New York energy company ramps up disconnections as it seeks 11% price hike. Con Edison, city’s monopoly utility, cut off 88,000 households in first half of 2025 as climate crisis drives extreme temperatures

 

A man transports an air conditioner on a bicycle during a heat wave in New York on 24 June 2025. Photograph: Selcuk Acar/Anadolu via Getty Images

by Nina Lakhani

An energy company seeking to hike utility bills in New York City by 11% disconnected more than 88,000 households during the first six months of 2025, signaling a crackdown on families struggling to cover rising energy costs even as the climate crisis drives extreme temperatures.

Con Edison, the monopoly utility that provides electricity to 3.6m homes across the country’s largest city and neighboring Westchester county, disconnected almost 2.5% of all its customers between January and June this year – triple the total number of families left without power in 2024. One in five disconnected homes remain without power for at least a week.

The utility shut off 16,327 households in the month leading up to 25 June. New York was hit by its first heatwave between 23 and 25 June, breaking daytime and night-time records in Central Park and driving a surge in emergency room visits.

A construction crew from a ConEdison electric repair team continues road work in the Chinatown neighborhood of New York on 15 February 2025. Photograph: Robert Nickelsberg/Getty Images

New York is among the most expensive places for electricity, with families shouldering above-inflation price hikes in recent years on top of unaffordable housing and the broader cost of living crisis stemming from the Covid pandemic.

Heat-related deaths account for about 3% of all fatalities from May through September, making New York the second deadliest city for heat after Phoenix, Arizona.

 

In the past five years, more than 40% of New Yorkers have fallen into arrears, and 23% of households were disconnected at least once – leaving families without access to a fridge, internet, cooking facilities and heat or cooling until they can find the money to pay for reconnection.

Black and Latino New Yorkers are more than twice as likely as white residents to fall behind, and almost eight times more likely to have a utility shutoff, according to the 2024 Poverty Tracker/Robin Hood report on energy insecurity.

“Disconnection is an effective cost recovery strategy but it’s also completely inhumane. It’s traumatizing for families and costs some people their lives,” said Diana Hernandez, co-author of the report and associate professor of sociomedical sciences at Columbia University.

“People want to pay their bills but they are unaffordable for too many families.”

People walk across the Brooklyn Bridge on a day where the heat index is expected to top 100 degrees Fahrenheit in New York on 25 July 2025. Photograph: Spencer Platt/Getty Images

Almost 16% of New York homes – one in six Con Edison residential customers – were behind on their energy bills at the end of 2024, with debts totaling $948m, according to data submitted by the utility to the state regulator.

But as Con Edison ramped up disconnections over the past six months, the debt fell to $840m by the end of June with 12.5% of New Yorkers now behind on their bills.

At the current rate, Con Edison could disconnect 150,000 households by the end of the year, the highest number by any utility in the country, according to Mark Wolfe, an energy economist.

“Energy is unaffordable so people fall behind. The disconnection numbers show that Con Edison is aggressively cracking down, and life is going to become harder for poor people in New York,” said Wolfe, executive director of the National Energy Assistance Directors Association (Neada).

Researchers at Neada, the organization for state directors of the federally funded Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (Liheap), collated the debt and disconnection figures submitted to the New York Public Services Commission, the regulator.

There is no demographic breakdown but people of color, households with children, renters in small buildings, and people with pre-existing medical conditions who rely on electronic devices such as oxygen dispensers, as well as Bronx residents are all more likely to experience energy poverty and therefore a disconnection, the 2024 Robin Hood report found.

A Con Edison spokesperson said: “Termination of service is a last resort, and we do so only after extensive outreach and exhausting all other options … nearly two-thirds of residential customers in arrears are on payment plans. It is essential that our customers pay their bills to maintain safe service and the most reliable system in the nation.”

Most customers were reconnected within 24 hours and 80% within a week, the spokesperson added.

A woman uses a fan to cool off on a day where the heat index is expected to top 100 degrees Fahrenheit in New York on 25 July 2025. Photograph: Spencer Platt/Getty Images

Nationwide, an estimated one in three households experience energy poverty – the inability to access sufficient amounts of electricity and other energy sources due to financial hardship. Low-income households, people of color and states with the fewest social safety nets are disproportionately affected, and millions of families are regularly forced to ration food, medicines, energy and other essentials

Across New York state – and the country – a patchwork of regulations prevent some households from being shut off on very hot or cold days, but millions are not protected at all.

New York, like much of the US, is susceptible to extreme highs and low temperatures, and the climate crisis is driving more frequent and more intense heatwaves.

The number of heat deaths has been rising over the past decade, and on average 525 people in New York City die prematurely each year for heat-related reasons – the vast majority due to the impact high temperatures and humidity have on existing medical conditions, according to the latest figures from the city’s department of public health.

Heat kills twice Black New Yorkers at twice the rate of white residents due to past and current structural racism that creates economic, healthcare, housing, energy and other systems that benefit white people and disadvantage people of color, the report found.

 Most deaths occur in homes without access to a functioning air conditioning. Citywide, 11% of New Yorkers do not have air conditioners at home but the rate is much higher in low-income communities of color. One study found that a fifth of renters do not use their air conditioner due to cost.

And while protections have improved in recent years, it has not been enough to shield families hit hardest by rising energy prices, rents and inflation – or the increasingly brutal heat and humidity.

According to its website, Con Edison currently suspends disconnections on the hottest and coldest days based on forecasts from the National Weather Service. In the summer, the utility will not disconnect a family the day of or day before the heat index – what the temperature feels like when humidity is taken into account – is forecast to hit 90F (32.2C) at Central Park – one of the shadiest parts of the city. It also suspends disconnections for two days after a 90F heat index day.

Yet temperatures in some neighborhoods in the Bronx and upper Manhattan, where there are fewer trees, less access to air conditioning, more Black and Latino residents, and most heat deaths, exceed Central Park by 6 to 8 degrees due to the heat island effect, according to one study from 2022.

Energy poverty is a chronic problem for many New Yorkers.

A ConEdison van in the Bronx borough of New York on 20 July 2019. Photograph: David Dee Delgado/Bloomberg via Getty Images

New York state is the largest recipient of Liheap, the chronically underfunded bipartisan federal program that helped about 6m households keep on top of energy bills last year – and which narrowly survived being cut completely from Trump’s 2026 budget.

In fiscal year 2024-25, New York received $379m (almost 10%) of the total Liheap fund, and Governor Kathy Hochul invested an additional $35m to supplement support for heating bills in January after Liheap money ran out with months of winter still to go.

In the summer, the Liheap program only covers the cost of an air conditioning unit and installation for qualifying low-income households in New York – not energy bills. A city program can provide a means-tested loan for working families in arrears.

Disconnections declined during the pandemic thanks to a statewide moratorium and debt forgiveness schemes, as well as child tax credits and a boost to food stamps among other federal programs that helped lift millions of Americans out of poverty. But the Covid-era social safety programs have now all been terminated, and recent focus groups conducted by Hernandez and her colleagues found people still struggling to recover and rationing energy use because they were so concerned about rising bills.

“The city has got better at advocating for households disproportionately impacted by disconnections but it’s a drop in the bucket of where it should be,” said Hernandez, the energy justice expert. “The 88,000 households disconnected are people who have done everything to get the money and still couldn’t get caught up. It illustrates families have been left completely exposed.”

Yet energy costs are about to get even higher in New York.

People cool off at a fire hydrant in New York on 25 June 2025. Photograph: Charly Triballeau/AFP/Getty Images

Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act will make electricity production more expensive, leading to residents paying $140 a year on average more by 2030, according to analysis by Energy Innovation. The bill also slashes benefits such as Snap (food stamps) and Medicaid, which will put further pressure on millions of families.

Meanwhile, Con Edison is under fire from city and state politicians including Hochul and the city comptroller (chief finance officer) and former mayoral candidate, Brad Lander, for requesting a rate hike of 11% for electricity and 13% for gas, which the regulator is currently considering. Con Ed’s proposed electricity rate hike could raise the average household bill by $372 next year. (The utility provides gas to 1.1m homes.)

“The combination of rising temperatures, rising electricity rates, the possible termination of the federal Liheap program, and this increase in shutoffs by Con Ed risks dramatically increasing heat-related illness and deaths for New Yorkers,” Lander told the Guardian.

“There needs to be strategies in place so that people will pay their bills – but to punish people who are poor by cutting off their electricity ever, but especially in extreme heat or wintertime, is inhumane. It is a form of debtors’ prison.”

Con Edison said it provided $311m in bill discounts to income-eligible customers last year, and the regulator (PSC) recently expanded the Energy Affordability Program to help more vulnerable residents.

‘Unprecedented’ wildfire burns area size of Paris in southern France. Advancing blaze scorches 16,000 hectares near Spanish border, destroying homes and forcing people to flee

 

Firefighters in Southern France battle blaze larger than the size of Paris

 

Hundreds of firefighters are battling to stop the spread of a fast-moving wildfire in southern France after one woman died and nine people were injured as the blaze scorched a vast area of the Corbières hills.

The blaze burned an area the size of Paris over one afternoon and night and was still burning on Wednesday evening, making it the second biggest fire in France in 50 years.

The French prime minister, François Bayrou, who visited the area, described the fire as “a catastrophe of unprecedented scale”.

“What is happening today is linked to climate change and drought,” he said.

The fire, which started on Tuesday afternoon, had burned 16,000 hectares (39,537 acres) inland from the Mediterranean near the Spanish border. It began in the village of Ribaute in the Aude department, spreading across the rural, wooded area of the Corbières, famous for its vineyards and medieval 

 

A woman died in her home and one person was in a critical condition with severe burns, according to the Aude prefecture. Several firefighters were also injured. At least 25 homes were destroyed or damaged. Police are investigating the cause of the fire.

The environment ministry said the fire had destroyed the same amount of land in 24 hours that wildfires typically burned across France in a year.

“This is an exceptional fire that illustrates the scale of the consequences of the climate crisis,” the ministry said in a statement.

 

The wildfire remained “very active’’ on Wednesday, local authorities said.

The mayor of the village of Jonquières, Jacques Piraux, said all residents had been evacuated. “It’s a scene of sadness and desolation,” he told the broadcaster BFM TV. “It looks like a lunar landscape, everything is burned. More than half or three-quarters of the village has burned down. It’s hellish.”

Lucie Roesch, the secretary general of the Aude prefecture, said: “The fire is advancing in an area where all the conditions are ripe for it to progress. We are monitoring the edges and the back of the fire to prevent flare-ups.”

Planes were dropping water on the flames but Roesch said: “This fire will keep us busy for several days. It’s a long-term operation.”

Weather conditions were expected to remain unfavourable due to strong winds, rising temperatures and dry vegetation in the area, officials said.

Camping grounds and at least one village were partially evacuated and several roads closed. Residents and tourists were asked to remain in their homes unless told to leave by firefighters. Some tourists who were evacuated from campsites spent the night in municipal buildings.

One person told France 2 TV: “I wanted to go back to my house to get my things but I couldn’t go in. We’re waiting to see what the damage was. When I left, there were flames at the foot of the house.”

 

The French president, Emmanuel Macron, wrote on social media: “All of the nation’s resources are mobilised.” He called on people to exercise “the utmost caution”.

The Aude department, in particular, has experienced an increase in wildfires in recent years, aggravated by low rainfall and the removal of vineyards, which used to help slow their advance.

 

Aude Damesin, who lives in the town of Fabrezan, told Agence France-Presse that the frequency of wildfires was taking a toll on residents. “I find it tragic to see so many fires since the beginning of the summer,” she said. “It’s terrible for the wildlife, the flora and for the people, who are losing everything.”

Last month a wildfire that reached the southern port city of Marseille left about 300 people injured.

Southern Europe has experienced large fires this summer. Fires have burned more than 25,700 hectares of Portugal since the beginning of 2025, according to the European Forest Fire Information System. There have also been wildfires in central Spain, Turkey, Greece and in the Balkans.

Scientists say climate breakdown is exacerbating the frequency and intensity of heat and dryness, making the region more vulnerable to wildfires. Europe is the world’s fastest-warming continent, with temperatures increasing at twice the speed of the global average since the 1980s, according to the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service.

Agence France-Presse contributed to this report

Scientists say they've found out what killed over 5 billion sea stars

 

Researcher Alyssa Gehman of the Hakai Institute counts and measures sunflower sea stars in the Burke Channel on the Central Coast of British Columbia in 2023.Bennett Whitnell / Hakai Institute via AP

 

 By The Associated Press

 

 Starting in 2013, a mysterious sea star wasting disease sparked a mass die-off from Mexico to Alaska. The epidemic has devastated more than 20 species and continues today.

 

 

WASHINGTON — Scientists say they have at last solved the mystery of what killed more than 5 billion sea stars off the Pacific coast of North America in a decade-long epidemic.

Sea stars — often known as starfish — typically have five arms and some species sport up to 24 arms. They range in color from solid orange to tapestries of orange, purple, brown and green.

Starting in 2013, a mysterious sea star wasting disease sparked a mass die-off from Mexico to Alaska. The epidemic has devastated more than 20 species and continues today. Worst hit was a species called the sunflower sea star, which lost around 90% of its population in the outbreak's first five years.

"It's really quite gruesome," said marine disease ecologist Alyssa Gehman at the Hakai Institute in British Columbia, Canada, who helped pinpoint the cause.

Healthy sea stars have "puffy arms sticking straight out," she said. But the wasting disease causes them to grow lesions and "then their arms actually fall off."

The culprit? Bacteria that has also infected shellfish, according to a study published Monday in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution.

The findings "solve a long-standing question about a very serious disease in the ocean," said Rebecca Vega Thurber, a marine microbiologist at University of California, Santa Barbara, who was not involved in the study.

It took more than a decade for researchers to identify the cause of the disease, with many false leads and twists and turns along the way.

Early research hinted the cause might be a virus, but it turned out the densovirus that scientists initially focused on was actually a normal resident inside healthy sea stars and not associated with disease, said Melanie Prentice of the Hakai Institute, co-author of the new study.

Healthy populations of sunflower sea stars in the Knight Inlet fjord of the Central Coast of British Columbia in 2023.Grant Callegari / Hakai Institute via AP

 

 

Other efforts missed the real killer because researchers studied tissue samples of dead sea stars that no longer contained the bodily fluid that surrounds the organs.

But the latest study includes detailed analysis of this fluid, called coelomic fluid, where the bacteria Vibrio pectenicida were found.

"It's incredibly difficult to trace the source of so many environmental diseases, especially underwater," said microbiologist Blake Ushijima of the University of North Carolina, Wilmington, who was not involved in the research. He said the detective work by this team was "really smart and significant."

 

Now that scientists know the cause, they have a better shot at intervening to help sea stars.

Prentice said that scientists could potentially now test which of the remaining sea stars are still healthy — and consider whether to relocate them or breed them in captivity to later transplant them to areas that have lost almost all their sunflower sea stars.

Scientists may also test if some populations have natural immunity, and if treatments like probiotics may help boost immunity to the disease.

Such recovery work is not only important for sea stars, but for entire Pacific ecosystems because healthy starfish gobble up excess sea urchins, researchers say.

Sunflower sea stars "look sort of innocent when you see them, but they eat almost everything that lives on the bottom of the ocean," said Gehman. "They're voracious eaters."

With many fewer sea stars, the sea urchins that they usually munch on exploded in population — and in turn gobbled up around 95% of the kelp forest s in Northern California within a decade. These kelp forests provide food and habitat for a wide variety of animals including fish, sea otters and seals.

Researchers hope the new findings will allow them to restore sea star populations — and regrow the kelp forests that Thurber compares to "the rainforests of the ocean."

This city could run dry ‘within weeks’ as it grapples with an acute water crisis

The Amir Kabir dam in Iran's northern Alborz mountain range on June 1, 2025. Many of the country's dams are at alarmingly low levels. Atta Kenare/AFP/Getty Images

 By Laura Paddison

 

 

Iran’s capital Tehran could be weeks away from “day zero,” experts say — the day when taps run dry for large parts of the city — as the country suffers a severe water crisis. Key reservoirs are shrinking, authorities are scrambling to reduce water consumption and residents are desperately trying to conserve it to stave off catastrophe.

“If we do not make urgent decisions today, we will face a situation in the future that cannot be solved,” President Masoud Pezeshkian said at a cabinet meeting Monday.

Water is inherently short in supply in this arid nation. The difference is this crisis is hitting the capital, said Kaveh Madani, director of the United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health.

Tehran, home to around 10 million people, could run out of water altogether if consumption levels are not reduced, experts fear. “We are talking about a possible day zero within weeks,” said Madani, who previously served as the deputy head of Iran’s Department of Environment.

The roots of the crisis lie in a tangle of factors including what engineers describe as decades of poor water management and an increasing imbalance between supply and demand.

It’s all compounded by climate change. 

 

Iran is experiencing one of its worst droughts on record, and its fifth consecutive year of drought. The country is also baking under brutal heat. Temperatures spiked above 122 degrees Fahrenheit in parts of the country this month, according to climatologist and weather historian Maximiliano Herrera. “Iran seems almost perennially in a record-heat status,” he told CNN.

In response to the crisis, authorities have reduced water pressure in Tehran by almost half, affecting around 80% of households, the governor of Tehran Province Mohammad Sadegh Motamedian said Monday.

For people living in tall apartment buildings, that can mean no water supply at all. One man who lives on the 14th floor in Tehran says his taps often run dry.

Water is being delivered to the capital by tankers, and residents who can afford it are rushing to install storage tanks, Madani said. “We have never had a situation like this… this is new to Tehran.” 

 

Last week, the Iranian government declared a one-day public holiday in Tehran Province, as well as other regions across the country, in an effort to save water and electricity.

It’s now considering giving people in Tehran a week’s public holiday, government spokesperson Fatemeh Mohajerani said in a press briefing Monday, in hopes people will temporarily leave the city, cutting water demand. 

Water tankers in Tehran on Sunday, June 15, 2025. AFP/Getty Images

Water experts point to mismanagement as a big factor in the crisis.

Human activities, including excessive groundwater pumping, inefficient farming practices and unchecked urban water use have pushed the region “toward what can only be described as water bankruptcy,” said Amir AghaKouchak, a professor of civil and environmental engineering and Earth system science at the University of California, Irvine. 

 

Madani echoes this. It is “water bankruptcy, because it’s not a crisis anymore… (it’s) a situation where some of the damages are irreversible,” he said.

In Tehran, so much water has been pumped from aquifers to support its increasing population that parts of the city are sinking, sometimes by more than 10 inches a year.

The capital “is grappling with a systemic, long-term imbalance that threatens the very foundations of water security for its residents,” AghaKouchak told CNN.

Climate change is making a bad situation much worse. Iran has seen a more than 40% decrease in rainfall this year compared to the long-term average, and the Tehran Regional Water Company says dams that supply the capital are at about 21% of their capacity, according to Iran’s semi-official Mehr News Agency. 

 All but one of Iran’s 31 provinces are experiencing water stress, said Iran’s energy minister Abbas Aliabadi, as reported by Mehr News. When asked about the possibility of water rationing, he said: “I hope this does not happen.” 

A resident tries to cool off in Tehran, Iran on July 22, 2025. Public institutions in many provinces, including the capital Tehran, were closed on July 23 in an effort to conserve electricity and water. Fatemeh Bahrami/Anadolu/Getty Images

 

Experts say there are no easy answers to this crisis.

The government is opting for “band aid” measures, such as new water transfer projects, Madani said. Technical solutions such as desalination and wastewater recycling must be part of picture, he added, but “these address the symptoms for a while without curing the cause.” 

 

He advocates for a wholesale overhaul of the economy to move away from water-intensive agriculture — which currently accounts for about 90% of Iran’s water use — toward services and industry with a much lighter water footprint.

This kind of reform is likely to be painful and costly, both economically and politically, and highly unlikely under the current government and given the sanctions imposed on Iran by the US and others, he said.

Ultimately, the roots of the crisis are not just environmental or technical but “deeply political and systemic,’ AghaKouchak said. “Iran’s water crisis cannot be separated from its broader governance crisis.”

For now, the country is waiting for the fall and hoping it will bring rain.

“If Tehran survives until the end of September then there is hope for avoiding day zero,” Madani said.

About 100 people missing as flash flood tears through town in northern India. Large-scale search and rescue operation under way after at least four people killed in Himalayan region

 

Footage shows raging flash flood tearing into Indian town of Dharali – video

Agence France-Press in Dehradun

 

A torrent of mud from a flash flood has smashed into a town in India’s Himalayan region, tearing down a mountain valley before demolishing buildings and killing at least four people, with about 100 others missing.

Videos broadcast on Indian media showed a terrifying surge of muddy water sweeping away blocks of flats in the tourist region of Dharali in Uttarakhand state.

Several people could be seen running before being engulfed by the dark waves of debris that uprooted buildings.

The Indian defence minister, Sanjay Seth, told the Press Trust of India news agency: “It is a serious situation … We have received information about four deaths and around 100 people missing. We pray for their safety.”

 

The Uttarakhand state chief minister Pushkar Singh Dhami said rescue teams had been deployed “on a war footing”.

A senior local official, Prashant Arya, said four people had been killed, with other officials saying that the number could rise.

India’s army said 150 troops had reached the town, helping to rescue about 20 people who had survived the wall of freezing sludge. “A massive mudslide struck Dharali … triggering a sudden flow of debris and water through the settlement,” the army said.

Images released by the army, taken from the site after the main torrent had passed, showed a river of slow-moving mud.

A swathe of the town was swamped by deep debris. In places, the mud lapped at the rooftops of houses.

“Search and rescue efforts are ongoing, with all available resources being deployed to locate and evacuate any remaining stranded persons,” an army spokesperson, Suneel Bartwal, said.

The prime minister, Narendra Modi, expressed his condolences, and said that “no stone is being left unturned in providing assistance”.

Dhami said the flood was caused by a sudden and intense “cloudburst”, calling the destruction “extremely sad and distressing”.

The India Meteorological Department issued a red alert warning for the area, saying it had recorded “extremely heavy” rainfall of about 21cm (8in) in isolated parts of Uttarakhand.

Deadly floods and landslides are common during the monsoon season from June to September, but experts say the climate crisis, coupled with urbanisation, is increasing their frequency and severity.

The UN’s World Meteorological Organization said last year that more intense floods and droughts are a “distress signal” for what is to come as climate breakdown makes the planet’s water cycle ever more unpredictable.

Melting glaciers threaten to wipe out European villages - is the steep cost to protect them worth it ?

 

In a small village in Switzerland's beautiful Loetschental valley, Matthias Bellwald walks down the main street and is greeted every few steps by locals who smile or offer a handshake or friendly word.

  by Imogen Foulkes Geneva correspondent

 

Mr Bellwald is a mayor, but this isn't his village. Two months ago his home, three miles away in Blatten, was wiped off the map when part of the mountain and glacier collapsed into the valley.

The village's 300 residents had been evacuated days earlier, after geologists warned that the mountain was increasingly unstable. But they lost their homes, their church, their hotels and their farms.

Lukas Kalbermatten also lost the hotel that had been in his family for three generations."The feeling of the village, all the small alleys through the houses, the church, the memories you had when you played there as a child… all this is gone."

Blatten's residents were evacuated days before the disaster

Today, he is living in borrowed accommodation in the village of Wiler. Mr Bellwald has a temporary office there too, where he is supervising the massive clean-up operation - and the rebuild.

The good news is, he believes the site can be cleared by 2028, with the first new houses ready by 2029. But it comes with a hefty pricetag.

Rebuilding Blatten is estimated to cost hundreds of millions of dollars, perhaps as much as $1 million (USD) per resident.

Voluntary contributions from the public quickly raised millions of Swiss francs to help those who had lost their homes. The federal government and the canton promised financial support too. But some in Switzerland are asking: is it worth it?

 Houses were destroyed after a large part of Blatten was buried under masses of ice, mud, and rock

 

Though the disaster shocked Switzerland, some two thirds of the country is mountainous, and climate scientists warn that the glaciers and the permafrost – the glue that holds the mountains together – are thawing as the global temperature increases, making landslides more likely. Protecting areas will be costly.

Switzerland spends almost $500m a year on protective structures, but a report carried out in 2007 for the Swiss parliament suggested real protection against natural hazards could cost six times that.

Is that a worthwhile investment? Or should the country - and residents - really consider the painful option of abandoning some of their villages?

The day the earth shook

The Alps are an integral part of Swiss identity. Each valley, like the Loetschental, has its own culture.

Mr Kalbermatten used to take pride in showing hotel guests the ancient wooden houses in Blatten. Sometimes he taught them a few words of Leetschär, the local dialect.

Losing Blatten, and the prospect of losing others like it, has made many Swiss ask themselves how many of those alpine traditions could disappear.

'I'll never forget it. The earth shook.' Fernando Lehner recalls the day of the landslide

Today, Blatten lies under millions of cubic metres of rock, mud, and ice. Above it, the mountain remains unstable.

When they were first evacuated, Blatten's residents, knowing their houses had stood there for centuries, believed it was a purely precautionary measure. They would be home again soon, they thought.

Fernando Lehner, a retired businessman, says no one expected the scale of the disaster. "We knew there would be a landslide that day… But it was just unbelievable. I would never have imagined that it would come down so quickly.

"And that explosion, when the glacier and landslide came down into the valley, I'll never forget it. The earth shook."

Landslides are 'more unpredictable'

The people of Blatten, keen to get their homes back as soon as possible, don't want to talk about climate change. They point out that the Alps are always dangerous, and describe the disaster as a once in a millennium event.

But climate scientists say global warming is making alpine life more risky.

Matthias Huss, a glaciologist with Zurich's Federal Institute of Technology, as well as glacier monitoring group Glamos, argues that climate change was a factor in the Blatten disaster.

"The thawing of permafrost at very high elevation led to the collapse of the summit," he explains.

Glaciologist Matthias Huss argues that climate change was a factor in the Blatten disaster

"This mountain summit crashed down onto the glacier… and also the glacier retreat led to the fact that the glacier stabilised the mountain less efficiently than before. So climate change was involved at every angle."

Geological changes unrelated to climate change also played a role, he concedes - but he points out that glaciers and permafrost are key stabilising factors across the alps.

His team at Glamos has monitored a record shrinkage of the glaciers over the past few years. And average alpine temperatures are increasing.

In the days before the mountain crashed down, Switzerland's zero-degree threshold – the altitude at which the temperature reaches freezing point – rose above 5,000 metres, higher than any mountain in the country.

"It is not the very first time that we're seeing big landslides in the Alps," says Mr Huss. "I think what should be worrying us is that these events are becoming more frequent, but also more unpredictable."

Blatten's residents lost their homes, church and farms: living below a mountain, as many Swiss do, looks increasingly precarious

A study from November 2024 by the Swiss Federal Research Institute, which reviewed three decades of literature, concurred that climate change was "rapidly altering high mountain environments, including changing the frequency, dynamic behavior, location, and magnitude of alpine mass movements", although quantifying the exact impact of climate change was "difficult".

More villages, more evacuations

Graubünden is the largest holiday region in Switzerland, and is popular with skiers and hikers for its untouched nature, alpine views and pretty villages.

The Winter Olympics was hosted here twice - in the upmarket resort of St Moritz - while the town of Davos hosts world leaders for the World Economic Forum each year.

One village in Graubünden has a different story to tell.

Brienz was evacuated more than two years ago because of signs of dangerous instability in the mountain above.

Its residents have still not been able to return, and in July heavy rain across Switzerland led geologists to warn a landslide appeared imminent.

Average alpine temperatures are increasing, say scientists. Meanwhile glaciers are shrinking

Elsewhere in Switzerland, above the resort of Kandersteg, in the Bernese Oberland region, a rockface has become unstable, threatening the village. Now residents have an evacuation plan.

There too, heavy rain this summer raised the alarm, and some hiking trails up to Oeschinen Lake, a popular tourist attraction, were closed.

Some disasters have claimed lives. In 2017, a massive rockslide came down close to the village of Bondo, killing eight hikers.

Bondo has since been rebuilt, and refortified, at a cost of $64 million. As far back as 2003, the village of Pontresina spent millions on a protective dam to shore up the thawing permafrost in the mountain above.

Not every alpine village is at risk, but the apparent unpredictability is causing huge concern.

The debate around relocation

Blatten, like all Swiss mountain villages, was risk mapped and monitored; that's why its 300 residents were evacuated. Now, questions are being asked about the future of other villages too.

In the aftermath of the disaster, there was a huge outpouring of sympathy. But the possible price tag of rebuilding it also came with doubts.

An editorial in the influential Neue Zürcher Zeitung questioned Switzerland's traditional - and constitutional - wealth distribution model, which takes tax revenue from urban centres like Zurich to support remote mountain communities.

The article described Swiss politicians as being "caught in an empathy trap", adding that "because such incidents are becoming more frequent due to climate change, they are shaking people's willingness to pay for the myth of the Alps, which shapes the nation's identity."

It suggested people living in risky areas of the Alps should consider relocation.

 

Preserving the alpine villages is expensive. And Neue Zürcher Zeitung was not the first to question the cost of saving every alpine community, but its tone angered some.

While three quarters of Swiss live in urban areas, many have strong family connections to the mountains. Switzerland may be a wealthy, highly developed, high-tech country now, but its history is rural, marked by poverty and harsh living conditions. Famine in the 19th century caused waves of emigration.

Mr Kalbermatten explains that the word "heimat" is hugely important in Switzerland. "Heimat is when you close your eyes and you think about what you did as a child, the place you lived as a child.

"It's a much bigger word than home."

Ask a Swiss person living for decades in Zurich or Geneva, or even New York, where their heimat is, and for many, the answer will be the village they were born in.

For Mr Kalbermatten and his sister and brothers, who live in cities, heimat is the valley where people speak Leetschär, the dialect they all still dream in.

 

The fear is that if these valleys become depopulated, other aspects of unique mountain culture could be lost too - like the Tschäggättä, traditional wooden masks, unique to the Loetschental valley.

Their origins are mysterious, possibly pagan. Every February, local young men wear them, along with animal skins, and run through the streets.

Mr Kalbermatten points to the example of some areas of northern Italy where this loss of culture has happened. "[Now] there are only abandoned villages, empty houses, and wolves.

"Do we want that?"

Lukas Kalbermatten believes the site can be cleared by 2028, with Blatten's first new houses ready by 2029.

For many, the answer is no: An opinion poll from research institute, Sotomo, asked 2,790 people what they most cherished about their country. The most common answer? Our beautiful alpine landscape, and our stability.

But the poll did not ask what price they were prepared to pay.

Trying to tame a mountain

Boris Previsic, the director of the University of Lucerne's Institute for the Culture of the Alps, says that many Swiss, at least in the cities, had begun to believe they had tamed the alpine environment.

Switzerland's railways, tunnels, cable cars and high alpine passes are masterpieces of engineering, connecting alpine communities. But now, in part because of climate change, he suggests, that confidence is gone.

"The human induced geology is too strong compared to human beings," he argues.

"In Switzerland, we thought we could do everything with infrastructure. Now I think we are at ground zero concerning infrastructure."

Boris Previsic says that many Swiss, at least in the cities, had begun to believe they had tamed the alpine environment

The village of Blatten had stood for centuries. "When you are in a village which has existed already for 800 years, you should feel safe. That is what is so shocking."

In his view, it is time to fight against these villages dying out. "To fight means we have to be more prepared," he explains. "But we have to be more flexible. We have always also to consider evacuation."

At the end of the day, he adds, "you cannot hold back the whole mountain".

In the village of Wiler, Mr Previsic's point is greeted with a weary smile. "The mountain always decides," agrees Mr Bellwald.

"We know that they are dangerous. We love the mountains, we don't hate them because of that. Our grandfathers lived with them. Our fathers lived with them. And our children will also live with them."

Helicopters carry debris from the disaster site at Blatten. Even the military is involved in the operation.

At lunchtime in the local restaurant in Wiler, the tables are filled with clean-up teams, engineers and helicopter crew. The Blatten recovery operation is in full swing.

At one table, a man from one of Switzerland's biggest insurance companies sits alone. Every half hour, he is joined by someone, an elderly couple, a middle aged man, a young woman. He buys each a drink, and carefully notes down the details of their lost homes.

Outside, along the valley's winding roads, lorries and bulldozers trundle up to the disaster site. Overhead, helicopters carry large chunks of debris. Even the military is involved.

Sebastian Neuhaus commands the Swiss army's disaster relief readiness battalion, and says they must press on despite the scale of the task. "We have to," he says. "There are 300 life histories buried down there."

The abiding feeling is one of stubborn determination to carry on. "If we see someone from Blatten, we hug each other," says Mr Kalbermatten.

"Sometimes we say, 'it's nice, you're still here.' And that's the most important thing, we are all still here."

Lead image: The village of Blatten after the disaster. Credit: EPA / Shutterstock

Clean energy subsidies should be replaced with ‘market-based incentives’ from 2030, Australia’s Productivity Commission says. Interim report on investing in cheaper, cleaner energy and the net zero transformation sets out reforms

 

There are concerns that the Labor government will not reach its 2030 climate targets, which include 82% of energy production from renewable sources. Photograph: Bloomberg/Getty Images

by Patrick Commins Economics editor 

  

The Productivity Commission says clean energy subsidy programs should not be extended beyond 2030, and that “market-based incentives” should guide investment in the clean energy transition over the coming decades.

The commission’s interim report on investing in cheaper, cleaner energy and the net zero transformation is one of five which will be released over two weeks and which set out a series of reforms to reinvigorate Australia’s productivity.

The commissioner Barry Sterland said: “Australia’s net zero transformation is well under way.”

“Getting the rest of the way at the lowest possible cost is central to our productivity challenge,” he said.

 

The commission stopped short of repeating previous recommendations for a broad price on carbon.

But it advocated for a significant expansion of the safeguard mechanism, which sets emission limits for only the heaviest polluters, by slashing the threshold from 100,000 tonnes to 25,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent a year.

 

Chris Bowen, the climate change and energy minister, last week announced an increase in taxpayer subsidies available for green energy projects under its successful capacity investment scheme.

The CIS and the government’s other clean energy subsidy scheme, the renewable energy target, do not extend beyond 2030, and the commission argued that the two programs should be replaced with “market-based incentives in the electricity sector”.

The commission also said the implementation of the new vehicle efficiency standard meant federal and state governments should phase out specific concessions for electric vehicles, including on fringe benefits tax, stamp duties and registration fees.

A new emissions-reduction incentive for heavy vehicles should also be introduced, the commission said.

The commission said it took too long to develop green energy infrastructure and there were deep concerns that the government would not reach its 2030 climate targets, which include 82% of energy production from renewable sources.

 

The report called for an overhaul of how green energy projects are assessed under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act, to allow decision-makers to consider whether a project is important to Australia’s clean energy transition.

Martin Stokie, a commissioner who is leading the inquiry alongside Sterland, said Australia’s “sluggish and uncertain approval processes are not up to the task” of delivering the huge amount of clean energy infrastructure needed to meet national climate targets.

“Overdue reforms to the EPBC Act would both speed up approvals and better protect the environment,” he said.

The environment minister, Murray Watt, is reviewing the act as part of a new package of federal nature laws, which were shelved before the election after lobbying from mining companies and the Western Australian government.

The commission also made a series of recommendations to build the country’s resilience to the effects of the climate emergency.

The interim report called on the commonwealth to lead development of a public database of all climate hazards, and a series of goals and policies to improve the resilience of houses.

Notably, the commission backed a climate resilience star-rating system that would reflect the potential damage from the climate crisis.

“People’s experience of climate change will depend on the resilience of their home, but most lack the information they need to invest in upgrades,” Sterland said.

“As climate risks intensify, boosting our resilience can lower the costs of disaster recovery and create a healthier, safer and more productive Australia.”

The commission will now consult on its draft recommendations before the final report due at the end of this year.