Climate

BERLIN (AP) — China and India have missed a U.N. deadline to submit fresh plans for cutting their greenhouse gas emissions in time for the global body to include their pledges in a report for governments at this year's global climate summit, officials said Saturday.

President Joe Biden is sounding the alarm about the need for more resources to fight a series of wildfires in western states, as climate change has worsened the spread and ferocity of the blazes.

“Our resources are already being stretched to keep up,” Biden told a bipartisan group of governors at a virtual meeting Friday.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The bipartisan compromise on infrastructure cuts in half President Joe Biden’s call for $15 billion to build 500,000 electric vehicle charging outlets, raising the stakes as the administration seeks to win auto industry cooperation on anti-pollution rules to curb climate change.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Stinging from the disappointment of Bernie Sanders' loss in the 2016 Democratic presidential primary, supporters pumped millions into the powerful advocacy group Our Revolution to keep the progressive fight alive and prepare for another swing at the White House.

An estimated 2 million abandoned oil and gas wells across the country, forgotten or ignored by the energy companies that drilled them, are believed to be leaking toxic chemicals. Many of the wells are releasing methane, a greenhouse gas containing about 86 times the climate-warming power of carbon dioxide over two decades.

LONDON (AP) — Britain has become wetter and warmer as a result of climate change, with the country's 10 hottest years in more than a century occurring since 2002, a report by leading meteorologists said Thursday.

GARDNERVILLE, Nev. (AP) — The governors of California and Nevada called for more federal firefighting assistance Wednesday as they toured a region blackened by one of several massive wildfires that have destroyed dozens of homes in the West.

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Baby salmon are dying by the thousands in one California river, and an entire run of endangered salmon could be wiped out in another. Fishermen who make their living off adult salmon, once they enter the Pacific Ocean, are sounding the alarm as blistering heat waves and extended drought in the U.S.

WASHINGTON (AP) — In a major step against climate change, President Joe Biden is proposing a return to aggressive Obama-era vehicle mileage standards over five years, according to industry and government officials briefed on the plan.

ROME (AP) — Pope Francis on Monday decried as criminal the existence of hunger in a world which can produce enough food for all, building on a warning from U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres that climate change and conflict are a consequence and driver of poverty and income inequality.

CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — Australia on Friday garnered enough international support to defer an attempt by the United Nations’ cultural organization to downgrade the Great Barrier Reef’s World Heritage status because of damage caused by climate change.

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (AP) — Two companies seeking to build thousands of miles of pipeline across the Midwest are promising the effort will aid rather than hinder the fight against climate change, though some environmental groups remain skeptical.

ROME (AP) — Many of the climate and energy ministers at a Group of 20 meeting hosted by Italy agreed Friday to work toward even more ambitious goals for fighting climate change than those established in the 2015 Paris accords, an Italian official said.

Efforts to increase how much philanthropic funding goes to minority-led environmental organizations are gaining momentum, with one group's push for transparency from the nation’s top climate donors drawing big-name support.

MOSCOW (AP) — Thousands of wildfires engulf broad expanses of Russia each year, destroying forests and shrouding regions in acrid smoke.

Northeastern Siberia has had particularly massive fires this summer amid record-setting heat.

BERLIN (AP) — With just months to go before her 16-year leadership of Germany ends, Chancellor Angela Merkel on Thursday defended her efforts to promote gender equality and curb climate change but expressed regret that some decisions, in hindsight, were made too late.

PARIS (AP) — France’s parliament on Tuesday approved a compromise climate bill that was intended to transform travel, housing and industry but which environmental activists said doesn't go fast or far enough to slash the country's carbon emissions.

LONDON (AP) — U.S. climate envoy John Kerry called on China to join America in urgently cutting greenhouse gas emissions and described the international alliances that rebuilt Europe after World War II as a model for fighting against climate change.

BRUSSELS (AP) — Just as the European Union was announcing plans to spend billions of euros to contain climate change, massive clouds gathered over Germany and nearby nations to unleash an unprecedented storm that left death and destruction in its wake.

The Latest on deadly flooding in Europe:

BRUSSELS — Belgium’s government says the death toll from unprecedented flooding in parts of the country has risen to 20.

Interior Minister Annelies Verlinden said Friday that emergency workers were trying to locate another 20 people who remained missing.

COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) — The left-leaning government of Greenland has decided to suspend all oil exploration off the world’s largest island, calling it is “a natural step” because the Arctic government “takes the climate crisis seriously.”

BEIJING (AP) — Chinese power companies bid for credits to emit carbon dioxide and other climate-changing gases as trading on the first national carbon exchange began Friday in a step meant to help curb worsening pollution.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Environmental groups hailed a sweeping $3.5 trillion domestic spending plan announced by Democrats, saying it would make “transformational investments” in clean energy and jobs and put the nation on a path to cut greenhouse emissions by at least 50% by 2030.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden made a quick foray to the Capitol on Wednesday hunting support for his multitrillion-dollar agenda of infrastructure, health care and other programs, a potential landmark achievement that would require near-unanimous backing from fractious Democrats.

The American West is baking, burning and drying in intertwined extreme weather. Four sets of numbers explain how bad it is now, while several others explain why it got this bad.

The West is going through “the trifecta of an epically dry year followed by incredible heat the last two months and now we have fires,” said University of California Merced climate and fire scientist John Abatzoglou.

BRUSSELS (AP) — The European Union unveiled sweeping new legislation Wednesday to help meet its pledge to cut emissions of the gases that cause global warming by 55% over this decade, including a controversial plan to tax foreign companies for the pollution they cause.

MOSCOW (AP) — U.S. climate envoy John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov expressed hope on Monday that climate change talks could act as a springboard to help reduce escalating tensions between the two rivals nations.

DETROIT (AP) — As the world increasingly focuses attention on climate change, Roland Busch, the CEO of Siemens AG, says his company is well-positioned to help manage the challenges.

Munich-based Siemens specializes in making buildings, factories and railroads more efficient through digitalization and automation.

WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen says she will lead an effort by top U.S. regulators to assess the potential risk that climate change poses to America's financial system, part of a wide-ranging initiative launched by the Biden administration.

TURNER, Ore. (AP) — The heat wave that recently hit the Pacific Northwest subjected the region’s vineyards to record-breaking temperatures nine months after the fields that produce world-class wine were blanketed by wildfire smoke.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — California denied 21 oil drilling permits this week in the latest move toward ending fracking in a state that makes millions from the petroleum industry but is seeing widespread drought and more dangerous fire seasons linked to climate change.

SPOKANE, Wash. (AP) — Washington state on Friday became the second state in the Pacific Northwest in as many days to announce emergency rules that provide farmworkers and others who work outdoors more protection from hot weather in the wake of an extreme heat wave that is believed to have killed hundreds of people.

PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — America remains awash in refuse as new cases of the coronavirus decline — and that has reignited a debate about the sustainability of burning more trash to create energy.

U.S. climate envoy John Kerry will meet with Russian officials in Moscow next week, making him the highest-ranking Biden administration official to visit Russia so far, at a time when the two countries are at odds.

FRANKFURT, Germany (AP) — The European Central Bank has adopted a new approach to managing the economy that would tolerate transitory periods of consumer inflation moderately above its 2% goal — and take greater account of climate change in its forecasting and stimulus programs.

The deadly heat wave that roasted the Pacific Northwest and western Canada was virtually impossible without human-caused climate change that added a few extra degrees to the record-smashing temperatures, a new quick scientific analysis found.

BERLIN (AP) — Chancellor Angela Merkel's party on Tuesday presented a campaign for Germany's September election that portrays would-be successor Armin Laschet as a conciliatory, experienced leader and mixes classic center-right themes with portraying the fight against climate change as an economic opportunity.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Climate activists and their Democratic allies in Congress are pressing with renewed urgency for huge investments to slow global warming, after a bipartisan infrastructure plan cut out some of President Joe Biden’s key climate initiatives.

LUCKNOW, India (AP) — More than a million people on Sunday began planting 250 million saplings in India’s most populous state, part of an annual mass tree planting campaign to reduce carbon emissions and mitigate the effects of global climate change.