The winter solstice has passed, Christmas and Hanukkah are upon us, and the calendar is about to flip over once again. Which means it’s time for this chronicle of the most important environmental stories of the year that was. Here’s a roundup of the best and the worst environmental news of 2024, and the issues that will likely ripple out into 2025.
In 2023, temperatures busted global records, and 2024 was hotter still — the hottest year ever recorded. Photo by fourbyfourblazer / Flickr.
It’s all but official: 2024 is on track to be the first year in which average global temperatures will be 1.5 degrees Celsius (or 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels. In 2023, temperatures busted global records, and 2024 was hotter still — the hottest year ever recorded. A growing number of climate scientists (see here and here) now warn that climate change may even be accelerating.
The primary cause of all this warming, of course, is the burning of coal, oil, and methane gas. Now, however, it appears that some long-feared negative feedback loops may be adding to the problem. A paper published in October concluded that the recent surge in methane emissions (a gas some 80 times more heat trapping than carbon dioxide) is being driven microbes in wetlands and agricultural soils — not fossil fuel consumption. This is, in a word, terrifying, as it suggests that some biological carbon sinks could now be carbon sources.
The Paris Agreement’s aspiration to keep global temperatures below 1.5 C looks to be dead. That’s bad enough on its own. It’s made even worse by the paralysis in global environmental cooperation. This year’s UN-sponsored climate negotiations in the petro-state of Azerbaijan came within inches of collapse, and resulted in little more than a pledge by wealthy nations to provide poorer countries with $300 billion annually in climate finance — a figure that some complained was a “paltry sum.”
The disappointing climate talks were part of a depressing pattern. International talks to address the global problem of plastic pollution fizzled. A UN summit on biodiversity, meant to tackle the planetary decline in wildlife, flopped.
The global architecture for environmental cooperation looks increasingly shaky as many nation-states appear to have lost the will to work together to address the cascading environmental crises. But power abhors a vacuum. If the world’s leaders refuse to lead on environmental solutions, then global civil society will have to take the lead. Twas ever thus. In 2025 and beyond, look to ordinary citizens, non-governmental organizations, and Indigenous groups to lead the way toward environmental progress.
Asheville, North Carolina, was left without potable water service for more than 50 days following Hurricane Helene, and saw its famous arts district utterly demolished. Photo by Bill McMannis.
During the nearly 15 years that I’ve been writing this year-end chronicle, a climate change-intensified disaster of some sort — massive wildfires, smoke storms, floods — has made its way into the roundup. In some ways, then, Hurricane Helene was yet more proof of how the reckless burning of coal, oil, and gas has warped the atmosphere. Some 230 people lost their lives due to the storm, which caused at least $200 billion in damages. But Helene was different for the way in which its worst destruction occurred so far from where it was expected.
As the storm built up strength and size over the ocean waters, most observers expected it would do its worst damage in Florida. Instead, the storm mostly skipped over the Sunshine State and ended up walloping Tennessee, Georgia, and North Carolina, where a deluge of rain caused widespread flooding. The mountain towns of North Carolina took the brunt of the damage, along with the alt-country, crunchy city of Asheville, which was left without potable water service for more than 50 days and which saw its famous arts district utterly demolished.
Asheville is more than 300 miles from the coast and sits 2,000 feet above sea level. Before the storm, the woodsy enclave had been widely celebrated as a “climate haven.” Helene made a mockery of the moniker. As one Asheville journalist wrote in the storm’s aftermath, “The truth is that no community is a climate refuge, despite what opportunistic real estate agents might say.”
That, in a nutshell, is the hard-earned lesson of Hurricane Helene. There is no perfect haven from climate chaos. Sure, some places may be more resilient than others. But the painful truth is that there is no escaping the threats of climate change. There is no “away.”
Perhaps we can find a sort of solidarity in that fact. No matter where you live, we’re all in this together.
The era of British coal came to a close this year with the closure of the Ratcliff-on-Soar power plant. Photo by Arran Bee.
The United Kingdom is, famously, the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution. The steam engine was invented there and the railroad too; the world’s first coal-fired electricity plant opened in London in 1882. As recently as 1990, the black rock accounted for 80 percent of British electricity generation.
The era of British coal came to a close this year, when the last coal-fired power station in the country shut down. “Truly historic,” is how a researcher at the World Resources Institute described the shuttering of the Ratcliff-on-Soar power plant. It “proves that other countries can also achieve rapid speeds of coal reduction.”
Exactly. During the last 20-some years, most industrialized, wealthy countries have turned away from this most carbon-intense energy source. Coal’s share of electricity production in the European Union has dropped by about 40 percent, and with the glaring exception of three laggards (Germany, Poland, and Turkey), coal accounts for 5 percent or less of electricity generation in EU nations. The United States is headed in this direction too: In March, American environmental groups announced that they had struck a deal to eventually shut down the last coal burning power plants in New England.
The pivot away from coal is a major reason why carbon pollution in both the EU and the US is declining. From 2022 to 2023 (the last period for which full stats are available), EU emissions dropped more than 8 percent, the largest decline ever; meanwhile, US climate pollution is less than it was in 1990.
It’s true that coal use continues to grow in many countries, especially in Southeast Asia, where the Philippines has now surpassed China and Indonesia as the most coal-dependent country on Earth. But Great Britain’s abandonment of coal shows that any economy — no matter how coal-dependent — can make a transition to other energy sources and sustain its prosperity.
Solar accounted for more than two-thirds of new electricity generating capacity in the United States this year. Photo by Tom Brewster Photography / BLM.
Ever since President Jimmy Carter put photovoltaic panels on the White House, environmentalists have heralded solar energy as the renewable energy source with the greatest potential of making fossil fuels obsolete. But let’s be real: for a long time, that promise was more of a fake-it-til-you-make-it posture. Now, it appears we’ve finally made it. The solar energy revolution has arrived.
In 2024 alone, China will have installed something like 165 gigawatts of solar generation capacity — nearly 25 percent more installation than in 2023 and enough to power more than 100 million residences. Rooftop solar is taking off across sub-Saharan Africa, and utility-scale solar is crushing it in the United States, where solar accounted for more than two-thirds of new electricity generating capacity this year. As one investor told The Economist, “The sun has won.”
The solar revolution is getting an assist from advances in energy storage, as utility-scale battery capacity skyrockets. In just the last three years, battery storage capacity in the US has increased tenfold. Meanwhile, other renewable energy sources are also surging. Keep an eye on geothermal in particular, which is on the cusp of major technological breakthroughs.
The economic and technological advantages of renewables have brought us to a place where, if you look closely, you can just about glimpse the peak of global greenhouse gas pollution. China’s emissions may have already peaked, and according to one analysis, global emissions may be peaking as well. A civilization powered by renewables is closer than ever before.
This will be the seventh consecutive year in which the United States will rank as the world’s top oil producer. Photo by Jonathan Cutrer.
“The future is already here,” the sci-fi novelist William Gibson once said, “it’s just not evenly distributed.” While it’s true that renewable energy generation and battery storage are booming, it’s equally true that for now we remain chained to fossil fuels.
This will be the seventh consecutive year in which the United States will rank as the world’s top oil producer, pumping even more than the petro-states of Russia and Saudi Arabia. As the US Energy Information Administration puts it: “US produces more crude oil than any country, ever.” Ugh.
The continued US oil and gas boom — which, as we’ll get to below, will only accelerate once Trump re-enters the White House — reveals the tension at the center of the energy transition. Renewables may be increasing, but they’re not yet displacing fossil fuels in the aggregate.
Maybe we’re caught in the so-called Jevon’s Paradox, which postulates that when energy gets cheaper, people will use more of it. Maybe all of the gains from renewables will get gobbled up by AI’s massive energy demands.
In any case, the takeaway for the environmental movement should be clear: It’s not enough to simply trust that the market will make renewables so cheap that they outcompete fossil fuels. We also need to keep doing everything we can do shove coal, oil, and gas toward obsolescence. That’s why every pipeline protest, every rally to stop LNG exports, and every new ordinance governing oil and gas drilling are so important — because they increase the fossil fuel industry’s cost-of-doing business.
We need to keep up the drumbeat of villainizing the Carbon Barons, which brings us to …
In 2024, the legal effort to hold Big Oil accountable expanded to a new target: fossil-fueled utilities. The hamlet of Carrboro, North Carolina, for example, filed a climate lawsuit against the South’s biggest utility, Duke Energy.Photo of Duke Energy’s Marshall Steam Station by Cdtew / Wikimedia.
In 2024, the years-long effort to hold oil and gas corporations accountable for climate change and other forms of pollution gained new momentum, as state and local governments expanded their legal and legislative efforts to “make polluters pay.”
In the last seven years, dozens of states, cities, and counties have sued the Big Oil companies like ExxonMobil and Chevron and BP for their well-documented role in deceiving the public about the threats of global warming. This past year, a few new jurisdictions piled on: the state of Maine, the city of Chicago, and Bucks County, Pennsylvania. (The Center for Climate Integrity has a handy cheat-sheet of all the climate tort cases.)
This year, some local governments went after a new target: fossil-fueled utilities. Oregon officials expanded their existing climate lawsuit to include the state’s largest gas utility, NW Natural. And the hamlet of Carrboro, North Carolina filed a climate lawsuit against the South’s biggest utility, Duke Energy.
Meanwhile, some big players started going after Big Oil for its alleged role in fueling the plastic pollution crisis. In September, California Attorney General Rob Bonta announced a first-of-its-kind lawsuit against ExxonMobil for misleading the public about the technical and economic infeasibility of plastics recycling. The Sierra Club, Surfrider Foundation, Heal the Bay, and Baykeeper filed a parallel suit at the same time. You may be thinking: Of course California and green groups would make that claim. Well, then, consider this: Ford County, Kansas has filed a lawsuit very similar to California’s. FWIW, Ford County is a deep red community that Trump carried by nearly a two-to-one margin, proof of how antipathy to Big Oil shenanigans can transcend partisan lines.
Also in 2024, legislators in Vermont passed the nation’s first Climate Superfund Act, which will require “super emitters” like ExxonMobil and Shell to cover part of the costs of climate-related damages, like the 2023 flooding that devasted the state capital, Montpelier. A similar law has already passed the New York Legislature, though it’s unclear that if Governor Kathy Hochul will sign it. Some climate hawks in the US Congress have introduced a bill that would create a federal climate superfund.
While the oil companies are still hoping and praying that the US Supreme Court will give them a get-out-of-jail-free card, the steady drumbeat of climate lawsuits and legislations means we are one step closer to holding polluters accountable for their climate change-related bad behavior.
Globally, deforestation continues unabated. In 2023, the last year for which full numbers are available, some 16 million acres of primary forest were razed. Photo by Patrick Shepherd / CIFOR.
As with climate change and greenhouse gas pollution, the world’s nation states have been promising for years to slow the pace of deforestation. And, just like with climate change, the globe’s governments are struggling to make good on their promises.
A report released in October by the research group Climate Focus found that, globally, deforestation continues unabated. In 2023, the last year for which full numbers are available, some 16 million acres of primary forest were razed, and another 153 million acres were “degraded” by road-building and wildfires. All this despite the 2021 pledge by 140 nations to halt deforestation by the end of the decade.
Why do we keep chopping down trees? Simple: to make space for agricultural activities like soy and oil palm cultivation and cattle ranching, along with room for mining metals like nickel.
The continued churn of the bulldozers and the chainsaws is a useful reminder that climate change and energy are just one of the environmental threats we’re facing. Agriculture — the imperative to simply feed ourselves — is the principle driver of forest loss and wildlife habitat destruction. We are, truly, eating the planet. Sustainability will remain a mirage until we succeed at shrinking agriculture’s huge footprint.
Grizzly 399, the most famous brown bear in the world, was struck and killed by a motorist in October. Photo of Grizzly 399 and four cubs in 2020 by StevenPDeVries.
Before she was struck and killed by a motorist near Grand Teton National Park in October, Grizzly 399 was the most famous brown bear in the world (no shade to the celeb bruins of Katmai National Park). The 28-year-old female grizzly had been the subject of a PBS documentary and a 60 Minutes segment, as well as a darling for the tourists and wildlife watchers who flocked to watch her rear some 18 cubs over her lifespan. Like any celebrity, her fame could be measured by the outpouring of celebrations that accompanied her death: see here and here and here. The US Fish and Wildlife Service even put out an obituary.
Her fame notwithstanding, Grizzly 399’s death was, in many ways, totally ordinary. Each year in the United States, millions — likely tens of millions — of creatures are killed by motor vehicles. But because of her media stature, Grizzly 399’s demise helped refocus public attention on the many ways that human activities crowd out wildlife and make their lives difficult, if not precarious. Her death was a reminder — if any more were needed — of the plight of wildlife in a human-dominated world.
The death of Grizzly 399 comes at a turning point for brown bear conservation in the Lower 48. Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming have petitioned the federal government to remove the bruin from the endangered species list, while conservation and wildlife groups are fighting to maintain the protections. A federal judge has ordered the USFWS to make a decision no later than January 20, 2025. This will be a major test of the Fish and Wildlife Service’s willingness to uphold the Endangered Species Act. If the agency won’t act to protect a species as iconic as the grizzly, what other creatures might it allow to slip closer to the void of extinction?
This past year, Biden administration officials worked overtime to get the Congressionally earmarked Inflation Reduction Act funds out the door, and it’s worked. Since its passage, the IRA has helped create 271,000 clean energy jobs and sparked a boom in domestic battery manufacturing. Photo by Joshua Bauer / Bryan Bechtold NREL.
In some ways, President Joe Biden is an unlikely environmental hero. When he was elected four years ago, Scranton Joe’s principal environmental bona fide was that he really, really liked Amtrak. But as his term comes to a close, Biden leaves the White House with one of the strongest environmental records of any president in modern US history.
Biden’s main accomplishment was, of course, his deft political maneuvering to win passage of the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), the first major US climate legislation ever. This past year, Biden administration officials worked overtime to get the Congressionally earmarked IRA funds out the door, and it’s worked. Since its passage, the IRA has helped create 271,000 clean energy jobs and sparked a boom in domestic battery manufacturing. Millions of Americans have tapped into the IRA tax rebates and other incentives to pay for home energy upgrades and help cover the cost of electric vehicles. And Biden’s WPA-like American Climate Corps launched this summer as young people got to work on grassroots climate-resilience projects.
In 2024, the Biden administration also used executive action to strengthen environmental protections. In January, the White House put in a place a pause on new LNG export facilities. Biden’s EPA finalized new rules to reduce pollution — especially toxic mercury — from fossil-fuel fired power plants and established strong new guidelines to limit pollution from cars and trucks. In April, the EPA announced an emergency suspension of the pesticide Dachtal, and in December the agency prohibited most uses of the insecticide Chlorpyrifos.
Biden was no slouch when it came to protecting lands and waters. Biden has created more national monuments in a single term than any president except Jimmy Carter; in 2024, he used the power granted the president under the Antiquities Act to dramatically expand San Gabriel Mountains and Berryessa Snow Mountain National Monuments, and moved to create a new national marine sanctuary off the California coast. And in what may prove to be biggest land protection move of his presidency, Biden’s White House put in place new rules for the Bureau of Land Management — the agency that stewards some 245 million American acres — that will finally put conservation on an equal footing with extractive industries like mining, logging, and cattle ranching.
Of course, the question now is how many of these laws and executive actions will be able to withstand assault by the incoming administration. Which brings us to our final item …
Though 2024 wasn’t an environmental election, the environment will likely be a casualty of a second Trump term. Photo by Lorie Shaull.
Let’s be clear: 2024 wasn’t in any way an environmental election. As I wrote the morning after the election results came in, “Climate change and the environment weren’t really on the ballot this year. Compared with other hot-button issues like the economy, women’s rights, and democracy, environmental concerns fell pretty low on most voters’ lists of concerns. But even if the environment wasn’t on the ballot, the environment will likely be a casualty of the election.”
Trump and his oil tycoon and tech oligarch backers have made no secret of their scorched earth agenda. Among other things, Trump has explicitly threatened to:
· “Frack, frack, frack and drill, baby, drill” by making it easier for oil and gas companies to do extraction in the Arctic, in offshore waters, and across public lands;
· Once again pull the US out of the Paris Agreement;
· Axe federal rebates for EV purchases, along with other elements of the Inflation Reduction Act;
· Dramatically reduce the federal workforce, including the ranks of public servants who steward our public lands, help maintain clean air and clean water, and enforce public health and safety rules.
It’s very likely that Trump will try to rollback or downsize some of Biden’s national monument designations, attempt to challenge California’s strong tailpipe standards, and even dismantle the National Weather Service. As he did in his first term, he will probably seek to withhold climate-related federal disaster relief from states controlled by Democrats.
But this isn’t 2016 all over again. The clean energy industry is much more mature than it was eight years ago, and if Trump tries to kneecap renewables, he will find himself up against some powerful interests. The politics of clean energy has changed, given how a majority of IRA investments have gone to Republican states and districts. Environmental groups are well prepared to push back against Trump’s oil-soaked agenda.
But no matter what, 2025 is going to a wild year for environmental politics. Happy New Year?
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