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Climate Change and Pollution Threaten Europe's Resources, EU Warns

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Monday, September 29, 2025

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) -Climate change and environmental degradation pose a direct threat to the natural resources that Europe needs for its economic security, the EU's environmental agency said on Monday.The European Environment Agency said biodiversity in Europe is declining due to unsustainable production and consumption, especially in the food system.Due to over-exploitation of natural resources, pollution and invasive alien species, more than 80% of protected habitats are in a poor or bad state, it said, while water resources are also under severe pressure.EUROPE'S FASTEST-WARMING CONTINENT"The degradation of our natural world jeopardises the European way of life," the agency said in its report: "Europe's environment 2025"."Europe is critically dependent on natural resources for economic security, to which climate change and environmental degradation pose a direct threat."Europe is the world's fastest-warming continent and is experiencing worsening droughts and other extreme weather events.But governments are grappling with other priorities including industrial competitiveness, and negotiations on EU climate targets have stoked divisions between richer and poorer countries.EU countries last week confirmed that the bloc will miss a global deadline to set new emissions-cutting targets due to divisions over the plans among EU governments.TIME RUNNING OUT, AGENCY SAYS"The window for meaningful action is narrowing, and the consequences of delay are becoming more tangible," executive director Leena Yla-Mononen said."We are approaching tipping points - not only in ecosystems, but also in the social and economic systems that underpin our societies."(Reporting by Bart Meijer. Editing by Mark Potter)Copyright 2025 Thomson Reuters.Photos You Should See – Sept. 2025

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) -Climate change and environmental degradation pose a direct threat to the natural resources that Europe needs for its economic...

The European Environment Agency said biodiversity in Europe is declining due to unsustainable production and consumption, especially in the food system.

Due to over-exploitation of natural resources, pollution and invasive alien species, more than 80% of protected habitats are in a poor or bad state, it said, while water resources are also under severe pressure.

EUROPE'S FASTEST-WARMING CONTINENT

"The degradation of our natural world jeopardises the European way of life," the agency said in its report: "Europe's environment 2025".

"Europe is critically dependent on natural resources for economic security, to which climate change and environmental degradation pose a direct threat."

Europe is the world's fastest-warming continent and is experiencing worsening droughts and other extreme weather events.

But governments are grappling with other priorities including industrial competitiveness, and negotiations on EU climate targets have stoked divisions between richer and poorer countries.

EU countries last week confirmed that the bloc will miss a global deadline to set new emissions-cutting targets due to divisions over the plans among EU governments.

TIME RUNNING OUT, AGENCY SAYS

"The window for meaningful action is narrowing, and the consequences of delay are becoming more tangible," executive director Leena Yla-Mononen said.

"We are approaching tipping points - not only in ecosystems, but also in the social and economic systems that underpin our societies."

(Reporting by Bart Meijer. Editing by Mark Potter)

Photos You Should See – Sept. 2025

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Related News

‘Climate Tech’ is a meaningless buzzword. Let’s do this instead

“Climate tech” isn’t a thing. It has shifted in recent years from a category to define clean energy companies to an umbrella phrase that loses meaning the more we use it. Granted, the term is everywhere: inserted into VC pitch decks, plastered on billboards along highways from San Francisco to Austin to Boston, wedged into government policy papers, and featured prominently on conference agendas. Media properties from CNBC to GreenBiz rely on it as a traffic-driving category. And there’s a reason why. A changing climate is the most complex and vast challenge and opportunity confronting our society today. That also means we can’t afford ambiguity. We need accountability. We need progress. We need to reengineer infrastructure with advanced tech that future-proofs as it solves urgent and complex problems. Now. Which means we need precision. And we need to acknowledge that infrastructure and markets that have served us for so long are failing—and in need of rebuilding to anticipate and meet future challenges. Our world is in desperate need of solutions tied to specific applications and impact across energy tech, waste tech, food tech, and carbon tech. We need solutions that advance specific areas of deeply specialized work with distinct metrics and challenges like energy storage, batteries, food security, and sustainable fuel development. And, we need talent trained and sharpened to tackle these specific problems. Ambiguity is the enemy of progress Progress requires clarity. Energy technology is a distinct thing. Waste technology is a distinct thing. Transportation technology, energy storage, agriculture and food sustainability, carbon removal—these are specific categories with definable challenges and measurable outcomes. Each is firmly tied to infrastructure and requires dedicated engineering, specialized expertise, and different pools of capital. For example, grid storage is not a “climate tech” problem—it’s a specific energy challenge with concrete metrics: cost per kilowatt-hour, storage capacity, duration, and efficiency. Grid storage is about optimizing supply and demand, the outcome of which is a financial, political, and engineering goal, not a moral imperative. We must connect the promise and hype of AI-powered software solutions to their physical applications in the real world. Why? Because solving these big, specific problems requires more than computation behind a screen. Realizing the promise of AI to transform and improve is only possible if it enters the physical realm and changes the mechanics of existing ways of doing things. Calling the solutions to these problems “climate tech” is a disservice to the work because it no longer adequately captures the scale and range of what’s required. Breaking “climate tech” down to drive breakthroughs We need to build and invest in technologies that are better, faster, cheaper than what came before and solve real problems—rather than loaded words that offer environmental promise and not much else. The trajectory of biotech offers a solid framework. Rather than lumping everything under a term like “health tech,” industry pioneers stood up clearly defined categories, including: immunotherapy, CRISPR, mRNA vaccine development, oncology, longevity, and so on. Each domain pursued a specific set of problems and attracted talent and capital to solve them. The result? Breakthroughs. Whether we realize it or not, software also focused in recent years, which has helped to accelerate progress. Information technology gave way to specific technical disciplines like cybersecurity, cloud computing, and enterprise tools. Category focus allowed companies to gain market share and differentiate with customer experience and accountability front-and-center. It’s time that “climate tech” undergoes the same level of rigorous redefinition. And it’s not just because we’re approaching critical climate “tipping points” (which we are). It’s because the economic opportunity cost of not acting is too great. The future of American communities and industries from agriculture to manufacturing rests on our ability to effectively seize the opportunities in front of us and reengineer them. Everything needs to be built for the future with engineering precision and a specific problem in mind to solve. We need infrastructure and hardware solutions to solve focused problems like recycling plastic for manufacturing, rendering cement carbon-neutral, electrifying freight transport, rethinking protein production, and removing carbon at scale. We cannot grow the economy in the future without approaching all tech as climate tech. For example, the investment firm I cofounded, Incite, invested in Monarch, a startup with a fleet of AI-powered electric vehicles and tech solutions that work for agricultural clients ranging from dairy farmers to municipalities to winemakers. Monarch recently shipped MonarchOne™, an end-to-end physical AI platform for OEMs to more efficiently manage work and use data to influence operations across environments. Monarch isn’t a “climate tech” company. It’s an AI and robotics company with clear environmental benefits. Working toward a post-”climate tech” world “Climate tech” served its purpose as an initial rallying cry. It placed an urgent crisis squarely on the map of capital markets, boardrooms, and policy agendas. It made innovation to help us take care of our planet inevitable. Totally unsurprisingly, however, grouping a product or tech into the vague category enables more greenwashing and ambiguity when what we need is progress, focus, and accountability. In order to scale up the grid, add resilience to infrastructure, and prevent the housing market from insurance collapse, we need to retire not just the language but the entire categorization of “climate tech” completely. We must dismantle the umbrella term into specific, infrastructure-centered areas in need of urgent work. Let’s refine our language. Words matter. Tech is crucial to curbing negative environmental impacts. But the utility of “climate tech” is running on fumes. Let’s stop pretending it’s still a thing—and seize the opportunity to build and invest in the physical infrastructure, software, apps, and technologies that will power economic opportunities and enrich life around the world.

Climate

Agriculture

Energy

Vietnam Evacuates Thousands and Shuts Airports as Typhoon Bualoi Nears Landfall

Vietnam has evacuated thousands from central and northern provinces as Typhoon Bualoi approaches faster than expected

HANOI, Vietnam (AP) — Vietnam evacuated thousands of people from central and northern provinces Sunday as Typhoon Bualoi raced toward the country faster than expected with landfall forecast later in the day.Bualoi had left at least 20 people dead in the central Philippines since Friday, mostly from drownings and falling trees, and knocked out power in several towns and cities, officials said. It forced about 23,000 families to evacuate to more than 1,400 emergency shelters.In Vietnam, the typhoon was expected to bring winds of up to 133 kph (83 mph), storm surges of more than a meter (3.2 feet) and heavy rains that could trigger flash floods and landslides. The eye of the typhoon was nearing the coast Sunday night and forecast to make landfall before midnight, before moving inland toward Nghe An province. Authorities grounded fishing boats in northern and central regions and ordered evacuations. State media reported Da Nang planned to relocate more than 210,000 people, while Hue prepared to move more than 32,000 coastal residents to safer ground.The Civil Aviation Authority said operations were suspended at four coastal airports, including Danang International Airport, with several flights rescheduled.Heavy rains have drenched central provinces since Saturday night. In Hue, floods swamped low-lying streets, storms ripped off roofs and at least one person was reported missing after being swept away by floodwaters. In neighboring Quang Tri province, a fishing boat sank and another was stranded while seeking shelter. Nine people have been rescued while efforts were underway to reach two others at sea, state media said.Forecasters warned of more heavy rain through Oct. 1, raising risks of flooding and landslides in northern and central provinces.Bualoi was the second major storm to threaten Asia in a week. Typhoon Ragasa, one of the strongest to hit in years, left at least 28 deaths in the northern Philippines and Taiwan before making landfall in China and dissipating Thursday over Vietnam.Global warming is making storms like Wipha stronger and wetter, according to experts since warmer oceans provide tropical storms with more fuel, driving more intense winds, heavier rainfall, and shifting precipitation patterns across East Asia.Associated Press writer Jim Gomez in Manila, Philippines contributed to this report.The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find the AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.Photos You Should See – Sept. 2025

Climate

Water

UNESCO Designates 26 New Biosphere Reserves Amid Biodiversity Challenges and Climate Change

The U.N. cultural agency UNESCO has designated 26 new biosphere reserves

An Indonesian archipelago that's home to three-fourths of Earth's coral species, a stretch of Icelandic coast with 70% of the country's plant life and an area along Angola's Atlantic coast featuring savannahs, forests and estuaries are among 26 new UNESCO-designated biosphere reserves.The United Nations cultural agency says the reserves — 785 sites in 142 countries, designated since 1971 — are home to some of the planet’s richest and most fragile ecosystems. But biosphere reserves encompass more than strictly protected nature reserves; they're expanded to include areas where people live and work, and the designation requires that scientists, residents and government officials work together to balance conservation and research with local economic and cultural needs.“The concept of biosphere reserves is that biodiversity conservation is a pillar of socioeconomic development” and can contribute to the economy, said António Abreu, head of the program, adding that conflict and misunderstanding can result if local communities are left out of decision-making and planning. The new reserves, in 21 countries, were announced Saturday in Hangzhou, China, where the program adopted a 10-year strategic action plan that includes studying the effects of climate change, Abreu said. The new reserves include a 52,000-square-mile (135,000-square-kilometer) area in the Indonesian archipelago, Raja Ampat, home to over 75% of earth’s coral species as well as rainforests and rare endangered sea turtles. The economy depends on fishing, aquaculture, small-scale agriculture and tourism, UNESCO said.On Iceland's west coast, the Snæfellsnes Biosphere Reserve's landscape includes volcanic peaks, lava fields, wetlands, grasslands and the Snæfellsjökull glacier. The 1,460-square-kilometer (564 square-mile) reserve is an important sanctuary for seabirds, seals and over 70% of Iceland's plant life — including 330 species of wildflowers and ferns. Its population of more than 4,000 people relies on fishing, sheep farming and tourism.And in Angola, the new Quiçama Biosphere Reserve, along 206 kilometers (128 miles) of Atlantic coast is a “sanctuary for biodiversity” within its savannahs, forests, flood plains, estuaries and islands, according to UNESCO. It's home to elephants, manatees, sea turtles and more than 200 bird species. Residents' livelihoods include livestock herding, farming, fishing, honey production.Residents are important partners in protecting biodiversity within the reserves, and even have helped identify new species, said Abreu, the program's leader. Meanwhile, scientists also are helping to restore ecosystems to benefit the local economy, he said.For example, in the Philippines, the coral reefs around Pangatalan Island were severely damaged because local fishermen used dynamite to find depleted fish populations. Scientists helped design a structure to help coral reefs regrow and taught fishermen to raise fish through aquaculture so the reefs could recover.“They have food and they have also fish to sell in the markets,” said Abreu.In the African nation of São Tomé and Príncipe, a biosphere reserve on Príncipe Island led to restoration of mangroves, which help buffer against storm surges and provide important habitat, Abreu said.Ecotourism also has become an important industry, with biosphere trails and guided bird-watching tours. A new species of owl was identified there in recent years. This year, a biosphere reserve was added for the island of São Tomé, making the country the first entirely within a reserve. Climate and environmental concerns At least 60% of the UNESCO biosphere reserves have been affected by extreme weather tied to climate change, which is caused primarily by the burning of fossil fuels such as coal and gas, including extreme heat and drought and sea-level rise, Abreu said.The agency is using satellite imagery and computer modeling to monitor changes in coastal zones and other areas, and is digitizing its historical databases, Abreu said. The information will be used to help determine how best to preserve and manage the reserves.Some biosphere reserves also are under pressure from environmental degradation.In Nigeria, for example, habitat for a dwindling population of critically endangered African forest elephants is under threat as cocoa farmers expand into Omo Forest Reserve, a protected rainforest and one of Africa’s oldest and largest UNESCO Biosphere Reserves. The forest is also important to help combat climate change.The Trump administration in July announced that the U.S. would withdraw from UNESCO as of December 2026, just as it did during his first administration, saying U.S. involvement is not in the national interest. The U.S. has 47 biosphere reserves, most in federal protected areas.The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find the AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.Photos You Should See – Sept. 2025

Climate

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On North Carolina’s Rivers and Streams, the Cleanup of Helene’s Fury Seems Never-Ending

It’s been only a year since Hurricane Helene hammered the southeast U.S. from Florida to the Carolinas

WOODFIN, N.C. (AP) — Bracing himself against the current in waist-deep water, Clancy Loorham wrestles a broken length of PVC pipe from the rocky bottom of the French Broad River and peers inside.“I got a catfish in the pipe,” the 27-year-old with wispy beard and mustache shouted to fellow cleanup workers floating nearby in rafts, canoes and kayaks piled with plastic pipe and other human-made detritus. “He’s right here. I’m looking him in the eyes!”It’s been just a year since floodwaters from the remnants of Hurricane Helene washed these pipes out of a nearby factory with such force that some pieces ended up in Douglas Lake, about 90 miles (145 kilometers) away in Tennessee. But they're already slick with algae and filled with river silt — and creatures.Helene killed more than 250 people and caused nearly $80 billion in damage from Florida to the Carolinas. In the North Carolina mountains, rains of up to 30 inches (76 centimeters) turned gentle streams into torrents that swept away trees, boulders, homes and vehicles, shattered century-old flood records, and in some places carved out new channels.In the haste to rescue people and restore their lives to some semblance of normalcy, some fear the recovery efforts compounded Helene’s impact on the ecosystem. Contractors hired to remove vehicles, shipping containers, shattered houses and other large debris from waterways sometimes damaged sensitive habitat.“They were using the river almost as a highway in some situations,” said Peter Raabe, Southeast regional director for the conservation group American Rivers.Conservationists found instances of contractors cutting down healthy trees and removing live root balls, said Jon Stamper, river cleanup coordinator for MountainTrue, the North Carolina-based nonprofit conducting the French Broad work.“Those trees kind of create fish habitats,” he said. “They slow the flow of water down. They’re an important part of a river system, and we’ve seen kind of a disregard for that.”The Army Corps of Engineers said in a statement that debris removal missions “are often challenging” due to the large volume storms can leave behind across a wide area. The Corps said it trains its contractors to minimize disturbances to waterways and to prevent harm to wildlife. North Carolina Emergency Management said debris removal after Helene took into account safety and the environment, and that projects reimbursed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency met that agency’s standards for minimizing impact. Battered first by the storm, and then by the cleanup Hannah Woodburn, who tracks the headwaters and tributaries of the New River as MountainTrue's Upper New Riverkeeper, said waters are much muddier since Helene, both from storm-related vegetation loss and from heavy machinery used during cleanup.She said it's been bad for the eastern hellbender, a “species of special concern” in North Carolina. It's one of only three giant salamanders found in the world, growing up to 2 feet (61 centimeters) long and weighing more than 3 pounds (1.4 kilograms).“After the storm, we had so many reports and pictures of dead hellbenders, some nearly a mile from the stream once the waters receded,” said Woodburn.Of even greater concern is the Appalachian elktoe, a federally endangered mussel found only in the mountains of North Carolina and eastern Tennessee. Helene hurt the Appalachian elktoe, but it also suffered from human-caused damage, said Mike Perkins, a state biologist.Perkins said some contractors coordinated with conservation teams ahead of river cleanups and took precautions. Others were not so careful. He described snorkeling in the cold waters of the Little River and “finding crushed individuals, some of them still barely alive, some with their insides hanging out.” On that river, workers moved 60 Appalachian elktoe to a refuge site upstream. On the South Toe River, home to one of the most important populations, biologists collected a dozen and took them to a hatchery to store in tanks until it's safe to return them to the wild.“It was shocking and unprecedented in my professional line of work in 15 years,” Perkins said of the incident. “There’s all of these processes in place to prevent this secondary tragedy from happening, and none of it happened.”Andrea Leslie, mountain habitat conservation coordinator with the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission, said she hopes the experience can inform future recovery efforts.“To a certain degree, you can’t do this perfectly,” she said. “They’re in emergency mode. They’re working to make sure that people are safe and that infrastructure is safe. And it’s a big, complicated process. And there are multiple places in my observation where we could shift things to be more careful." Humans along the river are still recovering, too Like the hellbender and the Appalachian elktoe, humans cling to the river, too.Vickie and Paul Revis’ home sat beside old U.S. 70 in a bend of the Swannanoa River. As Helene swept through, the Swannanoa took their home and scraped away a big chunk of their half-acre lot.With the land paid for and no flood insurance payment to move away, they decided to stay put.After a year in a donated camper, they'll soon move into their new house — a double-wide modular home, also donated by a local Christian charity. It sits atop a 6-foot mound that Paul Revis piled up near the front of the property, farther from the river. Using rock, fill dirt and broken concrete dumped on his property by friendly debris-removal contractors, Paul has reclaimed the frontage the Swannanoa took. His wife planted it with marigolds for beauty and a weeping willow for stability. And they've purchased flood insurance.“I hope I never see another one in my lifetime, and I’m hoping that if I do, it does hold up,” Vickie said. “I mean, that’s all we can (do). Mother Nature does whatever she wants to do, and you just have to roll with it.” Tons of debris pulled out, tons still to go Back on the French Broad, the tedious cleanup work continues. Many on the crew are rafting guides knocked out of work by the storm.MountainTrue got a $10 million, 18-month grant from the state for the painstaking work of pulling small debris from the rivers and streams. Since July, teams have removed more than 75 tons from about a dozen rivers across five watersheds.Red-tailed hawks and osprey circle high overhead as the flotilla glides past banks lined with willow, sourwood and sycamore, ablaze with goldenrod and jewelweed. That peacefulness belies its fury of a year ago that upended so many lives. “There are so many people who are living in western North Carolina right now that feel very afraid of our rivers,” said Liz McGuirl, a crew member who managed a hair salon before Helene put her out of work. “They feel hurt. They feel betrayed.”Downstream, as McGuirl hauled up a length of pipe, another catfish swam out.“We’re creating a habitat, but it’s just the wrong habitat,” crew leader Leslie Beninato said ruefully. “I’d like to give them a tree as a home, maybe, instead of a pipe.”The Associated Press receives support from the Walton Family Foundation for coverage of water and environmental policy. The AP is solely responsible for all content. For all of AP’s environmental coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/climate-and-environmentCopyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.Photos You Should See – Sept. 2025

Climate

Conservation

Health

The Dismantling of the US Forest Service Is Imminent

This story was originally published by High Country News and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. In the 1880s, giant cattle companies turned thousands of cattle out to graze on the “public domain”—i.e., the Western lands that had been stolen from Indigenous people and then opened up for white settlement. In remote southeastern Utah, this coincided with a wave of settlement by members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The region’s once-abundant grasslands and lush mountain slopes were soon reduced to denuded wastelands etched with deep flash-flood-prone gullies. Cattlemen fought, sometimes violently, over water and range. The local citizenry grew sick and tired of it, sometimes literally: At one point, sheep feces contaminated the water supply of the town of Monticello and led to a typhoid outbreak that killed 11 people. Yet there was little they could do, since there were few rules on the public domain and fewer folks with the power to enforce them. That changed in 1891, when Congress passed the Forest Reserve Act, which authorized the president to place some unregulated tracts under “judicious control,” thereby mildly restraining extractive activities in the name of conservation. In 1905, the Forest Service was created as a branch of the US Agriculture Department to oversee these reserves, and Gifford Pinchot was chosen to lead it. A year later, the citizens of southeastern Utah successfully petitioned the Theodore Roosevelt administration to establish forest reserves in the La Sal and Abajo Mountains. Since then, the Forest Service has gone through various metamorphoses, shifting from stewarding and conserving forests for the future to supplying the growing nation with lumber to managing forests for multiple uses and then to the ecosystem management era, which began in the 1990s. Throughout all these shifts, however, it has largely stayed true to Pinchot and his desire to conserve forests and their resources for future generations. But now, the Trump administration is eager to begin a new era for the agency and its public lands, with a distinctively un-Pinchot-esque structure and a mission that maximizes resource production and extraction while dismantling the administrative state and its role as environmental protector. Over the last nine months, the administration has issued executive orders calling for expanded timber production and rescinding the 2001 Roadless Rule, declared “emergency” situations that enable it to bypass regulations on nearly 60 percent of the public’s forests, and proposed slashing the agency’s operations budget by 34 percent. The most recent move, which is currently open to public comment, involves a proposal by Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins to radically overhaul the entire US Department of Agriculture. Its stated purposes are to ensure that the agency’s “workforce aligns with financial resources and priorities,” and to consolidate functions and eliminate redundancy. This will include moving at least 2,600 of the department’s 4,600 Washington, DC, employees to five hub locations, with only two in the West: Salt Lake City, Utah, and Fort Collins, Colorado. (The others will be in North Carolina, Missouri, and Indiana.) The goal, according to Rollins’ memorandum, is to “bring the USDA closer to its customers.” The plan is reminiscent of Trump’s first-term relocation of the Bureau of Land Management’s headquarters to Grand Junction, Colorado, in 2019. That relocation resulted in a de facto agency housecleaning; many senior staffers chose to resign or move to other agencies, and only a handful of workers ended up in the Colorado office, which shared a building with oil and gas companies. Using an emergency declaration, Trump’s timber production executive order would ease environmental protections so as to greatly expand logging in the national forests. Though Rollins’ proposal is aimed at decentralizing the department, it would effectively re-centralize the Forest Service by eliminating its nine regional offices, six of which are located in the West. Each regional forester oversees dozens of national forests within their region, providing budget oversight, guiding place-specific implementation of national policies, and facilitating coordination among the various forests. Rollins’ memo does not explain why the regional offices are being axed, or what will happen to the regional foresters’ positions and their functions, or how the change will affect the agency’s chain of command. When several US senators asked Deputy Secretary Stephen Vaden for more specifics, he responded that “decisions pertaining to the agency’s structure and the location of specialized personnel will be made after” the public comment period ends on September 30. Curiously, the administration’s forest management strategy, published in May, relies on regional offices to “work with the Washington Office to develop tailored strategies to meet their specific timber goals.” Now it’s unclear that either the regional or Washington offices will remain in existence long enough to carry this out. The administration has been far more transparent about its desire to return the Forest Service to its timber plantation era, which ran from the 1950s through the ’80s. During that time, logging companies harvested 10 billion to 12 billion board-feet per year from federal forests, while for the last 25 years, the annual number has hovered below 3 billion board-feet. Now, Trump, via his Immediate Expansion of American Timber Production order, plans to crank up the annual cut to 4 billion board-feet by 2028. This will be accomplished—in classic Trumpian fashion—by declaring an “emergency” on national forest lands that will allow environmental protections and regulations, including the National Environmental Protection Act, Endangered Species Act and Clean Water Act, to be eased or bypassed. In April, Rollins issued a memorandum doing just that, declaring that the threat of wildfires, insects and disease, invasive species, overgrown forests, the growing number of homes in the wildland-urban interface, and more than a century of rigorous fire suppression have contributed to what is now “a full-blown wildfire and forest health crisis.” Emergency determinations aren’t limited to Trump and friends; in 2023, the Biden administration identified almost 67 million acres of national forest lands as being under a high or very high fire risk, thus qualifying as an “emergency situation” under the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. Rollins, however, vastly expanded the “emergency situation” acreage to almost 113 million acres, or 59 percent of all Forest Service lands. This allows the agency to use streamlined environmental reviews and “expedited” tribal consultation time frames to “carry out authorized emergency actions,” ranging from commercial harvesting of damaged trees to removing “hazardous fuels” to reconstructing existing utility lines. Meanwhile, the administration has announced plans to consolidate all federal wildfire fighting duties under the Interior Department. This would completely zero out the Forest Service’s $2.4 billion wildland fire management budget, sowing even more confusion and chaos. The administration also plans to slash staff and budgets in other parts of the agency, further compromising its ability to carry out its mission. The so-called Department of Government Efficiency fired about 3,400 Forest Service employees, or more than 10 percent of the agency’s total workforce, earlier this year. And the administration has proposed cutting the agency’s operations budget, which includes salaries, by 34 percent in fiscal 2026, which will most likely necessitate further reductions in force. It would also cut the national forest system and capital improvement and maintenance budgets by 21 percent and 48 percent respectively. The goal, it seems, is to cripple the agency with both direct and indirect blows. The result, if the administration succeeds, will be a diminished Forest Service that would be unrecognizable to Gifford Pinchot.

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This film reveals how diverse environmental problems, from climate change to species extinction to ruined ecosystems, are all ultimately rooted in the “growth at all costs” attitude that pervades modern industrial society. Through beautiful and disturbing images and interviews with ecological scholars, spiritual leaders and activists, The Wisdom to Survive argues that the survival of humanity and most living beings on the planet will not come from technology, but from a profound raising of consciousness and deep spiritual transformation of humans who finally realize that we must live differently on planet earth.

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Ser Manguezal

Ser Manguezal, created by Eliseu Cavalcante, was inspired by Josué de Castro's book "Of Men and Crabs" from 1967. De Castro was a Brazilian geographer, physician, writer and activist against world hunger. In his book, Castro envisions men as crabs, learning to walk in the mangroves. This relationship between them seems to unify and blend all together making the human being part of that specific biome. This film is part of an ongoing project that examines those who depend on the mangrove ecosystem to survive, and the delicate relationship between humans and this particular ecosystem. It seeks to recognize the hard-working crab hunters of the mangroves and make their work more visible, and to bring awareness about the importance of mangroves to the environment. Worldwide, 3,400 square kilometers (1,300 square miles) of mangrove forests were lost between 2000 and 2016, or about 2% of the global mangrove area (NASA). About 62% of the losses were due to direct human causes such as agriculture and aquaculture. Mangrove degradation is greater than the average for tropical and subtropical forest loss.

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LEAVES

An academic woman in Texas becomes concerned when a massive red oak in her backyard seems to be ailing, though she isn’t sure why it bothers her so much. At the same time, in her small cottage, her attention to her work is distracted by news reports she sees and hears. They tell in graphic terms of the out-of-control forest fires up and down the West Coast. Her attention is further pulled in the direction of other stories about the worsening conditions of the world’s rainforests which she discovers are disappearing at the astounding rate of 200,000 acres a day. Suddenly such stories are all she seems to hear and see on the radio or television or on her computer. But when she hears/sees a science report about how trees actually communicate with each other, she begins to realize there may be a connection between her tree and what she is learning from the news. She begins to recall a strong connection she herself has with that tree and allows that connection to regrow…..

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Eating the Future

Bafta-winner Mia McKenna-Bruce voices an eco-investigator who is traumatised by her work accessing factory farms and documenting animal abuses undercover. Terrified of a future of climate apocalypse, she embarks on a journey into the food systems that shape our planet, to look for hope.

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Climate Change and Pollution Threaten Europe's Resources, EU Warns

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‘Climate Tech’ is a meaningless buzzword. Let’s do this instead

Vietnam Evacuates Thousands and Shuts Airports as Typhoon Bualoi Nears Landfall

UNESCO Designates 26 New Biosphere Reserves Amid Biodiversity Challenges and Climate Change

On North Carolina’s Rivers and Streams, the Cleanup of Helene’s Fury Seems Never-Ending

The Dismantling of the US Forest Service Is Imminent

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Climate Change and Pollution Threaten Europe's Resources, EU Warns

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Join us to forgea sustainable future

sign up for our mailing list to stay informed on the latest films and environmental headlines.

Join us to forge
a sustainable future