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    New Pact Would Require Ships to Cut Emissions or Pay a Fee

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    A draft global agreement sets a fee for cargo ships, which carry the vast majority of world trade, to pay for their greenhouse gas emissions.Amid the turmoil over global trade, countries around the world reached a remarkable, though modest, agreement Friday to reduce the climate pollution that comes from shipping those goods worldwide — with what is essentially a tax, no less.A draft accord reached in London under the auspices of the International Maritime Organization, a United Nations agency, would require every ship that ferries goods across the oceans to lower their greenhouse gas emissions or pay a fee.The targets fall short of what many had hoped. Still, it’s the first time a global industry would face a price on its climate pollution no matter where in the world it operates. The proceeds would be used mainly to help the industry move to cleaner fuels. It would come into effect in 2028, pending approval by country representatives, which is widely expected.The agreement marks a rare bit of international cooperation that’s all the more remarkable because it was reached even after the United States pulled out of the talks earlier in the week. No other countries followed suit.“The U.S. is just one country and that one country cannot derail this entire process,” said Faig Abbasov, shipping director for Transport and Environment, a European advocacy group that has pushed for measures to clean up the maritime industry. “This will be first binding decision that will force shipping companies to decarbonize and switch to alternative fuels.”The agreement applies to all ships, no matter whose flag they fly, including ships registered in the United States, although the vast majority of ships are flagged in other countries. It remained unclear whether or how Washington might respond to the fee agreement.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Pension Funds Push Forward on Climate Goals Despite Backlash

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      At a time of resistance to environmental, social and governance goals, pension funds have become a bulwark against efforts to sideline climate risks.In the past few months, some of the largest banks and asset managers in the United States have quit net zero networks, the climate groups that encourage their members to set ambitious carbon reduction targets and collaborate internationally on sustainability efforts.But the week after Donald J. Trump won re-election in November, NYCERS, a pension fund for New York City employees, went in the opposite direction. It joined a United Nations-affiliated climate action group for long-term investors, the Net Zero Asset Owner Alliance.The timing wasn’t intentional, said Brad Lander, the comptroller who oversees the city’s finances, including the pension fund, and is now running for mayor. But, he added, “we were pleased that the timing sent an important signal.”“It is far more important than it was for pension funds and other big asset owners to take collective action at this moment,” Mr. Lander said.At a time of growing backlash to environmental, social and governance goals and investment strategies, pension funds, particularly in blue states and Europe, have emerged as a bulwark against efforts to sideline climate-related risks.The funds, which sit at the top of the investment chain, have stepped up engagement with asset managers and companies on climate goals and have kept public commitments to use their fiscal might to reduce carbon emissions. In some cases, that has meant shifting to European asset managers, which have not backed off on climate commitments as much as their American counterparts have.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Care About Food Waste? In Massachusetts, You Can Be a Compost Consultant.

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      America has a food waste problem: Rotten tomatoes and pizza boxes end up in trash dumps and produce a potent planet-heating gas called methane.Massachusetts has a fix: A state regulation requires businesses to keep food out of dumpsters. To help them comply, the state offers a carrot, in the form of a chatty, practical, 63-year-old hand-holding food-waste-reduction consultant named Heather Billings.Which is how, on a frigid Wednesday morning, Ms. Billings found herself poking around the narrow kitchen of the Port Tavern, a sports bar in Newburyport, Mass.An owner of the Port Tavern, Abbie Hannan, left, invited Ms. Billings to look at how the restaurant managed its waste.She quickly spotted a very solvable problem at the prep cook’s station: a 23-gallon trash can into which went tomato tops and other food scraps.Then came the dumpster inspection. Could anything in there go to compost?Ms. Billings, a consultant contracted by the state government, took notes, snapped pictures and peered behind the bar to assess where the lemon wedges and plastic olive skewers ended up.She had some easy fixes for Port Tavern’s co-owner Abbie Hannan. She proposed inexpensive, four-gallon plastic buckets to nest inside the bigger trash bins to collect food scraps. She connected Ms. Hannan to compost haulers and a charity that could pick up leftover edible food.Tell Us About Solutions Where You Live

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      The Vicious Cycle of Extreme Heat Leading to More Fossil Fuel Use

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      A new report illustrates a concerning dynamic: Record heat last year pushed countries to use more planet-warming fossil fuels to cool things down.Last year was the hottest on record, and global average temperatures passed the benchmark of 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial times for the first time. Simultaneously, the growth rate of the world’s energy demand rose sharply, nearly doubling over the previous 10-year average.As it turns out, the record heat and rapidly rising energy demand were closely connected, according to findings from a new report from the International Energy Agency.That’s because hotter weather led to increased use of cooling technologies like air-conditioning. Electricity-hungry appliances put a strain on the grid, and many utilities met the added demand by burning coal and natural gas.All of this had the makings of a troubling feedback loop: A hotter world required more energy to cool down homes and offices, and what was readily available was fossil-fuel energy, which led to more planet-warming emissions. This dynamic is exactly what many countries are hoping to halt through the development of renewable energy and the construction of nuclear power plants.Put another way, the I.E.A. estimated that if 2024’s extreme weather hadn’t happened — that is, if weather was exactly the same in 2024 as in 2023 — the global increase in carbon emissions for the year would have been cut in half.It’s not all bad news: Increasingly, the global economy is growing faster than carbon emissions. “If we want to find the silver lining, we see that there is a continuous decoupling of economic growth from emissions growth,” said Fatih Birol, the executive director of the agency.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      How to Shop for a Home That Won’t Be Upended by Climate Change

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      Deciding where to live has always been a high-stakes financial decision, but a changing climate makes it even more critical. Just ask any of the millions of Americans who have already experienced the destruction that a warming planet can deliver to your doorstep. For them, a theoretical risk has already become an all too personal […] More

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      Trump Administration Aims to Eliminate E.P.A.’s Scientific Research Arm

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      The Environmental Protection Agency plans to eliminate its scientific research arm, firing as many as 1,155 chemists, biologists, toxicologists and other scientists, according to documents reviewed by Democrats on the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology.The strategy is part of large-scale layoffs, known as a “reduction in force,” being planned by the Trump administration, which is intent on shrinking the federal work force. Lee Zeldin, the administrator of the E.P.A., has said he wants to eliminate 65 percent of the agency’s budget. That would be a drastic reduction — one that experts said could hamper clean water and wastewater improvements, air quality monitoring, the cleanup of toxic industrial sites, and other parts of the agency’s mission.The E.P.A.’s plan, which was presented to White House officials on Friday for review, calls for dissolving the agency’s largest department, the Office of Research and Development, and purging up to 75 percent of the people who work there.The remaining staff members would be placed elsewhere within the E.P.A. “to provide increased oversight and align with administration priorities,” according to the language shared with The New York Times by staff members who work for Democrats on the House science committee.Molly Vaseliou, a spokeswoman for the E.P.A., said in a statement that the agency “is taking exciting steps as we enter the next phase of organizational improvements” and stressed that changes had not been finalized.“We are committed to enhancing our ability to deliver clean air, water and land for all Americans,” she said, adding, “While no decisions have been made yet, we are actively listening to employees at all levels to gather ideas on how to increase efficiency and ensure the E.P.A. is as up to date and effective as ever.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      E.P.A. Offers No New Evidence in Battle Over $20 Billion in Climate Grants

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      Nonprofit groups have sued the agency to get access to grants approved by Congress to fund climate and clean energy projects across the country.In a legal filing Monday, the Environmental Protection Agency did not provide direct evidence of waste, fraud, or abuse in a $20 billion climate grant program that the agency canceled citing “unacceptable risk.”For weeks, the grant program has been mired in controversy, with its funds frozen, as the E.P.A. attempted to claw back money that was approved by Congress for clean energy programs. At least three of the grant recipients have filed lawsuits seeking access to the funds they were promised.Last week, a federal judge ordered the E.P.A. to justify its moves to freeze the funds and cancel the program. The motion stemmed from a lawsuit brought by Climate United, a nonprofit group that was supposed to receive $7 billion under the initiative.But in response to the judge’s order on Monday, the E.P.A. did not present new direct evidence. Instead, it referred to unidentified media reports as well as a video released last year by Project Veritas, a conservative group known for using covert recordings to embarrass its political opponents.The video, filmed in a social setting, showed an E.P.A. staff member at the time, talking about the outgoing Biden administration’s efforts to quickly spend federal money. He compared it to throwing “gold bars” off the Titanic. A lawyer for the former staff member has since said he was not referring to the $20 billion grant program.But Lee Zeldin, the E.P.A. administrator, has seized on the video and has repeatedly suggested the grants were vulnerable to fraud. At the request of the Trump administration, the $20 billion allocated to eight nonprofit groups have been frozen in accounts held at Citibank.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      In ‘Weather Girl,’ Climate Change Sets Off a Meltdown

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      A new one-woman show from the producer of “Baby Reindeer” and “Fleabag” is an irreverent allegory about wildfires and global warming.At the Soho Theater in London, a beleaguered weather reporter is giving double meaning to the phrase “hot mess.” The setting is drought-stricken Fresno, Calif., where temperatures are sweltering and wildfires rage on the city outskirts. The presenter, Stacey Gross, has a telegenic glamour and some peppy catchphrases, but underneath is an angst-ridden functioning alcoholic who secretly quaffs Prosecco on the job. She suspects her TV station is misleading viewers about the role that climate change has played in the fires, and as the heat wave progresses she has a meltdown, embarking on a cathartic, booze-fueled rampage featuring wanton destruction, kidnapping and karaoke.“Weather Girl” has arrived in London amid plenty of hype, following a successful run at last year’s Edinburgh Festival Fringe. The show’s producer, Francesca Moody, has a knack of turning Fringe plays into television hits — she was behind “Fleabag” and “Baby Reindeer” — and a Netflix adaptation of “Weather Girl” is already in development, according to the trade publication Deadline. The show’s title character is played by Julia McDermott, who also takes several other parts in this lively but slightly undercooked one-woman show, an irreverent but serious climate change allegory that runs through April 5.The show’s title character has a telegenic glamour but underneath is an angst-ridden functioning alcoholic who secretly quaffs Prosecco on the job.Pamela RaithWearing a bright blouse, hot pink skirt and heels, McDermott performs on a bare stage, with just a colored screen behind her as an allusive backdrop. Her only prop is a trusty Stanley Tumbler. Over the course of 60 frenetic minutes, her character regales the audience in a fraught, high-tempo monologue about Stacey’s escapades in drinking holes with names like Malibu Nights and the Antelope Lounge. We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Climate United Sues E.P.A. Over Frozen $20 Billion

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      In a lawsuit, Climate United claims the E.P.A. is illegally withholding funds that have become a target of the Trump administration.A multibillion dollar dispute between the Environmental Protection Agency and several nonprofit organizations escalated on Saturday when one group sued the E.P.A. and Citibank, seeking access to grant money that has been frozen under President Trump.Climate United, a nonprofit organization, claimed that the E.P.A. and Citibank have illegally withheld a nearly $7 billion award announced last April. Citibank has housed the funds as part of a green financing program to finance projects that address climate change.The funds are part of a larger pot of money, $20 billion, that have been swept up in controversy after Lee Zeldin, the E.P.A. administrator, called the green financing program a “scheme” that was “purposely designed to obligate all of the money in a rush job with reduced oversight.”Now, some of the nonprofits say, their bank accounts are frozen and that they are struggling to pay staff.Climate United had planned to loan the money to developers across the country in support of solar power, electric trucks, and energy-efficient affordable housing projects, and said the freeze has meant small businesses and developers are unable to draw down funds they were promised.“We’re not trying to make a political statement here,” said Beth Bafford, chief executive of Climate United. “This is about math for homeowners, for truck drivers, for public schools — we know that accessing clean energy saves them money that they can use on far more important things.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More