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By: Anne Hedges During the last several months, NorthWestern Energy has vehemently denied that data centers are behind its desire to “merge” with another South Dakota utility, Black Hills Energy. However, when company executives announced the deal to investors, they repeatedly pointed to data centers as a top reason for the two utilities’ efforts. NorthWestern …

The post NorthWestern’s mega-monopoly merger is all about data centers appeared first on Montana Environmental Information Center - MEIC.

Ask most Americans what they know about the Arctic, and you’ll likely hear something like, “It’s far away.” Or “I’ll probably never get to go there.” Or even “I have no idea where that is.” And they’re mostly right. The Arctic is vast, wild, and remote. Most people will never stand on the coastal plain of the Arctic Refuge, never watch the Porcupine Caribou herd migrate across the tundra, never hear the silence of a landscape untouched by roads or cities or noise. 

And yet, what happens in the Arctic doesn’t stay in the Arctic. 

Whether you live in upstate New York or the Deep South, the Midwest or the mountains of Colorado, the coast of California or somewhere in between, the Arctic is connected to you. And right now, the policies being made in the stuffy halls of Congress in D.C. about that distant, breathtaking place are policies that affect every American who cares about public lands, clean water, wildlife, and the wild places that belong to all of us. 

Learn More Why the Arctic? 

It’s a fair question. The Arctic Refuge alone spans more than 19 million acres of wilderness in northeastern Alaska. There are no roads, no trails, and no campgrounds. It’s one of the last truly wild places left on Earth. The coastal plain, a 1.6-million-acre stretch along the Beaufort Sea, is the calving ground of the Porcupine Caribou herd and home to polar bears, musk oxen, wolves, and hundreds of species of migratory birds that travel to all 50 states and six continents. For the Gwich’in people, it’s sacred, they literally call it “the sacred place where life begins.” 

But the Arctic isn’t just a place for those who can reach it. It’s a place that belongs to every American, and what happens there matters to every American. The birds that nest on the coastal plain in summer return to backyards, wetlands, and flyways across the country. The caribou that have sustained the Gwich’in for millennia are part of an ecosystem that influences climate and biodiversity far beyond Alaska’s borders. And the decisions being made about the Arctic, about whether to drill it, protect it, lease it, or preserve it, are being made through policies that touch public lands from Minnesota to Montana to Wyoming and beyond. 

The policies that shape what happens to the Arctic aren’t Alaska policies. They’re American policies, written by Congress, signed by presidents, implemented by federal agencies that manage hundreds of millions of acres of public land from coast to coast. 

A Wave of Policy Changes 

Across the country, there’s been a rapid restructuring of how public lands are managed, who has a say, what gets prioritized, and who benefits. 

On day one of the current Trump administration, an executive order titled “Unleashing Alaska’s Extraordinary Resource Potential” directed federal agencies to reverse protections across Alaska, including the Arctic Refuge, the Western Arctic, and the Tongass National Forest. Interior leadership followed with orders rolling back climate priorities and removing limits on energy development. 

Source: X / Sen. Dan Sullivan

Then came massive budget cuts. A proposed 35% reduction to key land management agencies, including the National Park Service, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and Bureau of Land Management. Thousands of staff positions have been eliminated or left unfilled, including rangers, scientists, and land managers. 

The result is visible on the ground, from closed ranger stations, unmaintained trails, reduced scientific monitoring, to fewer people responsible for overseeing hundreds of millions of acres of public land. 

Public lands without the people to steward them aren’t really protected, they’re just waiting. 

The “One Big Beautiful Bill”  

A sweeping budget package passed in July 2025 reshaped federal land policy across the country, not just in Alaska. 

While proposed land sales in the West were removed after public pushback, the final law still dramatically expanded fossil fuel leasing and reduced environmental protections. 

It mandates quarterly oil and gas lease sales across more than 200 million acres of public land, removing agency discretion to protect sensitive areas. It requires millions of acres in the Western Arctic to be opened for leasing and mandates drilling in the Arctic Refuge coastal plain while limiting public input and judicial review. 

Source: Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee budget reconciliation bill text (as of June 16, 2025); BLM, USFS. Map by The Wilderness Society

It expands coal leasing, increases fees on renewable energy development on public lands, and reduces funding for national parks. 

These decisions don’t just stop in Alaska. They affect Wyoming, Montana, Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, Nevada, California, and beyond, shaping wildlife habitat, water systems, recreation economies, and public access nationwide. 

The CRA: One Tool in a Much Bigger Toolbox 

Outside the halls of Congress, few people are familiar with something called the Congressional Review Act (CRA), but they should because it’s one of the most powerful and consequential tools in American politics, and it’s increasingly being used to dismantle protections for the public lands and waters that belong to all of us. 

The CRA was originally designed to allow Congress to review major federal regulations. Historically, it was used sparingly, only once in its first 20 years. But in recent years, it’s been expanded, weaponized, and stretched far beyond its original intent.  

In 2017, the Trump administration used it to invalidate 17 Obama-era rules. In 2025 alone, 22 CRA repeals were signed into law. And each repeal carries a particularly alarming consequence because once a rule is overturned by the CRA, a future administration is barred from issuing anything “substantially similar” without an act of Congress. A single vote can permanently foreclose future protection, shutting the door not just for today, but for generations. 

Now, since 2025, it’s been used to overturn land management plans across Alaska, Montana, Wyoming, and North Dakota.  

It took years of public input, environmental review, and collaboration to build these protections. It takes one vote to erase them, and another act of Congress to restore them. 

From the Arctic to Your Backyard 

If you thought some of these policies, like the CRA, were just an Alaska problem, think again. 

In January 2026, the House passed a CRA resolution to overturn a 20-year mining ban protecting the headwaters of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness in northeastern Minnesota. In April 2026, the Senate followed, voting to open more than 225,000 acres of the Superior National Forest to sulfide-ore copper mining, even though the U.S. Forest Service had concluded such mining would cause irreversible harm to the ecosystem. 

Canoeing the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness in Northern Minnesota. (Brad Zweerink / Earthjustice)

The Boundary Waters is a 1.1-million-acre designated Wilderness Area, one of the most visited wilderness destinations in the country, with roughly 250,000 visitors each year. The 20-year mining ban at its headwaters was put in place in 2023 after years of extensive public input. That process, that democratic, science-based process, was undone in a matter of months by a simple majority vote using a tool that was never intended for this purpose. 

The same playbook. The same tool. The same consequences. Whether it’s the Arctic Refuge’s coastal plain in Alaska or the birch forests of northern Minnesota, policies are being used to dismantle public land protections across the country, one resolution at a time. 

The Stakes for Every American 

Public lands belong to every American. Every acre of the Arctic Refuge, every mile of the Boundary Waters, every stretch of BLM land in Wyoming or Montana or central Alaska, these places are held in trust for all of us. And the decisions being made about them right now are decisions about who gets to use those places, and for what, and whether future generations will have them at all. 

When policies are used to overturn a resource management plan in Buffalo, Wyoming, it affects the ranchers and hunting outfitters and outdoor recreation businesses who depend on balanced, responsible management. When it’s used to repeal a leasing plan in the Arctic Refuge, it cuts the Gwich’in people out of their own future and opens sacred calving grounds to industrial drilling. When it’s used to erase a mining ban at the Boundary Waters, it threatens the clean water that communities across northern Minnesota rely on and sets a precedent that every protected landscape in America is vulnerable. 

What’s happening is a coordinated shift in how public lands are defined, managed, and valued. Executive orders. Budget cuts. Large-scale leasing mandates. Legislative overrides of long-standing protections. Together, they form a pattern, faster approvals for extraction, fewer protections, reduced public participation, and diminished agency capacity.  

Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument
Photo Credit: BLM / Tarpley

And the Arctic is often the front line because it’s remote, symbolic, and easy to overlook.

But it reflects a larger question: Who are public lands for? 

Everything is Connected 

So, sure, you may never set foot in the Arctic. You may never paddle the Boundary Waters or drive through the open range of the Powder River Basin. But the birds that nest in these places pass through your sky, in your backyard. The water that flows through these watersheds feeds rivers and ecosystems that stretch across the continent. The policies that strip them of protection are the same policies, written by the same hands, using the same tools, that could one day come for the public lands near you. 

From upstate New York to the Deep South. From the Midwest to the Rockies to the Pacific Coast. The Arctic isn’t a faraway problem. It’s the frontline of a much larger fight, a fight about who gets to make decisions about public lands, how fast and with how little accountability, and whether the voice of Americans who say “protect these places” still means anything in D.C. 

We believe the Arctic belongs to all of us, and so does the responsibility to defend it. Because everything is connected. And the decisions being made today will determine what kind of country, and what kind of wild places we leave behind. 

Will you go beyond your backyard?

  By donating and/or signing, you will join Alaska Wilderness League’s Activist Network and receive communications from both Alaska Wilderness League and affiliate Alaska Wilderness League Action. We will keep you informed with the latest alerts and progress reports.

 

This video includes personal musings and conclusions of the creator and climate scientist Dr. Adam Levy. It is presented to our readers as an informed perspective. Please see video description for references (if any).

Video description

Climate change isn't tomorrow's problem. It's devastating lives right now in every corner of the world. In this video I take a look at four experiences of climate change in different countries: air pollution in India, extreme heat's impact on the elderly in Japan, malnutrition's effects on the young in South Africa, and the mental health toll of the crisis in Brazil. These stories show how the crisis is already affecting us. And just how much we have to save if we choose to act to halt climate change.

Support ClimateAdam on patreon: https://patreon.com/climateadam

Russia’s Arctic energy ambitions depend on a delicate balance: stable production, predictable shipping routes, and a logistics network that can withstand both harsh conditions and geopolitical pressure. Developments in March suggest that balance is becoming harder to maintain.

Two events highlighted in Bellona’s latest Arctic Digest—the disabling of the LNG tanker Arctic Metagas and a series of tanker detentions in European waters—underscore growing vulnerabilities in how Russia moves its Arctic oil and gas to market.

Explosion on the Arctic Metagas shadow tanker

On March 3, the LNG carrier Arctic Metagas was disabled by an explosion in the Mediterranean Sea, leaving it adrift with liquefied natural gas and heavy fuel on board. While the immediate impact was logistical, the incident also exposed a serious risk: the environmental fragility of Russia’s Arctic energy model.

A drifting LNG tanker is not just a shipping problem—it is a potential environmental emergency. Although no major spill was reported, the presence of fuel oil and LNG aboard a disabled vessel highlights what could happen if a similar incident occurred closer to Arctic waters. In such conditions, containment and cleanup operations would be far more difficult, if not impossible.

Bellona analysts have repeatedly warned that Russia lacks the capacity to respond effectively to oil spills in harsh, ice-covered environments. The Arctic Metagas incident serves as a reminder that accidents involving Arctic energy shipments are not hypothetical—they are already happening.

At the same time, the disruption triggered a chain reaction across the Northern Sea Route. Tankers rerouted away from the Mediterranean, cargo accumulated in Arctic storage, and vessels idled at sea waiting to unload.

For Bellona, this combination of logistical fragility and environmental risk is telling.

“This highlights the vulnerability of logistics for sanctioned Russian gas,” our analysts note. “Any incident involving a shadow LNG tanker can significantly slow down or halt shipments.”

But beyond logistics, the implication is broader: the expansion of Arctic LNG exports is happening in a context where both infrastructure and emergency response systems remain inadequate. In a region already under pressure from climate change, even a single accident could have outsized and long-lasting consequences.

Tanker Detentions: Pressure at Sea

At the same time, Russia’s oil exports are facing growing friction in international waters. In March, France detained the tanker Deyna, which was carrying Arctic oil from Murmansk under what authorities suspect was a falsified flag. The vessel is now under investigation, marking the second such case in recent months.

The UK has gone further, authorizing its military to inspect and detain Russian shadow fleet vessels passing through its waters, effectively raising the risks for any tanker attempting to transit key maritime chokepoints.

Bellona analysts see this as a turning point.

“There were signs of real progress toward countering the Russian shadow fleet,” we note. “If this practice becomes established and scaled up, it could significantly hinder the illegal transportation of Russian oil.”

The mechanism is simple but effective. Many of these tankers operate with questionable documentation—unclear ownership, false flags, or manipulated tracking data. Inspections and detentions introduce delays, and delays undermine the economics of Russian oil.

“Any delay disrupts deliveries, making the supplier significantly less attractive to buyers,” we point out, even when prices are low.

There is also an environmental dimension. Rather than targeting oil infrastructure directly—risking spills in fragile Arctic ecosystems—detaining vessels at sea offers a lower-risk way to constrain exports.

A System Under Strain

Taken together, the disruption of Arctic Metagas and the tightening net around shadow tankers point to a common theme: Russia’s Arctic energy model is increasingly exposed at the level of logistics.

Production continues. Icebreakers still escort vessels. Cargo still moves. But the system is becoming less predictable, less efficient, and more vulnerable to disruption—whether from a single strike in the Mediterranean or a document check in European waters.

The post Arctic gas disrupted and tankers detained: new risks for Russia’s northern energy strategy—the new Arctic Digest is out appeared first on Bellona.org.

More than 25 years after the uncontacted Indigenous Kawahiva people’s existence was officially confirmed, the demarcation of the Kawahiva do Rio Pardo Indigenous Territory in central Brazil began this week. #

For years, Canadian officials and oil industry backers have pitched carbon capture and storage (CCS) as the solution that would allow Alberta’s oil sands — and the nation’s proposed west coast pipeline — to proceed with a lower climate impact. Now, in a speech at this year’s Canada Strong and Free Network (CSFN) conference in Vancouver, keynote speaker and former British Columbia Premier Gordon Campbell warned the costly, troubled technology has failed to deliver, undercutting a central justification for billions in public subsidies and new oil infrastructure.

This reporter was there in person at the April 24 CSFN gathering. Formerly the Manning Centre for Building Democracy, the CSFN self-describes as supporting “conservative and libertarian activists and ideas in Canada”. Imagine a MAGA-adjacent gabfest featuring speakers mostly cheerleading extractive industries or fear-mongering about First Nations rights. My already low expectations were not exceeded. 

However, there was an unexpected utterance of truth from Campbell, who was the first elected leader in North America to bring in a carbon tax. And what does he think about the technology being touted to clean up ballooning emissions from the Alberta oil sands and justifying a new pipeline to the BC coast? 

“It’s time to take off the blinders. Carbon capture and storage is something we’ve talked about in Canada for more than a generation, more than 25 years,” he told the conference. “We’ve invested billions of dollars trying to convince ourselves that carbon capture and storage will work. It doesn’t work. It costs money. And that money is money that we take out of other potential productive resources that we could have for Canadians.”

Campbell was certainly not suggesting that fossil fuel extraction be scaled back. His comments instead pointed out that pretending to solve emissions problems with expensive and ineffective carbon capture and storage is an unwise waste of scarce public resources. This unusual truth-bomb from a public figure stands in stark contrast to the theater playing out in Alberta and Ottawa, where CCS is being heavily promoted and backed by billions in public money as a panacea for oil sands climate costs. 

Even a Pathways Alliance co-founder is now publicly coming out against the CCS project in a recent Globe and Mail op-ed, equating long-delayed efforts by the oil patch to limit its massive carbon emissions with a cash-strapped household wasting money on a vacation or meal deliveries. Is Big Oil now pivoting away from a marquee carbon capture project it never intended to build?

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Meanwhile the government of Prime Minister Mark Carney claims that the $20 billion CCS project  being promoted by the Pathways Alliance will make “Alberta oil among the lowest carbon intensity-produced barrels of oil in the world.” This multi-billion-dollar boondoggle has been offered as a “grand bargain” between Ottawa and Alberta to facilitate a new bitumen pipeline outlined in their now-overdue memorandum of understanding.

This confident public posturing was made despite internal briefing notes accessed by DeSmog showing Pathways had “…few front end engineering (FEED) studies done and initial cost estimates based on very limited project information”.

DeSmog previously reviewed 12 large scale CCS projects around the world and found “a litany of cost-overruns and missed targets, with a net increase in emissions.” Only 50MT of CO2 are sequestered each year by CCS, representing a mere 0.1 percent of global greenhouse gases. 

A recent study published in the prestigious journal Nature showed that a shortage of suitable geological formations worldwide limit CCS to mitigating only a puny portion of dangerous emissions. And even if injecting all production emissions underground was somehow perfectly effective, it would do nothing to alleviate the other 80-90 percent of downstream tailpipe greenhouse gases.

Such shaky fundamentals have apparently had little impact on government enthusiasm for throwing billions in public money towards dubious CSS schemes. The federal government has committed to covering half of the $20 billion estimated cost of the Pathways CCS project in tax credits, and the Alberta government is pledging to shovel billions more towards the highly profitable members of the Pathways Alliance. 

Pathways Alliance companies — recently renamed as the Oil Sands Alliance —  include Canada Natural Resources Ltd, Cenovus, ConocoPhillips, Imperial Oil, MEG Energy, and Suncor, representing 95 percent of Alberta’s bitumen production. These giants enjoyed $37 billion in combined profit in 2023 and will reap billions more in windfall profits with oil above $100 per barrel due to Trump’s war on Iran. 

A ‘Generous Transfer Provision’

A good yardstick of whether the Pathways project is credible is revealed in action, not words. Despite years of public spin and lobbying by Pathways members, the largest bitumen producers still stubbornly refuse to pony up any of their own money towards beginning construction even as Canadians struggle with historically high prices at the gas pump. 

If carbon capture is so safe, why has the oil patch lobbied to wash its hands of long-term CCS liabilities? In a system unique to Alberta, the province assumes the long-term risks associated with CO2 storage once a closure certificate has been issued, a concession to the oil industry described as one of the most “generous transfer provisions” of any CCS scheme in the world. 

Documents obtained by the Narwhal also revealed that Pathways Alliance president Kendall Dilling asked Ottawa for “assurance that the Pathways pipeline, hub and capture projects would not require a federal review under the Impact Assessment Act.” 

In Alberta, regulators allowed the largest CCS project in the world to be broken into over 120 separate proposals to avoid triggering a provincial environmental assessment. Does this kind of maneuvering inspire confidence? 

Not for local residents facing risks of a potentially deadly CO2 leak from a pipeline rupture, as occurred in Sataria, Mississippi where 49 people were hospitalized in 2020. Rural Albertans living close to the proposed 600 kilometre CO2 pipeline from the oil sands to Cold Lake have recently come together in an unlikely alliance of farmers and Indigenous leaders opposed to the Pathways project called “No CO2 Pipelines.” 

“Thousands of Albertans like me live directly in this project’s ‘hazard zone’”, said Penny Fox, No CO2 Pipelines co-founder, in a press release.  “In an explosion, people in our communities are facing anything from breathing issues to brain damage to instant death. So I have one question for the Prime Minister: if you wouldn’t live next to this pipeline, why should we?” 

“We’re talking about hundreds of kilometers of pipeline that pass directly through areas where we live, hunt, fish and exercise our treaty rights”, Chief Allan Adam of the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation has said. “This project endangers our people, our land, our water and wildlife. And yet there has been no consultation, no information sharing, and no formal environmental assessment.”

Gordon Campbell makes a good point. The Pathways project will cost the taxpayers billions and do nothing to contain the vast majority of ultimate oil sands emissions. Other Canadian industries have managed to cut greenhouse gases by one quarter since 2005, while bitumen producers have seen their emissions explode by 143 percent over the same period. 

Why should highly profitable oil industry laggards still expect public handouts before cleaning up their own mess? 

The post Former BC Premier Gordon Campbell: Carbon Capture ‘Doesn’t Work’ appeared first on DeSmog.

Farmworkers and allies march through Palm Beach in 2023, celebrating the Fair Food Program and calling attention to extreme human rights abuse that continues to occur outside the FFP, including modern-day slavery and sexual violence. The center-piece of the march was a papier-mâché globe depicting the world of protections inside the FFP, and the dark and opaque world of violence and abuse beyond the reach of the FFP. Lawsuit alleges extreme abuse, yet again, on fields beyond the Fair Food Program’s Presidential Medal-winning protections;  How much longer will Fair Food Program holdouts Kroger and Publix continue to turn a blind eye, refuse to join only social responsibility program proven to end abuse?

For over a decade, Kroger and Publix, two of the largest grocery chains in the United States, have refused to join the Presidential Medal-winning Fair Food Program, insisting — year after year, trafficking case after trafficking case — that their current vendor codes of conduct and occasional audits are sufficient to prevent the risk of extreme human rights abuses in their respective supply chains. 

Meanwhile, just weeks ago, farmworkers in North Carolina filed a class action lawsuit against their employer, alleging a series of extraordinary human rights violations, including wage theft, threats, confiscation of passports, predatory recruitment fees, and the failure to provide bathrooms, drinking water, or care when workers suffered debilitating heat stress. The lawsuit was filed under the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act, 18 U.S.C. §§ 1581 et seq. (TVPRA), and the North Carolina Human Trafficking Law, N.C. Gen. Stat. § 14-43.18 et seq.

Following the publication of the lawsuit, and using publicly available information, the CIW has found that Kroger and Publix buy produce from the company where the plaintiffs in the lawsuit say that they worked, Jackson Farming Company.

We will share those details below. First, however, we wanted to provide some context to understand just how unconscionable the grocery giants’ ongoing refusal is — especially given the leadership of companies like Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s, Walmart, Giant, Stop & Shop, and Fresh Market, all Fair Food Program Participating grocers that have put the power of their purchasing orders behind the protection of workers in their supply chains for years.

A brief history of two Fair Food Program holdouts

This case marks the fourth time in five years that Kroger has been linked to allegations of labor trafficking and extreme abuse in the fields. In 2021, an investigation from the LA Times revealed Kroger to be buying tomatoes from a Mexican farm subject to a Withhold Release Order (WRO) from the U.S. Government due to indications of forced labor, and in early 2023, the Department of Labor publicly outed Kroger as a buyer of watermelons harvested by modern-day slaves. Shortly thereafter, Kroger was linked to Maria Patricio, one of the lead defendants convicted in the “Blooming Onion” human trafficking ring. The CIW uncovered the ring, the largest modern-day slavery operation in US history, and the connection to Kroger was laid out in an investigative report in the journal The Lever.

As the London-based Business and Human Rights Resource Centre put it after the Blooming Onion case was connected to Kroger in 2024:

… The question before Kroger — its executive leadership, its board of directors, and its shareholders — is simple: Is having a case of modern-day slavery almost annually over the last 4 years an acceptable level of risk for Kroger, as long as the produce continues to arrive on shelves at the right time, in the right quality, and at the right price?  

If the answer to that question is yes, then Kroger needs to break its silence and own the outrageous failure of its social responsibility approach so consumers can know the company’s true thinking when it comes to the human rights of the men and women who pick its produce.

But if not, then Kroger needs to join the Fair Food Program — the universally-recognized gold standard for preventing forced labor and protecting fundamental human rights in corporate supply chains today — without further delay…

As for Publix, its refusal to join the FFP in the face of nearly annual modern-day slavery prosecutions in Florida’s fields goes even further back. In December of 2010 — shortly after the Fair Food Program was launched at an historic press conference announcing the new partnership between the CIW and the Florida Tomato Growers Exchange — Publix spokesperson Dwaine Stevens told The Bulletin, an Alabama newspaper, when asked if Publix had any intention of joining the promising new initiative:

“We don’t have any plans to sit down with the CIW,” Publix’s Media and Community Relations Manager Dwaine Stevens said, also citing that the company sells around 36,000 products in the stores and it cannot get involved with each product’s labor issues. “If there are some atrocities going on, it’s not our business. Maybe it’s something the government should get involved with.”

That statement — “If there are some atrocities going on, it’s not our business” — didn’t sit well with the growing consumer movement supporting the CIW’s Campaign for Fair Food at the time. Rabbi Bruce Diamond penned a powerful call to action for people of all faiths in the Fort Myers News Press in light of Publix’s cruel indifference, accompanied by a guest editorial cartoon drawn by Casey N. Kindle, a Southwest Florida Fair Food activist:

Publix’s stone wall starting to crumble

Jon Esformes, operating partner of the family-owned Pacific Tomato Growers — one of the largest growers in the nation — quoted Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel’s famous dictum, “In a free society, few are guilty, but all are responsible,” when he announced an agreement with the 4,000-member Coalition of Immokalee Workers to implement a penny-a-pound raise for the workers and to improve their working conditions. (“Tomato grower, harvesters strike historic accord,” Oct. 14)…

… [Stevens’ statement is] a far cry from the idea that “in a free society, few are guilty, but all are responsible,” and the principle of fairness to working people that is shared by all the world’s great religions…

For sure, a coalition of subsistence workers taking on America’s largest privately owned supermarket chain seems a daunting if not impossible battle.

But men and women of faith know that when are you on the side of the angels, nothing is impossible!

Today, 15 years later, the Fair Food Program has built an unrivaled track record — not only remedying abuses from sexual harassment to forced labor, but preventing them altogether. In light of that success, the continued refusal of retail giants like Kroger and Publix to use their purchasing power to protect farmworkers in their own supply chains is simply unacceptable.

Details of the class action lawsuit Screenshot from the initial complaint, with highlights

The working conditions at the Jackson Farming Company farm as described in the court documents are both deeply troubling and all too common outside the protections of the Fair Food Program. Below is an excerpt from the class action lawsuit, which was filed on April 17:

“Plaintiff and his co-workers worked at Jackson’s Farming Company of Autryville pursuant to temporary foreign worker visas, called H-2A visas. First-time employees were charged an illegal recruitment fee to be put on the list to work for Defendants Alvino Avilez and Avilez & Sons Harvesting, LLC (“Avilez Defendants”), and all employees were charged fees throughout their travel to the U.S. Once the employees arrived in North Carolina, the Avilez Defendants confiscated their passports and Social Security cards with the explicit goal of keeping them from leaving their employment. Rodriguez Luna and his co-workers also experienced a number of wage violations while working in North Carolina. 

Rodríguez Luna and his co-workers were not timely reimbursed for the costs of their visas, travel to and from North Carolina, or associated costs, as required by the H-2A visa program. Defendants did not pay workers at the promised H-2A wage rate, and they created false payroll records purporting to show that the workers were properly paid. The Avilez Defendants also deducted money from the workers’ pay for their Social Security cards. When Plaintiff Rodríguez Luna suffered a work-related injury, Defendants sent him back to Mexico and did not give him his final paycheck.”

Farmworkers with the class action lawsuit further allege that the farm labor contractor being sued also threatened workers if they tried to leave before their contract ended.

The lawsuit is filed on behalf of all farmworkers who were brought to the U.S. by one or more of the Avilez Defendants to perform agricultural work at Jackson Farming Company under H-2A contracts, who performed work during the ten-year period immediately preceding the date on which this action was filed. This could mean well over 100 farmworkers were subjected to comparable conditions to those alleged in the initial complaint, since the Avilez defendants have handled the H-2A petitions for Rodney Jackson, President of Jackson Farming Company, since 2019, with each petition requesting dozens of seasonal workers to harvest a variety of crops.

The farm itself is no stranger to allegations of abuse. Its founding President, Brent Jackson, weathered multiple lawsuits from farmworkers, including one from 2003 where a farmworker suffered a heat stroke so severe that it left him in a permanent “vegetative state.” In the present day, 22 years later, conditions do not appear to have significantly improved on the farm. According to the newest complaint, one farmworker “fell ill while working due to the heat. Because of this he was sent back to Mexico. Other workers who were impacted by the heat were sent to rest in a bus in the field that lacked air conditioning. Those workers were not paid for the rest of the day.” 

Kroger and Publix linked to Jackson Farming Company 

Kroger, through its regional subsidiary Harris Teeter, has itself stated that customers looking to buy produce from Jackson Farming Company can find it on their shelves today. Harris Teeter’s own website indicates they source sweet potatoes, cantaloupe, strawberries, broccoli, and melon for Jackson Farming Company. Meanwhile, the plaintiff in the civil suit alleges he was made to harvest melons, sweet potatoes, and broccoli on both his 2024 and 2025 H-2A contracts. 

Further, a North Carolina Department of Agriculture post from 2020 profiles Jackson Farming Company and states that consumers can find their crops in Harris Teeter and Publix. Because the civil suit’s time span includes those farmworkers with Jackson Farming Company during the 2020 harvest season up until 2025, there is a risk that crops harvested under conditions of extreme abuse have, for at least half a decade, been bought by both Kroger and Publix, and sold to unsuspecting customers.

At the same time, Brent Jackson — founding president of the company and a North Carolina state senator — sponsored legislation that would have weakened workers’ ability to sue for retaliation.

By contrast, farms participating in the Fair Food Program operate under what The New York Times has described as the country’s “best workplace-monitoring program,” where strong anti-retaliation protections are rigorously enforced and workers themselves serve as frontline monitors of their own rights.

Additionally, on the website for Publix, customers can currently buy George Foods-branded petite microwavable sweet potatoes. George Foods is one of the brands of sweet potatoes marketed by Jackson Farming Company. 

There is only one human rights enforcement program in agriculture that is proven to end forced labor, coercion, and retaliation, and that mandates rigorous heat stress protections: the Fair Food Program. 

In light of these apparent connections to the class action lawsuit out of North Carolina’s fields, the question before Kroger and Publix is simple: How many more farmworkers in their supply chains must be subject to outrageous farm labor abuse before they join the Fair Food Program, the only human rights program proven to prevent it? 

Nuclear power plants won’t be built, however, without long-term federal financial support and hyperscaler offtake agreements, said Ralph LaRossa, Public Service Enterprise Group CEO.

Carbon Brief is offering an exciting opportunity for students, or recent graduates, to work with the team for three weeks this summer. This journalism internship will be paid the London Living Wage, with an additional travel bursary.

Job description

Carbon Brief’s award-winning journalism and analysis is respected by scientists, journalists, policymakers and campaigners around the world. We write articles and create data visualisations, infographics and videos to explain the latest climate science and related policy issues.

You’ll spend time shadowing members of staff and helping out with the different tasks carried out by each part of the team. This includes journalists working on topics ranging from climate science through to China’s emissions, as well as specialists working on visuals and social media.

If you’re interested in whether carbon offsets are a viable climate solution, or how climate change is driving human migration, then this is the placement for you.

.innerArt>ol { font-family: 'PT Serif'; font-size: 18px !important; } What you will do

• Have the opportunity to research, write and publish an article for Carbon Brief.
• Promote your article using visuals and social media.
• Assist with the research and writing of Carbon Brief’s award-winning newsletters.
• Help decide how Carbon Brief covers the latest developments in climate change, by helping to find stories in scientific papers and policy documents.
• Create and discuss content for social media.

What you will learn

• Experience how a small, independent but global journalism team works in practice.
• See how Carbon Brief puts together articles step by step.
• Learn how we interrogate news, data and reports.
• Pick up skills on how to make best use of visuals in your journalism.

Your skills

• Interest in climate change.
• Some experience of writing on a technical topic for a general audience, which can include self-publishing.
• Interest in journalism and a commitment to the integrity of journalism.
• Competency in word processing and spreadsheet packages, such as MS Word/Excel or Google Docs/Sheets.
• Excellent spoken and written English.
• Experience with social media, such as Twitter/X and Instagram, would be a benefit.

Location: The internship will follow a hybrid format, involving time in person at our offices near London Bridge station in central London as well as remote working.

Reporting to: Our Associate Editor Daisy Dunne.

Hours/Duration: This is a three-week-long placement which will take place in the summer months from 13-31 July. Our office hours are 9am to 5pm Monday to Friday, with an hour for lunch.

Salary: London Living Wage (£14.80/hour), plus £100 towards travel expenses.

How to apply

To apply, please send:

1. Your CV.
2. A short covering letter of no more than 300 words, explaining why you would be a good fit for the internship and how you would benefit from it. Please include a paragraph explaining how Carbon Brief first caught your attention and pitch one idea for a Carbon Brief article. Any letter generated using AI will invalidate the application.
3. A link or attachment for an article you have published. This can either be in traditional or student media, or on a personal blog.

To: jobs@carbonbrief.org (please use “Internship application” in the email’s subject line).

Applications must be submitted by 9am UK time on 1 June. Interviews will likely be held on the week beginning 8 June.

Applicants must already have the right to work permanently in the UK and be more than 18 years of age.

Carbon Brief is committed to encouraging equality, diversity and inclusion among our workforce. Our aim is to be truly representative of all sections of society and for each employee to feel respected and able to give their best. We strongly encourage applications from those who feel underrepresented in climate journalism, including ethnic and social minorities.

The post Vacancy: Three-week summer journalism internship at Carbon Brief appeared first on Carbon Brief.

TVA’s interim CEO Mike Skaggs said he wants to “[establish] clarity on our position around new nuclear technologies,” and “work with the federal administration and our board of directors to clarify TVA's path going forward.”

 

Why don’t more people talk about chameleons?

These amazing reptiles come in all sorts of shapes, sizes, and colors, and are known for their color-shifting abilities and unique eyes, which can look in two different directions at once.

But not enough human eyes are paying attention to chameleons, and they now represent one of the world’s most at-risk species groups. According to experts as many as 50% of the 200-plus recognized chameleon species are endangered, critically endangered, or vulnerable to extinction.

On the eve of the third annual International Chameleon Day on May 9 — an occasion to call attention to these animals’ amazing abilities and underrecognized plight — I sat down with Dr. Christopher Anderson, chair of the IUCN/SSC Chameleon Specialist Group, to talk about what’s threatening these diverse reptiles, what we need to do to help them, and why they’ve eluded media and scientific attention over the past few years.

Let’s start with an observation: The word “chameleon” is part of our culture — I mean, everyone understands the word, everyone thinks they know what it means — but I have found almost zero news coverage about chameleons over the past two years. There’s been a little bit of coverage of research about their eyes or their tongues, but almost nothing about their conservation.

That is exactly true. And I think it’s one of the biggest shortcomings that we have as far as awareness about chameleons.

Like you mentioned, chameleons have fascinated naturalists, the public, and researchers for centuries. Aristotle wrote about chameleons and a lot of their unique behaviors. If you ask somebody on the street about a chameleon, they have a picture of what a chameleon is in their head because of a lot of those unique features.

Oftentimes people are a little bit squeamish or have some concerns or fear of reptiles — snakes in particular. But generally, when people hear about chameleons, they’re like, “Oh yeah, chameleons are great.”

The question there is, why have chameleons not fostered some of that attention that we see with turtles and tortoises, various snakes, and other groups? If you look at zoological institutions, most zoos will have a chameleon or a couple of chameleons on display, because they are fascinating and they really are important to most collections to be able to display. But most zoological institutions have not really focused on any type of major or large-scale projects with chameleons, in large part because they are difficult to capture, and delicate and difficult to display.

 

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So while a lot of zoos have many different turtle and tortoise species, or boas, or iguanas, or crocodilians, and so forth, and are very engaged with conservation efforts in those groups, chameleons have never really benefited from a lot of that attention. If you look at species survival plans or programs that zoological institutions have within reptiles, you see a number of iguana species, numerous turtle and tortoise species, crocodilian species, and so forth. There’s not a single chameleon species that has gotten that focus or attention.

The other thing is, if you look at the number of researchers that are working with crocodilians or turtles and tortoises, and iguanas — not to keep pointing the finger at a few different groups — there are lots of people that study those, even though there’s a lot fewer crocodilians or iguanas than there are chameleons.

But there are actually very few people that specialize in chameleons. I think that that has really been a disservice to even our understanding of where chameleons are as far as their conservation is concerned.

It’s not that they’re not threatened, or that there aren’t numerous species that should be covered, or even that there’s no interest. It’s just that there’s just not enough work that’s being done to really highlight it.

Right. So is that the goal of International Chameleon Day? What do you hope this species awareness day will accomplish?

Yeah, that’s a huge part of one of the goals that we’re hoping to get across with International Chameleon Day. There’s a huge potential, I think, to engage the public, educate them about the conservation status of chameleons, encourage awareness, as well as broader benefits that that could have for different animal groups that live in similar types of environments.

And who knows, maybe in the long run we can actually encourage other people to start focusing on chameleon conservation and increase the number of people that are working with them.

So what’s threatening them? You mentioned that they’re very sensitive animals, and it seems that a lot of them have evolved in particular microclimates or microhabitats. Can you tell us how they’re threatened by climate change or other factors?

We all kind of have an inherent image in our mind of what a chameleon is. But one of the things that fascinates me about chameleons is how diverse they are. There are 236 species that are described in science. And those 236 species are extremely diverse in their biology, ecology, natural history, anatomy, and so forth. They range in size from very small animals that are less than an inch in total length to species that, in total length, are well over two feet. We have species that give live birth, species that lay eggs. We have species that live upwards of 20 years and species that live outside of the eggs for a matter of three or four months.

 

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They’re hugely variable, and a lot of that variation and that species diversity is highly specialized to local microhabitats and very small areas. We have a lot of local endemism with chameleons where there’s a species that lives in a certain elevational band on a single mountain, or a single type of vegetation, or habitat in a very small area. That’s where lot of that diversity occurs, in very small, limited-range habitats.

When you have species that have that limited range, they can be very prone to local disturbances potentially wiping out a population or a significant portion of their distribution.

Most of the major threats that we have for chameleons relate to habitat alteration. That can be from clearing of the habitat for subsistence farming, timber harvesting, charcoal production — particularly in Madagascar, that’s a major issue. We see a lot of local effects from surrounding communities altering the habitat that these species live in.

But there’s other threats that we see with chameleons as well. One of those is harvesting for the pet trade, both illegal and legal. Chameleons for the last 30-40 years have been heavily traded in the international exotic pet trade. Some of that is legal and some of that is sustainable, but much of it is not sustainable or even illegal for some species and some regions.

We also see there’s some looming effects of climate change that are impacting chameleons, making the conditions at local habitats potentially unsuitable. Climate change is also doing things like accelerating dangers from fire and increasing the duration of the dry season, which increases the amount of vegetation that fires can consume if they get started.

And similarly, as habitats become smaller and smaller, you have these boundary effects around the edge of habitats where those boundary areas can be more prone to fire and so on.

Changing of a lot of the durations of the wet seasons and dry seasons, increases in temperature and aridity — all of that is going to play into some of these fire issues and so forth. That could affect a lot of these populations, even in protected areas.

Have you seen some of this in the wild? I found a paper you wrote about the Chapman’s pygmy chameleon in Malawi that seems to be suffering specifically from some of these problems.

Exactly. So, you know, I first traveled to Madagascar many years ago. I have not been back professionally recently, but I traveled there for ecotourism. And one of the things that I was shocked with was the amount of erosion and clear-cut forests and habitat alteration that I was seeing. And that’s not slowed down. If anything that’s accelerated in recent years.

That’s a huge issue. I’ve seen it in Cameroon. I’ve seen it in Kenya. I’ve seen it in Tanzania. I’ve seen it in South Africa. Anywhere you go where there are chameleons, we see a lot of those types of issues.

 

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I also have noticed over the years that there seem to be shifts in the wet season. When I was in Madagascar almost 25 years ago now, the beginning of the wet season was starting at the end of December, beginning of January. Now that period has shifted. People are now going in February or March to be there when the rain has started and when you can see a lot of that biodiversity.

We’re seeing a lot of shifts. Madagascar over the last few years in particular has gotten a lot of attention for some of the massive fires that they’ve had, particularly in the southern portion of the country, in the central highlands, and the southwestern regions. And those are going to have massive effects on local populations.

There’s a lot of concern that as these fires extend into protected areas, areas that we thought were safeguarding these animals may not actually be safe havens for them.

I don’t want to generalize with a couple hundred species, but what do chameleons need to ensure their continued survival? What can people in the conservation community do to help?

Yeah, like you said, there’s a lot of diversity within chameleons. And some chameleons are doing quite well. They’re habitat generalists, they’re widespread. And those species aren’t really ones that are under a high probability of extinction.

But of chameleon species that we know of, a large proportion are threatened — about 78 species based on our IUCN Red List assessments are considered either critically endangered, endangered, or vulnerable. That’s about a third of the species that we have described.

But we also have a lot of species that are not evaluated yet. They’re relatively newly described species or we don’t have enough data yet. If we figure in these species that are not evaluated, or that we haven’t actually got enough information to evaluate them, we could actually have as much as 50% of the diversity of chameleons threatened with extinction. That’s huge. We’re talking about 120 species that just from what we know right now may be threatened.

Education, I think, is one of the huge things as far as what we can do right now to advance the awareness of the conservation status with chameleons. We need people to be aware of the threat status of these species. If they’re engaged with the pet trade, [we need to teach them] to make educated and sound conservation decisions and make sure that if they’re involved with keeping chameleons as pets or anything, they’re doing so sustainably and ethically and legally.

 

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But in addition to that, we really need to reach out to local communities about the status of the environment around them, the species that live there, the importance of those species, and try and encourage sustainable practices in safeguarding of those animals.

That’s super challenging because a lot of the areas where these animals live are surrounded by communities that are struggling. Life in Madagascar and life in a lot of these places is not easy. They’re not generally doing mass agriculture that’s wiping out huge tracts of land. Most of it is subsistence agriculture that they depend on for their day-to-day survival.

So helping to provide resources and development that’s sustainable and helps these populations in a lot of these areas is potentially hugely beneficial to the conservation of lot of these animals as well.

This is kind of related to that, but do chameleons have any cultural value to the people who live near them?

This is actually an additional challenge that we face with chameleons and their conservation. What I mean by that is across most of the range of chameleons, there are a lot of local superstitions or taboos or what they call fady in Madagascar about chameleons. They have a longstanding, oftentimes negative connotation to local communities.

Across their range, people tend to think that they’re venomous, that if you touch them, you’ll die. They tend to think things like, if you have a chameleon in a tree in your village, it’s a bad omen. There are stories in northeast Africa saying if a camel steps on a chameleon, the vibrations will kill the camel. There are all kinds of variants on this common theme of not trusting chameleons or thinking that they’re dangerous that they’re bringing bad omens or so forth. So a lot of the time, the local communities don’t view chameleons in a particularly positive manner. When we’re talking about engaging these communities, just convincing them that they need to protect the chameleons is sometimes a little bit of a hard sell.

What we really also need to communicate to them is that they’re not dangerous, that they are harmless animals, that they’re interesting, and that they have value in their local community and in the environment around them. And that can be challenging because we’re trying to challenge and change generations of stories and stuff that have been passed on.

Wow. Are there any memorable encounters you’ve had in the wild with these animals, and can conveying those stories help influence other people?

You know, any time I’m in the field working with chameleons, it’s memorable for me. I am absolutely fascinated with them.

There’s a lot of different species that are very pretty, a lot of beautiful colors that they will express, and there’s some morphologies that are just incredibly intricate and impressive. Finding those species for the first time is always fascinating for me. There are so many species. I’ve never seen all of them in the wild, of course. Every time that I get out into the field and I can find a new species, it’s really exciting. Learning about the environment that each of those species lives in and seeing them in the field and kind of getting a little bit of a better understanding of them is always incredibly rewarding.

My wife and I teach a field course every other year. We bring students from South Dakota, where we’re based, to Kenya. We take them around to different habitats and we teach them about the local environments and so on. One of the things that we do is teach them how to find chameleons, and I teach them about the different species.

The students absolutely love this process of going out and looking for the chameleons. We’re in habitats where we’re looking at lions and elephants and rhinos — these megafauna that they’ve grown up idolizing, wanting to see in the wild. But then we go out and look for chameleons and they love it. The number of students that list that as among the most fun things that they did on these trips is really surprising.

That’s one of the things I really love about teaching that course, taking these students out and showing them these animals and giving them a chance to learn about chameleons firsthand — and appreciate that it doesn’t need to be one of these charismatic megafauna for them to get excited.

So what’s your favorite chameleon species — if you can even answer that?

There are so many species that I think are just fascinating, but I could give a couple that I think are just incredible — and I think some of those actually might surprise people, because they’re maybe not the most colorful species, for instance.

One of those species is the armored leaf chameleon. It’s a species from a drier area in Madagascar, the Tsingy de Bemaraha. It’s an endangered species, and it’s the largest species of the genus Brookesia, which are these miniaturized chameleons — you’ll often see pictures of them on a matchstick. But this is a species that has incredible ornamentation. They’re the only chameleon species that’s known to have osteoderms, these bones in the skin. They have these ornate projections off of their vertebral column that project out of their skins to create spines along their back. Overall coloration-wise, they’re just basically brown with a little bit of different hues of these drab colors, but they’re just incredibly intricate and interesting to me.

There’s a species in Tanzania, Trioceros laterispinis — one of its common names is the spiny-flanked chameleon. It looks kind of like those tree lichens that grow on branches. And it’s incredibly cryptic. You can just look at it and you can tell this is living in an environment that has a lot of those lichens and mosses. It’s beautifully evolved to live in that habitat.

Spiny-flanked chameleon. © Otto Bylén Claesson via iNaturalist (CC BY-NC)

In both cases these aren’t species that are exhibiting bright pinks and blues and reds and greens or flashy colors, but there’s just something about them that I just find fascinating, because you could just see the way that they’re trying to conceal themselves and the way that they’re living in this environment and how they’re adapted to that place, that specific location. I just find that fascinating.

So what can we do to maintain the energy and interest of International Chameleon Day throughout the year?

Chameleons are exciting to the public. They’re interesting. People are intrigued by them. And I think that we really should try to harness that. I think, like you said, if we could see an increase in the coverage of chameleons — just generally, not only on International Chameleon Day, but across different times of the year — that that would go a long way to promoting our understanding and encouraging others to work with these animals in the future. Education about these animals and their local habitats doesn’t need to just be isolated to a single day. We can take advantage of opportunities as they come to educate local communities about the wildlife that they have around them and the value of some of these animals. That would be huge.

Trying to break down some of these longstanding prejudices toward these animals — that doesn’t happen overnight. It doesn’t happen if we’re just isolating that to one day a year. I think that International Chameleon Day is a huge benefit for trying to start those conversations and start those education programs and start those efforts.

But we really do need to continue those across the year at different times and try and promote those messages and get that information and that word out there more generally.

Republish this article for free! Read our reprint policy. Previously in The Revelator:

This Month in Conservation Science: Trojan Seahorses and ‘Vampire’ Birds

The post Even Chameleons Can’t Hide From Climate Change appeared first on The Revelator.

For more than half a century, residents of Sampson County, North Carolina have watched their local landfill grow to nearly 1,300 acres, becoming the largest in the state. Garbage now arrives from far beyond the county line, traveling from all over the state. For locals like Sherri White-Williamson, the scale of the operation has become a source of concern. She grew up in the county, and was alarmed by potential for landfill chemicals leaching into residents’ groundwater and the impact it may be having on their health. “Many of the folks out around that landfill are on well water,” White-Williamson explained. “They are drinking in it, they’re bathing in it, they’re using it to water gardens and animals.” 

She worked for years at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, working in its Office of Environmental Justice, where public outreach and education, and coordinating between communities and federal agency staff together with the community were part of her daily routine. Eventually, White-Williamson saw that kind of advocacy was missing in her own backyard. In 2020, she co-founded the non-profit Environmental Justice Community Action Network (EJCAN) to educate and empower communities to advocate for themselves on environmental issues. 

Not long after its first meeting in October of that year, the group began working with residents of Snow Hill, a historically Black rural community near the Sampson County landfill. People described a range of environmental and public health worries. One concern that rose quickly to the top was whether the water — especially the private wells on which many households rely — might be contaminated.

Sherri White-Williamson outside of EJCAN’s headquarters in Sampson County, NC. Cornell Watson

Over the next few years, EJCAN partnered with UNC Chapel Hill and Appalachian State to do free well water testing through some small grants. “The community felt like they were seeing elevated levels of illnesses and [were] convinced what they were seeing was directly related to their proximity to the landfill, and the water that they’re drinking,” White-Williamson said, but there had been little formal research. “There’s never been a health impact analysis in that area, so it’s been all anecdotal,” she explained. The well testing became a first step toward gathering evidence that contaminants from the landfill might be harming residents.

The results were troubling. After four rounds of sampling at homes in the area, they found 13 percent of wells were contaminated with PFAS and other contaminants of concern. Short for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, the synthetic chemicals have been produced in the U.S. since the 1940s, and are used in water-repellent fabrics, nonstick cookware, and fire fighting foam, among other things. 

PFAS are sometimes referred to as “forever chemicals” because of how long they persist in the body and the environment. That includes “legacy” PFAS, substances such as PFOA and PFOS that were widely used for decades, but phased out during the 2000s. It also includes what researchers call “novel” PFAS, or newer chemicals developed as replacements. While initially thought to have fewer health risks, scientists are now questioning if these next-generation products are meaningfully safer. Because they are newer, far less is known about their impacts, according to the Center for Environmental and Health Effects of PFAS at NC State.

“We know that landfills are a common source of [PFAS], because folks have thrown away a range of consumer products,” said Courtney G. Woods, an environmental sciences professor at the University of North Carolina. According to a 2020 report in the academic journal Toxicology, there is mounting evidence that PFAS are implicated in “adverse health outcomes associated with exposure, including reduced kidney function, metabolic syndrome, thyroid disruption, and adverse pregnancy outcomes.” 

Residents raise red flags

Research into Sampson County water quality dates back a decade, thanks to the work of the late Ellis Tatum, who lived in Snow Hill. In 2016, Woods and some of her students met Tatum at the North Carolina Environmental Justice Network Summit, a gathering of environmental justice organizations led by people of color. “He was convinced there was something going on with what was in the water,” explained White-Williamson. 

Tatum invited Woods and some students to partner with his community. After convening neighborhood focus groups, Woods and a student began to test for legacy and novel PFAS, metals, and bacteria in Bearskin Swamp, located on the north side of the Sampson County landfill in Snow Hill. “There was a suspicion that bad things were going into the water from [the landfill],” White-Willliamson explained.

An exterior view of the Sampson County landfill where a constant stream of trucks deliver waste daily. Cornell Watson

On this first research foray, Woods’ team didn’t detect significant contamination upstream of the landfill. But downstream was a different story. “We found elevated levels of legacy PFAS, as well as novel PFAS just near the landfill,” Woods explained. These include newer chemicals like GenX and Nafion, she explained, which some studies have linked to liver damage and other human health effects.

Some of these chemicals match those produced by Chemours, a PFAS manufacturing facility which has dumped in the landfill for years. “We did have some knowledge from Chemours’ permit, as well as knowledge from other folks that Chemours had been sending their industrial sludge for disposal at the Sampson County landfill,” Woods continued. 

Bridging community concern with free water testing 

After Woods’ initial findings, EJCAN worked to establish further relationships with universities to expand water testing in the Snow Hill community. The collaboration marked a crucial step moving community concerns toward independent scientific verification.

The cost of at-home testing can be prohibitive to many households. According to Antrilli, costs for PFAS testing through private labs start around $380. “Considering the population in Sampson County, a lot of folks could not pay to have their water tested,” White-Williamson said.  

In February 2021, EJCAN partnered with Appalachian State University to provide free testing of well water for bacteria and metals for residents. The non-profit sent out a notice to community members asking if they wanted to participate. “There was a fairly decent amount of response,” said White-Williamson. The initial round of testing included professor Rebecca Witter, who focuses on sustainable development, and biologist Shea Tuberty. Rebecca Witter worked to develop a protocol that could be used to derive community impressions of water quality, while Shea Tuberty and his students went door to door collecting samples, testing for bacteria, nitrates, and heavy metals.

Pictured from left to right are Dr. Shea Tubberty, Sherri White-Williamson, Danielle Koonce (Project Director, EJCAN) and Dr. Rebecca Witter during the first weekend of water testing in Snow Hill.
Chris Lang

On subsequent research trips, the team was joined by Woods from UNC, who provided PFAS testing with support from the nonprofit Research Triangle Institute. After sampling about 250 homes, they found over thirty families had PFAS in their water.

As further rounds of testing were conducted, the respective labs mailed letters to residents with their results, as well as called to speak to residents who had concerning results. The scientists also held a meeting with residents, which White-Williamson attended, so that they could ask questions. Woods said the close communication “was absolutely instrumental” for both research and community organizing. 

EJCAN holds a monthly community meeting that is open to the public, which Tuberty sometimes brings his class to attend, “just to be present and answer questions,” he said. “That’s been really useful, because we get more community buy-in when they realize we’re invested long-term.”

The results led White-Williamson to contact the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality’s Division of Waste Management. In November 2023, the department held a community meeting where people who lived closest to the landfill could request sampling of their private wells. State staff initially tested 30 wells, before expanding the effort, Vincent Antrilli Jr., the waste management agency’s environmental program supervisor, wrote in an email. From October 2023 through April 2026, the program had collected 241 samples—about 25 percent (61) of which had exceedences of PFAS for EPA drinking water standards.

Point-of-use filter systems like this one are common throughout the Snow Hill community. Cornell Watson

The program also provides bottled water and home filtration systems designed to remove PFAS. “To date, 87 point-of-use filter systems have been installed or authorized statewide, including 37 in Sampson County,” Antrilli wrote. 

EJCAN has supplemented this by distributing over 50 Clearly Filtered water pitchers, which remove PFAS and other contaminants like lead and arsenic. “We worked with the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services to identify a pitcher that seemed to be pretty efficient in removing a large number of contaminants from drinking water,” White-Williamson said. 

A canceled grant 

EJCAN is still hearing from people who want their well water tested. “We really need thousands of water samples, and we’ve only done hundreds,” said Tuberty from App State.

For about six months, EJCAN, App State, UNC and the Department of Health and Human Services collaborated on an EPA grant application. “The grant would have been for a million dollars over the next three years,” White-Williamson explained. With that support, the coalition would have been able to test up to 250 homes a year and provide follow up support for the homes who had problems. “That would have gone a long way,” she said. 

In February, they learned they’d been approved for the million dollar grant. But in April 2025, as the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) slashed federal programs, the coalition learned the grant might be suspended. Only three days later, Tuberty said, they were told it would be spared. Then in early May, there was another reversal. 

“Before we got a nickel of it, we got DOGE-d,” Tuberty said. “Most of the money was going to go to the community members to mitigate the problems that we identified, which would have been great.”

While the research to date has been supported by a number of smaller grants, Tuberty said, “you need that big money to make a significant impact.” The researchers hope another opportunity will present itself. “I don’t think any of us are giving up on it,” he said. 

With federal priorities shifted, EJCAN is concerned about the unmonitored forever chemicals in their community. “These are hard projects to do, because the communities have just been burnt for so long, for so many decades,” Tuberty said. “They’ve just been overlooked over and over again.”

The Environmental Justice Community Action Network (EJCAN) is a North Carolina–based nonprofit that works to advance environmental justice in rural communities, particularly in Sampson County. The organization supports residents facing pollution and other environmental harms by providing scientific research, water and air monitoring, education, and advocacy. EJCAN also helps communities access legal and technical resources, empowering them to hold polluters accountable and push for cleaner air, water, and soil.

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toolTips('.classtoolTips10','A conductive and heat-resistant metal that forms a key part of many battery cathodes, which allow electric charges to flow. It is used in the lithium-ion batteries that power many EVs as well as solar energy systems and wind turbine components.'); toolTips('.classtoolTips12','An acronym for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, PFAS are a class of chemicals used in everyday items like nonstick cookware, cosmetics, and food packaging that have proven to be dangerous to human health. Also called “forever chemicals” for their inability to break down over time, PFAS can be found lingering nearly everywhere — in water, soil, air, and the blood of people and animals.
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This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Rural North Carolina fights back against PFAS contamination on May 6, 2026.

This article is part of Food Tank’s primer series, “Food Tank Explains.” Each installment unpacks the ideas, innovations, and challenges shaping today’s food and agriculture systems, offering clear insights into complex topics. To explore more articles in the series, click here.

Food and agriculture systems generate a variety of environmental, health, social, and economic impacts that are not generally reflected in the prices consumers pay for food, referred to as externalities in economics. True Cost Accounting (TCA) is an evolving, holistic framework for measuring and valuing the positive and negative externalities of the food system.

TCA seeks to make the impacts of food production, processing, distribution, and consumption more visible to support improved decision making by policymakers, farmers, and consumers and reduce the true costs of food. Drawing from the four-capitals framework of the TEEBAgriFood Evaluation Framework, TCA assesses four key capitals: natural, human, social, and produced.

The agrifood system generates myriad positive and negative externalities, says Salman Hussain, Coordinator The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity for Agriculture and Food initiative (TEEBAgriFood).

Common examples of positive externalities include a beekeeper incidentally providing a benefit to neighboring farmers when their bees pollinate the farmers’ crops and community cohesion. Examples of negative externalities include emissions from use of fuel in farm machinery, water pollution from fertilizer runoff, and healthcare costs for workers in unsafe conditions.

Though invisible in market prices, the costs of externalities across agrifood systems are nonetheless borne—just rarely by those who create them. Instead, they are passed on to the environment, workers, consumers, and society more broadly.

Environmental costs show up in the 30 percent of greenhouse gas emissions that agriculture produces, soil degradation, and biodiversity loss. Workers in food and farming systems face risks like pesticide exposure and heat-related illness and death.

Consumers bear rising rates of diet-related diseases and issues that are linked to modern food environments. 2.5 billion adults suffer diet-related illnesses, 733 million people live in hunger, and 2.8 billion people are unable to afford a healthy diet. And these burdens are often disproportionately carried by vulnerable populations who face higher exposure to environmental risks, poor health outcomes, and economic instability.

The hidden environmental, health, and social costs of global agrifood systems amount to roughly US$12 trillion each year, according to a U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) report that Lauren Baker, the Deputy Director of the Global Alliance for the Future of Food, calls a “startling call to action.” A Rockefeller Foundation study attributes US$1.1 trillion unaccounted-for costs to human health, US$900 billion to environmental and biodiversity damage, and US$100 billion in unaccounted livelihoods.

TCA evaluates four forms of capital—natural, human, social, and produced—reflecting the environmental, health, social, and economic dimensions of agrifood systems. The eco-agri-food system is like a puzzle, Alexander Müller, Study Leader for TEEBAgriFood, tells Food Tank. One only understands the full picture when all the pieces are considered together unclear.

TEEBAgriFood established the four-capital framework in 2018 with contributions from more than 150 researchers and experts across 30 countries. It now underpins most True Cost Accounting assessments used today.

Natural capital refers to the stock of physical and biological resources and ecosystem functions that sustain life and enable food production. In agriculture, this includes land, water, soil, biodiversity, and atmospheric systems.

Social capital captures the networks, institutions, and shared norms that enable cooperation and collective action within societies. This can include labor conditions, fair wages, worker protections, community well-being, and the broader social impacts of food production, such as rural livelihoods, job creation or loss, and community stability.

Human capital refers to individuals’ knowledge, skills, health, and capabilities. This includes farmers’ expertise, agricultural training and education, food system innovation, and the health outcomes associated with both food production and consumption.

Produced capital includes the manufactured and financial assets that support economic activity. This encompasses physical infrastructure such as buildings, machinery, and irrigation systems, as well as financial and intellectual capital that enable food production, processing, distribution, and retail.

The goal of TCA is not to increase retail prices, according to Adrian de Groot Ruiz, Co-Founder of True Price, a Dutch social enterprise that helps identify and measure products’ social and environmental costs. Rather, TCA seeks to reveal information that can ultimately help improve the way food is made and reduce the true costs of food, De Groot Ruiz tells Food Tank.

When externalities go unmeasured, they remain unaccounted for in policy decisions, private purchases and markets fail to prevent or address them. Failing to put a value or price negative impacts “creates a dishonest pricing scheme and perpetuates farming systems which destroy our planet and cause a catastrophic impact on public health,” says Patrick Holden, Founder and CEO of SFT.

By identifying and valuing externalities, TCA can help governments, businesses, and investors design policies, legislation, incentives, and investments that reduce harmful impacts, reward practices that generate public benefits, and support food systems in which nutritious food is accessible, workers are compensated fairly, and consumers can make informed choices.

As detailed in FAO’s reports, The State of Food and Agriculture 2023 and 2024, identifying and assessing all hidden costs across agrifood systems is resource- and data-intensive, requiring collaboration between political, economic and social actors and prioritization of the most decision-relevant impacts.

To be effective, TCA must be incorporated into national and international policy frameworks, accounting standards, and performance evaluation systems, supported by standardized metrics that allow impacts to be measured consistently across food value chains, according to government bodies and industry experts.

Some organizations and researchers advocate for policies under which governments tax activities that impose environmental or social harm so market prices reflect their full costs, alongside subsidies or incentives for practices that generate positive externalities such as improved soil health or ecosystem protection. Ultimately, according to Nature Food, TCA calls for a fundamental change to the valuation of food.

Articles like the one you just read are made possible through the generosity of Food Tank members. Can we please count on you to be part of our growing movement? Become a member today by clicking here.

Photo courtesy of Ed Wingate, Unsplash

The post Food Tank Explains: True Cost Accounting appeared first on Food Tank.

The additions bring the company’s total executed agreements with data centers to 7.6 GW, “nearly two-thirds of which are already under construction,” President and CEO Harry Sideris said. Duke’s $103-billion capital plan remained unchanged from 2025.

American Electric Power’s review of its market options comes amid a surge in customer demand across its multi-state footprint. Its utilities have contracts for 63 GW of new large load by 2030.

In summer of 2025, I embarked on the internship assignment of my dreams. Armed with a Nikon D3200, a 2008 birding map, and a healthy supply of coffee, I set out with my coworker to photograph all 35...

In February, the Department of Homeland Security purchased an idle 250,000 square foot warehouse.

Romulus, Michigan is a city of 25,000 people 23 miles outside of Detroit and home to the Detroit Metropolitan Airport. In February,  the Department of Homeland Security purchased an idle 250,000 square foot warehouse in Romulus for $34.7 million. City leaders and the community were kept in the dark as rumors circulated about the sale, including that it was sold at 56 percent more than the previous purchase price. After initial reporting on this sale, 300 Romulus High School students walked out and a thousand people gathered outside Romulus City Hall in late February when the reports were confirmed. On No Kings Day, March 28, another 350 to 400 people gathered for the Romulus No Kings at the warehouse. On Saturday, April 25, hundreds more gathered there for the Communities Not Cages National Day of Action.

A Coalition to Shut the Camps has developed out of weekly pickets at the planned detention center location. This coalition has produced a regulatory punch list and a package of letters sent to various state and local agencies demanding full transparency on all proposals and the opportunity for public meetings. The coalition has been leafleting homes and schools in the area, encouraging people to join weekly meetings and protests. Thirty-three organizations have signed onto the letters, and some are becoming partners in “Solidarity Saturdays,” collaborative events co-hosted by coalition members and other community organizations.

The National Day of Action on April 25 was called by the national coalition Detention Watch Network and involved the participation of other national organizations like Indivisible, Workers Circle, Public Citizen, MoveOn and many others. More than 200 events around the nation transpired as a result. The core campaign demands are to cancel the warehouse detention plan and stop conversions immediately; reject all public funding, approvals, and local resources for detention expansion; and require transparency and community consent before any federal detention action. In Romulus, the Metro Detroit Democratic Socialists of America, No Detention Centers in Michigan (NDCM), the People’s Assembly of Detroit, Southfield Neighborhood Action Committee (SNAC), and Community Aid for Empowerment (CAFE) from Pontiac came together with the Coalition to Shut the Camps to center the experiences of those at risk of being detained and those detained or recently released from detention.

The day of action in Romulus coincided with a hunger strike and work stoppage that began April 20 at the GEO Group owned-and-operated North Lake Processing Facility in the Village of Baldwin, Michigan (population < 1,000). The hunger strike and work stoppage were responses to the intensification of abuse in ICE detention, reflected by deaths in ICE detention entering a record high, and a continuation of unrest at the isolated Northern Michigan facility. From 2019-2022, there were multiple deaths and six separate hunger strikes at this immigrant-only federal prison.

Built in 1999 as the Michigan Youth Correctional Facility, North Lake has closed and reopened four times. Since reopening in June 2025 as the largest ICE detention center in the Midwest, North Lake has consistently imprisoned over a thousand people, many found by federal judges to be unlawfully detained. In recent months, a combination of reports of an increasingly unsafe environment, medical issues going unaddressed, and a steep decline in judicial approval of bonds has brought the North Lake detention center into the international spotlight. Following the death last December of Nenko Gantchev, an immigrant from Bulgaria who lived in the US for over 30 years, and the sharp increase in incidents requiring an EMS response, immigrants detained in Baldwin are demanding better medical care, adequate food, and their constitutional right to timely due process. They are also demanding conditions that allow for adequate sleep and an end to arbitrary rules.

No Detention Centers in Michigan (NDCM) has recently organized multiple protests and is calling for additional actions outside the Baldwin facility in solidarity with those incarcerated, such as blasting song requests from detainees with a loudspeaker to the inside. The strike has spurred calls from the ACLU of Michigan and Michigan Immigrant Rights Center for Congress to conduct formal independent investigations into neglectful and abusive conditions at North Lake.

The strike had been renewed as of April 27, despite claims by ICE denying any such assertion of the rights and dignity of those confined. A statement from a recently released immigrant affirming the courageous act of collective resistance by hundreds of immigrant men across multiple units in North Lake was read at the action in Romulus on April 25. A statement was also read there from Women’s Collective Civil Action, a group of women from another unit at North Lake who filed a joint habeas corpus petition earlier in the month. Many attendees of the Romulus demonstration made the 3.5 hour trek across the state to Baldwin the following day to express solidarity with those kidnapped from the broader region and subjected to the brutality of the state.

As Ale Rojas of NDCM put it, “This courageous collective action is a response to the dehumanization and abuse that are endemic to ICE detention, where immigrants are used as scapegoats so corporations like the GEO Group may continue to build their profits unchecked. Centering our humanity and the humanity of every person who has been kidnapped by ICE is the only way forward.”

Worsening conditions of confinement around the country and the expansion of ICE presence in Michigan with the purchase of the warehouse in Romulus has given rise to a deepened sense of alarm and more community opposition. The Ban Warehouse Detention Act would prohibit DHS from establishing, operating, expanding, converting, or renovating any warehouse or similar building for the purpose of detaining people. Congressmember Rashida Tlaib’s announcement of the bill on April 23 was a direct response to ICE’s expansion in Romulus and Southfield. She herself attended the Romulus No Kings demonstration organized by the Coalition to Shut the Camps on March 28 as well as demonstrations in Southfield opposing the leasing of office space to ICE. Her bill also addresses ICE’s plans to convert 23 such warehouses nationwide into new immigration detention and processing facilities, a plan that would expand the federal agency’s detention capacity significantly.

This legislation was drafted in partnership with Detention Watch Network and cites the likelihood that confining large amounts of people to spaces not meant for human habitation will increase the spread of illness and put people’s health at risk, increasing the chance for abuse and death in ICE custody. The group also suggests that such expansion normalizes mass confinement and will result in an increase in unlawful arrests, violations of due process rights and widespread family separation.

On April 25 in Romulus, the tenth demonstration since the end of February occurred in the city against the purchase of the warehouse by the federal government. The City of Romulus unanimously passed a resolution opposing the sale, citing proximity to nearby elementary and middle schools; negative impacts on the health, safety and welfare of Romulus residents; and negative impacts on economic development. Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel has also joined with the City of Romulus in a lawsuit against DHS and ICE, alleging the federal agency failed to complete necessary environmental reviews and to consider alternatives.

The Communities Not Cages demonstration featured a teach-in with speakers from No Detention Centers in Michigan, the Coalition to Shut the Camps, Detroit DSA, People’s Assembly, CAFE, and SNAC. Organizers discussed the work they have been doing to address ICE activity in Michigan, the needs for future work, how to keep building out the organizing, and how different organizations can work together effectively.

Another demonstration and march occurred earlier in the day organized by local Indivisible groups. Between the two events, roughly 500 people demonstrated throughout the day against the plans for a detention warehouse in metro Detroit.

As in Los Angeles, Chicago, and Minneapolis, the potential for social upheaval has led to action, in this case Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel’s suit against the DHS. The lesson taken from experiences around the country has been that local officials respond to organized mass pressure from below. With May Day following the day of action against warehouse detention, there was an opportunity to deepen the involvement of organized workers. The Metro Detroit AFL-CIO recognized International Workers’ Day for the first time in decade. Members organized a post-rally march to the Detroit ICE office, with a contingent for immigrants’ rights and against wars abroad.

Union support against immigrant detentions is crucial. For example, in the nearby city of Wayne, the No Kings Day event was held at UAW Local 900, a major Ford production complex not far from the Romulus detention center project. That No Kings Day was largely focused on the movement against ICE. At a March 16 demonstration outside the Romulus warehouse, a member of UAW Local 900 expressed opposition to the warehouse detention plans. Ron Lare, a retired Ford worker and member of UAW Local 600 at the Ford Rouge plant, held a sign that read, “UAW members and leaders –– join the resistance in the streets!” Lare urged UAW members and leaders to come out to the protests at the detention center project in Romulus. “The union is supposed to stand for the principle that ‘An injury to one is an injury to all.’ It is inevitable that if this detention center opens, some UAW members will be detained inside.”

Ron Lare, a retired Ford worker and member of UAW Local 600 at the Ford Rouge plant, held this sign at the March 16 demonstration.

Against the violence and brutality of the state, there is space for exposing connections to attacks by the ruling class on people throughout the world. It is possible to deepen bonds of international solidarity that pose an alternative to the reactionary ethno-nationalism of the ruling class. The emergence of a detention state with a renewed focus on borders and exclusion is the latest phase of a long history of racialized criminalization essential to stratifying and regulating the labor-market that produces the wealth of capitalist society. Immigration enforcement is a tool of capitalist exploitation that creates a tiered labor market, providing employers with a pool of cheap, exploitable labor and exerting a downward pressure on wages and working conditions, limiting the bargaining power of the working class.

The creation of ICE in 2003, following the post-9/11 reorganization of immigration services, consolidated and militarized longstanding practices rooted in history. The struggle for immigrants’ rights must be rooted in multiracial solidarity that shatters the myth of American exceptionalism and exposes the violent foundations of capitalism and US imperial dominance. Only a united working class has the power to reorganize society on the basis of real democratic control and defend against the inevitable disappointment entailed by elite cooptation.

We must reject any hollow attempt to paint over the historical existence of racial capitalism and recognize it as the key task for socialists to actively strengthen and learn from the struggle for abolition. We must understand, as CLR James did, that those most oppressed in the class struggle “carry the hatred of bourgeois society and the readiness to destroy it” to a greater degree than other sections of the population. It is an essential question of strategy and power to center and uplift such voices in a bottom-up struggle that targets the foundations of capitalism.

The struggle against oppression is the prerequisite for organizing a democratic mass movement capable of confronting the ruling class. A socialist vision for immigration recognizes freedom of movement as a fundamental human right. Only such a vision can address global inequities that drive migration and fuel the fight to extend full labor rights to all workers, removing the incentive for employers to exploit undocumented labor. A genuinely internationalist solidarity can unite workers across borders and advance the global struggle against exploitation.

Opinions expressed in signed articles do not necessarily represent the views of the editors or the Tempest Collective. For more information, see “About Tempest Collective.”
Featured Image credit: Ben Solis/Michigan Advance; modified by Tempest.

The post Communities not cages appeared first on Tempest.

The vast ocean dwarfs our efforts to understand it. Sensor-laden buoys, high-flying satellites and sophisticated computer models can only do so much to plumb the depths of the waters covering more than two-thirds of the planet.

But a creature with intimate knowledge of the ocean might help humans get a more accurate picture of what lies beneath. Sharks could serve as mobile, wide-ranging sensor systems, collecting data that improves our understanding of ocean conditions in ways that might inform fisheries management and other critical activities, according to new research in the journal npj Climate and Atmospheric Science.

“Sharks are already moving through parts of the ocean that are challenging for us to observe,” said Laura McDonnell, the lead author and a postdoctoral scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) in Massachusetts. “This research shows that data they collect can help fill important gaps.”

Scientists have attached sensors to sharks for years, but usually with the intent of understanding what’s going on with the animals. In 2022 I spent five days on the Atlantic Ocean near Africa with a team of scientists catching sharks and drilling holes in dorsal fins to attach light-bulb-sized sensors. They wanted to know how the sharks’ behavior changed as they swam through patches of low-oxygen water.

Neil Hammerschlag, a co-author of the new paper, was using sensors in much the same way as a marine ecologist at the University of Miami (UM) when, in 2018, he spoke with UM atmospheric scientist Ben Kirtman about the possibility of using data from the sensors to study the ocean, rather than the fish.

“Marine predators like sharks naturally seek out dynamic ocean features such as fronts and eddies,” explained Kirtman. “These are areas where models often lack sufficient observations.”

As a Ph.D. student at UM, McDonnell took on the question of whether this might work.  In waters off the Northeast U.S. coast, McDonnell and colleagues attached sensors to the dorsal fins of 18 blue sharks and one shortfin mako shark in October 2021. Then they set them loose, like so many fast-moving drones.

 

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In the following months, the equipment decorating the sharks’ fins collected moment-by-moment measurements of temperature and depth, two pieces of data critical to understanding the state of the ocean in a particular place. When the animals surfaced, the tags transmitted the information to satellite and on to the scientists. All told, they collected more than 8,200 snapshots of ocean conditions from the sharks. While the data was concentrated off the coast of the eastern U.S. north of Virginia, the sharks roamed as far south as Florida and out into the middle of the Atlantic. They also gave scientists glimpses of conditions at depths of almost 2,000 meters as they dove.

The researchers took this trove of information and used it to fine tune a computer program commonly used to model current ocean conditions based on data from ocean-going buoys and other sources. In certain parts of the ocean, the shark-enhanced approach was significantly closer to reality than the standard model, when scientists tested to see how well the models simulated ocean conditions during the time when the sharks were collecting the data. (The ability for computer models to accurately reconstruct past conditions is a standard test for ocean and atmospheric models.)

The improved performance was particularly notable along the shallow continental shelf, where it reduced the model’s error by 43% for November and 33% in December. That added up to the model being around 1.5°C closer to the mark when it came to sea surface temperatures, a significant improvement in an environment where subtle temperature shifts can drive major ecological changes.

 “For fisheries and coastal communities, small improvements in ocean forecasts can make a big difference,” said Camrin Braun, an oceanographer at WHOI who worked on the study. “Reducing uncertainty helps people plan, whether that’s where to fish, how to manage resources, or how to respond to changing conditions.”

That doesn’t mean sharks will be replacing other data-gathering, cautioned McDonnell. This was only a short-term experiment, and there is no mention of a more comprehensive effort to enlist sharks to the front lines of ocean forecasting. But it does show that tags formerly used to just understand the sharks could do double duty by shining more light onto broader mysteries of how the ocean is changing.

McDonnell, et. al. “Improved seasonal climate forecasting using shark-borne sensor data in a dynamic ocean.” npj Climate and Atmospheric Science. April 28, 2026.

Image: Blue shark (Prionace glauca) © Diego Delso via Flickr

Headline News:

• “Zambia Blasts The US Over A $2 Billion Health Deal In Exchange For Critical Minerals” • Zambia is accusing the US of tying a $2 billion deal for critical health assistance to access to the southern African nation’s rich mineral assets. The country calls the outgoing US ambassador’s allegations of corruption “mischievous” and “undiplomatic.” [ABC News]

Zambian Zebra (Henning Borgersen, Unsplash)

• “Turbine Prices ‘Surge As Supply Tightens'” • A Rystad Energy report said Europe’s offshore wind sector is facing a structural supply constraint as turbine prices have risen 40-45% since 2020. GE Vernova paused new offshore wind orders, Rystad Energy said, leaving Siemens Gamesa and Vestas to fill nearly all orders for turbines for European developers. [reNews]
• “Record Long Turbine Blades Arrive At Mill Rig” • The longest turbine blades installed at a UK onshore wind farm have arrived at the 33-MW Mill Rig Wind Farm in South Lanarkshire. OnPath Energy said the 80-meter blades will be fitted to six turbines that will power more than 45,000 homes annually and displace about 27,000 tonnes of CO₂ each year. [reNews]
• “The UK Sees A Surge In Solar Power Adoption” • An increase in installations, along with government initiatives, shows that even in a changing global landscape, the UK is moving forward with cleaner, more secure energy sources. March 2026 was a notable month for UK solar energy, with more than 27,000 installations completed. [Open Access Government]
• “Average US Gas Prices Top $4.50 Per Gallon, The Highest In Nearly Four Years” • As the war in Iran drags on, US drivers are feeling pain at the pump. In the US, the average price for a gallon of regular unleaded gas jumped to $4.51, the highest it has been since July 17, 2022, according to GasBuddy, a company that helps consumers find the cheapest gas. [ABC News]

For more news, please visit geoharvey – Daily News about Energy and Climate Change.

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