In an era where wildfires rage across Europe, water crises grip the US, and massive infrastructure projects like China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) reshape global landscapes, two invisible forces are amplifying the chaos: misinformation and environmental decline. Fueled by AI’s rapid evolution, false narratives spread rapidly online, eroding public trust, polarizing societies, and even weakening democratic processes. As a result, this two-year project with the shortened title “Impact of Misinformation & Mistrust on Environmental Issues & Democracy: A Comparative Study” aims to offer real solutions to fight back, as well as reveal ideological patterns of online news discourse that have not been studied before to such an extent. The project, funded by the AXA Research Fund and hosted at Hong Kong Baptist University, dives deep into how digital falsehoods distort our understanding of environmental disasters, turning urgent global challenges into battlegrounds for division and manipulation.