Something Else to Worry About: Biological Weapons
Recent reports that a young woman working in a Russian biolab became ill and died echo Annie Jacobsen’s new book, Biological War: A Scenario. How concerned should we be?
A person wears a white bio hazard suit and blue gloves.
(Photo by Jan Kopřiva on Unsplash)Common Dreams
A few months ago, I ordered a pre-publication copy of Annie Jacobsen’s new non-fiction book, Biological War: A Scenario, which followed on from her excellent book, Nuclear War: A Scenario—not because I enjoy reading about existential risks, but because I’m an information seeker and feel that it’s important to stay informed. But when it arrived a few weeks later, in spite of having written an opinion piece about her nuclear book, entitled, “Why We Avoid Thinking About Nuclear War—and Why We Shouldn’t,“ after seeing the frightening cover illustration of men in hazmat suits, I stashed it on the bookshelf of my study rather than reading it—for the same reasons I discussed in my earlier piece: I didn’t want to know!
But after the recent reports of a biolab accident in Russia, I retrieved it from the bookshelf and read it in two days.
The “scenario“ in the book is that of a ”biological weapons lab accident,“ where a scientist working to modify pneumonic plague into a deadly biological weapon experiences remorse and tries to destroy it. But the small fire he lights causes an explosion that propels the Yersinia pestis bacteria (which causes the plague) into the atmosphere. In the process, he becomes infected with his weaponized pneumonic plague, although he doesn’t yet know it.
Although most of us cannot directly influence negotiations about strengthening the BWC, there are things that we can do to support such efforts and to lessen the increasingly grave dangers that confront us.
The next morning, he goes to an Orthodox church to confess where, by coughing in the midst of confession, he infects the priest, as well as the next person in line—a pre-med foreign exchange student, who is back in this small Russian town visiting family—before returning to the US shortly thereafter, where he is studying and doing volunteer work with homeless people. The student subsequently infects scores on Skid Row, who, in turn, infect the first responders who come to help them and, ultimately, the whole city of Los Angeles.
Following his confession, the scientist goes into the woods to shoot himself but collapses from the symptoms of plague. He is found by men on an international hunting trip, who administer mouth-to-mouth resuscitation and carry him back to their hunting lodge, where he is collected by officials. After dining together, using the same sauna and steam bath, and driving to the airport in the same van, seven of the hunters board flights to six of the world’s seven continents, while another goes off on a sea cruise—spreading pneumonic plague on their flights and sea voyage—and ultimately around the world.
In the real-world scenario, reported on October 2, Darya Shipilova, a 28-year old laboratory technician working in an “Anti-Plague Institute” in Irkutsk, Siberia died, according to Russian officials, of “a pneumonia of unknown etiology.“ A Russian news agency reported that she had broken a test tube containing live bacteria of the pneumonic plague pathogen, leading to widespread speculation that she had, indeed, died of pneumonic plague.
These concerns were reinforced by reports that Russian health authorities imposed sweeping quarantine restrictions on the lab where she worked, the hospital where she died, and other nearby hospitals. Neighbors also reported that workers in protective suits and gas masks repeatedly disinfected the building where she lived, telling residents that it was “for cockroaches,” although the building has no cockroaches. More recently, Russia’s health agency asserted that the plague was not detected in follow-up tests of “thousands of people in the region.”
The overall opacity (a familiar playbook for crises in Russia) of Russian public health officials in responding to urgent requests for more information from the World Health Organization, the US, and other governments led to considerable disquiet around the world.
When asked if her death was related to a bioweapon, President Donald Trump responded, not very reassuringly, “We don’t think so.” He also acknowledged the similarities in how Chinese officials handled Covid-19 before it became a global pandemic: “China didn’t say much, and Russia is not saying much either.”
The Biological Weapons Convention Was Supposed to Prevent This, Then Came the Secret Soviet Biological Weapons Program
The 1925 Geneva Protocol banned the use of biological weapons, but not their development or possession. Although ratified by a number of countries in the 1920s and 30s, it wasn’t ratified by the US until 1975.
After 27 years of a US biological weapons program, President Richard Nixon unexpectedly announced on November 25, 1969 that the US would unilaterally end its offensive biological weapons program, stating, “The United States shall renounce the use of lethal biological agents and weapons, and all other methods of biological warfare… [and] confine its biological research to defensive measures such as immunization and safety measures.” Over the next years, US biological weapons stocks were destroyed with the process completed in May 1972.
Subsequently, the United Nations Conference on Disarmament negotiated “The Biological Weapons Convention” (BWC), the first multilateral treaty to ban an entire class of weapons of mass destruction. It was opened for signature on April 10, 1972 and signed by the US, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union the same day. It entered into force on March 26, 1975. Currently, it has 189 State Parties and four Signatory States, with only four States outside the Convention.
Because it was the first of its kind, however, the BWC lacked the important monitoring and verification procedures that were later included in the Chemical Weapons Convention. There are no mandatory verified declarations of biological facilities or activities; no inspections or site visits to verify compliance; no international organization to oversee implementation; and no penalties for non-compliance, although complaints can be made to the UN Security Council (which are subject to veto by any of the five Permanent Members). Only four staff are involved in its tiny Implementation Support Unit, compared with over 500 for the Chemical Weapons Convention.
In spite of the Soviet Union becoming a signatory to the BWC in 1972, the USSR continued to covertly develop and produce offensive biological weapons in what became the world’s largest and most sophisticated biological weapons program, with 40-50 biological research facilities scattered around the country, employing 65,000 people. The aim was to create “exotic biological weapons using techniques made possible by recombinant DNA.” Recombinant DNA, also called genetic engineering, involves joining the DNA from two entirely different species to make new pathogens.
Not detecting this vast biological weapons program was one of the biggest intelligence failures of the Cold War as it was totally unknown in the West until 1989, when a Soviet scientist, Vladimir Pasechnik, defected, shocking the British Intelligence Services and the CIA with details of the massive program and its deadly stockpiles. They learned that the Soviets had “genetically engineered a strain of Yersinia pestis to resist antibiotics” and had also stockpiled vast volumes of other deadly pathogens in the labs’ freezers, such as smallpox, anthrax, ebola, Marburg virus disease, and many others—all weaponized to kill populations in the most diabolical manner.
The terrifying extent of this biowarfare program was later confirmed by other defecting Soviet scientists, especially after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. In January 1992, Boris Yeltsin admitted that he knew about the program and pledged to close down the institutes, retire their directors, and ask for international inspections. But the two generals he appointed to carry out this mission resisted his orders. In 1992, a Trilateral Agreement was signed by Russia with the United States and the United Kingdom “promising to end biological weapons programs and convert facilities to benevolent purposes, but compliance with the agreement—and the fate of the former Soviet bio-agents and facilities—is still mostly undocumented.”
The State Department’s 2025 compliance report states: “The United States assesses that Russia maintains an offensive biological warfare program and is in violation of its obligations under Article I and II of the BWC… Key military biological facilities associated with the Soviet offensive program remain, inaccessible and not transparent, nearly 30 years after Yeltsin’s decree.”
Jacobsen’s Book Is Based on the Secret Soviet Biological Weapons Program
The latter part of Jacobsen’s book deals with the breakdown of law and order, as mass death and panic take hold and cause chaos. Ultimately, the president deploys the Insurrection Act, whereby military forces attempt to establish martial law for the first time in American history. Just as they are about to release the strategic national stockpiles of medicine, scientists at the US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Disease receive their first bacterial specimens (from the infected hunter who landed in Dallas and died in a local hospital). Microbiologists in biocontainment suits examine the specimens, and plague cultures are grown and used to test for antibiotic resistance in small animals. Simultaneously, microbiologists extract DNA from the specimen and feed it into a high-speed sequencing machine to get a genetic fingerprint of the pathogen.
What they discover is appalling—the organism has been bioengineered and “looks alarmingly like a 21st century version of something Russian scientists worked on during the Soviet-era secret biological weapons programs.” It is a combination of two pathogens, one concealed within another, referred to as a “bobby-trap bio-weapon,“ whereby, after a person becomes infected with pneumonic plague and takes antibiotics as soon as possible under the assumption they will be cured, the antibiotics trigger the chimera weapon’s bobby-trap mechanism—in this fictional case, the Venezuelan equine encephalitis gene which has been covertly spliced into the Yersinia pestis genome to cause acute neurological symptoms and death. As a result, there is no cure.
As Annie Jacobsen declares:
The book is not meant to create unnecessary fear. It is meant to make clear what is now possible, and what is at stake. The tools to engineer life are advancing faster than the rules that govern them. This gap is where existential danger lives. The point is not panic; the point is pressure. To demand guardrails, oversight, and accountability before the science outruns our ability to control it. Before we set something irreversible in motion.
Although the real-life situation in Siberia will hopefully not turn out to be the same as in Annie Jacobsen’s book, it should cause us to take notice.
Attempts to Improve the Biological Weapons Convention
Serious attempts have been made in the past to strengthen the BWC but without success. An Ad Hoc Group labored from 1995 to 2001 to create a protocol where states would submit declarations of treaty-relevant facilities and activities to an international body that would conduct routine on-site visits, as well as challenge inspections of suspect facilities and activities. But the draft was rejected by the US under President George W. Bush, who argued that it could harm US national security. Nothing more happened for many years.
Another attempt is currently underway, although progress is slow. A Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention Working Group was established at the 2022 BWC Review Conference and has been working steadily over the last four years to come up with the text of draft recommendations before the 2027 BWC Review Conference. At their August meeting this year, 90.6% of the text had been agreed, although fundamental disagreements over verification frameworks, transfer controls, and funding remain—and tensions are high.
The chair of the Working Group has highlighted the urgency, arguing that the sudden convergence of artificial intelligence and biology is “creating new security challenges,” warning that a gap “may emerge between these rapidly advancing capabilities and our collective ability to understand their governance and prevent their misuse.”
What We Can Do
Although most of us cannot directly influence negotiations about strengthening the BWC, there are things that we can do to support such efforts and to lessen the increasingly grave dangers that confront us.
We can be sure to vote in the upcoming midterms for Democratic candidates, who have been more likely to support regulatory controls in Congress, as well as multilaterally. We can support these candidates with financial contributions and by working on their campaigns to ensure that they get elected, since time is short. Once elected, we can strive to persuade them to urgently implement appropriate policies.
After all, who wants human extinction? Presumably, none of us—no matter how jaded we may have become.
We can educate ourselves about the threats by reading widely, including Jacobsen’s excellent books, as well as opinion pieces on the subject, such as ones I’ve written on AI and nuclear weapons. We can do online research to identify, join, financially support, and work with others in public advocacy organizations against threats that are of particular concern to us. We can attend protest rallies and discuss our concerns with friends, encouraging them to also become active, so that we can develop a large public constituency to combat these extreme dangers.
Just a couple of days ago, on October 11, The Lancet Commission on 21st Century Global Threats to Health highlighted 17 major threats to human health over the next 75 years, asserting that, “Malicious use of AI, including bioweapons, and nuclear conflict with nuclear famine [caused by nuclear winter] carry risks of extinction in the next 75 years.” There are so many existential dangers to confront that it can sometimes feel overwhelming and lead us to a state of helplessness when what we need, instead, is a pro-active approach that will foster resourcefulness.
By facing up to our natural tendency to avoid frightening information and by confronting our fears head-on, we can gain a true sense of self-efficacy and social responsibility. In this way, we can save those we love; ensure that future generations thrive; preserve the rich cultural heritage we have created; protect the magnificent array of other species on Earth; and safeguard our beautiful, one-of-a-kind planet—from all of these truly insane and, frankly, evil machinations—often designed by normal people, who have been seduced by competitive processes; rationales that “everyone is doing it”; lucrative remuneration; lapse of conscience; and bad ideas into creating conditions for the most dystopian futures imaginable.
As Gareth Evans, former Australian foreign minister, former president and CEO of the International Crisis Group, and co-chair of the Commission on Nuclear Proliferation and Disarmament has recently commented with regard to the nuclear threat, “It is up to those of us who passionately believe in both the possibility and necessity of a nuclear weapon free world, however disappointed and frustrated we may be right now, to get out there and continue to campaign our hearts out for it.” I suggest that we extend his call to action to all the existential threats we face. After all, who wants human extinction? Presumably, none of us—no matter how jaded we may have become. We must assume responsibility for the continuation of our kind and choose human survival.
Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.
Connie Peck
Dr. Connie Peck is the founder of the United Nations Institute for Training and Research Programme in Peacemaking and Conflict Prevention—the first training program in negotiation and mediation for senior UN staff and diplomats (now in its 33rd year). She is the author of a number of books and numerous articles and book chapters on conflict resolution and the nuclear threat.
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Clean Power Funding Surpasses Fossil Fuels, But Rich Nations Keep Bankrolling Dirty Energy: Report
“Laggards, including the United States and Japan, are continuing to prop up the fossil fuel industry.”
Wind turbines rise above thick fog at dawn in Jacobsdorf, Germany, on October 7, 2026.
(Photo by Patrick Pleul/Picture Alliance via Getty Images)
Stephen Prager
Oct 14, 2026
COMMON DREAMS
For the first time on record, major international public financial institutions are providing more financing for clean energy around the world than for fossil fuels. But wealthy nations, including the United States, continue to pour billions into oil and gas, hampering the global energy transition, according to a new report.
On Wednesday, two environmental advocacy groups—Oil Change International and Friends of the Earth US—published an analysis of new data on public financing from Group of 20 (G20) nations and multilateral development banks for clean energy projects, such as wind and solar, and planet-warming fossil fuels, including oil, gas, and coal.
They found that from 2023-25, public financing for clean energy averaged at least $52.7 billion annually, compared with just $36.3 billion for fossil fuels. The report attributes the shift mostly to multilateral development banks, while G20 nations’ own development and export financing continued to favor fossil fuels.
“This new dataset represents a tipping point. Clean energy financing overtaking fossil fuel financing for the first time is an important milestone,” said Claire O’Manique, public finance researcher at Oil Change International. “But it doesn’t mean we can sit back and count our wins.”
The level of clean energy financing, the group said, is still far below what is needed to limit global warming to 1.5°C above preindustrial levels, a threshold beyond which the risks of devastating climate impacts increase.That’s largely thanks to four main culprits. Canada, Japan, the United States, and Italy accounted for around 75% of fossil fuel financing from G20 countries during this period.Canada provided an annual average of $12.5 billion in fossil fuel financing—mostly for domestic projects. Japan averaged about $4.5 billion annually despite a G7 commitment to end public support for new international fossil fuel projects by 2022. Italy likewise averaged $3.8 billion annually, breaking a pledge to end international fossil fuel financing.Over the same period, the US provided an annual average of about $3.6 billion in fossil fuel financing, mostly through its Export-Import Bank, compared with just $1.5 billion for clean energy.The data from 2025, the first year of President Donald Trump’s second term, is particularly striking. That year, the US provided nearly $8 billion in financing for fossil fuel projects compared with just $2.5 million for clean energy—roughly 3,200 times as much.This included a loan of up to $4.7 billion for a liquefied natural gas project in Mozambique, despite allegations that soldiers guarding the project committed war crimes. British and Dutch backing has since been withdrawn from the project.“Important progress is being made to move the world’s largest economies away from supporting fossil fuels and shift that financing toward renewable energy projects,” said Kate DeAngelis, economic policy deputy director at Friends of the Earth US. “Unfortunately, laggards, including the United States and Japan, are continuing to prop up the fossil fuel industry instead of helping countries transition to sustainable economies.”The report also found that less than 2% of the clean energy financing tracked reached low-income countries, despite their unmet energy needs. Meanwhile, nearly half of the funds went toward projects in the highest-income countries, according to World Bank classifications.The five largest recipients of clean energy financing were all high- or middle-income countries: France, Poland, and Spain fall into the former category, while Brazil and India fall into the latter.“A just transition will not happen at the scale required without governments actively steering it through redirecting and mobilizing public finance,” O’Manique said. “Wealthy governments must move first and fastest to phase out fossil fuels at home and meet their climate finance obligations.”“We are running out of time,” she said. “Without a fossil fuel phaseout and public finance being redirected to drive a just energy transition, we will continue to see escalating climate disasters that come at a huge human and economic cost, such as the deadly glacial flood disaster in Nepal.”
Ahead of Biodiversity Summit, UN Chief Warns Countries Are ‘Subsidizing Suicide’ by Backing Fossil Fuels
“I urge governments everywhere to end these handouts once and for all, and to use the savings for people and planet instead,” said António Guterres.
United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres briefs reporters on the launch the “State of Biodiversity Action” report on the sidelines of the 17th meeting of the Conference of Parties on the Convention on Biological Diversity in Yerevan, Armenia on October 16, 2026.
(Photo by Hrant Sahakyan/UN)
Jessica Corbett
Oct 16, 2026
C0MMON DREAMS
“The food we eat, the water we drink, the very air we breathe—all are the gifts of biodiversity. Yet every day, humankind saws another branch off the tree of life,” outgoing United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres declared Friday, before a key global summit in Armenia.
“Climate chaos. Invasive species. Overgrazing and overfishing. Excessive fertilizers, pesticides, plastics, and heavy metals. All these and more are driving the triple planetary crisis of pollution, biodiversity loss, and climate chaos,” he warned. “Over 1 million species now face the risk of extinction, edging us ever closer towards an uninhabitable world.”
Guterres advocated for both government and financial leadership, calling out funding for “agribusiness that strips the land” as well as the leading driver of the worsening climate emergency: fossil fuels. According to him, “Subsidizing fossil fuels is subsidizing suicide.”
“They are boiling our planet, and are the scourge of biodiversity,” said the secretary-general—who has often argued for not only phasing out fossil fuels but also making polluters pay for their damage. “I urge governments everywhere to end these handouts once and for all, and to use the savings for people and planet instead.”
Four years ago, at the 15th Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity, world leaders agreed to the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework—which critics called “weak” and “an open invitation to greenwash.” With COP17 kicking off in the Armenian capital on Monday, the UN chief said that “Yerevan is our moment of accountability.”
The “good news” is that the framework “has inspired action across the globe,” with nearly 90% of parties to the convention establishing national biodiversity targets, Guterres said. The “bad news” is that “progress is uneven, and far too slow. Even if current national commitments are met, only 26% of terrestrial, and 12% of marine ecosystems would be protected by 2030.”
“That is well short of the promise made in Montreal to protect 30% of land and sea by 2030. Major gaps also remain in targets linked to economic systems, including those focused on reducing harmful incentives,” he noted. “And many of the critical elements of progress—including finance, capacity, cooperation and data—are still largely missing in action.”
The figures come from the United Nations Environment Program’s “State of Biodiversity Action” report, released in preparation for next week’s conference. That followed the September publication of the UNEP’s “Limiting Overshoot” report, which warns that the world will at least temporarily surpass the Paris Agreement’s temperature target for this century: 1.5°C beyond preindustrial levels.
In response to the overshoot report, Stephanie Roe, global climate and energy lead scientist at the international nonprofit WWF, said last month that “overshooting 1.5°C is not a cliff edge, but neither is it harmless. Every fraction of a degree of warming increases risks for people and nature, while every fraction avoided reduces harm.”
“What matters now is how far temperatures rise above 1.5°C and how long they stay there,” Roe continued. “The science shows that lower and shorter overshoot means fewer impacts on ecosystems, communities, and economies. Limiting peak warming and returning temperatures to safer levels as quickly as possible can help reduce risks, avoid irreversible losses, and improve resilience for the future.”
Roe’s organization has also released a series of relevant reports in the weeks before the summit, including a Wednesday analysis it commissioned from the Global Cooperation Institute that lays out “major barriers countries face in delivering the Global Biodiversity Framework and what could help unblock it,” and urges “decisive action in Yerevan.”
WWF International director general Kirsten Schuijt said that that “COP17 must move countries towards action and implementation. The benefits of collective action for nature are clear: stronger ecological resilience, more secure food and water systems, and reduced economic vulnerability. WWF’s latest ‘Living Planet Report’ shows that nature can recover when the right actions are taken.”
Released last month, that report found a 73% decline in the average size of monitored wildlife populations over a 52-year period—with an 85% decline in freshwater ecosystems, followed by 69% in terrestrial, and 59% in marine.
“Lasting progress,” said Schuijt, “depends on transforming the systems driving nature loss and shifting decision-making from short-term fixes to long-term solutions. For COP17, this requires governments, businesses, Indigenous peoples, local communities, women, youth, and wider society to all participate actively in decision-making that moves agreements into urgent implementation, to shape and deliver nature-positive solutions.”
The political declaration released Friday by heads of state in Yerevan for a leaders’ summit preceding the conference already has some advocates, like WWF International president Adil Najam, issuing warnings. Najam explained from the Armenian capital that “leaders came together to discuss the promise made in Montreal in 2022 to halt and reverse biodiversity loss by 2030. The declaration acknowledges that progress is insufficient and that implementation must accelerate. It also recognizes that our economies, communities, and peace depend on nature. But recognition alone will not fulfill that promise.”
“The declaration lacks explicit commitments to align economic and financial decisions with nature goals, including reforming subsidies that harm nature,” he said. “Governments must make these choices if they are serious about delivering on their commitments. At COP17, they must turn the global review into clear implementation pathways backed by finance on the scale needed. The declaration signals a commitment to action across government; the real test is whether it changes decisions back home.”
Trump Rule Change Allows for ‘Unintentional’ Killing of Polar Bears by Fossil Fuel Companies
The US Fish and Wildlife Service finalized the polar bear-killing rule despite a near universal negative reception from more than 85,000 public comments.
Polar bears play in the water at the Alaska Zoo, one of the places frequented especially by those who want to see polar animals, in Anchorage, Alaska on April 28, 2024.
(Photo by Hasan Akbas/Anadolu via Getty Images)
Brad Reed
Oct 16, 2026
COMMON DREAMS
Oil and gas companies will now be permitted to kill polar bears and Pacific walruses off the northern coast of Alaska so long as such killings are “unintentional,” according to a new Trump administration rule.
The US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) on Friday finalized a rule change that would shield fossil fuel companies from legal liability if they engage in the “incidental, unintentional” killing of the animals “during year-round oil and gas industry activities in the Beaufort Sea... and adjacent northern coast of Alaska.”
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Under the rule change, which is scheduled to last through 2031, the FWS “will issue letters of authorization” that sign off on the incidental killing of wildlife upon request by oil and gas companies.
As noted by a report in Bloomberg Law, the proposed rule change “drew more than 85,500 public comments, nearly all in opposition,” before the FWS ultimately signed off on it.
The rule change was a major priority for the Alaska Oil and Gas Association, which represents fossil fuel giants and requested the revision in September 2025.
Allowing for the incidental killing of polar bears isn’t the only controversial rollback of environmental regulations made by the Trump administration in recent weeks.
In September, The New York Times reported that FWS had gutted a key provision in the Endangered Species Act by arguing that only the intentional killing or wounding of protected species counts as illegal “harm.”
Last week, it was revealed that the US Department of the Interior is moving ahead with a plan to let fossil fuel companies conduct specific wintertime operations at the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska without undergoing reviews mandated by the National Environmental Policy Act.
Even though the Trump administration has prioritized the development of domestic fossil fuel production by gutting environmental standards, these policies have not translated into the promised cheaper oil and gas prices, which have spiked over the last half year thanks to the president’s illegal war with Iran.
‘Deadly Serious’: Half of World’s Reef-Building Coral Face Extinction Threat as Oceans Warm, Study Warns
“Every tenth of a degree of warming we avoid gives corals a better chance,” said one of the researchers. “So action now really does count.”
An adult green sea turtle rests on the sandy seabed beside a coral reef off Mataking Island in Sabah, Malaysia, on September 25, 2026.
(Photo by Sai Aung Main/AFP via Getty Images)
Stephen Prager
Oct 16, 2026
COMMON DREAMS
Nearly half the world’s reef-building coral species are at risk of extinction according to a global assessment released Thursday. Researchers warn that the accelerating climate crisis is making the danger even worse than the most recent data shows.
Coral reefs are among the most important ecosystems on Earth, providing food and shelter for around a quarter of all marine species. Their destruction jeopardizes not only entire marine food webs, but also the millions of people who rely on those species for food.
The study, published in the journal Nature, found that as of 2020, about 44% of coral species were threatened, compared with about one-third in 2008.
David Obura, a marine biologist and lead author of the study, said the new assessment “provides the most comprehensive evaluation to date of global extinction risk among reef-building corals, and a stark warning of the accelerating increase in global threats to coral reefs.”
But he said it also “highlights the challenges we face in addressing major data and knowledge gaps on the status of species at global scales, at the same time as having to take urgent decisions to reduce the drivers of global declines in critical species and ecosystems.”
The researchers stressed that the data they analyzed understates the danger. The assessment does not take into account the damage from the devastating bleaching event that began in 2023 and lasted until mid-2025. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), it was the largest such event ever recorded, exposing about 84% of the world’s coral reef area to bleaching-level heat stress and causing widespread coral deaths.
It also doesn’t take into account what meteorologists have projected could be the strongest El Niño ever, which could break ocean temperature records in the coming months, likely leading to another massive die-off of corals.
“It is entirely possible that reassessing the status of corals just after this coming El Niño may show them to have crossed the 50% mark of the proportion of species at elevated risk of extinction,” Obura told AFP.
He noted that a previous “super” El Niño, in 1997-98, also caused tremendous damage to reefs.
“That this coming event is worse than that, after three intervening global bleaching events, is a terrifying reality,” he said.
Researchers extract a fossil coral core sample from a massive coral colony in the Galápagos Islands to reconstruct historical climate and El Niño cycles as part of a study published in Science on August 27, 2026. (Photo by Julia Cole/Science)
In the new assessment, researchers found that human-caused climate change is the primary threat to reef-building coral, determining the fate of about 90% of the species at greatest risk.
They emphasized that coral reef health is more complex than simply “survival” versus “disappearance,” and that every reduction in global greenhouse gas emissions matters.
“Coral reefs can feel a world away...” said Françoise Cabada-Blanco, a marine ecologist at the University of Portsmouth and co-author of the study. “But they cover a tiny fraction of the ocean floor, while supporting an enormous share of marine life and the food, coastal protection and livelihoods of millions of people.”
“What happens to them affects all of us,” she said. “The message from this assessment is that every tenth of a degree of warming we avoid gives corals a better chance—so action now really does count.”
A report published last year concluded that the globe had already passed the 1.2°C warming threshold for widespread coral reef dieback and found that unless global temperatures drop substantially, reefs could largely disappear.
“The crisis facing corals is deadly serious,” said Miyoko Sakashita, oceans director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “If we don’t take swift action to curb climate pollution, we could lose half of them forever.”
“We’ve already seen a lot of disruptions to sea life from the much warmer waters El Niño has brought this year, and I’m really worried about what that will do to threatened coral species,” she added. “Coral reefs are the backbone of the ocean, and we can’t have a healthy marine ecosystem without them.”
2026 State of the Climate Report ‘Shows a Planet Reaching Its Limits’
“This is no longer a warning for the future; it is a diagnosis of the present,” the report’s authors warned.
A Fridays for Future youth demonstrator rallies for climate action in Turin, Italy on October 9, 2020.
(Photo by Stefano Guidi/Getty Images)
Brett Wilkins
Oct 15, 2026
COMMON DREAMS
Earth’s life-support systems are “moving deeper into uncharted territory,” with greenhouse gas concentrations, ocean heat, and other vital indicators reaching unprecedented levels as human activity continues to push the planet toward points of no return, an international team of scientists warned Wednesday.
“We are witnessing the rapid destabilization of the Earth’s climate system. This is no longer a warning for the future; it is a diagnosis of the present,” the authors of The 2026 State of the Climate Report wrote. “Earth’s life-support systems are being pushed beyond stable limits, with changes unfolding faster than our ability to respond.”
“Human activities are driving profound shifts in the atmosphere, oceans, and biosphere,” the report—which was published in the peer-reviewed journal BioScience—continues. “Carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere are higher now than any time in the last 2 million years. Across the globe, extreme heat, floods, droughts, storms, and wildfires are no longer rare events but defining features of a changing planet. For example, July 2026 was the hottest month on record for the contiguous United States (1895–present), while global ocean temperatures also reached a record high for July.”
The report, led by Oregon State University scientists William Ripple and Christopher Wolf, measures 16 key climate indicators, seven of which “are at record extremes and multiple others are also trending in the wrong direction,” co-author Johan Rockström explained.“Climate-related changes appear to be accelerating and intensifying, raising concerns about reinforcing feedbacks and crossing of tipping points, with potential irreversible impacts,” the report notes. “Climate change is increasingly interacting with global biodiversity loss, freshwater stress, food insecurity, pathogens, and geopolitical instability, amplifying risks across interconnected human and natural systems.”“Yet, the gap between scientific understanding and societal response continues to widen despite mounting evidence of escalating risks,” the authors said. “The evidence for accelerating climate and ecological disruption is now so compelling that attention must shift toward rapid decarbonization as well as adaptation, resilience, scalable responses, and transformative systemic change.”“Crucially, the communities least responsible for historical emissions, particularly in the Global South and small island states, are bearing disproportionately severe and early consequences, raising fundamental questions of climate justice that must inform both policy and science,” the publication adds.The new report comes on the heels of this year’s Planetary Health Check assessment, which found that seven of nine measures of the Earth’s health are no longer within the “safe operating space”: ocean acidification, freshwater change, land system change, climate change, modification of biogeochemical flows, introduction of novel entities, and change in biosphere integrity.Planetary Health Check lead author Boris Sakschewski said the findings indicate that “the risk of large-scale, persistent, and potentially irreversible change is increasing, while our margin for error in tackling these problems is shrinking.”Some 2026 State of the Climate report authors—described by US meteorologist Jeff Berardelli as “a who’s who of the best in the world”—weighed in individually on their findings.“Global warming appears to be accelerating,” Wolf told Scientific American.“The climate emergency is already here, but the future is not yet determined,” he stressed. “We still have opportunities to avoid some of the worst outcomes through rapid emissions reductions, climate adaptation, and broader societal changes. The window for action is narrowing, but it has not closed.”Rockström—who co-authored both reports—wrote on LinkedIn that “the global curve of emissions must start bending within the coming year or two.”“A fossil fuel-free global economy must be the landing point within the next 25 years,” he said. “A global food system transition towards healthy diets from sustainable production systems must start now. Carbon dioxide removal needs to start scaling, fast.”“We have the solutions,” Rockström continued. “They can be scaled. And, on essentially all fronts, we (meaning ALL peoples) come out as healthier, safer, more resilient, prosperous, and just, if we proceed with the transformation to a world within Earth’s safe operating space.”“Failure is not inevitable,” he added. “It is a choice. Our choice.”
75% of Likely US Voters Oppose Giving Big Oil Immunity From Climate Lawsuits
Even 67% of Republican voters think states should be allowed to sue oil companies for climate damage. But Trump and GOP lawmakers are pushing to kill these suits for good.
Demonstrators rally outside the US Supreme Court in Washington, DC, on October 5, 2026, as justices hear a case that could determine the fate of lawsuits seeking to hold oil companies accountable for climate damages.
(Photo by Finn Gomez/Getty Images)
Stephen Prager
Oct 15, 2026
COMMON DREAMS
President Donald Trump and Republicans in Congress have sought to stop state-level lawsuits aimed at holding oil and gas companies responsible for climate-related damage. But most voters don’t think they should be immune from accountability.
In a poll released last week by Data for Progress, 75% of likely voters said they would oppose legislation that would give fossil fuel companies “legal immunity from having to pay for the damages they have caused by worsening climate change.”
Just 20% said they would either “somewhat” or “strongly” support such legislation. Meanwhile, more than half (53%) said they would “strongly” oppose it.
Opposition was strong across political affiliations: 83% of Democrats and 76% of independents said they opposed giving oil companies immunity from lawsuits, but so did 67% of Republicans.
(Graphic by Data for Progress)
In recent years, states and municipalities have sued fossil fuel companies over their well-documented history of misleading the public about their products’ role in warming the planet. These lawsuits have sought compensation for damages from worsening floods, wildfires, droughts, and other climate-related disasters.
Eleven US states—California, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, Rhode Island, and Vermont—as well as the District of Columbia, have active lawsuits, as do at least two tribal governments and dozens of municipalities around the country, according to a tracker by the Center for Climate Integrity.
The new poll suggests voters are even more opposed to shielding oil companies from these lawsuits than they were five months ago. Another Data for Progress poll in May showed just 65% opposed legislation to shield oil companies, compared with 75% now.
“Big Oil is desperate to secure legal immunity and escape accountability for its role in the climate crisis—and the billions of dollars of damages that have followed,” said Iyla Shornstein, the political director at the Center for Climate Integrity. “These poll results show that Americans across the political spectrum are opposed to putting Big Oil above the law.”
Protesters hold a banner outside the US Supreme Court as it considers the Suncor v. Boulder case in Washington, DC, on October 5, 2026. (Photo by Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images)
The oil industry’s lobbying arm, the American Petroleum Institute, has described stopping state climate lawsuits as a top priority for 2026. Their Republican allies have pushed at all levels of government to advance that goal.
In April, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and several GOP cosponsors joined Rep. Harriet Hageman (R-Wyo.) to introduce legislation that would shield fossil fuel companies from any climate-related lawsuits, dismiss pending cases, and overturn state “superfund” laws requiring the industry to pay for climate damages.
That bill failed to pass out of the House Judiciary Committee last month but could be brought forth again during the “lame-duck” session after the midterm elections in November.
ProPublica has identified at least 15 bills across 11 states that have either been enacted or proposed to shield companies, either by granting them broad immunity from liability for greenhouse gas emissions or restricting the ability of communities to sue over climate-related damages. Groups linked to Leonard Leo, the co-chair of the right-wing Federalist Society, have coordinated many of these efforts.
Republican attorneys general in 16 states have proposed creating a “liability shield” for fossil fuel companies modeled on the one that protects gun manufacturers from liability for the misuse of their products. The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a leading conservative policy shop, approved a model bill in August aiming to establish this shield in state legislatures nationwide.
The oil industry has also pushed for the right-wing Supreme Court to step in to block these lawsuits. Earlier this month, during oral arguments, oil giants ExxonMobil and Suncor urged the court to block a lawsuit brought by Boulder, Colorado, that accused oil companies of deceiving the public about climate change and sought to hold them financially responsible.
If the court blocks the Boulder suit before it gets to trial, it could set a precedent that derails dozens of similar lawsuits around the country.
Meanwhile, Trump, who pledged to help Big Oil executives in exchange for their donations to his presidential campaign, signed an executive order last year directing the Department of Justice (DOJ) to identify and challenge state lawsuits that seek to impose financial penalties on fossil fuel companies.
His DOJ has weighed in on the Suncor v. Boulder case on the side of the oil industry and has sued at least five states that have sought to hold fossil fuel companies accountable.
The question about climate lawsuits was part of a broader set of questions Data for Progress asked voters about rising insurance costs and corporate accountability in partnership with the Insurance Fairness Project. Other results showed that many Americans want legal recourse against insurers and other companies that impose costs on consumers.
“As rising home insurance costs directly threaten housing affordability for the majority of Americans, voters are tired of their prices rising while insurance companies, energy providers, and the oil and gas industry go unchecked,” said Grace Adcox, senior climate strategist for the Insurance Fairness Project. “There is a strong appetite for holding corporations accountable, both for their role in driving up costs and their role in contributing to the climate crisis.”
IMF Warns of Debt-Fueled AI Spending as Fears of Massive Financial Bubble Grow
“If we don’t see the massive gains in productivity promised by the AI enthusiasts, then we will almost certainly see a collapse in the stock market,” said one economist.
A man is using his mobile phone to view GPT-6 Astra logo and using his computer to view OpenAI logo in Suqian, Jiangsu, China on September 4, 2026.
(Photo by CFOTO/Future Publishing via Getty Images)
Brad Reed
Oct 13, 2026
COMMON DREAMS
The International Monetary Fund warned Tuesday that the global economy faces serious risks from Big Tech firms taking on massive debt to fund the buildout of artificial intelligence data centers worldwide.
The IMF’s latest Global Financial Stability Report outlines a number of risks to economic growth in the coming years, including a reliance on AI industry spending that it warns could lead to a new financial crisis.
The report points to the methods the world’s largest data center operators, known as hyperscalers, are using to fund new construction as particularly troubling.
“Hyperscalers have strong earnings from their core businesses,” the report states. “Yet, free cash flows are rapidly declining as hyperscalers try to sustain large AI investment needs, leaving debt financing increasingly necessary.”
The analysis also details the role played by so-called circular financing agreements, in which one company agrees to fund another company’s AI project in exchange for the firm receiving the money buying the investing firm’s products.
These arrangements could create dangerous interdependence within the industry that could spark a financial contagion if one of the firms goes belly up, according to the report.
“While investors... are generally financially sound, distress at key investee firms could present significant ‘wrong-way risk’ to the AI ecosystem,” the report states. “Equity and debt investments in the firms depreciate in value precisely when future revenue streams tied to them are impaired.”
Investment expert Bret Jensen, in an analysis published by Seeking Alpha on Tuesday, examined projected capital expenditures from the five biggest hyperscalers—Oracle, Microsoft, Facebook parent company Meta, Amazon, and Google parent company Alphabet—and highlighted how they have increasingly moved financing off their corporate balance sheets.
“Over the past 12-18 months, there has been a huge increase in debt and equity issuance,” Jensen explained. “The five hyperscalers now have a combined over $1.3 trillion of debt on their balance sheets and roughly $3 trillion in off-balance-sheet allocations.”
Because of this, Jensen continued, “debt markets are starting to groan” by “signaling a substantial chance of default over the next half-decade on the debt of Oracle.”
Jensen also pointed out that half of this infrastructure was being built for the benefit of frontier AI labs OpenAI and Anthropic, which he described as “unprofitable” and “bleeding cash.”
Dean Baker, co-founder of the Center for Economic and Policy Research argued in an analysis published on Friday that AI is completely propping up the US economy at the moment, as investors are holding out hope that it delivers an unprecedented boom in productivity.
The problem, Baker pointed out, is there is little sign that AI is going to deliver anywhere near the increased productivity needed to make these historic investments pay off.
“If we believe the hype, we are about to see an incredible surge in productivity that will make us ridiculously wealthy,” Baker explained. “To date, there is no evidence to support this view. Productivity growth has been at best on its trend pace the last couple of years.”
“If we don’t see the massive gains in productivity promised by the AI enthusiasts,” Baker added, “then we will almost certainly see a collapse in the stock market, with a serious recession almost guaranteed.”
‘Let Them Eat Cake’: How Trump Family Pocketed Nearly $3 Billion While Millions of Americans Lost Food Aid
“Donald Trump promised to lower costs for American families,” said the co-chair of the Not Above the Law Coalition. “Instead, he turned the presidency into his family’s most profitable business.”
Demonstrators hold up mock cryptocurrency coins with President Donald Trump’s image during the “America Is Not for Sale” rally at Trump National Golf Club in Washington, DC on May 22, 2025.
(Photo by Jemal Countess/Getty Images for Public Citizen)
Brett Wilkins
Oct 15, 2026
COMMON DREAMS
A report released Thursday details how the family of President Donald Trump “pocketed more than $2.9 billion”—including “in cash and gifts from crypto ventures, legal settlements, a luxury jet from a foreign government, and corporate deals”—while Republican cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program left millions of Americans without critical food aid.
The report, “Let Them Eat Cake: Cost of Corruption,” was published by the Not Above the Law Coalition—a group of more than 150 advocacy organizations mobilized against the Trump administration’s corruption—and cites data from the Center for American Progress revealing over $2.9 billion in cash and gifts received by the Trump family since the 2024 election.
The bulk of that amount—more than $2.4 billion—comes from the cryptocurrency industry. Trump has boasted about how his administration won’t investigate alleged crypto-related crimes.
Not only has Trump embraced crypto deregulation, he also pardoned Changpeng Zhao, the founder of cryptocurrency exchange Binance, who pleaded guilty to money-laundering charges in 2023. Binance has provided critical support for World Liberty Financial, the crypto venture enriching the Trump family.
“The Trump family cashed in on the presidency while American families paid the price,” Not Above the Law said in a statement. “Over the same period, Trump signed a budget law that cut almost $187 billion from SNAP, leaving 5.2 million fewer people with help buying groceries.”
That law, the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act, ushered in the biggest cuts to both SNAP and Medicaid in those programs’ histories.
According to the report, “The Trump family’s take alone could cover a full year of groceries for about 1.3 million people on SNAP.”
“At the same time, Trump’s pardons let wealthy allies and fraudsters walk away from nearly $1.7 billion owed to victims and taxpayers,” the publication adds.
Not Above the Law noted that “foreign money flowed straight to the [Trump] family” via an investment vehicle controlled by the United Arab Emirates’ national security adviser, who “put $500 million into World Liberty Financial, and the administration soon cleared advanced [artificial intelligence] chip exports to the UAE.“
The report highlights that “Trump also accepted a roughly $400 million luxury jet from Qatar.”
Not Above the Law said that, in addition to groceries for 1.3 million people for a year, the $2.9 billion could buy “more than 600 million free school lunches, or three months of groceries for the 5.2 million people who lost SNAP benefits.”
In addition to the nearly $3 billion the report says Trump’s family pocketed, the coalition noted “companies backed by Trump’s sons have collected $3.2 billion in federal funds, including a fast-tracked $620 million Pentagon loan” to a business in which Donald Trump Jr. invested.
“Donald Trump promised to lower costs for American families. Instead, he turned the presidency into his family’s most profitable business,” said Lisa Gilbert, Not Above the Law co-chair and co-president of the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen. “While the Trumps collected nearly $3 billion from crypto schemes, foreign governments, and corporations seeking favors, millions of Americans lost help putting food on the table. Congress must stop the self-dealing and hold this administration accountable.”
The new analysis follows a report published earlier this year by a group of Democratic US senators accusing the president and his family of turning “the power of the presidency into eye-popping profits,” with Trump increasing his personal net worth by more than $2 billion during his second term alone, according to official disclosures.
Also on Thursday, The Washington Post reported on companies and billionaire CEOs who donated a combined $333 million to Trump’s White House ballroom project, as well as previously undisclosed donors who have benefited from a presidential pardon, government contracts, and at least one closed federal investigation.
“This is what corruption is all about,” Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said in response to the Post report. “We don’t want a government of, by, and for the billionaire class. FIGHT BACK.”
‘Blatant Corruption’: Donors Pouring $330 Million Into Trump Ballroom—and Reaping Benefits—Exposed
“Under Donald Trump, there’s a two-tiered justice system,” said one watchdog leader. “Big Tech plays by a different set of rules because they bought their way in.”
US President Donald Trump (R) greets Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang on September 29, 2026 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)Julia ConleyOct 15, 2026COMMON DREAMSA newly revealed list of companies and billionaire CEOs who donated millions of dollars to President Donald Trump’s ballroom construction project shows that Big Tech, according to one government watchdog, “bankrolled it fully expecting a return on their investment.”The list, first reported by The Washington Post, doesn’t just show the $25 million donations from tech giant Apple, the pro-Israel Adelson Family Foundation, and microchip firm Nvidia—the latter of which requested anonymity.It also reveals previously undisclosed donors who have benefited from a presidential pardon as well as government contracts and at least one closed federal investigation.The 57 donors whose names were published by the Post had committed to contributing at least $100,000 to the ballroom construction project, which is proceeding for now following a Supreme Court ruling in August.The list shows a total of $333 million contributed from private donors, but does not include Trump’s name, though the president has said the demolition of the White House’s East Wing and the construction of the ballroom would be “paid for a hundred percent by me and some friends of mine.”It also falls short of the $600 million projected price tag; according to the Post, taxpayer funds have been used to partially fund the project, along with donations from companies with business before the government.Nvidia’s $25 million donation came three months after the company reached a deal with the Trump administration to sell advanced microchips to China.A $25 million donation from Charles Ergen, co-founder and chairman of the telecommunications company Dish Network, came shortly after the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) dropped an investigation into the failure of EchoStar, which owns Dish Network, to upgrade its cellphone network.FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr had threatened last May to revoke government licenses from EchoStar, and a month later, Ergen met with Carr and Trump in a closed-door meeting where his political donations were discussed, Bloomberg reported.Ergen then negotiated a deal to sell some of the licenses to AT&T. Carr dropped the investigation the following month, and months later, with the sale pending, the executive donated $12.5 million to Trump’s ballroom construction. A second $12.5 million contribution came soon after, according to the list published by the Post.“Big Tech giants didn’t just chip in for Trump’s ballroom,” said Sacha Haworth of the Tech Oversight Project, a watchdog group. “The same companies funding Trump’s vanity project lined up for tax breaks, chip deals, federal contracts, and a blind eye to lawbreaking. Under Donald Trump, there’s a two-tiered justice system. Big Tech plays by a different set of rules because they bought their way in.”The Post also detailed a $2.5 million contribution from Isabela Herrera, the daughter of international banker Julio Herrera Velutini, whom the US Department of Justice indicted on bribery charges in 2022.Herrera Velutini’s charges were reduced to a misdemeanor months after his daughter donated millions of dollars to Trump’s MAGA Inc. political action committee, and a month later, she committed to a $2.5 million donation for the ballroom. Soon after, Herrera Velutini was pardoned.The transactions detailed by the Post amount to “blatant corruption,” said progressive news outlet The Tennessee Holler.
Cryptocurrency investors Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss donated more than $5 million in bitcoin—a portion of the more than $18 million the industry contributed to the ballroom. Trump has pushed for loose regulations for the industry.Other top donors include Google, Lockheed Martin, Amazon, and Palantir.Government watchdog Public Citizen said a new tax filing from the Trust for the National Mall, a nonprofit charity that manages the donations for the ballroom, shows that $169.7 million came from just 10 big donors.“One year after the people’s house was abruptly bulldozed for a gold-plated ballroom that most Americans will never be allowed inside, we are uncovering who paid the most to fund it,” said Jon Golinger, democracy advocate for Public Citizen. “The question these ballroom megadonors all now need to answer is—why?”Haworth said that “when Democrats take back gavels in January, they need to investigate Google, Apple, Meta, Amazon, OpenAI, and others for potentially breaking the law to buy get-out-of-jail-free passes and sweetheart deals in exchange for their donation.”
