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      California Sues Exxon Mobil Over Plastics Pollution and ‘Myth’ of Recycling

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      The lawsuit, seeking ‘multiple billions of dollars,’ opens a new front in the legal battles with oil and gas companies over climate and environmental issues.The attorney general of California, Rob Bonta, sued Exxon Mobil on Monday alleging that the oil giant carried out a “decades-long campaign of deception” that overhyped the promise of recycling and spawned a plastic pollution crisis.The suit, filed in superior court in San Francisco, argued that people were more likely to buy single-use plastics because of the false belief, promoted by Exxon Mobil, that they would be recycled. Mr. Bonta said the company is a leading producer of a key component used to make single-use plastics. The suit seeks unspecified damages that Mr. Bonta estimated would amount of “multiple billions of dollars.”In an interview, Mr. Bonta said that plastic pollution was “fueled by the myth of recycling, and the leader among them in perpetuating that myth is Exxon Mobil.”The company did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Monday.The case opens a new front in the legal battles against oil and gas companies over climate and environmental issues. More than two dozen state and local governments, including California, have sued the companies for their role in the climate crisis, making claims that the companies deceived the public in a quest for profit. None have gone trial yet.The California suit filed on Monday alleged that Exxon Mobil promoted the widely used “chasing arrows” symbol on plastic products, which led buyers to believe that their bottles and other products would, in fact, be recycled if disposed of properly. But only about five percent of the plastic waste in the United States is recycled, according to Mr. Bonta’s office, citing an estimate by the advocacy group Beyond Plastics, which looked at 2021 data. At the same time, the amount of plastic manufactured, much of it single-use, grows yearly.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 Trump and Harris Talked About Climate Change During the Debate

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      At the tail end of the hottest summer in recorded history, as wildfires tear through California and a hurricane heads toward Louisiana, both Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald J. Trump failed to say how they would fight climate change during their debate Tuesday night.It was the final question posed during the 90 minute exchange, about an issue that moderator Linsey Davis of ABC News noted was “important for a number of Americans, in particular younger voters.”The outcome of this presidential election could be critical to determining whether the United States, the world’s biggest historic source of the greenhouse gasses that are dangerously warming the planet, cuts its pollution enough to keep global warming within relatively safe limits. Scientists say the window for action is rapidly closing.Ms. Harris acknowledged the problem, noting “the former president has said that climate change is a hoax and what we know is that it is very real.”“We know that we can actually deal with this issue,” she said, but did not offer any specifics about how she would. Instead, Ms. Harris made a largely economic argument, noting that federal subsidies for clean energy, which includes wind and solar power, have created new jobs and spurred manufacturing.And, in an unusual turn, Ms. Harris boasted that under the Biden administration, gas production has reached record highs. It’s a point that until very recently the administration had been reluctant to emphasize. The burning of fossil fuels is the main driver of climate change and at the United Nations climate talks last year, the United States joined nearly 200 other countries in a pledge to transition away from coal, oil and gas.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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      It’s Been the Hottest Summer on Record, European Officials Say

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      The excessive heat worldwide suggests the full year will also be a record-breaker, according to Copernicus, the E.U. agency that tracks global warming.The summer of “brat,” the Paris Olympics and political conventions may be winding down, but the heat in 2024 is still going strong.The southwestern United States’ sizzling triple-digit temperatures this week mark the tail end of the hottest summer on record, according to a new European climate report.“We know that the warming of the planet leads to more intense and extreme climate events, and what we’ve seen this summer has been no exception,” said Julien Nicolas, a climatologist with the Copernicus Climate Change Service, the European Union agency that published the assessment on Wednesday.Since 2018, the agency has been combining data like weather observations from balloons and satellites with computer models that simulate temperature and precipitation to get a picture of what’s happening around the world. It pairs that picture with past weather conditions reconstructed back to 1940 to compute a global average temperature.June and August were the hottest June and August on record, according to the models, while July is not quite as clear.The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, based in the United States, found that this July was three-hundredths of a Celsius degree hotter than July 2023, while Copernicus determined it was a few hundredths of a degree cooler than last year. For all practical purposes, that created a virtual tie, according to Karin Gleason of NOAA, speaking recently about her department’s findings.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 Change Can Cause Bridges to ‘Fall Apart Like Tinkertoys,’ Experts Say

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      Extreme heat and flooding are accelerating the deterioration of bridges, engineers say, posting a quiet but growing threat.On a 95-degree day this summer, New York City’s Third Avenue Bridge, connecting the Bronx and Manhattan, got stuck in the open position for hours. As heat and flooding scorched and scoured the Midwest, a steel railroad bridge connecting Iowa with South Dakota collapsed under surging waters. In Lewiston, Maine, a bridge closed after the pavement buckled from fluctuating temperatures.America’s bridges, a quarter of which were built before 1960, were already in need of repair. But now, extreme heat and increased flooding linked to climate change are accelerating the disintegration of the nation’s bridges, engineers say, essentially causing them to age prematurely.The result is a quiet but growing threat to the safe movement of people and goods around the country, and another example of how climate change is reshaping daily life in ways Americans may not realize.“We have a bridge crisis that is specifically tied to extreme weather events,” said Paul Chinowsky, a professor of civil engineering at the University of Colorado Boulder who researches the effects of climate change on infrastructure. “These are not things that would happen under normal climate circumstances. These are not things that we’ve ever seen at this rate.”Bridges designed and built decades ago with materials not intended to withstand sharp temperature swings are now rapidly swelling and contracting, leaving them weakened.“It’s getting so hot that the pieces that hold the concrete and steel, those bridges can literally fall apart like Tinkertoys,” Dr. Chinowsky said.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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      Is This Massive Attack Concert the Gold Standard for a Green Gig?

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      Coldplay and Billie Eilish have tried to drive down carbon emissions while touring, but the British band Massive Attack has tried to take the efforts even further.When the British band Massive Attack was halfway through a West Coast tour in 2019, flying from show to show, the rapper and singer Robert Del Naja had a moment of crisis. Given all the carbon emitted by moving the band and its equipment around, he recalled wondering: Can I justify this anymore?Not long afterward, the band made a decision. It would work with climate scientists to develop a model for touring that made as little climate impact as possible.On Sunday, Massive Attack staged a daylong 35,000-person festival in the band’s home city of Bristol, England, to showcase the carbon-cutting measures it has developed with the Tyndall Center for Climate Change Research, a British organization, and A Greener Future, a nonprofit focused on lowering the music industry’s emissions.The concert on Sunday was powered by batteries charged from wind and solar energy.Sandra Mickiewicz for The New York TimesFans were encouraged to travel to the show by walking, cycling or using public transportation.Sandra Mickiewicz for The New York TimesWhereas other bands, including Coldplay, have staged attention-grabbing stunts to draw awareness to the industry’s climate impacts, they have sometimes ignored the main sources of emissions from gigs, such as audience travel and venues’ power supplies. With its show on Sunday, Massive Attack wanted to show how to tackle all of the polluting parts of a show.In an interview a few days before the event, Del Naja said that previous music industry efforts to cut emissions had not been in line with the United Nations-agreed goal to stop average temperatures rising more than 1.5 degrees Celsius, or 2.7 Fahrenheit.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 Change Is Not a Key Talking Point for Harris Campaign

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      In the 2020 presidential election, climate activists demanded that Democratic candidates explain, in detail, how they planned to tackle the planet’s greatest environmental threat.But in the weeks since Vice President Kamala Harris ascended the 2024 Democratic ticket, she has mentioned climate change only in passing, and offered no specifics on how she would curb dangerous levels of warming. Climate leaders say they are fine with that.“I am not concerned,” said Jay Inslee, the Democratic governor of Washington, who made climate change the centerpiece of his own 2019 bid for the presidency. Mr. Inslee said he believes it is more important for Ms. Harris to draw a distinction between her and her Republican rival, former President Donald J. Trump, than to drill down on policy nitty-gritty.“I am totally confident that when she is in a position to effect positive change, she will,” Gov. Inslee said.As Ms. Harris prepares to address the nation on Thursday at the Democratic National Convention, she faces the challenge of energizing party loyalists while also reaching out to disaffected Republicans and moderate voters. So far Ms. Harris and her running mate Tim Walz, the governor of Minnesota, have embraced a pragmatic agenda, calling for things like a minimum-wage increase and child-care funding.While President Biden has made climate change a signature issue, signing into law the largest clean energy investments in American history, Ms. Harris has yet to detail for voters her climate or clean-energy positions. Some analysts chalked that up to strategy and said new promises to slash greenhouse gas emissions or rein in fossil fuels could alienate voters particularly in the energy-rich swing state of Pennsylvania.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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      Deadly Landslides in India Made Worse by Climate Change, Study Finds

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      Extreme rainfall made 10 percent heavier by human-caused climate change triggered landslides that killed hundreds, according to a new study.A sudden burst of rainfall on July 30 caused a cascade of landslides that buried hundreds of people in the mountainous Kerala region of southern India.That downpour was 10 percent heavier because of human-caused climate change, according to a study by World Weather Attribution, a group of scientists who quantify how climate change can influence extreme weather. Nearly six inches, or 150 millimeters, of rain fell on soils already highly saturated from two months of monsoon and marked the third highest single-day rain event on record for India.“The devastation in northern Kerala is concerning not only because of the difficult humanitarian situation faced by thousands today, but also because this disaster occurred in a continually warming world,” said Maja Vahlberg, a climate risk consultant at the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre. “The increase in climate-change-driven rainfall found in this study is likely to increase the number of landslides that could be triggered in the future.”In a state that is highly prone to landslides, the Wayanad district is considered the riskiest part. As of Tuesday, at least 231 people had died and 100 remained missing.The Kerala landslides were the second extreme landslide event in July, following one in Ethiopia that killed 257 people. July was the second-worst month on record, after July 2019, with 95 landslide events that caused 1,167 fatalities, according to data maintained by Dave Petley, the vice-chancellor of the University of Hull. Together, they caused roughly one-third of the more than 3,600 deaths resulting from some 429 fatal landslides recorded this year, Dr. Petley said in an email.Already, 2024 is an outlier, Dr. Petley posted to The Landslide Blog on Tuesday. He wrote that he could “only speculate on the likely underlying reasons for this very high incidence of fatal landslides,” but “the most likely cause continues to be the exceptionally high global surface temperatures, and the resultant increase in high intensity rainfall events.”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