In just under three weeks, on Wednesday, Sept. 24, we’ll be hosting our annual Climate Forward event, bringing together world leaders, policymakers, executives and activists for a full day of live journalism. You can sign up to watch the livestream for free.
Much has changed since we gathered last year, but the most significant development on the climate front has been the return of Donald Trump to the White House.
This has been perhaps one of the most consequential years ever for United States climate policy. At the Climate Forward event we’ll have frank discussions about what it all means.
We’ve already announced a strong lineup of interviewees including Senator Brian Schatz, Democrat of Hawaii; Abigail Dillen, president of Earthjustice; Scott Strazik, chief executive of GE Vernova; Manish Bapna, chief executive of the Natural Resources Defense Council; and Bob Mumgaard, chief executive of Commonwealth Fusion Systems. We’ll be announcing many more guests in the coming weeks.
The Trump effect
On his first day in office, Trump withdrew the United States from the Paris accord, the 2015 agreement by most nations to try and limit global warming to well below 2 degrees Celsius.
Since then, the Trump administration had waged a broad assault on the federal government’s ability to monitor and respond to the warming planet.
It has defunded and fired scientists, pared back disaster aid and rolled back pollution controls. The Environmental Protection Agency has repositioned itself away from its original mission to protect the environment and public health and is trying to remove its legal authority to regulate greenhouse gases.
In recent months, Trump has turned his attention to the private sector. By targeting specific projects, canceling loan guarantees and halting permitting approvals, the administration has thrown the nascent offshore wind power industry into chaos.
Taken together, these actions have given many in the United States — and around the world — whiplash. Under the Biden administration, the U.S. had positioned itself as a global climate leader and was making strides to reduce emissions at home.
Trump has withdrawn from international efforts to address global warming while plowing ahead with a domestic agenda that will delay any transition away from fossil fuels. All of this has happened as global temperatures and planet-warming emissions continue their upward trajectories, and extreme weather is wreaking havoc from Texas to California and beyond.
Send us your questions
Among the questions we’ll be asking our guests at the event:
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What does the Trump administration mean for the push to address climate change?
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What happens to climate action now?
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How will the rest of the world keep moving forward even as the United States steps back?
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Are net zero goals unrealistic?
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What can local communities do to combat global warming and protect the environment?
And we want to hear from you. What questions should we ask in our interviews? What other themes would you hope that we explore?
Write to us at [email protected] and share your thoughts. We hope you’ll follow along on the day of the event.
The Trump administration
White House orders agencies to escalate fight against offshore wind
The White House has taken the extraordinary step of instructing a half-dozen agencies to draft plans to thwart the country’s offshore wind industry as it intensifies its governmentwide attack on a source of renewable energy that President Trump has criticized as ugly, expensive and inefficient.
Agencies that typically have little to do with offshore wind power have been drawn into the effort, according to two people briefed on the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment publicly. Those include:
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The Health and Human Services Department officials are studying whether wind turbines are creating electromagnetic fields that could harm human health.
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The Defense Department is investigating whether the projects could pose risks to national security.
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Last week Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the health and human services secretary, said he was working with Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, Energy Secretary Chris Wright and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth as part of a “departmental coalition team” to investigate the risks from offshore wind farms. — Maxine Joselow, Lisa Friedman and Brad Plumer
Renewable energy
Orsted sues Trump administration in fight to restart its blocked wind farm
Orsted, the Danish renewable energy giant, sued the Trump administration on Thursday, saying the government’s move to halt a nearly finished wind farm off Rhode Island was unlawful and “issued in bad faith.”
The administration last month ordered work to stop on Revolution Wind, a $6.2 billion offshore wind farm that was nearly 80 percent complete. In a letter to Orsted, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management alluded to national security concerns around the project but did not elaborate.
On Thursday, Revolution Wind, a joint venture of Orsted and Skyborn Renewables, asked a district court to prevent the administration from enforcing the stop-work order. The complaint alleges that the order was arbitrary and capricious in part because it appeared to be carried out under political pressure from the White House. — Brad Plumer and Karen Zraick
More climate news from around the web:
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Climate change made the fires in Spain and Portugal this summer 40 times more likely, according to a new analysis by World Weather Attribution that was highlighted by The Associated Press.
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The amount of carbon emissions that the world can safely store is just a tenth of industry estimates, Bloomberg reports. Capturing carbon dioxide and storing it underground has been seen by experts as crucial to hitting long-term climate goals.
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David Gelles reports on climate change and leads The Times’s Climate Forward newsletter and events series.
The post The Climate Forward Conference Is Coming Soon appeared first on New York Times.
