The New York Times reports that the U.S EPA has weakened pollution limits for coal-burning power plants, allowing them to release more heavy metals including mercury. I guess this fulfills a Republican party commitment to create more brain damage in children? (mercury is a powerful neurotoxin). The EPA’s action will also lower limits on cadmium, chromium, lead and nickel emissions, all of which pose health risks that led to the limits in the first place. Coal plants are the single-largest source of mercury pollution in the United States, according to the EPA.

What is particularly infuriating, as the Guardian notes, that almost all coal-fired power plants in the country had the ability to comply with pollution limits. ‟Only 27 coal plants across the US, out of around 219 total coal facilities, would have to adopt any sort of technological upgrade, such as filters in their smokestacks, to meet the stronger standards.” With complete disregard for human-health impacts, the Trump Administration agreed to every request to exempt facilities from these limits, and even gave exemptions to operators who said they had the technology to comply with the limits.

To make matters worse for any American who breathes, The New York Times reports that ‟the E.P.A. stopped estimating the monetary value of lives saved when setting limits on two of the most widespread deadly air pollutants, fine particulate matter and ozone. Instead, the agency is calculating only the costs to companies of complying with pollution regulations.” So, when analyzing the benefits and costs of a regulation, the EPA will now consider the costs but not the benefits. The EPA has historically considered the value of a life saved in the millions of dollars. The higher the value, the more the government has required businesses to spend on their operations to prevent a single death. This policy ‟has helped prevent hundreds of thousands of premature deaths from air pollution, which kills more Americans each year than vehicle crashes.” An op-ed in The Times notes that the EPA’s ‟position is that environmental safeguards have essentially no benefits. People with asthma who’ve experienced improvements in their health from cleaner air know this isn’t true, but our government will now pretend otherwise.”

The Guardian describes the conclusions of a new analysis of regulatory changes made by the Trump Administration in multiple areas. ‟Donald Trump’s policies are likely to drive soaring rates of lung disease and premature death, according to a wide-ranging new study by pulmonary specialists and public health experts. The moves are likely to increase lung disease incidences, worsen existing illness and undermine care for patients already suffering, threatening children and adults’ pulmonary health, the researchers say. Taken together, they amount to ‘an attack on Americans’ lungs’ warned a pulmonary physician and professor at Harvard Medical School.”

The New York Times examines the rising emissions of methane from natural sources. ‟While much attention has been focused on how methane, the main ingredient in natural gas, leaks from gas and oil operations, there is growing concern that the amount of heat-trapping gas from wild sources is rising faster.” This is an example of a tipping point (I provide others in CODE RED: Time to Tip the Climate Odds in Our Favor). Once crossed, natural systems will ‟tip” into a state where they become less able to absorb greenhouse gases or actually become runaway sources.

Yale e360 describes the growing concern among climate scientists that we are entering a period where tipping points are being passed. For example, oceans are becoming more stratified, reducing their ability to remove CO2, and trees are succumbing to heat and drought. ‟A string of recent research papers has reported an ‘unprecedented’ weakening of natural land-based carbon sinks in 2023 and 2024, triggered in part by an epidemic of extreme wildfires, which have doubled globally in the past two decades. African rainforests, previously responsible for around a fifth of the terrestrial take-up of CO2, recently turned from a long-term carbon sink to a source.” There is also concern that crossing one tipping point may trigger others like falling dominos. For example, the melting of ice in Greenland could freshen the ocean surface and disrupt the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), which would then heat the tropics and destroy the Amazon rainforest. As one climate scientist put it: “Nature has so far balanced our abuse. This is coming to an end.”

The New York Times reports that a federal agency has taken action to restrict judicial education about global warming, making it harder for judges to understand the scientific questions and evidence presented in their courtrooms. The Federal Judicial Center, created by Congress to assist the judiciary with research and continuing education, prepared a manual for judges in conjunction with the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. The manual includes chapters on artificial intelligence, DNA identification and epidemiology, but the chapter on climate change has been removed. (For now, it remains available on the National Academies’ website.) RealClimate states ‟this chapter is actually well-written, appropriately peer-reviewed, and deserves a far better fate than to be cowardly disappeared into a memory hole for being inconvenient, so you can download it here. The nice thing about science is that it doesn’t change based on whether a report is published here or there, so feel free to share.”

Grist notes that a new analysis has concluded that geothermal power ‟could theoretically replace 42 percent of the European Union’s electricity generation from coal and natural gas — and at the same cost.” The closer that hot rock formations are to the surface (the ‟geothermal gradient”), the easier this energy can be exploited. Other factors include water availability, and whether minerals from the formation dissolve into the circulated water, as the latter situation can damage equipment above ground.

While Trump is actively pursuing efforts to lock-in fossil fuels, the economic realities of the world’s energy transformation are beginning to sink in. The New York Times notes that, as part of Trump’s budget bill, the Department of the Interior was tasked with offering offshore tracts for oil drilling in Alaska’s Cook Inlet. They even called it the ‟Big Beautiful Cook Inlet 1 (BBC1) Oil and Gas Lease Sale.” However, there were no bids. One environmental advocate noted: ‟This is a huge embarrassment for Trump’s Alaska fossil-fuel fantasy.”

The San Francisco Chronicle reports that the winter snowpack in California is melting at an unprecedented rate, and the mid-March heatwave developing as this is written will only increase the rate of melting (‟Even the summit of Mount Whitney is likely to experience above-freezing temperatures.”). The snowpack in the Sierra Nevada is about half of normal for this time of year. This early snowmelt complicates reservoir management, as dam operators normally let water flow through in March so that they can prevent flooding from large April storms. Although snowpack is below normal, precipitation is at average, demonstrating the impact of warmer temperatures as more precipitation is coming as rain in the winter.

The New York Times reports that, due to more than $16 billion in losses since 2022, Ford has decided to scale-back its EV plans. The company has canceled plans for an electric truck and a commercial delivery van. It has also stopped making the F-150 Lightning pickup truck. Honda, General Motors and Stellantis have all made similar decisions. This is unfortunate news, as the American auto industry (with pressure from the Trump Administration) is deciding not to develop cars for the new global market. Indeed, while these automakers scale back, ‟Rivian and Lucid, U.S.-based carmakers that sell only electric vehicles, provided details about models that would be priced under $50,000 and threaten to steal customers from established rivals.” In addition, Toyota, Subaru, BMW, Volkswagen and Hyundai are among the established carmakers that are continuing to introduce EVs. It should be noted that both Rivian and Lucid are not yet profitable, and are trying to prove to investors that they can survive long enough to make money.

Anthropocene Magazine reports that ‟sales of fully electric cars surpassed those of gasoline vehicles in the European Union in December 2025.” Manufacturers continue to improve batteries, and new research demonstrates that improved lithium-ion batteries now perform well even under hot weather conditions. Electrive reports that the Chinese EV manufacturer BYD has premiered EVs with batteries that, when utilizing a new ‟flash charger,” can charge from 10-97% in nine minutes.

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