And that was the hottest summer in U.S. history, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration confirmed this week.
August, in fact, has never been so bad. It led the college football season to kick off with a sputter and a gasp. South Carolina’s game was called due to “searing temperatures” with 10 minutes left to play. Two schools in Kansas agreed to end their game in a tie rather than risk playing overtime.
Even after a win, the first thing Indiana Coach Curt Cignetti said had nothing to do with the defending champions’ dominating performance. “I heard the heat index was at 152,” he told the media, “which I’ve never heard of in my life.”
In Texas, anyway, it doesn’t look as though it’ll be any better this weekend than last, either.
While teams have been installing their offenses, though, the Trump administration has considered cutting one of the federal government’s last lines of defense against the heat-trapping, climate-altering pollution that’s causing the problem. We’ll break that down below.
This week:
More climate pollution at the worst possible time?
How clean energy is helping one school district keep costs down and the lights on
Federal court: “No emergency” requiring coal plants to stay open
More pollution!?
In August, the Trump administration proposed getting rid of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s rule that limits the amount of heat-trapping carbon dioxide that can be released from power plants.
This, after also refusing earlier to limit methane, which is responsible for about a third of the warming we’re already experiencing. And that, after dismissing the government’s fundamental legal and scientific determination that climate change even threatens our health and safety in the first place.
A draft of the proposal was sent for review to the White House before Labor Day, E&E News by POLITICO reported, as part of a larger campaign to prevent all future administrations from being able to limit climate pollution.
Meanwhile, as college football fans saw last weekend, climate pollution is already making life more dangerous and more expensive. The University of Alabama, for one, made sure to have 30,000 pounds of ice on hand and 10-15 bottles of water for each player on their football team on Saturday.
Cities across the country are rushing to protect their residents from extreme heat, which kills more people than all other climate-related weather disasters combined. In Houston, for example, the city council just strengthened an ordinance requiring all landlords to ensure their tenants have access to air-conditioning equipment that can keep their homes cooler than 80 degrees.
That’s not exactly the “concierge, white-glove service” the Trump administration bragged about providing the oil and gas industry last summer. Or, as one state industry regulator in Texas groused as the world gets hotter and hotter, “just turn the damn air conditioner up.”
Recommended reading
The economics of solar power might save thousands of jobs from Trump administration attacks | Vital Signs
I read the new U.N. climate report so you don’t have to | Ayana Elizabeth Johnson on Substack
Stories from the States
Pennsylvania
But it’s not only more harmful climate and air pollution that’s driving what appears to be widespread antipathy to data centers. Governments at every level are scrambling to respond. In 2026, 15 states have considered legislation for moratoriums or bans, and 39 states introduced legislation on data center’s electricity use, and 31 on water use.
Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro has tried to implement new guidelines, signing an executive order for data centers with development standards. Developers are required to bring their own power generation, meet clean-energy requirements, pay for infrastructure needed to serve their electricity demand, secure local approval and meet environmental, water quality, transparency and community engagement requirements.
Complicating the response is another EPA proposal that would get rid of the minimum public comment period for “minor sources of pollution,” a category that includes data centers. The proposal could allow them to go up faster, before communities could ask questions. “Data centers and other polluters shouldn’t be able to move into our neighborhoods on the sly and keep communities in the dark about their air pollution impacts,” Surbhi Sarang, my colleague in Washington D.C., at Environmental Defense Fund, said.
Virginia
In Virginia, which has more data centers than anywhere else in the world, one school district is investing in clean energy to keep electricity costs down and the lights on, even during emergencies.
Roanoke City Public Schools is adding a battery-storage system to rooftop solar arrays at its two high schools, creating “microgrids” that will allow them to remain open as Federal Emergency Management Agency-designated shelters in the case of disasters that cause widespread power outages.
These investments, Canary Media reported, pay for themselves — and then some: “The solar arrays are poised to cover 44% of the schools’ energy needs, cutting the school system’s electric bills by more than $22 million over 35 years. Because many installations come with new roofs, they’ll also help the district avoid $24 million in capital costs.”
Michigan
Today, a federal court rejected the Trump administration’s repeated claims and ruled there is “no emergency” justifying the Department of Energy’s orders that have required a coal-burning, money-losing power plant in Michigan to stay open indefinitely past its planned retirement. (You can read the whole saga here.)
Having been extended for more than a year, now, the orders have created at least $259 million in unexpected costs that the utility’s customers are bearing. Similar “emergency” orders have been issued for retiring coal plants in Indiana, Colorado, Washington and Florida.
The bottom line? “The Department of Energy’s unlawful actions attempted to make families and businesses in the Midwest wastefully pay hundreds of millions of dollars for a coal plant that should have been shut down over a year ago,” EDF’s Ted Kelly said.