Climate Diet September 2026 Newsletter

Climate Diet partnered with Newsweek writer James Roberts for a July 30 feature on how food choices are shaping the climate crisis. CEO Jane DeMarines was featured in the piece, making the case that small, everyday choices can add up — and that livestock production remains one of the most overlooked drivers of climate change, through global deforestation and methane emissions.

Scientists have long warned that extreme weather — heat waves, storms, floods, and droughts — will keep intensifying as long as fossil fuel use continues at today’s pace, according to the Associated Press. In the opening scene of Kim Stanley Robinson’s novel The Ministry for the Future, a heat wave paired with a grid failure in India kills 20 million people — a devastation so vast it finally forces the world’s nations to unite against climate change.

For more than a year, the National Park Service has been working to carry out a directive from Trump administration officials: parcel off a corner of Yosemite National Park for a private developer, according to NOTUS.

Many Venezuelans suspected there would be a price for President Trump’s capture of autocratic leader Nicolás Maduro, arrested by U.S. forces in January. That cost became clear when Trump announced the U.S. would take majority control of a vast share of Venezuela’s oil reserves — resources long considered a national birthright, according to the New York Times.

The Trump administration’s move to cancel offshore wind projects in favor of fossil fuel development is generating a major payday for one of the president’s million-dollar donors, the Washington Post reports.

The Interior Department is preparing to publish a “categorical exclusion” that would fast-track oil and gas development in Alaska’s remote National Petroleum Reserve, bypassing standard environmental review.

As farmers face skyrocketing fertilizer costs and runoff threatens drinking water sources across Iowa, North America’s top fertilizer manufacturers are posting strong profits — raising questions about who benefits most from fertilizer use, according to an advocacy group cited by Inside Climate News.

McDonald’s, Subway, and Taco Bell are falling behind on their pledges to reduce antibiotic use in their beef supply chains, according to a report from a group of food safety advocates covered by The New Lede.

In 2024, wide-ranging regulations were enacted to protect communities near petrochemical plants from air toxics. Since then, the current administration has granted exemptions to scores of polluting facilities and is working to rewrite the long-awaited rule, according to Yale Environment 360.

Guest Nandita Srivastava grew up vegetarian in India and spent years working on food and climate policy across Asia and Africa — and what she’s learned about methane might surprise you. In this episode, we dig into livestock emissions, the one food she still can’t quit (coffee ☕), and why protecting the climate doesn’t mean giving up flavor.