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    Trump Administration Move to Freeze E.V. Charger Funding Confounds States

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    A new federal order that freezes a Biden-era program to build a national network of electric vehicle charging stations has confounded states, which had been allocated billions of dollars by Congress for the program.In interviews on Friday, some state officials said that as a result of the memo from the Trump administration, they had stopped work on the charging stations. Others said they intended to keep going.In Ohio, where Gov. Mike DeWine, a Republican, has welcomed federal money to build 19 E.V. charging stations, Breanna Badanes, a spokeswoman for the state’s Transportation Department, said Friday that “it’s safe to say we’re not sure” how or whether the state will build more.“Those stations will continue operating, but as far as what comes next, we’re in the same boat with everyone else, just trying to figure it out,” she said.The Feb. 6 memo signed by Emily Biondi, an associate administrator at the U.S. Transportation Department, said that the administration was “suspending approval of state electric vehicle infrastructure deployment plans.” The memo singled out the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure, or NEVI, program, which was authorized under the 2021 bipartisan infrastructure law.A national network of fast charging stations was part of President Joseph R. Biden’s Jr.’s effort to combat climate change by accelerating the nation’s transition to electric vehicles.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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      Lawsuit Seeks to Block New York’s Climate Change Law Targeting Energy Companies

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      Emboldened by President Trump, West Virginia and other states are challenging a law that makes corporate polluters pay for past emissions.Twenty-two states, led by West Virginia, are suing to block a recently approved New York law that requires fossil fuel companies to pay billions of dollars a year for contributing to climate change.Under the law, called the Climate Change Superfund Act, the country’s biggest producers of greenhouse gas emissions between the years 2000 and 2024 must pay a combined total of $3 billion annually for the next 25 years.The collected funds will help to repair and upgrade infrastructure in New York that is damaged or threatened by extreme weather, which is becoming more common because of emissions generated by such companies. Some projects could include the restoration of coastal wetlands, improvements to storm water drainage systems, and the installation of energy-efficient cooling systems in buildings.The measure, which was signed into law in December, is slated to go into effect in 2028.At a news conference on Thursday unveiling the legal challenge, the attorney general of West Virginia, John B. McCuskey, said the legislation overreached by seeking to hold energy companies liable in New York no matter where they are based.“This lawsuit is to ensure that these misguided policies, being forced from one state onto the entire nation, will not lead America into the doldrums of an energy crisis, allowing China, India and Russia to overtake our energy independence,” Mr. McCuskey said in a statement.West Virginia, a top producer of coal, is joined in the lawsuit by 21 other states, including major oil, gas or coal producers like Texas, Kentucky, Oklahoma and North Dakota. The West Virginia Coal Association and the Gas and Oil Association of West Virginia are also among the plaintiffs.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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      My 500-Mile Journey Across Alaska’s Thawing Arctic

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      Flames were leaping out of the forest beneath the float plane taking us deep into the remote interior of northern Alaska. Our destination was the glacial Walker Lake, which stretches 14 miles through Gates of the Arctic National Park.Nearly 100 miles from the nearest dirt road, Walker Lake is within an expanse of uninhabited tundra, scraggly boreal forests and the seemingly endless peaks of the Brooks Range in a wilderness bigger than Belgium. Once we arrived, we saw wide bear trails bulldozed through alder thickets and plentiful signs of moose and wolves.We had come here to begin a 500-mile journey that would take us in pack rafts down the Noatak River, believed to be the longest undeveloped river system left in the United States, and on foot, slogging the beaches of the Chukchi Sea coastline. Our goal was to get a close-up look at how warming temperatures are affecting this rugged but fragile Arctic landscape. Worldwide, roughly twice the amount of the heat-trapping carbon now in the atmosphere has been locked away in the planet’s higher latitudes in frozen ground known as permafrost. Now that ground is thawing and releasing its greenhouse gases.The fire we flew over was our first visible sign of the changes underway.While wildfires are part of the landscape’s natural regenerative cycle, they have until recently been infrequent above the Arctic Circle. But now the rising heat of the lengthening summers has dried out the tundra and the invasive shrubs that have recently moved north with the warmth. This is a tinderbox for lightning strikes. The fires expose and defrost the frozen soil, allowing greenhouse gases to escape into the atmosphere.I have slept more than 1,000 nights on frozen terrain while exploring the Far North. My first Arctic venture was in 1983, with a fellow National Park Service ranger in a tandem kayak on the Noatak River in Gates of the Arctic. We awoke one morning, startled by the sounds of a big animal running through low willows. It jumped into the river straight toward our tent — a caribou chased by a wolf. We were relieved it wasn’t a bear.I couldn’t help but feel unsettled, even reduced, by the immense sky and landscape. While the scale of it all seemed too much to process, the Arctic had captured my soul and I set out on numerous other trips across different places in the North.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 Biden Should Spend His Final Weeks in Office

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      The days are dwindling to a precious few before President Biden relinquishes his tenancy at the White House to Donald Trump. Four years ago, in his inaugural address, Mr. Biden promised to “press forward with speed and urgency, for we have much to do in this winter of peril and possibility.” The peril remains, but so do the possibilities.Last week he announced that he was commuting the sentences of nearly 1,500 people and pardoning 39 others convicted of nonviolent crimes. Eleven days earlier, in a decision widely criticized, Mr. Biden pardoned his son Hunter, who was awaiting sentencing on gun possession and income tax charges.There is still much the president can do before he repairs to Delaware. He can spare federal death row prisoners from the fate some almost certainly will face when Mr. Trump returns. He can make the Equal Rights Amendment a reality after decades of efforts to enshrine it in the Constitution. He can safeguard magnificent landscapes that might otherwise be desecrated. He can protect undocumented immigrants facing deportation, alleviate crushing student debt facing millions of Americans and protect the reproductive rights of women. And more.New York Times Opinion contributors share what they hope President Biden will accomplish during his remaining time in office.Yes, time is running out for Mr. Biden’s presidency, but he can still repair, restore, heal and build, as he promised he would do on the January day four years ago when he took the oath of office. Here are a few suggestions:Commute the sentences of the 40 federal inmates on death rowBy Martin Luther King IIIBy commuting all federal death sentences to life, Mr. Biden would move America, meaningfully, in the direction of racial reconciliation and equal justice. In 2021 he became the first president to openly oppose capital punishment. Since his inauguration, the federal government has not carried out a single execution.If Mr. Biden does not exercise his constitutional authority to commute the sentences of everyone on federal death row, we will surely see another spate of deeply troubling executions as we did in the first Trump administration. A majority of those executed — 12 men and one woman — were people of color; at least one was convicted by an all-white jury and there was evidence of racial bias in a number of cases; several had presented evidence of intellectual disabilities or severe mental illnesses. The same problems were features in the cases of many of the 40 men on federal death row today, more than half of whom are people of color.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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      U.S. Will Allow California to Ban New Gas-Powered Cars, Officials Say

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      California and 11 other states want to halt the sale of new gas-powered cars by 2035. President-elect Donald Trump is expected to try to stop them.The Biden administration is expected in the coming days to grant California and 11 other states permission to ban the sale of new gasoline-powered cars by 2035, one of the most ambitious climate policies in the United States and beyond, according to three people briefed on the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss it publicly.President-elect Donald J. Trump is expected to revoke permission soon after taking office, part of his pledge to scrap Biden-era climate policies. “California has imposed the most ridiculous car regulations anywhere in the world, with mandates to move to all electric cars,” Mr. Trump has said. “I will terminate that.”The state is expected to fight any revocation, setting up a consequential legal battle with the new administration.“California has long led the nation in pioneering climate policies and innovation,” said Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, earlier this year. “Those efforts will continue for years to come.”He has described the ban as the beginning of the end for the internal combustion engine.Under the 1970 Clean Air Act, the Environmental Protection Agency has for decades allowed California, which has historically had the most polluted air in the nation, to enact tougher clean air standards than those set by the federal government. Federal law also allows other states under certain circumstances to adopt California’s standards as their own.The waiver can be used to rein in toxic, smog-causing pollutants like soot, nitrogen dioxide and ozone that lead to asthma and lung disease. But California officials have also been using the waiver to curb greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide, a chief cause of global warming. Gas-powered cars and other forms of transportation are the biggest source of carbon dioxide generated by the United States.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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      Illustrator Oliver Jeffers Reflects on 2024

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      The fine artist and illustrator Oliver Jeffers on climate change, A.I. and the idea that maybe everything is pretty much our fault.This personal reflection is part of a series called Turning Points, in which writers explore what critical moments from this year might mean for the year ahead. You can read more by visiting the Turning Points series page.The following is a close look at an emerging global trend or insight through creative narrative.Oliver JeffersNo One Is ComingOne of the biggest issues, I believe, with the current global narrative on climate change is that it’s (deliberately) abstractly big. It is, therefore, no fault of anyone in particular. By speaking of climate change in the way that we do, we give ourselves permission to ignore it, convincing ourselves it is someone else’s problem. And, if climate change is someone else’s problem, it is definitely up to someone else to fix it.But the brutal truth is that we are the only ones here — or anywhere, for that matter. The scale of the universe is so vast that it is incomprehensible, and we have yet to find any indication of life other than on Earth. So, whether it’s our fault or not (spoiler alert: it is!), it is certainly up to us alone to do something about it. Our current attitude is the cosmic equivalent of covering our eyes because we are going downhill too fast on a bicycle.Oliver JeffersThe Weather Doesn’t Need a PassportWe 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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      Canada Moves to Protect Arctic From Threats by Russia and China

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      Ottawa says its focus on the Arctic comes after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine “has shaken the foundations” of international cooperation in the northern region.Citing growing interest by China and Russia in the Arctic as global warming makes the region more accessible, Canada on Friday said it would focus on building stronger alliances with other nations in the region, particularly the United States.“For many years, Canada has aimed to manage the Arctic and northern regions cooperatively with other states as a zone of low tension,” according to a statement by the Canadian government.But more recent developments, including Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, had “shaken the foundations of international cooperation in the Arctic,” the statement said.Canada has long debated how best to assert control over its vast but very sparsely populated Arctic.The policy statement calls climate change “the overarching threat” to that control. Warmer temperatures and thinning ice make it increasingly likely that it will soon be possible in the summers for ships to regularly travel from the Pacific to the Atlantic Ocean by way of an Arctic route known as the Northwest Passage.Canada’s government said the country was committed to increasing military spending in the Arctic, including a 5 billion Canadian dollar, or $3.6 billion, upgrade of defense systems used by the North American Aerospace Defense Command — a joint operation of the two countries.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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      Bitcoin Price Surges to a Milestone: $100,000

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      The price of a single Bitcoin rose to six figures for the first time, an extraordinary level for a 16-year-old cryptocurrency once dismissed as a sideshow.In May 2010, Laszlo Hanyecz, an early cryptocurrency enthusiast, used Bitcoin to buy two pizzas from Papa John’s. He spent 10,000 Bitcoins, or roughly $40 at the time, in one of the first purchases ever made with the digital currency.It has turned out to be the most expensive dinner in history.On Wednesday, the price of a single Bitcoin rose to more than $100,000, a remarkable milestone for an experimental financial asset that had once been mocked as a sideshow and a fad. The total cost of those pizzas today: $1 billion.Bitcoin now stands as arguably the most successful investment product of the last 20 years. The value of all the coins in circulation is $2 trillion, more than the combined worth of Mastercard, Walmart and JPMorgan Chase. The motley assortment of hackers and political radicals who embraced Bitcoin when it was created by an anonymous coder in 2008 have become millionaires many times over. And the invention has spawned an entire industry anchored by publicly traded companies like Coinbase, a cryptocurrency exchange, and promoted by celebrities, athletes and Elon Musk.Even the president-elect says he is a believer. During the campaign, Donald J. Trump marketed himself as a Bitcoin enthusiast, vowing to create a federal stockpile that could push its price even higher.

      Note: As of 10 p.m. Eastern on Dec. 4Source: Investing.comBy The New York TimesBitcoin began as “essentially an experimental hobbyist project,” said Finn Brunton, the author of a 2019 book about the history of cryptocurrency. “To see where it is now is to see a really impressive feat.”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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      Patagonia C.E.O.: Corporate Responsibility Still Matters

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      Companies continue to invest in sustainability, though many are no longer broadcasting it.This personal reflection is part of a series called Turning Points, in which writers explore what critical moments from this year might mean for the year ahead. You can read more by visiting the Turning Points series page.Turning Point: Some of the world’s largest financial firms pulled out of a group committed to fighting climate change.It’s been a tough year for companies wanting to do the right thing. In addition to managing a turbulent global economy, brands have faced backlash from a handful of activists on everything from climate and diversity commitments to supporting Pride events and even encouraging people to vote. More than 100 laws against environmental, social and governance principles have been introduced in Congress and state legislatures since 2023, and right-wing politicians and activists continue to force companies that value corporate responsibility into a culture war by smearing them as “woke.”When a few companies got skittish and pulled back on their diversity or climate efforts, headlines crowed about the demise of corporate responsibility as a whole.This is what happens when sound bites and taglines replace the real work needed to make progress. It seems impossible to find a product now that doesn’t claim to be “green” or “sustainable” or made responsibly. Although some businesses are putting in the time and work to back up those claims, others are confronting the reality that their investors and customers are paying close attention, and the bill to produce results is past due.As I look back on 2024, I think the backlash against corporate responsibility — and sustainability in particular — has been overstated. But while some companies are talking less about their commitments, I’m heartened that many are still quietly setting ambitious targets to reduce emissions, care for their employees and create inclusive communities. They’re doing the work to get there, and they’re pressing ahead in the face of disgruntled pundits and social media trolls.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