A new federal rule to protect workers from extreme heat faces uncertainty as the Trump administration considers rolling it back or replacing it with a weaker version.
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) begins public hearings this week on a rule proposed under former President Biden that would require employers to offer water and rest breaks in high heat.
Business groups and Republican lawmakers have pushed back, arguing that such rules would be burdensome and that workers in hotter regions are already acclimated.
Worker safety advocates fear the Trump administration will dilute the rule, which could override stricter state protections already in place.
Key quote:
“All heat-related deaths are preventable because they all result from an overexposure that can be prevented.”
— Dr. John Balbus, former co-chair of a federal working group on heat
Why this matters:
As climate change drives record-breaking heat across the country, more workers face life-threatening conditions on the job. Outdoor and manual laborers — farmhands, delivery drivers, construction crews — bear the brunt of these conditions without consistent federal safeguards. Heat doesn’t just cause dehydration or fainting; it stresses the cardiovascular system, raising risks of stroke and heart attacks. But despite rising deaths, federal protections have lagged. Without national standards, workers’ safety depends on a patchwork of state laws, some of which are now being dismantled.
Temperatures nearing 90 degrees prompted Alaska to issue its first heat advisory, highlighting how unprepared the state remains for the effects of a warming planet.
The National Weather Service issued Alaska’s first-ever heat advisory as Fairbanks faced temperatures between 85 and 89 degrees, a range increasingly common in a state historically built for cold.
Homes across Alaska are ill-suited for heat, lacking air conditioning or fans; long daylight hours and poor heat dissipation make the risk of heat-related illness more acute.
Heat is Alaska’s fastest-rising climate threat, triggering health concerns, glacial melt that raises river levels, and wildfire risks that worsen air quality.
Key quote:
“Even in places where people might think they’re immune from extreme heat — they’re not anymore.”
— Jennifer Marlon, research scientist at the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication
Why this matters:
Extreme heat kills more Americans than any other weather event, and as climate change accelerates, regions historically immune to high temperatures are losing that buffer. Alaska, warming faster than any other U.S. state, is a stark example. Its homes and infrastructure are designed to trap heat, not shed it, and many residents aren’t physically acclimated to sudden spikes. Longer summer daylight and the absence of cooling systems compound the health risks. Heat waves can also melt glaciers faster, pushing rivers toward flood conditions, and feed wildfires that choke the air with smoke. The appearance of heat advisories in Alaska marks not just a meteorological shift but a deeper signal: The norms we’ve used to define safe, livable environments are slipping away, even in places once synonymous with ice.
A rush to mine nickel in Indonesia’s Raja Ampat archipelago, driven by the electric vehicle boom, has damaged one of the world’s richest marine ecosystems despite recent government action to curb operations.
Drone photos shared by Global Witness show deforestation and sediment runoff from nickel mines in Raja Ampat, a biodiverse region dubbed the “Amazon of the Seas.”
Indonesia revoked permits for four of five mining companies in the area, but one remains active, and campaigners fear legal challenges could reverse the decision.
Between 2020 and 2024, nickel mining expanded by 500 hectares across Raja Ampat, raising concerns among scientists, activists, and local communities about long-term environmental and social impacts.
Key quote:
“Mining is always going to be environmentally impactful and we all tend to think that electrification is a good idea. But what is the acceptable damage that we're willing to see?”
— Mark Erdmann, coral reef ecologist
Why this matters:
The transition to electric vehicles is often marketed as a clean solution to the climate crisis, but the materials fueling this shift come with environmental costs. Indonesia sits atop the world’s largest nickel reserves, a metal crucial for EV batteries. Mining those reserves, however, can destroy tropical forests, pollute water, and harm marine life. In places like Raja Ampat, sediment from mining flows downhill into coral reefs, clouding waters and suffocating marine species. These reefs not only support vibrant biodiversity but also sustain fishing and tourism economies. Coastal communities already vulnerable to rising sea levels now face degraded environments and damaged livelihoods. As global demand for “green” technologies accelerates, the environmental toll of extracting so-called critical minerals — whether from rainforests, seabeds, or islands — poses a growing dilemma for countries trying to balance ecological preservation with economic development.
Fishing-dependent Port Heiden, Alaska, lost a shot at cheaper, cleaner power after the Trump administration froze climate funds meant to replace the village’s polluting diesel system.
Port Heiden, an Alutiiq fishing village in Alaska, planned to use a $300,000 U.S. Environmental Protection Agency-funded grant to design hydropower systems that could replace its high-cost diesel infrastructure, but the grant was frozen amid federal climate spending cuts under President Trump.
The grant was part of a broader $6.97 billion initiative under the Inflation Reduction Act’s Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, which was halted when EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin accused the program of waste and terminated multiple grants now contested in court.
As the village faces rising fuel costs, coastal erosion, and population decline, local leaders fear that replacing grants with loans — even forgivable ones — adds financial risk and delays desperately needed clean energy transitions.
Key quote:
“These cuts can be a matter of life or death for many of these communities being able to heat their homes, essentially.”
— Raina Thiele, former adviser for Alaska affairs to Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland
Why this matters:
Many remote Alaskan villages, like Port Heiden, sit at the front lines of the climate crisis, where thawing permafrost and rising seas are upending centuries-old ways of life. These communities also rely on diesel fuel that is exorbitantly expensive and logistically challenging to deliver, driving up the cost of everything from heating to food storage. For tribes long excluded from energy infrastructure investments, grants like those from the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund offered a rare chance to take control of their energy future and stabilize their economies. Replacing them with loans introduces bureaucratic and financial hurdles many small tribal governments are ill-equipped to navigate. The loss of federal support may worsen rural flight, further eroding the cultural and economic foundations of Native villages struggling to adapt to climate realities.
A fossil fuel promoter who advises GOP lawmakers is pushing Congress to gut renewable tax credits, influencing the Republican megabill backed by the Trump administration.
Alex Epstein, founder of a fossil fuel advocacy group, played a behind-the-scenes role in Republican negotiations over a sweeping budget package by urging lawmakers to eliminate renewable energy tax credits sooner than originally planned.
His influence helped shift House legislation to cut off clean energy tax breaks 60 days after enactment, instead of allowing them to continue through 2031 under the Inflation Reduction Act.
Epstein is now working to convince Senate Republicans to go further by ending all subsidies for wind and solar projects, arguing that these incentives undermine the electric grid.
Key quote:
“What I was arguing for very strongly is at minimum, you have to get rid of the new subsidies, and you absolutely have to have them all expire and stop under Trump’s term.”
— Alex Epstein, founder of the Center for Industrial Progress
Why this matters:
The future of U.S. clean energy development is being redrawn as political forces push to unwind landmark climate investments. Subsidies for wind and solar have driven historic growth in renewable energy, often benefiting conservative rural districts with new jobs and infrastructure. Rolling back those incentives risks stalling or reversing this momentum just as the grid faces escalating demands from extreme weather and electrification. Advocates warn that yanking support for renewables means increasing dependency on volatile fossil fuel markets and delaying the transition to cleaner, more stable energy systems. Meanwhile, fossil fuel proponents argue the grid can't reliably run on intermittent sources and that market forces should dictate energy choices. With Congress debating the terms of energy support, these policy shifts could reshape emissions, energy access, and investment for decades.
Rising temperatures are reshaping ecosystems, and scientists warn that unless protected areas are designed with climate adaptation in mind, they may fail to preserve biodiversity in the decades to come.
Scientists say the global push to protect 30% of land and water by 2030 must adopt “climate-smart” planning, using models that anticipate how climate change will shift species’ habitats and stress ecosystems.
Many protected areas already face climate disruptions, with research showing two-thirds of tropical forest Key Biodiversity Areas now experiencing novel temperature regimes, threatening the species they were meant to shield.
Initiatives like the Climate Adaptation and Protected Areas project are restoring habitats, empowering local communities, and factoring climate risks into conservation strategies across Africa, Fiji and Belize.
Key quote:
“Protected and conserved areas can contribute towards climate change adaptation and mitigation. However, for this to work, it is essential that these areas are well connected, and that appropriate policies and effective management are put in place.”
— Elise Belle, project manager at the United Nations Environment Programme, World Conservation Monitoring Centre Europe
Why this matters:
Protected areas are cornerstones of biodiversity conservation, but climate change is upending the assumptions on which they were built. As temperatures rise and rainfall patterns shift, animals and plants are moving in search of new habitats. Areas that once served as reliable refuges may no longer meet the ecological needs of species they were meant to protect. If new conservation zones are based solely on current species distributions, they risk becoming obsolete within a generation. Worse, existing protected areas could become population traps — isolated, unadaptable, and unable to connect wildlife with the corridors they need to survive. This matters not just for wildlife, but for the human communities that rely on ecosystems for clean water, pollination, food and flood control. Climate-smart planning could help maintain these life-support systems in the face of accelerating change.
A top federal emergency official has resigned after President Trump announced plans to phase out the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and shift disaster response responsibilities to states.
Jeremy Greenberg, who oversaw FEMA’s National Response Coordination Center, resigned following Trump’s announcement to wind down the agency by November.
President Trump said states should manage their own disaster responses and warned that federal funding would decrease, with aid potentially routed through the White House instead.
FEMA has lost about a quarter of its staff since the start of the Trump administration, leading to long delays in disaster declarations and growing concerns about the agency’s ability to function during an above-average hurricane season.
Key quote:
“I will not be complicit in the dismantling of this agency, and while I would implement change — even radical change — the current approach lacks a clear end state or plan, and has been done recklessly without regard to our current statutory or moral obligations to the American people.”
— MaryAnn Tierney, former deputy administrator of FEMA who left the agency last month
Why this matters:
A move to shutter FEMA or strip it of authority risks turning disaster recovery into a patchwork system where political favoritism could determine which communities receive help. The potential for delayed responses, increased human suffering, and avoidable loss of life looms large, particularly for vulnerable populations who depend on federal support when local systems fail. As extreme weather intensifies, so does the need for a coordinated, well-resourced national response system.
