Nuevo Laredo was dumping millions of gallons of sewage a day into the Rio Grande. The U.S. and Mexico worked together to find a solution.

By Martha Pskowski, photos by Brenda Bazán

For years, raw sewage has flowed into the Rio Grande from a beleaguered wastewater treatment plant in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico.

Our Fix Our Forests advocacy in 2025

By Elissa Tennant

Healthy forests are a key part of the climate puzzle — and they’ve been a big part of our advocacy in 2025!

In January of this year, CCL volunteers sent 7,100 messages to Congress urging them to work together to reduce wildfire risk. Soon after, the Fix Our Forests Act was introduced in the House as H.R. 471 and passed the House by a bipartisan vote of 279–141. 

At our Conservative Climate Conference and Lobby Day in March, we raised the Fix Our Forests Act as a secondary ask in 47 lobby meetings on Capitol Hill. The next month, an improved version of the bill was then introduced in the Senate as S. 1462 and referred to the Senate Agriculture Committee. 

The bill was scheduled for a committee vote in October. CCLers placed more than 2,000 calls to senators on the committee and generated a flurry of local media in their states before the vote. In October, the bill passed the Senate Agriculture Committee with strong bipartisan support.

It’s clear that this legislation has momentum! As the Fix Our Forests Act now awaits a floor vote in the Senate, let’s take a look back at our 2025 advocacy efforts to advance this bill — and why it’s so important.

Protecting forests and improving climate outcomes

Wildfires are getting worse. In the U.S., the annual area burned by wildfires has more than doubled over the past 30 years. In California alone, the acreage burned by wildfires every year has more than tripled over the past 40 years.

American forests currently offset 12% of our annual climate pollution, with the potential to do even more. We need to take action to reduce wildfire, so forests can keep doing their important work pulling climate pollution out of the atmosphere.

The bipartisan Fix Our Forests Act:

• Protects America’s forests by supporting time-tested tools, like prescribed fire and reforestation, that make our forests healthy and able to better withstand and recover from severe wildfire and other extreme weather.
• Protects communities across the nation by reducing wildfire risks to people, homes, and water supplies and adopting new technologies.
• Protects livelihoods by supporting rural jobs and recreation areas and sustaining the forests that house and feed us.

CCL supports this bill alongside many organizations including American Forests, The Nature Conservancy, Environmental Defense Fund, National Audubon Society, The Western Fire Chiefs Association, The Federation of American Scientists and more.

A deeper dive into our efforts

All year long, CCL’s Government Relations staff has been in conversation with congressional offices to share CCL’s perspective on the legislation and understand the opportunities and challenges facing the bill. Our Government Relations team played a key role in helping us understand when and how to provide an extra grassroots push to keep the bill moving. 

Starting Sept. 9 through the committee vote, CCLers represented by senators on the Senate Agriculture Committee made 2,022 calls to committee members in support of FOFA. CCL also signed a national coalition letter to Senate leadership in support of the bill, joining organizations like the American Conservation Coalition Action, Bipartisan Policy Center Action, the International Association of Fire Chiefs, and more.

In October, we launched a local media initiative in support of FOFA, focused on states with senators on the Agriculture Committee. Volunteers published letters to the editor and op-eds in California, Minnesota, Colorado, and more. In one state, the senator’s office saw a CCLer’s op-ed in the local newspaper, and reached out to schedule a meeting with those volunteers to discuss the bill! CCL’s Government Relations team joined in to make the most of the conversation.

As soon as the committee vote was scheduled for October 21, our Government Relations staff put out a call for volunteers to generate local endorsement letters from trusted messengers. CCL staff prepared short endorsement letter templates for each state that chapters could personalize and submit to their senator’s office. Each version included clear instructions, contact info, and space for volunteers to add their local context, like a short story or relevant example of how wildfires have impacted their area. 

Then, CCL state coordinators worked with the CCL chapters in their states to make sure they prepared and sent the signed letters to the appropriate senate office, and to alert CCL’s Government Affairs staff so they could follow up and keep the conversation going on Capitol Hill.

Individually, our voices as climate advocates struggle to break through and make change. But it’s this kind of coordinated nationwide effort, with well-informed staff partnering with motivated local volunteers, that makes CCL effective at moving the needle in Congress.

On October 21, the Fix Our Forests Act officially passed the Senate Agriculture Committee with a vote of 18-5. 

Building on the momentum

After committee passage, FOFA is now waiting to be taken up by the full Senate for a floor vote. It’s not clear yet if it will move as a standalone bill or included in a package of other legislation. 

But to continue building support, we spent a large portion of our Fall Conference training our volunteers on the latest information about the bill, and we included FOFA as a primary ask in our Fall Lobby Week meetings. 

Volunteers are now messaging all senators in support of FOFA. If you haven’t already, add your voice by sending messages to your senators about this legislation. With strategy, organization, and a group of dedicated people, we can help pass the Fix Our Forests Act, reducing wildfire risk and helping forests remove more climate pollution.

Help us keep the momentum going! Write to your Senator in support of the Fix Our Forests Act.

The post Our Fix Our Forests advocacy in 2025 appeared first on Citizens' Climate Lobby.

Our Fix Our Forests advocacy in 2025

Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed.
An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change.

This week

Deadly floods in Asia

MOUNTING DEVASTATION: The Associated Press reported that the death toll from catastrophic floods in south-east Asia had reached 1,500, with Indonesia, Sri Lanka and Thailand most affected and hundreds still missing. The newswire said “thousands” more face “severe” food and clean-water shortages. Heavy rains and thunderstorms are expected this weekend, it added, with “saturated soil and swollen rivers leaving communities on edge”. Earlier in the week, Bloomberg said the floods had caused “at least $20bn in losses”.

CLIMATE CHANGE LINKS: A number of outlets have investigated the links between the floods and human-caused climate change. Agence France-Presse explained that climate change was “producing more intense rain events because a warmer atmosphere holds more moisture and warmer oceans can turbocharge storms”. Meanwhile, environmental groups told the Associated Press the situation had been exacerbated by “decades of deforestation”, which had “stripped away natural defenses that once absorbed rainfall and stabilised soil”.

‘NEW NORMAL’: The Associated Press quoted Malaysian researcher Dr Jemilah Mahmood saying: “South-east Asia should brace for a likely continuation and potential worsening of extreme weather in 2026 and for many years.” Al Jazeera reported that the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies had called for “stronger legal and policy frameworks to protect people in disasters”. The organisation’s Asia-Pacific director said the floods were a “stark reminder that climate-driven disasters are becoming the new normal”, the outlet said.

Around the world

• REVOKED: The UK and Netherlands withdrew $2.2bn of financial backing from a controversial liquified natural gas (LNG) project in Mozambique, Reuters reported. The Guardian noted that TotalEnergies’ “giant” project stood accused of “fuelling the climate crisis and deadly terror attacks”.
• REVERSED: US president Donald Trump announced plans to “significantly weaken” Biden-era fuel efficiency requirements for cars, the New York Times said.
• RESTRICTED: EU leaders agreed to ban the import of Russian gas from autumn 2027, the Financial Times reported. Meanwhile, Reuters said it is “likely” the European Commission will delay announcing a plan on auto sector climate targets next week, following pressure to “weaken” a 2035 cut-off for combustion engines. 
• RETRACTED: An influential Nature study that looked at the economic consequences of climate change has been withdrawn after “criticism from peers”, according to Bloomberg. [The research came second in Carbon Brief’s ranking of the climate papers most covered by the media in 2024.]
• REBUKED: The federal government of Canada faced a backlash over an oil pipeline deal struck last week with the province of Alberta. CBC News noted that ​​First Nations chiefs voted “unanimously” to demand the withdrawal of the deal and Canada’s National Observer quoted author Naomi Klein as saying that the prime minister was “completely trashing Canada’s climate commitments”.
• RESCHEDULED: The Indonesian government has cancelled plans to close a coal plant seven years early, Bloomberg reported. Meanwhile, Bloomberg separately reported that India is mulling an “unprecedented increase” in coal-power capacity that could see plants built “until at least 2047”.

$518 billion a year

The projected coastal flood damages for the Asia-Pacific region by 2100 if current policies continue, according to a Scientific Reports study covered this week by Carbon Brief.

Latest climate research

• More than 100 “climate-sensitive rivers” worldwide are experiencing “large and severe changes in streamflow volume and timing” | Environmental Research Letters
• Africa’s forests have switched from a carbon sink into a source | Scientific Reports
• Increasing urbanisation can “substantially intensify warming”, contributing up to 0.44C of additional temperature rise per year through 2060 | Communications Earth & Environment

(For more, see Carbon Brief’s in-depth daily summaries of the top climate news stories on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.)

Captured

A new target for developed nations to triple adaptation finance by 2035, agreed at the COP30 climate summit, would not cover more than a third of developing countries’ estimated needs, Carbon Brief analysis showed. The chart above compares a straight line to meeting the adaptation finance target (blue), alongside an estimate of countries’ adaptation needs (grey), which was calculated using figures from the latest UN Environmental Programme adaptation gap report, which were based on countries’ UN climate plans (called “nationally determined contributions” or NDCs) and national adaptation plans (NAPs).

Spotlight

Inclusivity at the IPCC

This week, Carbon Brief speaks to an IPCC lead author researching ways to improve the experience of global south scientists taking part in producing the UN climate body’s assessments.

Hundreds of climate scientists from around the world met in Paris this week to start work on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC’s) newest set of climate reports.

The IPCC is the UN body responsible for producing the world’s most authoritative climate science reports. Hundreds of scientists from across the globe contribute to each “assessment cycle”, which sees researchers aim to condense all published climate science over several years into three “working group” reports.

The reports inform the decisions of governments – including at UN climate talks – as well as the public understanding of climate change.

The experts gathering in Paris are the most diverse group ever convened by the IPCC.

Earlier this year, Carbon Brief analysis found that – for the first time in an IPCC cycle – citizens of the global south make up 50% of authors of the three working group reports. The IPCC has celebrated this milestone, with IPCC chair Prof Jim Skea touting the seventh assessment report’s (AR7’s) “increased diversity” in August.

But some IPCC scientists have cautioned that the growing involvement of global south scientists does not translate into an inclusive process.

“What happens behind closed doors in these meeting rooms doesn’t necessarily mirror what the diversity numbers say,” Dr Shobha Maharaj, a Trinidadian climate scientist who is a coordinating lead author for working group two (WG2) of AR7, told Carbon Brief.

Global south perspective

Motivated by conversations with colleagues and her own “uncomfortable” experience working on the small-islands chapter of the sixth assessment cycle (AR6) WG2 report, Maharaj – an adjunct professor at the University of Fiji – reached out to dozens of fellow contributors to understand their experience.

The exercise, she said, revealed a “dominance of thinking and opinions from global north scientists, whereas the global south scientists – the scientists who were people of colour – were generally suppressed”.

The perspectives of scientists who took part in the survey and future recommendations for the IPCC are set out in a peer-reviewed essay – co-authored by 20 researchers – slated for publication in the journal PLOS Climate. (Maharaj also presented the findings to the IPCC in September.)

The draft version of the essay notes that global south scientists working on WG2 in AR6 said they confronted a number of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) issues, including “skewed” author selection, “unequal” power dynamics and a “lack of respect and trust”. The researchers also pointed to logistical constraints faced by global south authors, such as visa issues and limited access to journals.

The anonymous quotations from more than 30 scientists included in the essay, Maharaj said, are “clear data points” that she believes can advance a discussion about how to make academia more inclusive.

“The literature is full of the problems that people of colour or global south authors have in academia, but what you don’t find very often is quotations – especially from climate scientists,” she said. “We tend to be quite a conservative bunch.”

Road to ‘improvement’

Among the recommendations set out in the essay are for DEI training, the appointment of a “diversity and inclusion ombudsman” and for updated codes of conduct.

Marharaj said that these “tactical measures” need to occur alongside “transformative approaches” that help “address value systems, dismantle power structures [and] change the rules of participation”.

With drafting of the AR7 reports now underway, Maharaj said she is “hopeful” the new cycle can be an improvement on the last, pointing to a number of “welcome” steps from the IPCC.

This includes holding the first-ever expert meeting on DEI this autumn, new mechanisms where authors can flag concerns and the recruitment of a “science and capacity officer” to support WG2 authors.

The hope, Maharaj explained, is to enhance – not undermine – climate science.

“The idea here was to move forward and to improve the IPCC, rather than attack it,” she said. “Because we all love the science – and we really value what the IPCC brings to the world.”

Watch, read, listen

BROKEN PROMISES: Climate Home News spoke to communities in Nigeria let down by the government’s failure to clean up oil spills by foreign companies.

‘WHEN A ROAD GOES WRONG’: Inside Climate News looked at how a new road from Brazil’s western Amazon to Peru has become a “conduit for rampant deforestation and illegal gold mining”.

SHADOWY COURTS: In the Guardian, George Monbiot lamented the rise of investor-state dispute settlements, which he described as “undemocratic offshore tribunals” that are already having a “chilling effect” on countries’ climate ambitions.

Coming up

• 1-12 December: UN Environment Assembly 7, Nairobi, Kenya
• 7 December: Hong Kong legislative elections
• 11 December: Falkland Islands legislative assembly elections

Pick of the jobs

• Greenpeace International, engagement manager – climate and energy | Salary: Unknown. Location: Various
• The Energy, newsletter editor | Salary: Unknown. Location: Australia (remote)
• University of Groningen, PhD position in motivating people to contribute to societal transitions | Salary: €3,059-€3,881 per month. Location: Groningen, the Netherlands

DeBriefed is edited by Daisy Dunne. Please send any tips or feedback to debriefed@carbonbrief.org.

This is an online version of Carbon Brief’s weekly DeBriefed email newsletter. Subscribe for free here.

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The post DeBriefed 5 December: Deadly Asia floods; Adaptation finance target examined; Global south IPCC scientists speak out appeared first on Carbon Brief.

DeBriefed 5 December: Deadly Asia floods; Adaptation finance target examined; Global south IPCC scientists speak out