A blog by Shelia Hu, Researcher and Editorial Associate, NRDC

Despite the science denialism of federal leaders, on the ground, we’ve continued to make strides for cleaner air, threatened wildlife and wildlands, and community resilience.

Climate progress in the United States has hit some roadblocks in 2025, to say the least. In its first year, the second Trump administration got straight to work torpedoing bedrock environmental protections to pad the profits of its allies in the fossil fuel industry. 

On top of abandoning national leadership on the matter, the administration also pulled the country out of international collaborations, like the Paris Agreement, to address our warming world.

But climate advocates have kept up their efforts to both slow the climate crisis and mitigate its consequences, which affect every living thing in every corner of the globe. And thanks to their persistence, 2025 saw some significant wins as well—in clean transportation, community adaptation planning, and much more—that deserve attention. 

So, after enduring a year of much bad news, it’s important to recharge by taking inspiration from the successes that climate activists did achieve. Here are a few that are helping to keep our heads up, our hearts full, and our hands busy.

Greener transit

With transportation being the country’s largest source of climate pollution, it was no small feat when New York City became the first American city to launch a congestion pricing program last January. A nod to similar programs in London, Singapore, and Stockholm, the initiative requires vehicles to pay a fee to enter Manhattan’s central business district. The $9 peak-hour fee for most cars is not only reducing traffic (and therefore air pollution) in a city with 8.5 million residents but also encouraging more people to ride public transit. In turn, the new tolls—projected to bring in $500 million after the first year in effect—allow the city’s transit authority to start planning for much-needed repairs and improvements to its bus, commuter rail, and subway systems. 

Within the program’s first year, researchers with Cornell University confirmed that air quality citywide (and even in the surrounding suburbs) also improved. In their study, they noted that for the central business district specifically, the harmful pollutants referred to as particulate matter 2.5 dropped by 22 percent.

Transportation systems in other parts of the country also took steps toward a cleaner future. In July, the California Transportation Commission approved $94 million to build 500 new electric truck charging ports along the Golden State’s busiest highways. Carter Rubin, NRDC’s director of state transportation advocacy, notes that a whopping 25 percent increase in the number of truck chargers would make it easier for companies to update their dirty diesel fleets. 

And in December, Illinois Governor JB Pritzker signed a law that would secure $1.5 billion to modernize the state’s mass transit systems. The funding package will not only help avoid service cuts but also expand electric vehicle charging across the state. “This bill is emblematic of what states should be doing to support their big transit systems,” Rubin says. “Stabilize funding, invest in more service, and improve regional coordination between commuter rail and urban transit systems.”

Holding polluters accountable

Another area of recent progress focused on preparing communities to face down intensifying storms and other climate change impacts. Such readiness is essential to improving resilience on the ground; after all, the United States experienced 14 major weather events—from wildfires to flooding—that caused $101.4 billion in damages in just the first half of 2025. And the burden of preventing and repairing these damages falls heavily on state and local budgets that are already stretched thin.

A new campaign known as Make Polluters Pay seeks to hold the fossil fuel industry financially accountable for its role in climate change. Advocates point out that the oil and gas industry—responsible for more than 40 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions—continues to rake in record profits, averaging more than $3 trillion a year since 2018. “The general idea behind these polluters pay laws is a very basic one: If you make a mess, you should clean it up,” says Kimberly Ong, a senior attorney at NRDC. 

One type, the “climate superfund law,” would require large fossil fuel companies to pay into a fund that can be used by the state to protect its residents from future climate damage. That could mean anything from building climate-resilient housing and infrastructure and installing air conditioners in schools and private homes to restoring wetlands (which help curb flooding). 

So far, Vermont and New York have successfully passed such laws, both in 2024. In December, Maryland committed to conducting a study assessing the total state costs associated with climate change. This is an important first step in our fight to pass a full climate superfund law in the state, as the study will help determine the fund’s size. 

California, Connecticut, Hawai’i, Maine, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Oregon, Rhode Island, Tennessee, and Virginia all introduced similar bills recently, indicating a growing interest in establishing some climate accountability from fossil fuel companies. 

Tackling food waste

Several states also made strides in tackling our serious food waste problem—a social, economic, and climate issue. Landfills are the third-largest source of human-generated methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, and advocates are looking to lower the amount of food scraps we send there to rot. 

Washington State wants to reduce its food waste disposal by 75 percent by 2030 (from 2015 levels). Governor Bob Ferguson passed a law in May that expands organic waste collection requirements (covering food scraps and yard debris) to multifamily residential buildings. It also aims to lessen confusion and improve habits around recycling by making bins uniform across the state. And on the opposite coast, Maine passed a law to require facilities that generate more than two tons of food waste per week (think schools, hospitals, and food manufacturers) to divert that waste to a recycling facility—as opposed to a landfill or incinerator—starting in 2030.

Meanwhile, in Illinois, a food waste diversion law went into effect this year, requiring large event facilities to provide composting services. Chicago also expanded its popular food scrap drop-off program by adding 13 locations throughout the city. Since the program launched two years ago, more than a million pounds of food waste have been diverted from landfills.

Several cities also made inroads. In New York, the Department of Sanitation completed its first year of curbside collection of food scraps and yard waste from every city household. And Austin, Baltimore, and Columbus—all of which partner with NRDC on our Food Matters Initiative—earned recognition from the Milan Urban Food Policy Pact this year. The pact, an international effort to tackle food waste, held its global forum in October. A total of 30 new cities signed on. “In the absence of momentum from the federal government, our cities are looking elsewhere for inspiration,” says Yvette Cabrera, NRDC’s director of food waste. “International forums like these have been great resources for new ideas.” 

International teamwork

In November, the United States government, under President Trump, boycotted talks to address the global climate crisis in Belém, Brazil. The 30th meeting of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP30) drew more than 56,000 delegates from 194 countries. Some 5,000 of the attendees were Indigenous Peoples, representing communities of environmental stewards on the frontlines of climate change around the globe. 

Rich countries agreed to at least triple the adaptation finance going to developing countries, to help them prepare for and minimize the impacts of rising seas, intensifying storms, prolonged droughts, and more. And should this goal be met, it will result in a minimum of $120 billion annually by 2035. The countries also agreed to create a Just Transition Mechanism. As they chart the path away from fossil fuels and toward a low-carbon economy, this mechanism can support communities with the resources they need to move forward, including the retraining of workers for growing job fields. Additionally, momentum continued to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Toward that end, countries that represent more than three-quarters of the world’s emissions announced new 2035 climate targets.

Dubbed the “Forest COP,” COP30 zoomed in on protecting trees, in recognition of the carbon-capturing powers of large, intact forests like the Amazon. Brazil launched a conservation fund to support countries with tropical forests, with 20 percent earmarked for local communities and Indigenous Peoples, who play crucial roles in forest protection and have had to continuously defend their lands from development and industrialization. European countries pledged $2.5 billion over the next five years to protect the Congo Basin rainforest, the second biggest in the world. These wins build on others made during meetings of the International Union for Conservation of Nature in Abu Dhabi in October. There, countries adopted several resolutions on forest protection, including one on ensuring accountability for forest protection, another on preventing forest bioenergy, and a third on protecting the Congo Basin.

Many more global efforts, too, advanced climate action in 2025. Among those were the ratification of the High Seas Treaty in September and meetings on the Montreal Protocol—to enhance global cooperation around protecting the ozone layer—in July. 

“Ten years after the historic Paris climate agreement, the world is moving toward an unstoppable, more prosperous future,” says NRDC’s International team leader Yamide Dagnet, who was one of 13 staffers at the COP30 negotiations. “While we must dramatically pick up the pace, the direction of travel is clear.” So for 2026, let’s keep our eye on the road.

This blog has been sourced from the official website of NRDC and has been slightly edited. It can be accessed here