ChangeNOW 2025: From promise to planet-saving impact
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Yahoo
42 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Durham Council staff 'wanting to leave or retire' after Reform UK threats about jobs
Council staff have considered leaving their roles or retiring early after comments from Reform UK leaders, a councillor has claimed. Liberal Democrat Mark Wilkes suggested that comments made by the party nationally and locally have jeopardised officers' roles. It comes after Nigel Farage previously said council staff working on diversity or climate change initiatives should be 'seeking alternative careers' after Reform UK took control of Durham council. Cllr Wilkes also criticised the party's messaging around its recent decision to remove diversity training for all councillors after members refused participation. He told a Durham County Council scrutiny committee: 'If you're a sane person, would you feel comfortable at all working for an organisation where the political leadership might appear to be anti-staff? Even if they're not, that might be what it appears to be. 'If you are somebody with a protected characteristic - perhaps a disability or from a minority background- would you want to come and work at Durham County Council right now when you see that kind of narrative in the press? 'I have heard of staff already wanting to leave or retire early.' Reform said councillors were not legally required to take diversity, equality and inclusion training, and dismissed Cllr Wilkes' concerns as "utter nonsense". Recommended reading: Thousands of vulnerable residents face impact of proposed council tax changes Bishop Auckland STACK venue to progress after funding lifeline Speeding concerns on County Durham road are 'ignored' by council, MPs say In May, Mr Farage warned council staff working on diversity or climate change initiatives to seek 'alternative careers' after the party took control of the local authority. The local authority is believed to have just 1.8 full-time-equivalent diversity roles, which are connected to duties required by law. Durham County Council was urged to maintain its roll of 'quality' workers across several council departments to help deliver cost-effective services. Cllr Wilkes said: 'You can't have a well-functioning council, and you can't make savings, if you don't have quality staff.' The opposition councillor's plea was supported by Reform's John Cook, chair of the corporate overview and scrutiny management board, who said: 'I agree. This should be a great place to work and our community should be a great place to live.' Meanwhile, the party's deputy leader, Darren Grimes, added: 'He claims, without a shred of evidence, that staff are 'wanting to leave'. This is pure political scaremongering. 'Let me be clear: there is no statistically significant change. The mass exodus he imagines exists only in his alarmist fantasies.'
Wall Street Journal
3 hours ago
- Wall Street Journal
The Trump Administration's New Take on Climate Change - Opinion: Potomac Watch
Full Transcript This transcript was prepared by a transcription service. This version may not be in its final form and may be updated. Speaker 1: From the Opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal, this is Potomac Watch. Kyle Peterson: The Trump administration moves to repeal the so-called endangerment finding, which is a linchpin of regulations of federal greenhouse gas emissions. Meantime, the Energy Department releases a report with a new view of climate change from the federal government. Welcome, I'm Kyle Peterson with the Wall Street Journal. We are joined today by my colleagues, columnist Allysia Finley and Kim Strassel. The endangerment finding is what underlies a lot of federal regulations of greenhouse gas emissions, but the Environmental Protection Agency is now moving to undo that. Let's listen to Energy Secretary Chris Wright discussing that this week. Chris Wright: When I heard the endangerment finding announcement 17 years ago, that they had found, as someone who was already involved in the climate discussion, was already involved in the energy world, clearly they didn't look at the data. They didn't understand climate change. They didn't appreciate how energy works. But this ruling happened, and it happened because they couldn't do it through the House and the Senate and the presidency, the normal lawmaking process. They found a backdoor way to take away your freedom and to make your life more expensive and shrink your life opportunities. Kyle Peterson: Allysia, give us some of the background here. What is this endangerment finding, and why is it so important to a lot of the regulations that have taken place over those past 17 years in Washington? Allysia Finley: So this endangerment finding goes back to 2007 Supreme Court case, in which you have many Democratic states sued the Bush administration and claimed that the EPA must regulate greenhouse gas emissions, because they are a pollutant that endangers the public health and welfare. Now, the Clean Air Act only gives express authority to the EPA to regulate what are known as six criteria pollutants, and these are things that clearly do harm to human health, can make you sick, for instance, carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide, particulate matter, ozone. These have direct effects on human health. Now, what the Supreme Court ruled was, well, okay, but we're going to order the EPA, they have an obligation to review all the evidence, nonetheless, to consider whether greenhouse gas emissions, which the justices deemed an air pollutant under a very broad, capacious interpretation of the law, endangers human health and welfare. And not surprisingly, the Obama administration came back in 2009, said, well, we do think that greenhouse gas emissions endanger human health and welfare, and they provided a ream of cherry-picked studies that claim, well, greenhouse gas emissions, through indirect effects, increase global warming and can affect the climate, and that therefore can harm human health, safety. Rising sea levels, higher temperatures can increase perhaps allergies and the spread of diseases. Even though there's a lot of uncertainty, and for the most part, there's a lot of uncertainty about these claims. And for the most part, they really haven't been borne out by more rigorous studies. And so, this 2009 endangerment finding therefore provided the pretext for the EPA to go in and regulate greenhouse gas emissions across the entire economy. Now, the Obama administration focused more on the vehicle tailpipe emissions, so to restrict or limit how much CO2 can be emitted by cars, and this ended up becoming essentially a back door EV mandate that was begun under Obama and continued under Biden. What it also did was, it embarked on its clean power plan that effectively forced coal and natural gas plants to shut down because they didn't meet the greenhouse gas emission standards for power plants, and the other kind of kink in this role was that it would've required these fossil fuel plants to subsidize renewable plants. Now, you'll recall that the Supreme Court eventually ruled in 2022 that the Clean power plant under Obama was unlawful, that the EPA didn't even have the authority to do it, but they didn't address this broader question of whether EPA even has the authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. And so, now with the Trump EPA, Lee Zeldin is coming out and saying, no, we actually don't think we do have the authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. Kyle Peterson: To underline that point, this is some of the language that the Supreme Court was looking at in the Clean Air Act in that Massachusetts VEPA ruling. It says that the EPA "shall regulate any emissions of any air pollutant from any class or classes of new motor vehicles which in the EPA administrator's judgment shall contribute to air pollution which may reasonably be anticipated to endanger public health or welfare." So, the two questions here, Kim. First, the Supreme Court said in that 5-4 decision that the Clean Air Act and that language does apply to greenhouse gases that may be anticipated to endanger public health or welfare. And then the EPA, as Allysia describes, went back and found that that endangerment was, in fact, happening. But part of the argument here is that this is not a pollutant in the way that Congress might have been thinking about that when it passed the Clean Air Act initially. Greenhouse gases, carbon dioxide, are not, things get spewed out into the air and you breathe them in and they make you sick. And so, I assume that that's part of the argument from the Trump administration here, is that we are going back to what we think was originally meant by Congress and these lawmakers when they passed the Clean Air Act in the first place. Kim Strassel: Something to know about that 2007 decision that Allysia referenced, which is that it was a 5-4 decision by the Supreme Court, a very close run thing. And this was a very different court that made the decision. I mean, this was back in the days with swing votes of Anthony Kennedy, et cetera. And it was deeply criticized, because if you actually read the clear text of the Clean Air Act, there is no mention of greenhouse gases. So this was very much the court saying, well, we're going to take the kind of living statute approach here and just now say it's okay to also include this. When in reality, those of us out there always argued, if Congress really believed something, an issue this large was something that Congress wants to have addressed via the Clean Air Act or by a new statute, it should have to pass legislation. But that's what ended up happening. Now, of course, remember we've got a very, very different court these days, and that's crucial to the argument that the Zeldin EPA is making, is that under the new majority that we've had, they have talked a lot about, for instance, the Major Questions doctrine and this argument that you can't go hiding elephants in mouse holes, and that if Congress didn't specifically say something, then most likely the bureaucrats do not have the authority. And so, that's the fundamental rationale that Zeldin used as he put this out and said, under our judgment, looking again at more recent Supreme Court findings and rulings, we don't think that we actually have the authority to go this far. Because one other thing I just want to clarify, because it's very confusing to a lot of people, and it's deliberate on behalf of climate activists, is they like to make it sound as though greenhouse gases are pollution, and they're not. There is nothing wrong with CO2. It does not cause health problems, as Allysia noted. It's a very different category of everything else that is regulated under the Clean Air Act. And in fact, just a funny thing, to a certain extent, to the degree that we have those other pollutants and they create, for instance, things like smog, which CO2 does not do, scientists actually believe that smog has an, interestingly, a cooling effect on the planet to a certain degree. Not that we should want more of it, but what I am saying is that actual pollution is not contributing to global warming. Kyle Peterson: Hang tight. We'll be right back in a moment. Welcome back. Allysia, on the point of the legal lay of the land here, I've seen some skeptics, and not on the left, but on the right saying that because there is this record of a decade and a half of the EPA talking about the endangerment of climate change, that any attempt to reverse that by the Trump administration might get tangled up in the courts. What do you make of that objection to this? And could this be, would this be, should this be, I mean, is there going to be an opportunity maybe for the Supreme Court at some point to take another look at that 5-4 Massachusetts VEPA ruling, and another consideration, with new, more Originalist, Textualist justices, to consider what a pollutant under the Clean Air Act actually is? Allysia Finley: Right. So I think the Trump administration is hoping to tee this up, Massachusetts VEPA to tee this up, to reconsider whether the EPA even has authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions as pollutants. And to Kim's point, this seemed to be a major questions that should be left for Congress. Now, what I would expect to happen is, I expect the Democratic states and maybe some climate groups will sue and challenge the EPA once an administrative result comes out with the final finding of rescinding the endangerment finding. And then there's going to be a couple questions here. One, do those Democratic and climate groups even have standing, legal standing to sue in federal court? I raise that because actually, at the Supreme Court in the Massachusetts VEPA case, you had the conservatives hold that the Democratic states didn't have standing to challenge the EPA's failure to regulate. So courts could actually just hold that while these states don't even have standing to sue, or climate groups don't have standing to sue because they haven't been directly harmed by the rescission of this endangerment findings. So that's one possibility. Now, the other possibility is they find that they do, or the federal courts, lower courts do, and then this kicks it up to the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court now, they may also revisit that standing question. But they also have an opportunity to revisit this Massachusetts VEPA decision and extend their major questions doctrine here. And what I think is really important to recall and remember is that Democrats in Congress in 2009 did seek to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. There was a cap and trade program that they were trying to pass. It passed the House. It died in the Senate, as it turns out, because there was opposition from Democrats at the time in the Senate, blue dog Democrats from states like Arkansas, Indiana, who didn't want to walk that plank, and you had the famous Joe Manchin ad in 2010 vowing to that he'd shoot the cap and trade bill. And so, this is relevant because it shows that this really is a question that Congress should and did attempt to address. They just didn't have the political support to do it at the time. And what the Obama administration did is, they basically did an end run around Congress. Kyle Peterson: In the meantime this week, the energy Department also released a report on climate change. It is titled A Critical Review of Impacts of Greenhouse Gas Emissions on the US Climate, written by five Ph.D.s. Kim, this is part of what you talk about in your column on Friday under the headline, the Rise of the Climate Right, and later you talk about energy Secretary Chris Wright rallying the nascent climate right. So, give us a sense of what do you mean by, what is the climate, right? Kim Strassel: Well, this report, just to put this in context, I think is really important, because it actually goes hand in hand with what the EPA did. That's why they were released simultaneously. If the EPA ruling the rescission of the endangerment finding was essentially taking away the legal authority of the federal government to regulate greenhouse gases as a pollutant, this report was seeking to reframe the science that the federal government has depended on under the Obama and Biden administrations as a justification to take the very extreme steps that they did. And Chris Wright's complaint has been that a lot of that data was cherry-picked to just show worst case scenarios, and that one problem is that the American public has not really heard the truth about the totality of climate science, which is that it's deeply unsettled. There are so many questions that we don't really have answers to, and this media narrative that you hear constant, this drumbeat in the New York Times and elsewhere that we're headed toward a doomsday catastrophe scenario is not justified if you actually even look at the IPCC reports and other things. If you go look at the data, it shows much more profoundly that uncertainty and the big questions and the variations that are out there. And the reason I think this is important politically... That's a question of policy, the report itself, and it's a good report, I do suggest people read it. But politically, if you look back over the history of the last 30 or 40 years, the conservative movement has somewhat struggled about how to handle these climate wars, and for a long time, they simply rejected the argument that the earth was warming, and thus leading to the term climate denier. Obviously, as the planet has warmed some, that's been a harder position to hold, and so then they kind of moved to trying to say, this is just too expensive for us to do, and attacking the Democrats on that part. That was, in fact, played a huge role in it being shot down in the Senate back in 2010, the episode Allysia was talking about. It was effective political strategy, but not a long-term one, because as this narrative has grown, this incomplete narrative, mostly by the press and activists. People became more and more worried about this. And this marks the first time, I would argue, that you've had an elected leader in an administration that's now willing to completely go toe to toe with the left instead on the science, and to say, yes, our climate is changing. Nobody is denying that, and if you read the report, it makes it very clear. But here's all the stuff that you guys have not heard yet, and it is not part of the debate that needs to be. For instance, that there are aspects of global warming that are beneficial, including to agricultural production. That we still do not know yet the extent to which humans play a role in climate change. That our models are all over the map, and the fact that we can't get agreement on them is kind of concerning, because it means we're doing a lot of guesswork. That climate change has not had much of an economic impact, nor is it expected to have much an economic impact. And, I think this is an important one, that even if the United States takes drastic climate policy action, it will have a negligible or no effect in global climate questions. So, report's out there, but I just think both from a policy perspective and a political perspective, this marked a little bit of a moment. Kyle Peterson: Hang tight. We'll be right back after one more break. Don't forget, you can reach the latest episode of Potomac Watch anytime. Just ask your smart speaker, "Play the Opinion Potomac Watch podcast." Speaker 1: From the Opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal, this is Potomac watch. Kyle Peterson: Welcome back. This report is quite in the weeds on some of these questions about uncertainty in climate modeling. It talks about the changing pH of ocean water, for example, often called ocean acidification. They take issue with that term. But notable, this is a section from the foreword by the energy secretary. He writes, "Climate change is real and it deserves attention, but it is not the greatest threat facing humanity. That distinction belongs to global energy poverty." He goes on to say, "Climate change is a challenge, not a catastrophe, but misguided policies based on fear rather than facts could truly endanger human wellbeing," unquote. Allysia, I guess my read of this is, the report will be taken for what it is. I mean, government agencies often issue reports. People can read them or not read them. They can have that effect. But it is an interesting statement about the energy secretary and the US government's view potentially of its policy and its approach toward these issues, again, emphasizing in the energy secretary's view that climate change is real and it is a challenge, but it is one that does not necessitate some of the policy changes that have been pushed in recent years, and particularly the idea in some quarters that the response to climate change needs to be pushing back people's standard of living by maybe years or decades. Allysia Finley: Well, I think all that's right. The Trump administration really wants to focus on improving standards of living, and the best way, in the US and abroad, the best way to do that is probably to unleash cheap natural gas and boost production. That's also, by the way, if you really care about climate change, that's the least expensive, most technologically feasible way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. But to the broader point, cold weather kills many more people than hot weather does, and so, providing cheap sources of fuel will reduce the number of deaths. And not only that, providing more cheap, abundant energy will allow more electrification. And what I mean electrification, there are many people in sub-Saharan Africa and very poor areas of the world that still don't actually have connection to electricity. And so, therefore, forget about air conditioning or many sanitation. Sanitation requires electricity, too. By connecting these people to the grid, and the easiest way to do that is with fossil fuels, not by building huge solar plants that can't run at all hours of the day. By expanding fossil fuel production, you're actually helping to improve living standards in many places of the world that are currently very poor and suffering diseases and other results of that poverty. Now, back in the US, and what you've been seeing is that energy, or electricity prices in particular, have been increasing over the last four or five years as a result of the administration's policies to promote solar, wind, batteries, notwithstanding all these subsidies going into those areas. That electricity prices have been increasing, and as a result, you're actually having people one fall behind on their utility payments, and two, having to swelter in the heat during heat waves and cut back on their consumption because of the rising prices. And this really, by the way, threatens to row ,living standards, but also US economic growth and manufacturing activity, because one of the largest inputs, or largest cost from manufacturers, is electricity and natural gas. Kyle Peterson: The other thing that always strikes me about the politics around this, Kim, is I don't doubt the sincerity of some of the activists who are saying that climate change is a real, serious threat, needs to be taken more seriously, Al Gore and whatnot. But even after years and decades of that drumbeat, they have not convinced the public of that, or at least to take on added costs to their day-to-day budgets to do that. And you see that whenever there are referendums, votes, ballot initiatives on climate taxes, green taxes, carbon fees and whatnot. Even in pretty blue jurisdictions in the Pacific Northwest and stuff, those things seem to go down by pretty significant margins. There must be people in those states who are voting blue and voting for Democrats for governor because those are the politicians who are running those states, and are nevertheless coming out to the ballot box to oppose those kinds of measures that would add costs to their daily budget and make their lives more difficult. Kim Strassel: If you want a case study in consumer rejection of more full-scale greenhouse gas reduction policies, look to Europe at the moment, where the politicians that have made energy production there extremely expensive and unstable are getting a lot of backlash over their emissions that they have put into effect in recent years. And I think it's a good warning for here in the United States. We've had a couple of our own warnings. Allysia has written brilliantly about some of the blackouts we've seen and grid instability, a lot of which has come from poorly thought through renewable energy projects, et cetera, in places like Texas and elsewhere. And we were headed toward a situation like Europe, which is under the Biden administration, which is why I think it's so important. This Trump administration has not been shy about saying, look, we need to care about resilience. We need to care about stability. We need to care about affordable energy. Chris Wright, who you mentioned and Allysia was talking about, and global energy poverty, this was a mission of his. For much of his adult life, he's had a nonprofit devoted to this that he ran via his company, Liberty Energy, before he came to be the Department of Energy Secretary. And just talking about all of the problems that so many average people around the globe face because of a lack of any affordable energy out there. And this gets to the bigger point too, about the problems of this narrative, which is that they tend to warp the discussion and then make it harder for us to have good priorities in policymaking and decision. And it's just very important that people start to push back, because in recent years, especially under the Biden administration, I mean, it's almost become absurd, the level of manipulated and distorted and incorrect climate reporting out there, that is providing this scary, scary scenario that is simply not supported by what we know at all. And that message needs to get out to more Americans, and this was a good starting point this week. Kyle Peterson: Thank you, Kim and Allysia. Thank you all for listening. You can email us at PWPodcast@ If you like the show, please hit that subscribe button, and we'll be back next week with another edition of Potomac Watch.
Yahoo
3 hours ago
- Yahoo
National Science Foundation staff decry Trump's ‘politically motivated' cuts
Almost 150 workers from the National Science Foundation (NSF) have lambasted Donald Trump's cuts to the agency as 'politically motivated and legally questionable', joining colleagues at three other federal research agencies in warning that the administration is destroying innovation and sacrificing the US's position as a global scientific leader. The three-page dissent states the actions of the administration 'collectively amount to the systemic dismantling of a world-renowned scientific agency' and that they have been compelled to act because 'NSF employees are bound by their oath to uphold the Constitution.' The document condemns the decision as 'illegally' withholding $2.2bn of the $9bn budget appropriated by Congress for 2025 and the 'unlawful termination and threatened mass reductions' in the workforce, which has already seen more than 10% of the agency's staff dismissed. They also point to the termination of more than 1,600 active NSF grants 'using undisclosed criteria devised by the Department of Government Efficiency (Doge)' – the quasi-government agency set up by Trump's billionaire donor Elon Musk. Earlier this month, the Guardian reported on the unprecedented political interference being wielded by Doge which, together with the chaotic cuts, has already undermined the gold standard review process used by the NSF to support cutting-edge science, and was jeopardizing the future of US industries and economic growth. 'A covert and ideologically driven secondary review process by unqualified political appointees is now interfering with the scientific merit-based review system,' the letter states. The best public interest journalism relies on first-hand accounts from people in the know. If you have something to share on this subject you can contact us confidentially using the following methods. Secure Messaging in the Guardian app The Guardian app has a tool to send tips about stories. Messages are end to end encrypted and concealed within the routine activity that every Guardian mobile app performs. This prevents an observer from knowing that you are communicating with us at all, let alone what is being said. If you don't already have the Guardian app, download it (iOS/Android) and go to the menu. Select 'Secure Messaging'. SecureDrop, instant messengers, email, telephone and post See our guide at for alternative methods and the pros and cons of each. The NSF was created 75 years ago and until Trump took office for his second term had enjoyed bipartisan support. It is the only federal agency that funds fundamental research across all fields of science and engineering, and which over the years has contributed to major breakthroughs in organ transplants, gene technology, AI, smartphones, extreme weather warning systems, American sign language, cybersecurity and even the language app Duolingo. Trump's budget proposal calls for a 56% cut to the NSF budget for 2026, which if enacted 'would undermine US leadership in science, eliminate funding for over 250,000 researchers and students, and break bipartisan commitments made under the CHIPS and Science Act', the letter states. The NSF statement follows similar unprecedented dissent by hundreds of scientists and other staff at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and most recently the Voyager Declaration from almost 300 current and former Nasa scientists including four astronauts. All have warned about the devastating impact of the administration's arbitrary and chaotic cuts to staff and research funds on the lives of Americans – now and in the future – in order to pay for tax cuts for the wealthy including Trump's billionaire donors. The NSF dissent is addressed to California member of Congress Zoe Lofgren, the top Democrat on the House science committee, who has repeatedly condemned Trump's assault on science. Only one employee, Jesus Soriano, president of the local chapter of the American Federation of Government Employees which represents two thirds of the NSF's unionized bargaining unit, included his name; 148 of the 149 signatories are anonymous due to fear of reprisals. The fear is well founded given that around 140 named signatories of the EPA 'declaration of dissent' were put on administrative leave, and Lee Zeldin, the climate change denier and EPA secretary, warned that there was a 'zero-tolerance policy for career bureaucrats unlawfully undermining, sabotaging, and undercutting' the current administration. It ends with a stark warning: 'NSF employees are committed to serving the American people through research, education, and innovation. But they cannot do so under fear, censorship, and institutional sabotage. Without immediate oversight and corrective action from Congress, one of our nation's greatest engines for scientific and technological advancement faces irreversible long-term damage. Put simply, America will forfeit its scientific leadership position to China and other rival nations.'
