Climate crisis

Seven states sued the Trump administration on Tuesday over its decision to cancel a major offshore wind lease off the coast of New York.

In March, federal officials announced they would pay nearly $1bn in taxpayer dollars to French energy firm TotalEnergies in exchange for the company killing plans to erect two offshore windfarms off New York and North Carolina. TotalEnergies agreed to terminate the projects and pledged not to develop any new offshore wind projects in the United States, while investing hundreds of millions of dollars in oil and gas projects.

The deal was unlawful, says the lawsuit, led by Letitia James, New York’s attorney general.

“The Trump administration is once again trying to kill clean energy projects and destroy good-paying jobs for New Yorkers,” she said in a statement to the Guardian.

The administration’s agreement with TotalEnergies came after federal judges repeatedly struck down the president’s executive orders and stop-work directives which aimed to halt offshore wind development, ruling them unlawful and arbitrary.

Six states sued the Trump administration on Tuesday over its decision to cancel a major offshore wind lease off the coast of New York.

In March, federal officials announced they would pay nearly $1bn in taxpayer dollars to French energy firm TotalEnergies in exchange for the company killing plans to erect two offshore windfarms off New York and North Carolina. TotalEnergies agreed to terminate the projects and pledged not to develop any new offshore wind projects in the United States, while investing hundreds of millions of dollars in oil and gas projects.

The deal was unlawful, says the lawsuit, led by Letitia James, New York’s attorney general.

“The Trump administration is once again trying to kill clean energy projects and destroy good-paying jobs for New Yorkers,” she said in a statement to the Guardian.

Some scientists expressed dismay at the plan, while Democratic lawmakers said they would fight it, including Senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, who called it a “shortsighted move” that would “end up costing American taxpayers more not less”, the New York Times reported.

Eighteen American youth are demanding that a court immediately halt the Trump administration’s repeal of the scientific finding underpinning virtually all US climate regulations.

The plaintiffs sued the Trump administration in February days after officials revoked the 2009 endangerment finding, which found that greenhouse gas pollution threatens public health and welfare. Filed in the Washington DC circuit court of appeals Venner v EPA alleges that the move infringes upon rights guaranteed by the US constitution, including to religious freedom, life and liberty.

But Narulla said the new resolution was likely to have the greatest influence on climate diplomacy. “The international community is showing that Cop is not the only forum that matters and, if progress stalls there, then climate action will be pursued through the general assembly and in other multilateral spaces.”

Rebecca Newsom, the global political lead at Greenpeace International, said the timing of the vote, after the inaugural fossil fuel phaseout conference in Santa Marta, Colombia, last month and the impact of the energy crisis on the fossil fuel industry, showed “political momentum is clearly growing”.

In a Thursday letter, a coalition of watchdog organizations called on the Senate judiciary committee to investigate Alito, the sole supreme court justice with holdings in energy companies.

“His irregular recusal practice in oil and gas industry-related cases is undermining public confidence in the impartiality of the Court,” says the letter, signed by green groups including the League of Conservation Voters and the Center for Biological Diversity, as well as progressive accountability watchdogs the Revolving Door Project and True North Research.

Nearly 4,000 people have lodged objections to the project being approved, with this pushback leading to contentious public meetings that Lee Perry, the Box Elder county commissioner, said have left him feeling “physically sick” amid alleged death threats and false accusations.

O’Leary has claimed in social media posts that most of the protesters don’t live locally and have been paid to object to the project. “There are professional protesters that are paid by somebody, I don’t know who,” O’Leary said in a video posted to X last week. “They’re being bused in.”

Opponents of the project have rejected this accusation. On Monday, a group calling itself the Box Elder Accountability Referendum filed an application for a referendum to reverse the commissioners’ approval of Stratos. If the group is able to collect 5,422 signatures from registered voters in the county in the next 45 days, the project approval will go to a vote in November.

“Instead of speaking with us, Kevin O’Leary went on social media saying we were out-of-state, paid protesters, and we don’t want people from out-of-state making decisions for us,” said Brenna Williams, lead sponsor of the referendum push.

“The only thing he’s right about is that we don’t want him, an out-of-state billionaire, making decisions for us.”

McIlreath said she was paying close attention to what changes the council proposes and was undeterred by what happened to her and her colleagues. She said: “Until Fema capabilities are restored and disaster survivors are served I’m going to continue speaking out.”