President Donald Trump has gone beyond policy overhauls to fundamentally alter the way the government talks about climate change and the environment, limiting or outright deleting countervailing language and evidence during the first year of his second term in office.

The administration has methodically removed references to climate change and environmental justice from government resources and even blocked or deleted access to longstanding data and information that might contradict or undermine his agenda.

As he begins Year Two of Term Two, President Donald Trump has already left a heavy mark on U.S. climate policy, pursuing an aggressive deregulatory and pro-fossil fuel agenda.

What comes next is the big question – especially now that the president has publicly dismissed climate change as “the greatest con job” the world has ever witnessed.

As wildfires driven by climate change are spurring efforts to build homes with fire-safe materials, the dangers of the use of plastic in construction needs more recognition, experts say.

Plastic in both the exteriors and interiors of homes burns far hotter than do traditional building materials such as wood or other natural products.

As 2025 draws to a close, one lesson stands out from a year of conflict, climate shocks and economic turbulence: food systems now sit on the frontline of social protection and global stability. 

When people cannot rely on safe, affordable and nutritious food, the consequences are immediate and far-reaching.

In 2015, Columbus, Ohio won the U.S. Department of Transportation’s $40 million Smart City Challenge. By 2020, the promised transformation had not materialised. Traffic remained congested. Systems didn’t integrate. Citizens saw incremental improvements, at best.

Columbus isn’t an outlier. It’s the norm.

Under the scorching midday sun, Asmania and several women from Indonesia’s Pari Island walk toward Rengge Beach, a shoreline slowly receding from the rising sea, to plant dozens of young mangrove seedlings.

The Women’s Group of Pari Island hopes the mangroves, which also absorb planet-heating greenhouse gas emissions, will protect the coastline from worsening tidal floods, rising sea levels and stronger waves.

As the United Nations climate talks roll around each year, so too does a familiar refrain: “The COP is broken!”

Having attended the past nine COPs, I see something different.

The world’s largest polluters must pay for the damage they are causing in Sierra Leone, where climate change is having a “slow-burning impact” and degrading basic standards of living, the country’s top environment official said.

Sierra Leone is among the 15 economies worst-affected by climate change, according to a World Bank report in June, and one of the world’s poorest countries after a 1991-2002 civil war that killed more than 50,000 people.

The climate crisis is wreaking havoc and taking an increasingly devastating toll on people’s health across the planet, while the world is falling short of cutting its greenhouse gas emissions, thanks to escalating investment in fossil fuels.  

A recent ActionAid study shows that fossil fuels and industrial agriculture are receiving subsidies worth $677 billion in the Global South1, leaving a disproportionate and multidimensional adverse impact on people in climate-vulnerable regions like densely populated South Asia.

Floating piles of garbage. Chaos on the lake. And a beloved pet dog called Chicory, her chest ripped open in the devastating aftermath that followed Hurricane Helene. 

This was the scene that greeted Leslie Purser when she returned to her Dandridge, Tennessee home after the September 2024 hurricane that tore through eastern Tennessee and western North Carolina.