The first two weeks of the U.S. and Israel’s war on Iran released a deluge of carbon emissions equivalent to the combined yearly climate warming pollution output of the lowest 84 emitters in the world, a new analysis finds. Researchers for progressive think tank Climate and Community Institute found that the first 14 days of the assault released over 5 million metric tons of carbon dioxide…
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Diane Wilson is a fourth-generation fisherwoman and a lifelong resident of Seadrift, Texas. Wilson has become a global folk hero over the course of her epic, decades-long journey from shrimp boat captain and mother of five to social and ecological justice warrior who took on a multibillion dollar corporation polluting the bays along her beloved Texas Gulf Coast. But the fight to save her home from industrial pollution is far from over. On March 2, Wilson began a hunger strike outside the Dow Chemical Company/Union Carbide plant in Seadrift. “I have a tent and am camping out 24 hours, 7 days a week,” Wilson wrote in a letter to Dow CEO Jim Fitterling, “to impress upon Dow/Union Carbide our intense dislike and frustration of decades of plastic pollution being discharged into our bays and waterways.” In this episode of Working People, TRNN Editor-in-Chief Maximillian Alvarez speaks with Wilson as her hunger strike enters its third week.
Guest:
Diane Wilson is a fourth-generation shrimper, boat captain, mother of five, author, and an environmental, peace, and social justice advocate. During the last 30 years, she has launched legislative campaigns, demonstrations, hunger strikes, sunk boats, and even climbed chemical towers in her fight to protect her Gulf Coast bay. She is a co-founder of CODEPINK, the women’s anti-war group based in Washington, DC, and co-founder of the Texas Jail Project, which advocates for inmates’ rights in Texas county jails. Since 2012, Wilson has been executive director and waterkeeper of San Antonio Bay Estuarine Waterkeeper (SABEW) on the Texas Gulf Coast. Wilson is the author of numerous books, including: An Unreasonable Woman: A True Story of
This story was originally published on Truthout on Feb. 12, 2026. It is shared here under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) license.
On Wednesday, President Donald Trump ordered two executive branch departments to take actions that would increase the use of coal in the United States, despite fossil fuels becoming an obsolete form of energy production that is devastating to the health of the planet.
Under his plan, intended to bolster the dwindling U.S. coal industry, the Department of Defense would purchase electricity from coal-fired power plants. Meanwhile, the Department of Energy will be doling out $175 million in upgrades for six coal plants in coal-rich states, including Kentucky, North Carolina, Ohio, Virginia, and West Virginia.
Trump announced his plans while hosting an event at the White House, where he also received an “Undisputed Champion of Coal” award from a coal-based special interest group.
“Sir, to show our appreciation, the trophy says ‘the undisputed champion of beautiful, clean coal'” pic.twitter.com/D16HNy2CKQ— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) February 11, 2026
“I will sign an executive order that directs the Department of War [sic] to work directly with coal plants on the new power purchasing agreements, ensuring that we have more reliable power and stronger and more resilient grid power, and we’re going to be buying a lot of coal through the military now,” Trump said during the event.
The president’s executive order, which cites a so-called “national emergency” on energy he signed at the start of his second term, also described increasing the use of coal as “a matter of national security, strategic deterrence, and American energy dominance.”
Experts have decried Trump’s claims that there is an energy emergency.
“We’re the world’s number one exporter
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is now only counting costs to businesses when considering regulation on key pollutants, internal documents show, rather than considering human lives saved by such caps. For the first time in decades of the practice, The New York Times reports, the EPA will effectively set the cost of a human life at $0 when doing cost-benefit analysis for fine…
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This story originally appeared in Common Dreams on Jan. 08, 2026. It is shared here under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0) license.
President Donald Trump on Wednesday withdrew the United States from dozens of international treaties and organizations aimed at promoting cooperation on the world’s most pressing issues, including human rights and the worsening climate emergency.
Among the treaties Trump ditched via a legally dubious executive order was the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), making the US—the world’s largest historical emitter of planet-warming greenhouse gases—the first country to abandon the landmark agreement.
The US Senate ratified the convention in 1992 by unanimous consent, but lawmakers have repeatedly failed to assert their constitutional authority to stop presidents from unilaterally withdrawing from global treaties.
Jean Su, energy justice director at the Center for Biological Diversity, said in a statement that “Trump cutting ties with the world’s oldest climate treaty is another despicable effort to let corporate fossil fuel interests run our government.”
“Given deeply polarized US politics, it’s going to be nearly impossible for the U.S. to rejoin the UNFCCC with a two-thirds majority vote. Letting this lawless move stand could shut the US out of climate diplomacy forever,” Su warned. “Withdrawing from the world’s leading climate, biodiversity, and scientific institutions threatens all life on Earth.”
Trump also pulled the US out of the International Institute for Justice and the Rule of Law, the International Union for Conservation of Nature, the UN International Law Commission, the UN Democracy Fund, UN Oceans, and dozens of other global bodies, deeming them “contrary to the interests of the United States.”
The president’s move came as he continued to steamroll domestic and international law with an illegal assault on Venezuela and threats to seize Greenland with military force, among other grave abuses.
Below is the full list of international organizations that
As droughts, extreme heat, and other climate disasters increasingly plague California, people throughout the state have been subject to water restrictions. For many Californians, this means emergency regulations like limitations on lawn watering. But one group of people has been forced to bear the brunt of the state’s water restrictions: those in prison. People in California prisons already…
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