Climate Café Asheville

04/30/2026

33.5 million children in the USofA are already breathing dangerous levels of polluted air. 33.5 million children are 46 percent of all the kids in the country. Protecting people, especially kids, from the harmful effects of air pollution is why the Clean Air Act was passed. The current Administration would like to see it weakened or even eliminated. That would bring about an equality we do not want by exposing ALL of our children to dangerous levels of polluted air and harmful toxins.

The American Lung Association report comes amid Trump EPA’s expansive rollback of environmental protections.

04/22/2026

As the drought across WNC deepens, consider adding a bird bath to your yard or garden for birds and other small wildlife. The drought is beginning to impact some smaller streams and waterways, making it harder for critters to find a drink, a bathing spot, or a place to submerge for a good soak.

Here's a little more from WLOS here in Asheville about wildlife that is being impacting by the extreme drought in our area:

4 likes. "Wildlife intake increases as drought causes animals to search for water"

04/22/2026

Most of Western North Carolina is experiencing Extreme Drought (D3), including Buncombe County where Asheville is located. This is why we have a burn ban. In fact, 84 of North Carolina's 100 counties are currently severe or moderate drought.

This drought comes with a higher threat of wildfires because of the number of downed trees and tree limbs left from the devastation of Hurricane Helene 2 and a half years ago. That is a lot of dry fuel for fires. Drought early in the year after a dry winter is particularly hard for farmers trying to get their spring and summer crops growing.

is causing droughts to be drier, more intense, and sometimes longer in duration. At the same time, we are also seeing wet cycles that are also more extreme and intense. These cycles of dry and rainy weather are challenging for our ecosystems, our economy, and for people. We need to work to mitigate the climate change by protecting and restoring our local ecosystems and by reducing our . We also need to work on innovative and collaborative ways to adapt to extreme weather - droughts, rains/storms, and heat.

Check out this clip from WCNC in Charlotte. In this clip, Corey Davis, the Assistant State Climatologist with the NC State Climate Office, explains and discusses the origin and impacts of our current state-wide drought. He also compares it to the drought of 2007-2008.

Corey Davis, the assistant North Carolina state climatologist, talks about the impacts of the ongoing drought and dry weather.

04/22/2026

Our global climate is changing, and we are feeling the effects of it in North Carolina and elsewhere. March 2026 was the warmest March on record for the contiguous United States over the 132 years of records.

Check out this news clip from WRAL that reflected back on the wild weather we had in March, 2026:

North Carolina saw extreme swings in temperature and rainfall in March, as scientists say a warming climate is driving more volatile “weather whiplash.”

03/26/2026

Here's a win-win project: get rid of lead water pipes AND create jobs! Even if those jobs last only a decade, they will still do a lot for stimulating the economy in Illinois or anywhere else that makes this kind of investment in their community's health and future.

Illinois has nearly 1.5 million lead service lines. A new report estimates replacing the unsafe plumbing could generate 90,000 jobs.

03/26/2026

The Trump Administration is bribing a French company to drop their offshore wind energy project and switch to a fossil fuel one instead. This is just another form of subsidizing fossil fuels in the USA, which already happens at about $30billion per year. Keep in mind that those billions of dollars in subsidies are going to companies that already make tens of billions of dollars in profits.

What the Trump Administration doesn't seem to understand is that fossil fuels are finite in supply, dirty, and harmful to people and the planet. Without even considering greenhouse gas emissions, burning fossil fuels releases sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, mercury, and arsenic into the air and waterways. Extracting these fuels from the ground radically changes the landscape and harms the communities around the extraction sites, and often contaminates both surface and groundwater supplies.

Subsidies to fossil fuel companies won't bring down energy costs; they will only increase the profits of those companies, their executives, and shareholders.

Keep Fossil Fuels in the Ground!

The government is paying TotalEnergies to halt an offshore wind farm it isn't building, in exchange for fossil fuel investments it's already making.

03/16/2026

Dr. Booth is an amazing science speaker and communicator, not to mention an amazing scientist. Come hear her at A-B Asheville-Buncombe Technical Community College, A-B Tech on Tuesday, 3/17, at 11am.

02/28/2026

02/19/2026

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The TVA (Tennessee Valley Authority), a federally-owned utility company that provides all the electricity used in Tennessee, Kentucky, Mississippi, and Alabama as well as some to small portions of North Carolina, Georgia, and Virginia, has just decided to turn back time to 1930s which is the period when the TVA was founded as part of FDR's New Deal. The TVA is notorious as a "dirty" utility that has been responsible for significant air and water pollution across much of the Appalachian region.

Earlier this century (2005, with a 2011 settlement), North Carolina sued the TVA over air pollution from its 4 coal-fired power plants. Even after North Carolina passed its own pollution reducing laws controlling smoke stack emissions, thus reducing sulfur oxides and nitrogen oxides from power plants like the one at Long Shoals just south of Asheville, Asheville and other NC cities experienced pollution and poor air quality from pollutants emitted by TVA power plants that were blown across the state line and the mountain ridges.

Now that the Trump Administration has fired the last of the Biden Administrations appointees the TVA Board and appointed 4 new members, the TVA voted to drop renewable energy projects as a priority in their energy portfolio and keep two of the coal plants that were slated to be decommissioned. One of those two, the Kingston Fossil Plant, was to be repurposed as a gas-fired plant with battery storage facility, and the other, the Cumberland Fossil Plant recently failed and shutdown during a major winter storm.

What else will be brought back from extinction or the brink of extinction? Home milk delivery? Doctors making house calls? Telephone operators and repair technicians? All of those were common in the 1930s.

Our culture and the technology has changed. We do not need coal-fired power plants ruining our environment, water, and air, and exposing people to harmful, toxic substances. We need more renewable energy systems, now!

The Tennessee Valley Authority once prided itself on political independence. Data center demand and political pressure have it changing course from clean energy.

02/16/2026

Even the Olympics are wise to PFAS (per or polyfluoroalkyl substances), which are also called "forever chemicals" because they never breakdown and continue to persist in the environment, especially in water supplies, indefinitely.

We need to have stricter regulations and controls for chemicals. Maybe we don't really need them at all. This rule change for the Winter Olympics is one small step in the right direction.

Waxes containing PFAS are banned at the Milan-Cortina Games. Three athletes already have been disqualified for using them.