The Biggest Carbon Polluters Are to Blame for Half of U.S. Western Water Lost to Climate Change, ‘Groundbreaking’ Paper Says

Panorama photo: Lake Mead National Recreation Area – Hoover Dam – Intake Towers & Lake Mead – May 1, 2016. Photo credit: Jared via Flickr. CC BY 2.0. Article by Jake Bolster. Inside Climate News – August 25, 2026. Research article: Nature’s Communications Earth and Environment.

Some of the largest fossil fuel companies on Earth are disproportionately responsible for the water crisis in the American West, according to a first-of-its-kind study published Tuesday. From 2014 to 2024, climate change sapped over a third of the region’s typical annual snowpack and decreased streamflows by about 13 percent, the authors found in the paper, which appeared in Nature’s Communications Earth and Environment journal. About half of those losses are attributable to emissions from “carbon majors,” 122 fossil fuel companies and cement producers, the study concluded. […]

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