The US oil industry has earned almost $130 billion in profits since the US and Israel began bombing Iran in February. The same companies, according to the New York Times, earned less than $47 billion over the same span of 2025, when oil was comparatively cheap. Shipping and insurance costs have spiked thanks to the war, allowing oil companies to spike their prices. ExxonMobil and Chevron, the nation’s two largest fossil fuel corporations, saw profits surge. According to quarterly earnings reports released on Friday, ExxonMobil’s profits doubled over the same period last year, while Chevron’s grew by 180 percent. BP, another large oil company, reported its profits reached an 18-year high. Shareholders are making money. President Donald Trump’s personal wealth in oil and gas stocks grew as much as $35.8 million this year, according to a report this week from congressional Democrats. Americans, meanwhile, are paying the price—the median US household has spent $856 more at the gas pump than they otherwise would have since the war started. The national average price of gasoline during the third quarter of 2026 was $4.12 a gallon, according to AAA—up 96 cents from a year ago and the highest ever quarterly price. On...

In his second term as the U.S. president, Donald Trump has taken actions to remove protections from at least 34.8 million hectares (86 million acres) of public lands, according to the advocacy group Center for American Progress. The nonprofit Conservation Lands Foundation (CLF) recently catalogued 12 such policy actions in its newly released Public Lands Attack Tracker. The tracker examines the myriad ways public lands have been reduced and weakened, from encouraging extractive industries to sidelining public participation, over the last nearly two years. These actions by the Trump administration include expanding oil and gas drilling “to encourage energy exploration and production on Federal lands and waters” and repealing the public lands rule, which requires that conservation be considered equally important as extractive industries. The administration has also moved to rescind the roadless rule that currently bans road construction across millions of acres of national forest land and weakened provisions of the Endangered Species Act, which grants protection to species in decline. On its Public Lands Attack Tracker website, the CLF argues that the combined effects of such actions could be greater than the sum of their individual impacts. “This Attack Tracker connects the dots,” the website notes. It lays...

Climate breakdown is happening on one Earth, but two different worlds. In one, its impacts increasingly encroach on everyday life; longer periods of discomfort and shorter periods of sharp pain. Endless, hotter summers, and within them sudden wildfires, evacuations, homes burned to cinders in a matter of hours. In another, catastrophe. This summer has been a snapshot of that split-screen. The hottest day on record in parts of Europe, and a wave of water, mud and ice in Nepal that so far has claimed more than 750 lives. Thousands of people are still missing. The difference is also one of resources. The climate crisis has an economic cost, but some places can absorb it better than others. Responses to this summer of wildfires in Europe included a rapid scrambling by the French government to provide everything from tax breaks for businesses affected by the fires to relocation costs and aid to rebuild homes. The UK government had deployed almost £100m before the summer to strengthen wildfire resilience. Entire industries exist to absorb the impact, undergirded by sophisticated technology, disposable income and evolved sectors. Wildfire insurance in the US is being powered by AI, which spits out numbers to estimate risk...

The prospect of large-scale changes to familiar landscapes can trigger emotional distress long before those changes take place. Known as anticipatory solastalgia, this sense of impending environmental loss may help explain why agrivoltaic projects face local opposition, even when they promise benefits for renewable energy generation and agricultural resilience. The concept builds on solastalgia, a term introduced by Australian philosopher Glenn Albrecht in the early 2000s to describe distress caused by environmental changes to familiar places. Its future-oriented dimension was subsequently developed in environmental psychology, with anticipatory solastalgia examined as a distinct psychological construct in 2023. A new survey examining public perceptions of agrivoltaics suggests that anticipated landscape changes are among the most significant barriers to social acceptance. At the same time, perceived environmental sustainability, local economic opportunities, trust in scientific experts, and the fairness of decision-making processes are associated with more favorable attitudes toward the technology. “Global and local sustainability are among the factors most closely associated with a positive assessment of agrivoltaics,” Mirella De Falco, lead author of the study, told pv magazine. Global sustainability refers primarily to the perceived environmental consequences of agrivoltaic technology, including its effects on ecosystems, biodiversity, and agricultural land. Local sustainability, meanwhile, concerns...

The world’s largest glacier is melting much faster and could add twice as much to global sea levels as previously expected over the next century. New research published this week by a team of glaciologists has found that the Thwaites glacier in West Antarctica is losing mass rapidly because warm seawater is pushing underneath it and melting its core. This could add 1.2 inches (30mm) to water levels even if global warming does not accelerate as predicted. Recommended Stories list of 4 items list 1 of 4The Nepal floods question: When the Himalayas collapse, who gets warned? list 2 of 4India to supply Nepal electricity after floods wrecked hydropower projects list 3 of 4El Nino reaches super status: Where will it bring rain, drought and heat? list 4 of 4‘The drought has left its mark’: Slovenia’s potato lovers lament low yields end of list The findings, published in the journal Nature Communications, add to a growing body of evidence that shows that the glacier, which has been receding for decades, is now losing mass even faster than scientists thought. Researchers at the University of California in the United States collaborated with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory for the study. Here’s what...