskog doesn’t think it will take very long this time. It’s easier to narrow down the possibilities for an urban fire because there are typically both witnesses and surveillance footage, he told me. He said the most common causes of wildfires in Los Angeles are power lines and those started by unhoused people. They can also be caused by sparks from vehicles or equipment.
At more than 40,000 acres burned total, these fires are unlikely to make the charts for the largest in California history. But because they are burning in urban, densely populated, and expensive areas, they could be some of the most devastating. With an estimated 9,000 structures damaged as of Friday morning, the Eaton and Palisades fires are likely to make the list for most destructive wildfire events in the state.
And they will certainly be at the top for costliest. The Palisades Fire has already been declared a likely contender for the most expensive wildfire in U.S. history. It has destroyed more than 5,000 structures in some of the most expensive zip codes in the country. Between that and the Eaton Fire, Accuweather estimates the damages could reach $57 billion.
While we don’t know the root causes of the ignitions, several factors came together to create perfect fire conditions in Southern California this week.
First, there’s the Santa Ana winds, an annual phenomenon in Southern California, when very dry, high-pressure air gets trapped in the Great Basin and begins escaping westward through mountain passes to lower-pressure areas along the coast. Most of the time, the wind in Los Angeles blows eastward from the ocean, but during a Santa Ana event, it changes direction, picking up speed as it rushes toward the sea.
Jon Keeley, a research scientist with the US Geological Survey and an adjunct professor at the University of California, Los Angeles told me that Santa Ana winds typically blow at maybe 30 to 40 miles per hour, while the winds this week hit upwards of 60 to 70 miles per hour. “More severe than is normal, but not unique,” he said. “We had similar severe winds in 2017 with the Thomas Fire.”
Second, Southern California is currently in the midst of extreme drought. Winter is typically a rainier season, but Los Angeles has seen less than half an inch of rain since July. That means that all the shrubland vegetation in the area is bone-dry. Again, Keeley said, this was not usual, but not unique. Some years are drier than others.
These fires were also not a question of fuel management, Keeley told me. “The fuels are not really the issue in these big fires. It's the extreme winds,” he said. “You can do prescription burning in chaparral and have essentially no impact on Santa Ana wind-driven fires.” As far as he can tell, based on information from CalFire, the Eaton Fire started on an urban street.
While it’s likely that climate change played a role in amplifying the drought, it’s hard to say how big a factor it was. Patrick Brown, a climate scientist at the Breakthrough Institute and adjunct professor at Johns Hopkins University, published a long post on X outlining the factors contributing to the fires, including a chart of historic rainfall during the winter in Los Angeles that shows oscillations between wet and dry years over the past eight decades.
But climate change is expected to make dry years drier and wet years wetter, creating a “hydroclimate whiplash,” as Daniel Swain, a pre-eminent expert on climate change and weather in California puts it. In a thread on Bluesky, Swain wrote that “in 2024, Southern California experienced an exceptional episode of wet-to-dry hydroclimate whiplash.” Last year’s rainy winter fostered abundant plant growth, and the proceeding dryness primed the vegetation for fire.
Get our best story delivered to your inbox every day:
Editor’s note: This story was last update on Monday, January 13, at 10:00 a.m. ET.