• Homeowners are increasingly being dropped by their private home insurers.
• Regions with the highest nonrenewal rates are most prone to wildfires, hurricanes, and other disasters.
• A new Senate report warns of economic risks as climate change destabilizes insurance markets.

Homeowners across the country are increasingly facing a stark new reality: they're losing their home insurance.

The share of home insurance policies from large insurers that weren't renewed increased last year in 46 states, a report released Wednesday by the Senate Budget Committee found. The increasing frequency and intensity of disasters like wildfires, hurricanes, and flooding and the rising cost of rebuilding have pushed many insurers to drop customers or hike premiums. This has left thousands of homeowners scrambling to find new insurance policies or joining the growing ranks of those going without insurance.

More than 200 counties saw their non-renewal rates spike threefold between 2018 and 2023. Counties in Northern California and South Florida saw among the highest rates of nonrenewals. Coastal counties in Massachusetts, Mississippi, and North Carolina also saw dropped policies soar. Manhattan ranks 20th, with rates of dropped policies rising from 1.25% in 2018 to 4.11% in 2023.

The national scale of home insurance nonrenewals was previously unknown because insurance companies are regulated at the state level. The National Association of Insurance Commissioners said not all states collect granular data about the availability and affordability of coverage in some areas. The association in March announced an effort with state insurance regulators to try to fill the gap.

Senate Budget Committee Chairman Sheldon Whitehouse launched his own investigation into the homeowners' insurance market last year. He received nonrenewal data from 23 companies accounting for about two-thirds of the market. In testimony on Wednesday, Whitehouse said he demanded nonrenewal data because experts suggested policies being dropped were an early warning sign of market destabilization. He also said they correlated with higher premiums.

The American Property Casualty Insurance Association, a lobbying group representing insurance companies, said nonrenewal data doesn't provide "relevant information" on climate risks. Many factors, including a state's litigation and regulatory environment, factor into nonrenewal decisions, the association said.

The association added that more costly weather disasters, combined with inflation and overbuilding in climate-risk regions, are making insurance less affordable for many Americans.

Home insurance premiums are rising in many regions across the country. The National Bureau of Economic Research recently reported that average home insurance premiums spiked by 13%, adjusted for inflation, between 2020 and 2023.

Most mortgage lenders require homeowners to purchase insurance, and some require additional insurance for specific disasters, including flooding. Insurers refusing to offer coverage can hurt home values because homes that can't be insured in the private market are less desirable to potential buyers.

The Senate Budget report warned that the insurance crisis will get worse as the climate crisis fuels more frequent and destructive disasters, including hurricanes, wildfires, and flooding. A destabilized insurance market could "trigger cascading economy-wide financial upheaval," the report said.

"The failure to deal with climate change isn't just driving up the cost of homeowners' insurance, it's making it harder for families to even find homeowners' insurance, and that makes it harder to get a mortgage," Whitehouse said in a statement to Business Insider. "When the pool of buyers is limited to only those who can pay cash, it cuts off pathways to homeownership—particularly for first-time homebuyers—and risks cascading into a crash in property values that trashes the entire economy."

Have you been dropped by your home insurance company or are you facing a steep premium increase? Email these reporters to share your story: [email protected] and [email protected].

• Private home insurers are dropping a growing number of customers in most states, a Senate report found.
• That leaves homeowners at risk, turning to more expensive last-resort options or going uninsured.
• While Florida has managed to reverse the trend somewhat, the risk to homeowners is set to intensify.

As Americans flock to places in the US vulnerable to natural disasters, private home insurance companies are running the other way.

The problem has left a rising number of homeowners with just one option to cover property damage: insurers of last resort.

The scale of homeowners losing their plans became clearer on Wednesday after a Senate Budget Committee investigation found that private insurers' nonrenewals spiked threefold in more than 200 counties between 2018 and 2023.

"What our new data reveal is that the failure to deal with climate change is also affecting whether families can even get homeowners insurance, which threatens their ability to get a mortgage, which spells trouble for property values in climate-exposed communities across the country," Senate Budget Chairman Sheldon Whitehouse said in releasing the report.

A recent study by Harvard University's Joint Center for Housing Studies found that between 2018 and 2023, the number of properties enrolled in California and Florida's insurers of last resort more than doubled. A similar trend is playing out in Louisiana. While Florida has reduced participation this year, it still has the highest enrollment in the country.

The problem isn't isolated to the most predictable states. The Senate Budget Committee found that the rate of homeowners losing their private insurance also rose in Hawaii, North Carolina, and Massachusetts.

Policymakers and insurers are trying to stabilize the private market, by enacting new laws and overhauling regulations. However, with scientists predicting that climate-fueled disasters will become more frequent and severe for the foreseeable future, the risk to America's homeowners is mounting.

Growing insurance risk has some states looking for solutions

In nearly three dozen states, insurers of last resort, known as Fair Access to Insurance Requirements, or FAIR, are available to homeowners and businesses who struggle to find insurance on the private market.

The numbers are rising because private insurers are pulling back coverage and hiking premiums in areas at risk of wildfires, hurricanes, flooding, and other disasters often made worse by climate change.

While state-mandated FAIR plans are designed to be a backstop, insurance regulators and private insurance companies are alarmed by how many homeowners and businesses are enrolling, especially in California and Florida. The plans are often more expensive and provide less coverage. Plus, saddling one insurer with the riskiest policies increases the chances of one major disaster sinking the system and leaving taxpayers and insurance companies with the bill.

Florida and California are trying to reverse the trend, and Florida has seen some progress. The state's insurer of last resort, Citizens Property Insurance Corporation, said on December 4 that its policy count dropped below 1 million for the first time in two years.

Mark Friedlander, a spokesperson for the Insurance Information Institute, said the drop reflects a series of changes in recent years to stabilize the state's private insurance market after more than a dozen companies left the state or stopped writing new policies.

The Florida legislature passed laws to curb rampant litigation and claim fraud that drove up legal costs for private insurers. Friedlander said insurance lawsuits in the first three quarters of 2024 are down 56%, compared with the first three quarters of 2021 — the year before the new laws were enacted. Citizens also started a "depopulation" program that shifts customers to the private market. State regulators in October said they had approved at least nine new property companies to enter the market, and premiums weren't rising nearly as much as last year.

In California, many of the deadliest and most destructive wildfires have occurred within the last five years. As a result, some private insurers are hiking premiums and limiting coverage in risky areas, pushing more homeowners to the insurer of last resort. The Harvard study found that policies in the state's FAIR plan doubled between 2018 and 2023 to more than 300,000. As of September, the California Insurance Commission said policies totaled nearly 452,000.

The commission is working to overhaul regulations to slow the trend, including requiring private insurers to sell in risky areas. In exchange, it should be easier for companies to raise premiums that factor in reinsurance costs and the risks of future disasters. That should help stabilize rates, said Michael Sollen, a spokesman for the commission.

Sollen added that in the past, private insurers could seek approval for higher premiums but weren't required to offer coverage in wildfire-prone areas.

"In a year from now, what's happening with the FAIR plan will be a key measure for us," he said. "We expect to see those numbers start to stabilize and go down."

A mounting home insurance crisis

Still, a reduction in state-backed plans isn't necessarily a sign of progress, Steve Koller, a postdoctoral fellow in climate and housing and author of the Harvard report, told Business Insider.

A growing number of homeowners in places like Florida, Louisiana, and California are purchasing private insurance from nontraditional providers barely regulated by state governments. These so-called "non-admitted" insurers don't contribute to a state fund that guarantees homeowners will have their claims paid even if the insurance provider fails, leaving their customers without access to this backup coverage.

"Someone could be moving to a private insurer from Citizens, and that insurer might have higher insolvency risk," Koller said.

He added that more homeowners are opting out of insurance altogether. The number of US homeowners going without insurance has soared from 5% in 2019 to 12% in 2022, the Insurance Information Institute reported.

Plus, Americans are increasingly moving into parts of the country most vulnerable to extreme weather. Tens of thousands more people moved into the most flood—and fire-prone areas of the US last year rather than out of them, the real estate company Redfin reported earlier this year.

As insurers of last resort try to shift more risk to the private market, home insurance premiums are expected to keep rising. That's especially true in the areas hardest hit by climate-fueled disasters.

If private insurers exit hard-hit regions en masse in the future, Koller said states might need to become the predominant insurance provider in the same way the National Flood Insurance Program took over after the private market for flood insurance collapsed in the 1960s. Most flood insurance plans are still issued by the federal government.

"My guess is states are going to work very, very hard to avoid that and ensure the existence of a robust private market, but that's a parallel that I can't personally unthink about," he said.

Have you struggled to get home insurance, moved to an insurer of last resort, or gone uninsured? Contact these reporters at [email protected] or [email protected].

• Startups like Equatic and Climeworks develop ways to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
• Carbon removal helps businesses meet ESG goals and offset emissions through a carbon credits system.
• This article is part of "Transforming Business," a series on the must-know leaders and trends impacting industries.

Out on a barge in Los Angeles, a team of engineers is hard at work tweaking the designs of a collection of machines with multiple tubes attached to tanks filled with air and different minerals.

The team works for a startup called Equatic, which uses a process called sea electrolysis to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Seawater runs through an electrolyzer, which separates the water into an acid and a base. Rock minerals neutralize the acid, and the base mixes with CO2 from the atmosphere. This results in carbonates that can safely return to the ocean.

Carbon removal technologies, like those developed by Equatic, can transform businesses by helping them reduce their legacy carbon footprint. For many companies with environmental, social, and governance goals, investing in carbon removal through the purchase of carbon credits helps them offset their emissions and get closer to their goal of being "net zero." For rapidly developing industries like artificial intelligence that massively consume energy, implementing carbon removal could help offset emissions in the long term.

The idea of Equatic emerged in the research labs at the University of California, Los Angeles, with a team led by its cofounder Gaurav Sant, a sustainability professor at the school.

Sant said that his team began thinking about how to activate and expand the capacity of oceans, which already naturally absorb CO2 from the atmosphere. Processes such as sea electrolysis have been used for decades, though scaling ocean carbon removal technology has started only in the past few years. Sant said his experience as a cement chemist helped him consider ways to reduce carbon emissions.

"There was very little attention that was being paid truthfully to reducing the carbon intensity of cement production and concrete construction," Sant said. "The journey started with low-carbon cement and low-carbon concrete, and from there, it sort of went into a bunch of other things."

For startups that want to break into the industry and market their product's integrity, they must make carbon removal measurable. At the development plant in Los Angeles, Equatic engineers measure the machinery's ability to remove carbon and produce hydrogen. They then quantify carbon removal results. They also publish their findings in peer-reviewed scientific research papers.

Equatic is developing the world's largest ocean-based carbon removal plant in Singapore, a demonstration project in partnership with the country's National Water Agency. The plan for the new plant is to remove 4,000 tons of CO2 annually and create 300 kg of carbon-negative hydrogen a day, according to its website. If these projects succeed, Equatic intends to take its idea to a commercial scale.

For Climeworks, a Zurich carbon removal startup, scaling has taken place gradually over the past fifteen years. The company uses direct air capture technology at its plants to suck CO2 out of the air and then later mineralize it into a solid rock form and store it underground.

"What carbon removal can offer to businesses is making sure that CO2 in the atmosphere, or climate in general, is not a barrier to growth," Jan Wurzbacher, the CEO of Climeworks, said.

The carbon credits market has shortcomings

While these companies plan to scale commercially, startups like Equatic sell carbon credits to businesses and individuals who want to reduce their carbon footprint. Two of Equatic's customers are Boeing and Stripe. Climeworks counts Microsoft, Boston Consulting Group, and Shopify as clients.

The carbon credits market is highly unregulated, dotted with stories of credits sold but followed by incomplete actions and scams. An investigation by The Washington Post found that some carbon credit ventures reaped profits from protected public lands in the Brazilian Amazon forests and failed to share profits with locals. Essentially, these ventures gave the impression that they would reduce emissions but used lands they had no rights to, possibly invalidating the credits they said they would offset for companies such as Netflix, Salesforce, and Boeing.

"Some 'cheaper' carbon credits that you can buy are not easily verifiable," said Indroneil Ganguly, an environmental and forests sciences professor at the University of Washington.

Critics of carbon credits argue that this system allows businesses to continue polluting. Some businesses, such as Occidental Petroleum, invest in carbon removal and use the process to extract more fossil fuels. While telling businesses to cut emissions would be ideal, Wurzbacher said that cutting them entirely or converting to more sustainable practices could be costly and not immediate.

Carbon removal can be expensive

Even at the rapid scaling rate of these carbon removal startups, their emissions removal is only a small drop in the sea. In 2022 alone, the global aviation industry emitted 800 megatons of CO2. In comparison, Climework's first commercial plant in Iceland, called Orca, can remove 4,000 tons a year, the company says. Climeworks said its larger Mammoth plant would be able to remove 36,000 tons.

The biggest hurdle for carbon removal startups like Equatic and Climeworks is cost. A plus side of Equatic's sea electrolysis process is that it creates hydrogen, which can be used as a clean energy source and lower the technology's costs.

"So you push the price down, right, and that's what stimulates the market," Edward Sanders, the CEO of Equatic, said.

What's more, carbon removal is a voluntary purchase and an elastic good, meaning that it depends on the desire of individuals or businesses to participate, and the demand can shift significantly with price.

"The way in which we are going to get the necessary volumes is going to be at a price point they can accept and still manufacture the goods they are making and clear the services they do," Sanders said.

The cost to permanently remove 1 ton of CO2 right now is between $600-$1,000. Scaling up existing technology requires more laborers and building very specific machinery, Wurzbacher said. Both Climeworks and Equatic have received grants from the US Department of Energy, including a grant for Climeworks to subsidize its expansions in Louisiana and Texas.

This year, Climeworks expanded beyond permanent carbon removal and began offering a new solutions branch of its business. If the direct air capture method is too expensive for customers, Climeworks finds a portfolio of other options they can use, such as reforestation and biomass storage.

The incoming Trump administration raises questions about the future of carbon removal and whether companies will be motivated to cut emissions. 

Both Climeworks' and Equatic's respective CEOs said that while timelines and execution could change, these solutions still had bipartisan support and political momentum. Also, carbon removal itself is inherently adaptive.

"The nice thing about direct air capture," Wurzbacher said, "is that you can basically do it anywhere in the world and have your customers at a very different place."

Puffs of smoke rose above a meadow in northeastern Washington as a small test fire danced in the grass a few feet away from me. Pleased by its slow, controlled behavior, my crew members and I, as part of a training program led by the nonprofit organization The Nature Conservancy and the Washington State Department of Natural Resources, began to light the rest of the field on fire. The scene had all the trappings of a wildfire — water hoses, fire engines, people in flame-resistant outfits. But we weren't there to fight it; we were there to light it.

It might sound counterintuitive, but prescribed fires, or intentionally lit fires, help lessen fire's destruction. Natural flames sparked by lightning and intentional blazes lit by Indigenous peoples have historically helped clean up excess vegetation that now serves as fuel for the wildfires that regularly threaten people's homes and lives across the West and, increasingly, across the country.

For millennia, lighting fires was common practice in America. But in the mid-to-late 1800s, the US outlawed Indigenous burning practices and started suppressing wildfires, resulting in a massive buildup of flammable brush and trees. That combined with the dry, hot conditions caused by the climate crisis has left much of the country at a dangerously high risk of devastating wildfires. The top 10 most destructive years by acreage burned have all occurred since 2004.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, federal land managers reevaluated their approach to fire and did the first prescribed burns in national parks. We're still making up for lost time: Scientists and land managers say millions more acres of prescribed burns are necessary to keep the country from burning out of control.

But the scale of the task doesn't match that of the labor force, whose focus is often extinguishing fires, not starting them. Responding to the increase in natural disasters has left America with few resources to actually keep them from happening. As Mark Charlton, a prescribed-fire specialist with The Nature Conservancy, told me, "We need more people, and we need more time."

This fall, I outfitted myself in fire-resistant clothing and boots, donned a hard hat, and joined a training program called TREX to better understand how prescribed burns work. TREX hosts collaborative burns to provide training opportunities in the field for people from different employers and backgrounds. The hope is that more people will earn the qualifications they need to lead and participate in burns for the agencies they work for back home.

The program's emphasis on learning, coupled with the support of the University of Idaho's Artists-in-Fire Residency (which helped pay my way), is why I, a journalist with no fire jobs on my résumé, could join a prescribed-fire module of about two dozen more experienced participants. I had to pass a fitness test — speed walking three miles with a 45-pound backpack in under 45 minutes — take 40 hours' worth of online coursework, and complete field-operations training to participate as a crew member. While hundreds of people have participated in TREX burns across the country since the program's inception in 2008, the dramatic growth of wildfires is outpacing the number of people being trained to reduce their impact.

The Forest Service manages 193 million acres of forests and grasslands across the country, burning an average of about 1.4 million acres, roughly the size of Delaware, each year with prescribed burns. It burned a record 2 million acres in fiscal 2023. But it's still not enough preparation, considering wildfires have burned over 10 million acres in recent years and people continue building and living in wildfire-prone areas. "It's a huge workload we have, and we know it," said Adam Mendonca, a deputy director of fire and aviation management for the Forest Service who oversees the agency's prescribed-fire program. The agency plans to chip away at the problem with the roughly 11,300 wildland firefighters it employs each year who squeeze the work in during the offseason, when there are fewer fires to fight.

But relying on wildland firefighters can be problematic. "We only have those resources for a short time," said Charlton, who served as the incident commander on the Washington burns I joined this fall. "After a long fire season, people are exhausted. It's hard to get people to commit." Plus, wildfires are increasingly overlapping with the ideal windows to do prescribed burns — often the spring and the fall, when conditions are cooler and wetter, making fires easier to tame.

That was especially true this year: Multiple large fires burned across the West into October. These late-season wildfires, coupled with two hurricanes that firefighters helped respond to, strained federal resources. That month, the nation's fire-preparedness level increased to a 5 — the highest level — indicating the country's emergency crews were at their maximum capacity and would've struggled to respond to new incidents.

In response to the elevated preparedness level, the National Multi-Agency Coordinating Group urged "extreme caution" in executing new prescribed fires, saying backup firefighters or equipment might not be available. "We get to the point where we're competing for resources," said Kyle Lapham, the certified-burner-program manager for the Washington State Department of Natural Resources and the burn boss on the Washington burns.

There's also a qualification shortage. Prescribed burns require a well-rounded group with a variety of expertise and positions — including a burn boss, who runs the show and must have years of training. Charlton estimated that hundreds more qualified burn bosses are necessary to tackle nationwide prescribed-burn goals.

Just as concerning is an interest shortage. The Forest Service has struggled to hire for and maintain its federal firefighting force in recent years, in large part because of poor pay (federal firefighter base pay was raised to $15 an hour in 2022) and other labor disputes over job classifications, pay raises, staffing, and more. The agency is also expecting budget cuts next year and has already said it won't be able to hire its usual seasonal workforce as a result.

Legislation inching its way through Congress could help, though its fate under a new administration is unclear. The National Prescribed Fire Act of 2024 would direct hundreds of millions of dollars to the Forest Service and the US Department of the Interior for prescribed burns, including investment in training a skilled workforce — but it hasn't progressed past a Senate subcommittee hearing in June.

Without a boost in funding, the agency will continue relying heavily on partnerships with nonprofits like The Nature Conservancy and the National Forest Foundation to staff prescribed burns. The Forest Service also recently expanded its Prescribed Fire Training Center to host educational opportunities out West. Critically, though, time is of the essence.

During my TREX training in October, about 20 foresters and firefighters from as far south as Texas and as far north as British Columbia worked beside me. Our group included employees of the Washington Department of Natural Resources and two citizens of the nearby Spokane Tribe of Indians, who have a robust prescribed-fire program of their own.

Over two weeks I got a front-row seat to how much planning (sometimes years) and time a single prescribed burn takes. We conducted several burns in the mountains north of Spokane on the property of a receptive landowner who'd hosted TREX in previous years. He provided the training ground and, in exchange, got work done on his property. This isn't a common scenario — burning on private land can be more complicated, and so more burns happen on state or federal property.

When I arrived, the burn's incident-management team had already put together a burn plan detailing our objectives — reducing wildfire risk to the landowner's house, thinning small tree saplings, knocking down invasive weeds, opening up more wildlife habitat — and the exact weather conditions, like wind speed, relative humidity, and temperature, we needed to safely burn. Prescribed burns on federal lands also go through an environmental review.

At the site, we scouted contained areas we would burn, called units, with trainees making additional plans for how to ignite and control fires. Keeping a fire in its intended location, called "holding," meant lots of prep work, like digging shallow trenches to box the fire in. During the burn, teams monitored smoke and occasionally sprayed the larger trees we wanted to preserve with water when flames threatened their canopies; others poured fuel on the ground, igniting bushes, grass, and smaller trees to slowly build the fire.

Managing the fire didn't end when we finished burning the 30 or so acres. In some cases, it can involve days of monitoring and cleanup. To make sure the fire was out, my crew and I combed through areas we'd burned the day before for smoke or heat. If we discovered something still smoking, we'd churn up the ground with a shovel or pickax, douse the hot spot with water, and repeat. Just when we thought we were done, we'd find another spot we'd missed.

I went to bed those nights dreaming of little puffs of smoke and woke up with small flakes of ash embedded behind my ears. The work was rewarding and exhausting — I left with a deeper appreciation for the workers who do it for a living.

While every prescribed burn is different, it's always a careful equation. Everything needs to line up: supportive communities, the right weather, and, of course, the workers necessary to plan, burn, and extinguish. Only then can you light the match.

Kylie Mohr is a Montana-based freelance journalist and correspondent for the magazine High Country News.

• The Arctic is rapidly changing from the climate crisis, with no "new normal," scientists warn.
• Wildfires and permafrost thaw are making the tundra emit more carbon than it absorbs.
• From beaver invasions to giant holes, drastic changes in the Arctic are affecting the entire planet.

From Alaska to Siberia, the Arctic is changing so rapidly that there is no "normal" there now, scientists warn. The consequences reach across the globe.

The Arctic tundra now releases more carbon than it naturally draws down from the sky, as wildfires burn down its trees and permafrost thaw releases potent gases from its soil.

Once-brown regions are turning green with vegetation, while green areas are turning brown and barren. Sea ice and herds of caribou are disappearing.

This summer was the wettest on record for the Arctic overall, as rain is becoming more common than snow in some areas. Region by region, though, rainfall and the snow season are knocking down both high and low records.

Decades of data on "vital signs" suggest that "the Arctic exists now within a new regime, in which conditions year after year are substantially different than just a couple of decades ago," Twila Moon, a scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center, said in a briefing on Tuesday.

"Climate change is not bringing about a new normal," she added. "Instead, climate change is bringing ongoing and rapid change."

That's because the Arctic is warming about four times faster than the rest of the planet, according to previous research.

The increase in average temperatures is changing weather and landscapes in the Arctic, speeding up the climate crisis worldwide.

Giant holes, beaver invasions, and polar wildfires

For example, beavers are moving into Alaska's tundra and transforming its waterways with their dams, as warmer conditions have brought more wooded, comfortable riverbanks for them.

In Siberia, a giant hole in the ground is rapidly growing because the permafrost — a layer of soil that used to be permanently frozen — is thawing.

That's an extreme example, but melt and thaw is happening all over the planet's northernmost regions. Combined with drastic swings in weather year-to-year, these changes are wreaking havoc on Arctic landscapes, ecosystems, and people.

"These dramatic differences are making it difficult for communities to plan and they create safety issues for people who are used to more stable ice, snow, and temperature," Moon said.

She was presenting the Arctic Report Card, an update that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration publishes each year, at the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union.

This year's report revealed a crucial shift in northern landscapes: The Arctic tundra is no longer a net carbon sink, with its boreal forests pulling carbon dioxide from the sky. Now it's a net source of carbon emissions.

"This transition from a carbon sink to a source is of global concern," Brendan Rogers, a scientist studying the tundra at the Woodwell Climate Research Center, said in the briefing.

He added that the tundra's carbon emissions are relatively small for now, "but it's that transition that we're concerned about."

This shift is partly due to giant polar wildfires burning down tundra vegetation and all the carbon it's stored. It's also because of permafrost thaw, which releases large amounts of methane — a heat-trapping gas more potent than carbon dioxide — as bacteria in the soil digest thawing plant matter.

Meanwhile, rising Arctic temperatures are driving ice melt, including on the Greenland Ice Sheet, which is a major contributor to sea-level rise worldwide. Rising oceans are already increasing flooding in coastal cities across the planet.

For example, US coastal cities from Boston to San Diego have seen more and more flood days per year every decade since 1950, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

Arctic science is more important than ever

Reporters asked the NOAA scientists about the incoming Trump administration and whether they were concerned about losing funding for their Arctic research.

"The need, the requirement, the demand signal if you will, is higher than ever before," Richard Spinrad, the NOAA Administrator, said in the briefing.

Changes in extreme weather and sea level across the globe show that "there's a need for these investments to increase right now," he said, adding that studies have shown "the return on those investments is extraordinary, in many cases 10 to 1 in terms of protection of lives and property."

FIRST ON FOX: A controversial judicial advocacy organization funded by left-wing nonprofits continues to work with judges and experts involved in climate change litigation despite publicly downplaying the extent of those connections.

"CJP doesn’t participate in litigation, support or coordinate with any parties in litigation, or advise judges on how they should rule in any case," the Environmental Law Institute Climate Judiciary Project President Jordan Diamond wrote in a recent letter to The Wall Street Journal in response to criticism of the project. 

The Washington, D.C.-based Environmental Law Institute (ELI) created the Climate Judiciary Project (CJP) in 2018, establishing a first-of-its-kind resource to provide "reliable, up-to-date information" about climate change litigation, according to the group. The project's reach has extended to various state and federal courts, including powerful appellate courts, and comes as various cities and states pursue high-profile litigation against the oil industry.

A Fox News Digital review shows that several CJP expert lawyers and judges have close ties to the curriculum and are deeply involved in climate litigation.

DARK MONEY FUND POURED MILLIONS OF DOLLARS INTO ECO ACTIVIST GROUPS BLOCKING HIGHWAYS, DESTROYING FAMOUS ART

Princeton University professor Michael Oppenheimer contributed to the CJP curriculum and presented "Evidence of Change: Judging Climate Litigation" with CJP’s Sandra Nichols Thiam at the 2022 Ninth Circuit Judicial Conference July 20, 2022. 

Oppenheimer has a long history of filing climate-related amicus briefs from 2019-2022 in litigation across several states.

Robin Kundis Craig, a professor at the University of Utah's Law School, wrote a module for CJP in 2022 and has also filed several amicus briefs showing she is active in court cases. 

One example occurred in 2023, when Craig is listed on an order granting legal scholars' request to file amicus, which was signed by Justice Mark Recktenwald, who, Fox News Digital previously reported, quietly disclosed last year that he presented for an April course in collaboration with the Environmental Law Institute Climate Judiciary Project. 

Recktenwald co-presented at a December 2022 National Judicial College webinar sponsored by CJP, "Hurricanes in a Changing Climate and Related Litigation." In 2023, he co-presented with Professor Robert DeConto at a National Judicial College seminar, "Rising Seas and Litigation: What Judges Need to Know about Warming-Driven Sea-Level Rise."

RADICAL CLIMATE ACTIVIST ENDORSES BLOWING UP PIPELINES IN STARTLING INTERVIEW, ADMITS PEOPLE COULD BE KILLED

In October 2023, Recktenwald’s Hawaii Supreme Court denied an appeal from oil companies to toss a Honolulu climate misinformation suit.

Craig also filed an amicus in Hawaii state court in July 2022, where an order was signed by Judge Jeffrey Crabtree allowing the brief to be filed. Crabtree is a member of the National Judicial College Curriculum Development Committee, which creates curricula for "Environmental Law Essential for the Judiciary."

"Don’t underestimate the importance of the role of state court judges in environmental law," the curriculum's website states.

Ann Carlson, who joined the Biden administration in 2021, served on ELI's board of directors for years while also "providing pro bono consulting" for Sher Edling, an eco law firm representing a number of jurisdictions, on litigation against oil companies, financial disclosures showed. Sher Edling counsel Michael Burger has also participated in multiple ELI events, and former Sher Edling lawyer Meredith Wilensky was previously an ELI Public Interest Law Fellow.

BIDEN ADMIN REPORT COULD SLOW TRUMP'S EFFORTS TO UNLEASH DOMESTIC NATURAL GAS, EXPERTS SAY

Burger is the executive director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law and an ELI presenter who has filed amicus briefs in support of plaintiffs in climate cases across the United States. 

UCLA’s Emmett Institute on Climate Change and the Environment hosted a talk in October 2017 with Sher Edling’s Vic Sher, "Suing Over Climate Change Damages: The First Wave of Climate Lawsuits." Ann Carlson was the moderator for that discussion.

John Dernbach, listed as an expert on CJP’s website, filed an amicus brief in 2019 as part of a brief of legal scholars in support of plaintiffs in City of Oakland v BP. 

"Judges attending Climate Judiciary Project events are advised that they are walking into a left-wing lobbying shop," American Energy Institute President Jason Isaac told Fox News Digital. "Under the guise of ‘judicial education,’ CJP uses activist academics to give a pro-plaintiff sneak peek at climate change lawsuits. This kind of politicking underlines that the climate change lawsuits themselves are a left-wing attack on our quality of life.

"The Supreme Court will have an opportunity early next year to hear a case asking whether blue states and far-left mayors like Brandon Johnson can sue energy providers for climate change. Let us hope the court takes the case and ends Green New Deal lawfare."

Fox News Digital previously reported that since it was founded more than five years ago, the project has crafted 13 curriculum modules and hosted 42 events, and more than 1,700 judges have participated in its activities. And multiple judges serve as advisers at CJP, potentially having an impact on its curriculum and modules.

"So-called ‘climate change lawsuits,' lawsuits claiming that private companies should be monetarily liable for damage to public infrastructure allegedly caused by climate change, have exploded in the past five years," GOP Sen. Ted Cruz wrote in a letter to Environmental Law Institute earlier this year.

"In tandem with this unprecedented litigation, the Environmental Law Institute (ELI) launched a ‘first-of-its-kind effort’ to provide judges with ‘education on climate science, the impacts of climate change, and the ways climate science is arising in the law.’ It appears that ELI’s goal in providing this ‘education,’ however, may be to influence judges to side with plaintiffs in climate change cases."

The letter went on to label Carlson as "one of the program’s architects" and requested "information to allow the Committee to evaluate the efforts of both Ms. Carlson and ELI to influence the federal judiciary in its adjudication of climate litigation."

Cruz alleged that "ELI intends to accomplish via the courts what it cannot get enacted into law: a radical environmental agenda."

"To help judges reach those ‘appropriate’ decisions, the Project developed the ‘Climate Science and Law for Judges Curriculum’ (the Curriculum). While ELI claims the Project is ‘neutral' and ‘objective,’ the Curriculum reads like a playbook for judges to find in favor of plaintiffs in artificial climate change cases against traditional energy companies: it includes courses that ‘show how climate science is built on long-established scientific disciplines' and 'explore the human-caused component of [global] warming,’ such as the ‘causal connections between emissions’ and ‘changes in the climate.’"

An American Energy Institute report earlier this year alleges CJP "hides its partnership with the plaintiffs because they know these ties create judicial ethics problems."

AEI says Sandra Nichols Thiam, an ELI vice president and director of judicial education, acknowledged as much in a 2023 press statement, saying, "If we even appeared biased or if there was a whiff of bias, we wouldn’t be able to do what we’re doing."

"Taken together, it appears CJP made the thinnest possible disclosures to create the appearance of rectitude," AEI states. "But their admissions confirm that CJP exists to facilitate informal, ex parte contacts between judges and climate activists under the guise of judicial education. And secrecy remains essential to their operation, whose goal, as Thiam has said, is to develop ‘a body of law that supports climate action.'" 

AEI, a group self-described as "dedicated to promoting policies that ensure America’s energy security and economic prosperity," says CJP’s work is "an attack on the rule of law."

"In America, the powerful aren’t allowed to coax and manipulate judges before their cases are heard," the report states.

In a statement to Fox News Digital, an ELI spokesperson said, "CJP doesn’t participate in litigation, support or coordinate with any parties in litigation, or advise judges on how they should rule in any case. Our courses provide judges with access to evidence-based information about climate science and trends in the law.

"Of course, experts in the field are welcome to provide their expertise to CJP programs while separately and independently providing that same expertise in another setting that is unrelated to the CJP program. It is routine and encouraged for judges to participate in continuing education that exposes them to expertise in a wide variety of disciplines."

Fox News Digital’s Thomas Catenacci contributed to this report

• Climate change poses a threat to US national parks like Yellowstone.
• Warmer temperatures and extreme weather impact both ecosystems and visitors.
• Advocates hope witnessing changes to the parks will inspire visitors to help protect them.

Each year, over 300 million visitors explore the hundreds of parks that make up the US National Park system. These spaces offer unparalleled views of mountains and forests, immersing people in the sights and sounds of nature that are often missing from their everyday lives.

But the national parks are in trouble. "Most of our parks have multiple assaults on them," Chad Lord, senior director of environmental policy and climate change with the National Parks Conservation Association advocacy group, told Business Insider.

From hotter, drier weather to invasive species to more powerful storms, many of the country's parks are experiencing dramatic changes. For example, warming temperatures are making glaciers disappear from Glacier National Park.

From Alaska to Florida, here are six examples of how the climate crisis is changing national parks.

Glacier National Park is a geological marvel.

Montana's Glacier National Park sprawls over 1,500 miles, encompassing mountains, valleys, and glacial lakes. Even if you've never visited, you might recognize the park's Going-to-the-Sun Road, which was featured in the 1980 movie "The Shining."

Throughout the park, grizzly bears graze on huckleberries. Little rodent-like pikas, lynx, and Harlequin ducks are also adapted to the area's chilly weather.

Glacier National Park's glaciers are melting.

The park once held 80 glaciers. In 2015, NPS estimated only 26 were left. Satellites have captured the remaining few as they continue to shrink.

Warming temperatures are driving the glaciers' disappearance, which will impact the plants and animals that live there.

For example, mountain goats rely on snow patches to stay cool during the summer. In the winter, the snow helps keep tiny mouse-like rodents, called pikas, insulated from the bitter cold.

Denali National Park has breathtaking views.

Together the Denali National Park and Preserve are larger than New Hampshire, stretching nearly 9,500 square miles of Alaskan terrain. Winter days there are short and cold, with temperatures as low as -40 degrees Fahrenheit.

The park originally began as a way to protect Dall sheep. Today, an estimated 2,000 big-horned sheep brave the chilly climate. Red foxes, snowshoe hares, and dozens of bird species are also around, in addition to grizzlies, wolves, and moose. Even a small wood frog, the park's only amphibian, can survive the subarctic environment.

Part of Denali's road has been impassable for years.

In the 1960s, the Pretty Rocks landslide began cracking the road leading to the park. In 2014, the landslide was moving a few inches every year. By 2021, it was moving a few inches per hour. The road is now closed at about its halfway point, cutting off vehicle access to sites like Wonder Lake.

While the annual average temperature of the park was once well below freezing, it's now close to 32 °F, according to NPS. The warmer weather and melting permafrost is making the landslide move more quickly. The road is cut into a rock glacier, "and little bits of climate warming are causing this big kind of slump, and the road is falling off the cliff," said Cassidy Jones, a senior visitation program manager with NPCA.

The trees are tall and mighty at Sequoia & Kings Canyon National Parks.

At Sequoia & Kings Canyon National Parks, visitors can enjoy over 1,300 square miles of trails, trees, foothills, and lakes. Groves of sequoia trees dominate some parts of the landscape, including the famous General Sherman tree towering almost 275 feet high. With its 100-foot circumference, it's one of the largest trees by volume in the world.

Closer to the ground, vivid flora like Evalyn's jewel flower grow and kingsnakes slither. Gophers, skunks, and squirrels scamper about, along with larger mammals like black bears, mule deer, and mountain lions. The parks span a range of habitats, making it a bird-watcher's paradise.

A 2021 fire ravaged swaths of the Sequoia National Park.

In 2021, lightning struck several areas, igniting what became the KNP Complex Fire. A year earlier, the Castle Fire also ravaged Sequoia National Park. Fires over those two years killed between 8,400 to 12,000 sequoias. Some of the trees were thousands of years old.

Forest fires aren't uncommon, but the sequoias were already vulnerable after a lengthy drought. A combination of low humidity and high temperatures can be a dangerous combination when fires erupt. "Fires have gotten bigger and hotter," Jones said.

Sequoias have long been able to withstand fires, she said. "It tells you something different is going on in terms of just the way the fire is behaving, in the amplification of fire weather," she said.

Yellowstone is the US's first national park.

Covering 3,500 miles, most of it in Wyoming, Yellowstone became the US's first national park in 1872. It's home to Old Faithful, as well as many more geysers and hot springs.

Visitors sometimes have to halt their vehicles for bison crossing the road, and moose, bobcats, badgers, bats, and the many other species that live in the park.

However, warmer temperatures are speeding up snowmelt, changing vegetation, and leading to less water in some areas — all of which will likely force some wildlife to relocate. Every year, pronghorn antelope migrate through the park, a journey that's already risky as they cross over roads and fences. A lack of water and food could alter their path.

Yellowstone experienced extensive damage during a flood in 2022.

A mix of rain and snowmelt caused severe flooding in June 2022. The rushing water damaged roads, structures, and trails. NPS called it an unprecedented, 500-year flood. While the disaster was rare, warmer temperatures are increasing snowmelt and rain is falling instead of snow. Floods could become more common as the climate continues to change.

Death Valley has breathtaking views, day and night.

Along the California-Nevada border, Death Valley draws visitors keen to see the salt flats, sand dunes, and craters. It's 3.4 million acres of wilderness, making it one of the largest national parks in the country. At night, its remote location and aridity make it ideal for stargazing.

The scorching desert climate might not seem hospitable to many kinds of life. Yet jackrabbits, bats, tortoises, and roadrunners have all thrived in the park.

Death Valley is getting hotter by the year.

Extreme heat is nothing new for Death Valley. But in recent years, temperatures regularly soar past 125 degrees Fahrenheit in July. Plus, triple-digits can extend into October, and the nights don't get as cool.

The sizzling weather can be dangerous for visitors and residents, and plants and animals have difficulty coping, too. Some animals may start migrating to cooler climates, but some species may not survive. For example, the extremely rare Devils Home pupfish population, found only in Death Valley, has been in decline since the 1990s.

The Everglades host a wealth of biodiversity.

Located in Southern Florida, the Everglades National Park is a patchwork of unique ecosystems, from mangroves to pinelands. With 1.5 million acres of land, it has space for estuaries, giant cypress trees, and marshy rivers.

With so many habitats, a huge range of species create the delicate web of life that is the Everglades. Dozens of species of lizards and snakes scuttle and slither, while ducks, doves, and nighthawks mingle not far from flamingos. River otters and manatees also swim through different parts of the park.

Sea-level rise threatens the Everglades' Cape Sable.

Elevated temperatures, more-intense hurricanes, and rising sea levels are among the challenges the Everglades face. When salty seawater seeps into the park's coastal landscape, it can harm rare tropical orchids and other vegetation that can't cope with increased salinity.

Cape Sable lies at Florida's southwestern tip. Sea levels have risen at an accelerated pace over the last 100 years, according to NPS. Hurricanes and tropical storms have washed seawater into what was once freshwater marshes and lakes. The incursion threatens not only mangrove forests but wildlife like the Cape Sable seaside sparrow, which is only found in this unique habitat.

Former Secretary of State John Kerry claimed that there is a "climate emergency," and suggested that Africans without electricity must select "the right kinds of electricity," likely referring to green energy production, and that the U.S. must help them to afford it.

Kerry made the comments at a speaking event at the Harvard Kennedy School Institute of Politics on Thursday.

The Democrat suggested there will be a need to "declare a climate emergency, which is what we really have. And we need to get people to behave as if this really is a major transitional challenge to the whole planet."

He noted that the U.S. has the biggest economy on earth, with China in second place.

JOHN KERRY CALLS THE FIRST AMENDMENT A ‘MAJOR BLOCK’ TO STOPPING ‘DISINFORMATION’

"Adios comunista," Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, wrote on X when replying to a post featuring a clip of Kerry's comments.

JOHN KERRY TORCHED FOR CLAIMING PEOPLE WOULD ‘FEEL BETTER’ ABOUT UKRAINE WAR IF RUSSIA REDUCED EMISSIONS

Kerry, a former senator and the 2004 Democratic presidential nominee who lost to incumbent Republican President George W. Bush, went on to serve as secretary of state during a portion of President Obama's White House tenure.

He has also previously served as special presidential envoy for climate under President Biden. 

BIDEN CLIMATE CZAR JOHN KERRY SNAPS WHEN CONFRONTED ABOUT CARBON FOOTPRINT

Biden awarded Kerry the Presidential Medal of Freedom earlier this year.

• Parts of Siberia's landscape are a ticking time bomb.
• Giant craters started mysteriously appearing 10 years ago.
• A team of scientists think they finally know why.

Tucked away in the frigid northern corner of Siberia are giant craters, some deep enough to fit a 15-story building. Scientists observed the first crater in 2014 and have found about 20 more in the years since.

It's been fairly clear from the beginning that the craters are caused by some type of explosion deep underground. What's triggering the explosions is a topic of debate — one that Ana Morgado, a chemical engineer at the University of Cambridge, thinks she and her colleagues have settled.

If their theory is correct, it would mean these types of exploding craters are rare and only form under specific geologic conditions, so there's no risk of something similar showing up in, say, downtown Manhattan.

Their theory also ties these massive eruptions to climate change. As the planet continues to warm, more craters will likely erupt. When this happens, it releases a highly potent greenhouse gas into the atmosphere, which in turn contributes to climate change.

The mysterious case of Siberia's exploding craters

The colder nooks of the world, in places like Siberia and northern Canada, have a subsurface layer of soil called permafrost that's been permanently frozen for millennia. As global temperatures climb, pockets of permafrost are thawing worldwide.

This has led to some spectacular discoveries like a perfectly preserved 30,000-year-old squirrel in Canada and a 46,000 year-old worm in Siberia. It's not just ancient squirrels and worms hiding in permafrost.

Concentrated amounts of the highly explosive greenhouse gas methane are trapped deep underground in the permafrost in ice-like solids called methane hydrates.

Researchers widely agreed that when these hydrates are damaged, they release methane gas, which is what's triggering the explosions in Siberia.

How the hydrates are damaged in the first place, though, is less clear.

Existing theories suggest that warming permafrost, as a result of the warming Arctic, could ultimately destabilize the hydrate layer, releasing explosive methane gas.

"That was the initial idea, and we didn't question it at all at the beginning," Morgado told Business Insider. "What we questioned was that: Okay, you're saying that that is the case, but you don't present a physical model that can explain that. So no math."

When the team tried matching the math with the observations, they found that it would take centuries for the process to trigger an explosion. The Arctic had only been significantly warming over decades.

"So either something else was happening or magnifying this effect," Morgado said in an email.

The team found the missing piece to their puzzle when they learned of past geological surveys that had identified pools of liquid water, called cryopegs, just above the methane hydrates in Siberia.

What's causing the ground to erupt in Siberia

Normally, the cryopegs are stable. Morgado and the team realized that the summer would threaten this stability.

In summer, frozen soil at the surface melts. That meltwater is then pulled down toward the cryopegs via a process called osmosis — the same process that helps water climb against gravity through tall plants.

Osomis was the magnifying effect the researchers were looking for.

With longer, warmer summers in recent years, enough meltwater is available for long enough periods that it's being driven down to the cryopegs on timescales that matched the observations, Morgado said.

Once the meltwater reaches the cryopegs, it's over.

The meltwater increases the pressure inside the cryopegs, just like adding more water to a water balloon. That pressure cracks the soil leading to the surface, which triggers a drastic reverse in pressure. And that pressure change is what damages the methane hydrates, triggering an explosion.

More exploding craters to come

Siberia will likely have more explosive craters in the coming years as global temperatures continue to warm. That's a problem because the methane these explosions release is a highly potent greenhouse gas, which helps drive global temperatures up even more.

It's unclear exactly how much methane these explosions release, but in the grand scheme of climate change, they're a small matter. Thawing permafrost is a larger concern because it contains concentrations of not only methane but also carbon dioxide that is released into the atmosphere when it melts.

Siberia isn't the only place in the world with permafrost.

If the team's theory is correct, it's possible, but unlikely, that other places with permafrost will start erupting the way Siberia has, Morgado said.

"It would need to be very specific that you would have this in another place," Morgado said, adding, "Luckily we are not seeing the entire world, or the entire Arctic, bursting into craters."

• Trump's Cabinet picks for Interior, Energy, and EPA are allies of the oil and gas industry.
• They plan to expand drilling in the Gulf of Mexico and on federal lands and roll back climate rules.
• Scientists warn that burning more fossil fuels will worsen the climate crisis.

President-elect Donald Trump wants to stack his Cabinet with oil and gas supporters who plan to make it easier to drill on federal lands and waters and repeal climate rules for the industry.

If confirmed by the Senate, three key nominees would largely be responsible for executing Trump's "drill, baby, drill" agenda across the federal government.

Trump tapped Gov. Doug Burgum of North Dakota, a Republican with ties to fossil-fuel executives, to serve as interior secretary. The Interior Department leases millions of acres of public lands and waters for oil and gas drilling.

Chris Wright, the CEO of the fracking company Liberty Energy, is nominated to serve as energy secretary. The Energy Department's pause on approvals of new export terminals for shipping US gas overseas is a top target of the incoming Trump administration, as are billions of dollars' worth of loans and grants accelerating the US transition to renewable energy.

And Lee Zeldin, a former congressman from New York who often voted against climate legislation, has been tapped to lead the Environmental Protection Agency, which regulates pollution from cars, trucks, power plants, and oil and gas infrastructure.

Burgum would coordinate the effort as the chair of the National Energy Council, which Trump in a statement on Truth Social said would consist of all the departments and agencies involved with "permitting, regulating, producing, generating, distributing, and transporting energy." Cutting red tape and regulations is their mandate, Trump said.

Scientists say that the US and other major economies must reduce the burning of fossil fuels to slow the climate crisis — which is already making hurricanes, wildfires, heat waves, and droughts more destructive around the globe. Trump and his allies in the oil and gas industry argue that the US should boost production to drive down prices and help lower inflation, an issue voters cited as a main concern in the election this year. Energy analysts have said gas prices are mostly determined by global supply and demand, not the actions of any one president.

Here are three actions Trump's Cabinet is gearing up to take, based on interviews with several groups helping shape his agenda. When asked about these priorities, Karoline Leavitt, a spokesperson for the Trump-Vance campaign, said: "The American people re-elected President Trump by a resounding margin giving him a mandate to implement the promises he made on the campaign trail. He will deliver.

Resume approvals of new gas export facilities

At the Energy Department, Wright, if confirmed, is expected to start approving permits for new gas export terminals, which have largely been paused in 2024 by the Biden administration.

Biden paused approvals of new terminals in January until the department could analyze their impacts on greenhouse-gas emissions and energy costs for consumers. A federal judge blocked the pause this summer, and the department has greenlighted one permit since then. Republicans and the oil and gas industry accused the Biden administration of intentionally holding up the process. They argue the delays undercut America's leverage over its competitors, such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Russia, and cost jobs at home.

The pause didn't affect terminals already under construction, which are on track to double US gas exports by the end of this decade, federal data shows. Some energy analysts and consumer advocates have said America's dominance in the global market could expose customers to more-volatile prices. A cold snap in Europe or unrest in the Middle East could spike demand for gas — and therefore prices — and the climate crisis is increasing the risks of extreme weather shocks.

"The incoming administration has an opportunity to bolster America's geopolitical strength by lifting the Department of Energy's LNG permitting pause, swiftly processing all pending export applications, and ensuring the open access of American energy to global markets," Amanda Eversole, the chief advocacy officer of the American Petroleum Institute, told reporters during a call last week.

Permit more oil and gas drilling in the Gulf of Mexico

The Interior Department between 2024 and 2029 is set to hold three lease sales for oil and gas drilling in the Gulf of Mexico — the fewest number since the program began decades ago. The sales were required by the Inflation Reduction Act, which directed the department to offer a minimum amount of oil and gas leases before opening an auction for offshore-wind developers.

The oil and gas industry is pushing the Trump administration to issue a new five-year offshore-leasing program.

"There are companies that would pay for leases in the western Gulf of Mexico today if there was an auction held," said Kenny Stein, the vice president for policy at the American Energy Alliance, a conservative group advising Trump's energy agenda. "They have platforms and equipment already in place and could start drilling quickly."

ExxonMobil CEO Darren Woods similarly told CNBC earlier this month that there were areas in the Gulf of Mexico that could be tapped for more oil production in the long term. He doesn't expect a major US oil boom, however, because the market is already well supplied, he said.

The incoming Trump administration is also expected to shrink national monuments in the West to open up more public lands to drilling and mining, though those moves would likely be challenged by environmental groups in court, Stein said.

Roll back climate rules

Trump has promised to "kill" the EPA's regulations that limit emissions from cars, trucks, power plants, and oil and gas wells, pumps, and storage tanks. He has also called the Inflation Reduction Act the "green new scam" and promised to claw back subsidies for renewable energy under the law.

It's a replay of Trump's first term, when the EPA scrapped nearly 100 environmental rules. This time, some climate rules have support from automakers and big oil and gas companies. Woods of ExxonMobil told Semafor last week that the Trump administration should keep regulations to curb methane emissions from oil and gas infrastructure. The largest US automaker group has said that the future is electric and companies are investing billions in the transition. But Trump attacked electric vehicles on the campaign trail, adopting the oil and gas lobby's messaging.

A full repeal of the Inflation Reduction Act is unlikely, in part because the majority of $220 billion in investments in manufacturing EVs, batteries, solar panels, and other renewables technologies are flowing to Republican congressional districts, David Brown, the director of the energy-transition service at Wood Mackenzie, said in a statement.

Officials at the Department of the Interior are pushing to finalize a new "implementation handbook" to guide agency decision makers on how to "apply indigenous knowledge" in their day-to-day work. 

The notion of "indigenous knowledge" puts forward that Native groups possess an understanding about the natural world that others do not, due to their ethnic background.

The Interior Department's new handbook supplements a Departmental Manual chapter added last year, entitled "Departmental Responsibilities for Consideration and Inclusion of Indigenous Knowledge in Departmental Actions and Scientific Research, 301 DM 7." 

The aim of the new chapter in the agency-wide manual is to "equitably promote the inclusion of indigenous knowledge," but this new supplemental handbook lays out methods for "applying" indigenous knowledge into departmental practices, such as scientific research, environmental compliance work, community resiliency and more. 

"This Handbook is not a step-by-step guide," a draft version of the handbook states. "Instead, it includes context, approaches, and ways of engaging along with references to numerous existing resources where employees can learn more about a specific topic. The goal is for employees to have a foundation of knowledge to draw upon to create individualized processes as each situation arises in a respectful, equitable, and lasting way."

US INTERIOR DEPARTMENT TO ALLOCATE MORE THAN $120 MILLION TO TRIBES TO ADDRESS CLIMATE-RELATED THREATS

One approach laid out in the handbook instructs employees to seek out indigenous "knowledge holders" to supplement their scientific research, including ensuring that there is enough project time allocated to adequately consider indigenous knowledge and compensating any "knowledge holders" for their participation. The guide also implores hiring mangers to consider employing these indigenous knowledge experts. 

When it comes to scientific research, some laws require the consideration of scientific information, methods and practices. However, the handbook points out that in some cases these statutes allow the inclusion of indigenous knowledge.

"In these cases," the handbook posits, "Bureaus and Offices should include [indigenous knowledge] as an aspect of best available science when it is generally considered authoritative by the Indigenous Peoples who possess it."

BIDEN APOLOGIZES FOR FEDERAL INDIAN BOARDING SCHOOLS: ‘ONE OF THE MOST HORRIFIC CHAPTERS IN AMERICAN HISTORY’

The nearly 150-page handbook includes a litany of other "approaches" to applying indigenous knowledge into the agency's practices, including how to create "an ethical space to receive indigenous knowledge" and information about how to shield "sensitive" indigenous knowledge from public disclosure laws.

"President Biden came into office loudly stressing scientific integrity and creating new rules to supposedly ensure government scientific findings were never 'distorted or influenced by political considerations.' No matter how well-intentioned, elevating indigenous knowledge to being on a par with results obtained through rigorous application of the scientific method opens a Pandora’s box whereby desired results, even if at odds with reality, can be imposed to serve political ends," Michael Chamberlain, director of the conservative nonprofit Protect The Public's Trust, told Fox News Digital. 

Chamberlain and his nonprofit dug into how the Biden administration has implemented indigenous knowledge across the federal government, including through the use of public disclosure laws.   

"We’ve already seen [indigenous knowledge] in action as the Department of the Interior elevated indigenous knowledge that supported their position over indigenous knowledge that didn’t in canceling oil and gas leases in Alaska," Chamberlain pointed out. "The fact that the administration explored ways to exempt indigenous knowledge from FOIA adds to the potential for misuse."

BIDEN-HARRIS BORDER POLICIES WREAK HAVOC ON INDIGENOUS TRIBE, SAYS EXPERT: ‘PUSHED ASIDE AND DESTROYED’

Officials from the Department of the Interior declined to comment on the record for this story.

In 2022, the Biden administration's Office of Science and Technology Policy unveiled federal guidance on utilizing indigenous knowledge across various sectors of the government. The guidance was also accompanied by an "implementation memorandum," both of which the White House said, work to "value and, as appropriate, respectfully include Indigenous Knowledge" throughout government practices in order to "make the best scientific and policy decisions possible."

From the sidelines of the 29th Conference of the Parties (COP29) in Baku, the Interior Department's Acting Deputy Secretary Laura Daniel-Davis highlighted the agency's commitment to incorporating indigenous knowledge and pointed out that the agency will be conducting consultations with tribal leaders and other indigenous knowledge holders in December to help finish fleshing out the details of the handbook before it is formally released. 

President-elect Trump nominated North Dakota Republican Gov. Doug Burgum to be the next head of the U.S. Interior Department, which manages public lands and minerals, national parks, wildlife refuges and any federal responsibilities to recognized Native American tribes across the country.