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Alert! This Thursday’s double-header: show up against Zenith & for Climate Justice

Zenith Energy is currently trying to quietly sneak out of town by selling its dangerous facility to I Squared Capital, an international private equity firm worth $60 billion in worldwide assets. Given the history of City officials breaking laws, straying from established processes to protect Zenith, and the immense dangers the Zenith facility poses to our region, Portlanders deserve more information, transparency, and a thorough investigation of this business deal–specifically the transfer of Zenith’s “franchise agreement” to I Squared (a legal contract that would grant I Squared a license to operate in a public right of way). City Council must conduct a thorough review of this franchise agreement transfer with substantial community involvement.

I Squared Capital has no previous connection to Portland. There is no reason to expect it would operate any differently than Zenith Energy. The last thing our community needs is another faceless, out-of-town fossil fuel company operating a dangerous, polluting facility in our City. Let City Council know you’re concerned about this process and demand public input, transparency, and accountability.

How to take action:

1. Send a quick message right now to City Councilors using this form

2. Sign up to testify this Thursday 7/23 at ~10:45 AM (in person or virtually) to the Committee of the Whole meeting at City Hall. Testimonies will only be 1.5 minutes long, and we have talking points you can use.

   • If you can come in person, please do. We need to pack City Hall. Wear Red.

   • If you’re unavailable to testify in-person or virtually, please submit written testimony, and feel free to use some of these talking points.

Multnomah County Climate Justice Plan – The Final Adoption!

County Commissioners are due to adopt the Multnomah County Climate Justice Plan, an innovative roadmap to guide community and County toward climate justice, equity and resilience for years to come. But some Commissioners are on the fence! Join us in flooding County leaders with written comments before Thursday. Let them know why you support clean air, affordable clean energy, parks, transportation, and more.

350PDX community members have actively participated during the plan’s comment periods, and now it’s time to show deep support and enthusiasm for its adoption and implementation with our County Commissioners. Here’s a guide to help craft your testimony, and here’s a great article to learn more about this innovative plan.

Send your written comment to the following email addresses: boardclerk@multco.us, sustainability@multco.us, district1@multco.us, district2@multco.us, district3@multco.us, district4@multco.us, mult.chair@multco.us

Thursday, July 23rd at 9:30 AM
Multnomah County Boardroom, 501 SE Hawthorne Blvd, Portland, OR 97214 (street parking is limited. TriMet bus lines are 2, 10, and 14)

Public Testimony: Sign up to testify in person or virtually HERE (testimony spots are limited and pre-registration is required). Wear Red.

Livestream: You can watch a livestream of the meeting HERE.

The good news is—you can attend both of these important events! 

• The 1-hour County hearing begins at 9:30 AM at the County building (501 SE Hawthorne Blvd).
• Once that’s over, head across the river on bus #6 or #14 to attend the 10:45 AM Zenith item at City Hall.

The post This Thursday’s double-header: show up against Zenith & for Climate Justice appeared first on 350PDX: Climate Justice.

Looking for the perfect way to spend a summer evening? Join us at Rowe Sanctuary for Pickin' on the Platte, where live music, river views, and family-friendly activities come together for a...

Op-ed by: Anne Hedges and Tamara Kennedy, Seattle Times For decades the Northwest has enjoyed affordable, abundant and clean electricity. We enjoy some of the lowest electric rates in the country because of our hydropower resources and now, with vast wind and solar resources at hand, we can meet future challenges, too. Because of rising …

The post New BPA leader must find balance between modernization, conservation appeared first on Montana Environmental Information Center - MEIC.

Maine Medical Center registered nurses and community allies will hold a press conference and rally on Thursday, July 23 in Portland to highlight their demand that MaineHealth cancel its contract with Palantir Technologies, a company that has helped enable increasingly deadly encounters with immigration officers, including, most recently, the murders of Johan Sebastian Durán Guerrero in Maine and Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Texas.

Currently, on the South End of Wrightsville Beach, tiny gray and white downy Black Skimmer chicks with long legs and thick beaks have just hatched. With temperatures soaring, it’s more...

The Marigold Energy Center, about 45 miles south of Phoenix, would include 400 MW of battery storage, 600 MW of solar generation, up to 675 MW of gas generation and a new substation.

Residents of Louisiana’s “Cancer Alley” have defeated plans for what could have been the largest carbon sequestration and storage project in the world, adding to a long list of carbon dioxide facilities and pipelines across the state that communities have fought and defeated.

Hundreds of residents packed public hearings to share their opinions about the Air Products carbon capture pipeline.

On July 30, Air Products announced they abandoned their so-called Louisiana “Clean” Energy  Project, citing “expected financial returns not meeting stringent return criteria.” But we know the truth. Ever since the multi-billion-dollar project was announced more than four years ago, River Parish residents have demonstrated strong opposition to the project because of the considerable risks it would bring to communities, including: 

• Building an ammonia plant and carbon dioxide pipeline right next door to a primary school, putting children and teachers at risk of pollution and leaks.
• Industrializing Lake Maurepas, turning a beloved lake and important ecosystem into a toxic wasteland.
• Being built on the site of the former Orange Grove sugar plantation, where local communities raised the alarm regarding the presence of unmarked graves of people who had been enslaved on the property. 
• Using an unproven technology to bury carbon dioxide deep underground, turning communities and environment into testing grounds for something not guaranteed to work. 

The project would have injected carbon dioxide under Lake Maurepas for “permanent storage,” risking the livelihoods of residents nearby and people who trap, hunt, and fish as a living. 

Kaitlyn Joshua and Logan Wolf, Earthworks’ organizers who both live in River Parishes, have helped build opposition to the project since it was first proposed with many partners, building common ground across a diverse group of stakeholders. All the town halls, door knocking, public hearings and comment writing workshops eventually led to this win, further demonstrating to the petrochemical and carbon capture industry that their era of unchecked expansion in communities is over.

Earthworks’ organizers coordinated hundreds of door knocking events to educate residents on the project, its harms, and opportunities to engage with decision makers about their concerns for the project. 

We sat down with Kaitlyn to hear more about this win, the carbon capture scheme, and how community voices shaped this outcome. 

“So what I’m really noticing in this moment, and I think a lot of people can agree with this, is that it’s not a white, Black, Democrat, Republican issue,” Joshua says. “It is literally everybody’s issue at this point when it comes to CO2 build out across the state of Louisiana.”

Q: What does the blue hydrogen project being cancelled mean to the River Parishes and you personally?

A: Essentially, this particular halt of this project means that the work that we’ve been doing for years has merit, it has value, the grassroots organizing that we’ve been doing in these communities really does work. And most importantly it does mean that these industries are hearing our plea and understanding that folks are concerned about the impacts of carbon capture and storage and what CO2 pipelines could mean for the communities that they love, for the people that they love, for the kids that attend the schools, and for the neighborhoods that exist near these proposed pipelines.

Q: Why should people care about blue hydrogen and carbon capture?

A: I think that the reason why I’m so just committed to helping people understand why they should care about this particular technology is because it’s something that doesn’t work. It’s something that is kind of taking the focus off of something that could work and essentially put a place like Louisiana in a position to be able to address the climate crisis as we are seeing more aggressive hurricanes every single year, we’re seeing higher temperatures, more extreme weather. We used to not get tornado watches nearly as much as uh as much as we do now, and that’s something that’s extremely alarming and we need to be sounding the alarm — for lack of a better term — and helping industry understand that they play a major role in these climate crisis pieces and if we want to kinda make any type of change in this particular arena, then we’re definitely gonna have to work together to try and solve it instead of constantly coming up with fake solutions or false solutions.

Q: What’s the real impact on frontline communities?

A: Frontline communities stand to gain the least when it comes to carbon capture and storage. I know that the communities that I organize enjoy beautiful waterways and bodies of water across the state of Louisiana where we fish in, that we boat in. A lot of people have beautiful residential homes and retirement homes situated on these lakes and waterways and those would be completely dilapidated as a result of carbon capture storage. Literally — pipelines being constructed in the middle of these different bodies of water across the state.

We literally couldn’t have both anymore and I think what’s so sad about that is we’ve really done the work in south Louisiana to try to revitalize a lot of these different lakes and rivers so that people can enjoy them, so fishermen can continue their livelihoods, and that would be jeopardized as a result of CO2 pipelines being constructed, wells being drilled miles and miles underneath the lake and to what end? Right. And I think the moment that you allow one facility to take this on you’re allowing hundreds of facilities to take this on as Louisiana has already been coined as a breeding ground for CO2 pipelines. And that’s not just in south Louisiana unfortunately. We’re seeing that happen in central and making its way up to north Louisiana as well.

So what I’m really noticing in this moment, and I think a lot of people can agree with this, is that it’s not a white, Black, Democrat, Republican issue. It is literally everybody’s issue at this point when it comes to CO2 build out across the state of Louisiana. At this point everyone is becoming a frontline community. And I think that’s kind of in a weird way the beauty of us kind of coming together around this one particular issue that we have in common and being able to come up with creative ways to push back on it. 

Q: You’ve been organizing on the ground for years—can you describe what that looks like and how community voices shaped this moment?

A: I’ve been organizing on the ground for a few years now and can describe a little bit what that looks like and how community voices have shaped this moment. And it’s been a delicate dance, if you will.

First, I’ll start by saying Earthworks supported on the lake side, so in particular around the Air Products blue hydrogen facility. That fight started on the Lake Mareupas side which is situated in Tangipahoa and Livingston Parish which is southeast Louisiana and essentially a very affluent part of the district, if you will, and typically very conservative, if you will, and a lot of time a lot of these folks don’t necessarily have to deal with an industrial build out or petrochemical build out as it is, and this was their first time ever fighting industry. You wouldn’t necessarily find them as — they’re definitely unsuspecting allies for sure.

Lake Maurepas to be exact, to be specific, was the main kind of common denominator if you will around organizing on the lake side and we had a um term or like a campaign, if you will, that was “Save the Lake” that Earthworks was really instrumental on helping with and really excited to support the folks within Lake Maurepas Preservation Society, which started out about three years ago.

The momentum kind of built two years ago around legislative session but also at the local level where the lake side folks were able to pass resolutions on the local level in Livingston Parish, Tangipahoa, and I believe one more. Where basically, local governing bodies, we have city councils and Parish councils, who pass resolutions saying they did not want Air Products to come into Lake Maurepas, destroy it.

As I already alluded to earlier, Lake Maurepas took years or advocates took years to revitalize and constantly try to advocate on behalf of the lake which led it to becoming a wildlife management center officially. And so that fight was very interesting.

It was very much like, if it can be quite candid, a lot of white folks just, you know, advocating on behalf of the lake and, you know, us, you know, people of color, we have a very diverse group of folks organizing with Earthworks, supporting that work and we had to, you know, be very cautious in the way that we were organizing as we didn’t wanna kinda overlay the plan that we’ve used in the agenda and the lens of which we’ve organized is what I’m trying to say for the last few years. In certain other parts of the state we couldn’t just kind of, you know, use that same blueprint right over to Livingston and Tangipahoa, we had to kind of take the lead of the folks in that area, so that was a very unique thing.

All in all, it worked out. We’re still in community, still building with the folks on the lake side, and now that we’re on the Ascension Parish side, also organizing in St. James and St. John. 

And to be clear, St. James and St. John are the parishes that would bear the brunt of the CO2 pipeline construction. Ascension Parish is where the facility is situated, where the official announcement has happened from Air Products, where they have decided to halt construction of the CO2 carbon capture facility in Sorrento-Darrow area.

And so now that we are organizing this side, it’s also very interesting because it’s a mix of Black and Brown, white folks that are also pretty well off that typically enjoy, you know, a very luxurious lifestyle for the most part. Their kids go to really good schools, a great deal of them are already a part of industry but don’t necessarily buy into carbon caption storage and what that is and what that means and a lot of them are very well aware, very educated on the fact that carbon capture and sequestration has not worked anywhere in the world and they’re not bought into it right and Air Products has not sold them on the technology.

And so for them, it is the pushback on; I don’t want CO2 pipelines constructed near my home, what does this do to my property values, what does this technology potentially do, or what does a pipeline rupture or leak look like near the school that my kids attend. Right

So the conversations are a little different, but no matter what, those different narratives have certainly shaped the feedback and the responses and the public comments that we’ve dispersed throughout the different public hearings that we’ve been able to participate in in the last few years, whether in Baton Rouge at the primacy hearings or in Ascension Parish, or in St. John, St. James, or Livingston on the lakeside. And it’s been very interesting and really exciting to see people’s different world views on how they take on this CO2 pipeline facility.

The post Victory! Louisiana Residents Defeat Air Products’ Carbon Capture Project appeared first on Earthworks.

Andreas Sieber is head of political strategy at 350.org. Cat Abreu is director of the International Climate Politics Hub.

From the US abduction of Venezuela’s president at the start of this year to the Iran war which rumbles on, disruption is the new normal for global geopolitics, more often than not linked to conflict over supplies of oil and gas. 

Events so far in 2026 – driven largely by the desire of the Trump administration to grab control of fossil fuels around the world – show that the climate community’s approach to energy diplomacy will have to evolve if we are to operate effectively and push for climate action in such a volatile landscape. 

Today’s climate and energy governance must be able to cope with trade wars, genocide, fascism, spiralling inequality and challenges to multilateralism. The increasingly dominant paradigms of economic competitiveness, energy security and green industrialisation can help drive the transition but they also challenge our collective mission to deliver an equitable green shift. 

US-China rivalry dominates

Longer-term geopolitical trends that are seeing power move from West to East and North to South have fuelled a US–China “superpower rivalry”, which is pulling the global economy apart and reining in trade. 

A key question will be how the fracture “lines” are drawn: by the US and China, or also by other countries or blocs? Many governments will try to remain “in the middle” between the two giants to capture economic gains from both sides. Yet despite the language of “strategic autonomy”, Washington and Beijing may be in a position to force choices via market access, export controls and sanctions.

• Jun 24, 2026 News EU, UK lead push for electrification as “powerful weapon” against fossil fuels A group of dozens of countries seeks to build momentum for a COP31 pledge to electrify 35% of global energy use by 2035 as an alternative to fossil fuels Read more
• Jul 20, 2026 News Top maritime court rejects bid to halt UN deep-sea mining inquiry Two subsidiaries of The Metals Company sought to block the probe into potential contract breaches launched after the firm’s application for US-sponsored permits Read more

At first glance, this may not seem particularly relevant for climate and energy politics. But Huawei’s exclusion from 5G operations across the political West and India following the so-called Clean Network Campaign by the US government serves as a warning of what could happen to climate green tech. 

And the recent debate to cut out Chinese inverters from European markets follows the same pattern – US security forces perceive a risk and start encouraging their allies to drop Chinese technology.

The new drivers: competition and security

Despite this fracturing geopolitical and economic context, energy transition is still happening. To ensure it is effective and equitable, we need to understand what is driving it and how to adapt climate politics so that it better responds to these drivers.

Put simply, China is supplying the world with low-cost renewables (roughly 60% of critical wind and 80% of solar components), batteries, EVs and other key elements. Other countries now also want their piece of the green tech pie and are forming industrial policies to get it.

It is this new competitiveness-driven logic that will shape the quest for decarbonisation, which has shifted from cooperating around the cost of tackling climate change to rivalry for the benefits of climate action. 

Over 90% of new renewables projects are now cheaper than fossil alternatives. Gas-fired power is 3–4 times more expensive than solar and wind. In 2015, most decarbonisation policies were “traditional” emissions-cutting strategies like carbon pricing or net zero dates, whereas green industrial policies now underpin the majority.

Iran war could boost fossil fuel phase-out push, says Colombian minister

Meanwhile, security has become a central driver of energy politics. We are living through the second major fossil fuel crisis in just four years. Elevated oil and gas prices will impose up to $1 trillion in additional costs on the global economy by the end of the year if disruption continues in the Strait of Hormuz. Fossil fuel supply chains have exposed countries to conflict, coercion and brutal price shocks.

Fossil fuel volatility destabilises whole economies – higher fuel costs drive up food prices, increase political instability, and push millions into poverty and hunger. This incentivises governments to shield themselves from global shocks, especially in countries that are net fossil fuel importers and home to roughly three-quarters of the world’s population. 

Yet security fears can cut both ways. The same instability that makes fossil fuel dependence untenable is also sharpening concern over China’s dominance of critical clean technologies and supply chains.

Equity, cooperation and the opportunity for change

Developing countries benefit from the rapid uptake of renewables enabled by low-cost Chinese technologies. But significant fiscal space and public investment is needed for the electricity grids and infrastructure required to fully unleash the energy transition, as well as for green industrialisation to diversify revenue streams.

Despite this, industrial-scale domestic production and ownership often remain out of reach for too many countries that lack the fiscal space to allow green supply chains to flourish and compete with their traditional industrial base. But more just and diversified green tech supply chains could be achieved with concomitant support.

Can giant batteries unlock Africa’s green industrial future?

For the first time in decades, the international order is being substantially reshaped. If within this context, decarbonisation is increasingly driven by green industrial policy, energy security and competitiveness, the climate policy community must better anticipate where these debates are moving. We must speak the same language, and enter the forums where decisions are made,  including security, trade and bilateral or trilateral spaces. 

We should build on an enlightened self interest recognising that cooperation remains essential and beneficial. This includes using the UN climate process differently: less as an ever-expanding negotiation machine, and more as a space for norm-setting, political alignment and deal-making. In an age of fragmentation, effective cooperation must not only be framed as necessary but thought of as a strategically compelling source of resilience and shared advantage. 

The post Energy transition policymaking must evolve to fit an age of rupture appeared first on Climate Home News.

Friends of the Earth map of areas where a form of fracking could be carried out. Link to interactive version of map

On the first full day of the Burnham government, campaigners have warned that people in 79 English constituencies could face a form of fracking unless a legal loophole is closed.

The previous Starmer administration promised to ban fracking for good. But it did not define which operations would be included in legislation.

The current moratorium, introduced in 2019, did not prevent lower volume fracking, also called proppant squeeze, reservoir stimulation or acid fracking.

These operations use a smaller volume of fluid than the statutory limit set out in the moratorium. They can be used on various rock types, not just shale.

It is unclear whether the Energy Independence Bill, which proposes to ban fracking, would outlaw these lower-volume operations.

Lower-volume fracking has already been approved for a site at West Newton in East Yorkshire and was recently rejected at Burniston in North Yorkshire. The Wressle oil site in North Lincolnshire is currently seeking permission for proppant squeeze.

The government also promised to ban new oil and gas licences. But this would not prevent lower-volume fracking in existing licences.

Friends of the Earth said its new analysis, published today, reveals constituencies in England with at least 1km where oil and gas developments are licenced.

The organisation identified the location of the affected constituencies:

20 in Yorkshire & Humber
17 in the south east
15 in the north west
14 in the east midlands
6 in the south west
5 in the west midlands
2 in the north east

More than half (46) the constituencies currently have a Labour MP, the analysis found. They include four members of Andy Burnham’s new cabinet:

• Chancellor John Healey (Rawmarsh & Conisbrough)
• Foreign secretary Ed Miliband (Doncaster North)
• Health secretary Yvette Cooper (Pontefract, Castleford & Knottingley)
• Culture secretary Lisa Nandy (Wigan)

Friends of the Earth campaigner Tony Bosworth said:

“Fracking blights our countryside, won’t cut energy bills, fuels the climate crisis and remains deeply unpopular.

“If ministers are serious about banning it, they must close the loophole that allows planning applications for lower-volume fracking, such as proppant squeeze, and turn the current moratorium into a comprehensive legal ban.

“Anything less would leave communities in 79 constituencies, over half of which have Labour MPs, still potentially at risk from fracking. Failing to act would reduce the government’s promise to little more than empty words.”

Frack Free Coastal Communities (FFCC) is campaigning against plans by Europa Oil & Gas to carry out lower-volume fracking at Burniston, just north of Scarborough. Earlier this year, a parliamentary petition secured more than 10,000 signatures against the Burniston operation.

Professor Chris Garforth, chair of FFCC’s steering group, said:

“It took almost 1,600 objections, hundreds of people lobbying outside the Town Hall, and a planning committee willing to overrule its own officers to win a planning refusal at Burniston.

“Most communities won’t have those resources, and they shouldn’t have to spend their free time battling companies that put profit above health, climate and the environment. The solution is obvious. We need a comprehensive ban.”

Earlier this year, Friends of the Earth published analysis by Stuart Haszeldine, professor of geology at University of Edinburgh, which warned that lower-volume fracking could trigger earthquakes that are as large and as unpredictable as high-volume fracking.

Tejido Global de Alternativas: Declaración Popular de Bandung [ English ] [ Español ] [ Français ] [ Português] [ Kurdish] Emitida en la segunda Asamblea presencial celebrada en Bandung, Indonesia, del 11 al 17 de abril de 2026. A los pueblos del mundo y a quienes luchan contra todas y cada una de las formas de opresión e injusticia. A toda la vida, incluidas todas las especies no humanas. A los gobiernos de los Estados-nación del mundo y a las instituciones internacionales.

Global Tapestry of Alternatives: People’s Bandung Declaration [ English ] [ Español ] [ Français ] [ Português] [ Kurdish] Issued after the second in-person Assembly of the Global of held in Bandung, Indonesia, 11-17 April 2026 To the peoples of the world and to those struggling against any and all forms of oppression and injustices. To all of life, including all non-human species. To the nation-state governments of the world, and to international institutions.TapestryAlternativesalternativ…

If drivers of gasoline cars refrained from speeding, they would collectively save an average of 57,000 metric tons of carbon emissions every day in the United States—while spending less than a minute more behind the wheel, a new study reveals.

“We are presenting a somewhat obvious, but impactful, way to reduce energy and emissions that doesn’t require a new vehicle or new technology, just backing off the accelerator pedal,” says study team member William Northrop, professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Minnesota.

The analysis proceeds from a simple and well-known proposition: driving fast is disproportionately energy intensive, as drag force increases exponentially with speed and the engine burns more and more fuel. “That’s physics,” Northrop says.

But no one had ever added up the impact at a national scale before.

In the new study, Northrop and University of Minnesota graduate student Bharat Jayaprakash analyzed a database of more than 120 million actual trips made by light-duty vehicles such as cars, SUVs, and pickup trucks across the United States to gain insight into how often and how fast drivers speed.

They used a computer model to quantify the energy consumption, fuel cost, and carbon emissions from the actual vehicle trips. Then they modeled what would happen if those same trips had all taken place without the drivers ever exceeding posted speed limits.

Driving the speed limit would save an average of 6.7 million gallons of fuel, 57,000 metric tons of carbon emissions, and $22 million in fuel costs daily across the United States, the researchers found.

 

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Why don’t people comply with posted speed limits? Mostly, because they want to save time. But the analysis shows that slowing down would only add about 190 seconds of drive time per 100 miles traveled—which works out to about 54 seconds per day for the average driver.

“The core takeaway is that the individual time savings gained from speeding are statistically negligible, but the collective environmental and economic costs are massive,” Jayaprakash says.

Obeying the speed limit only cuts fuel consumption by about 2.4-3%, depending on the time of year. But across the United States, that all adds up to an annual fuel savings equivalent to taking about 5.5 million passenger cars off the road.

Plus, the savings estimate is likely a conservative one since the researchers only evaluated speeding on roads with posted speed limits of at least 45 miles per hour.

The team also analyzed the effect of speeding on energy use and emissions generated by EVs in California (the only state where there are enough EVs for a statistically significant analysis). This investigation showed that obeying speed limits would yield small but collectively significant savings for EV drivers too: a single day’s savings of 195 megawatt hours of electricity could power 82 EVs for an entire year.

“There is no free lunch here; no matter what vehicle you drive, speeding and aggressive driving cost energy regardless of what energy source powers it,” Northrop says; the stop-speeding strategy remains important even as the vehicle fleet goes electric.

Source: Jayaprakash B. and W. F. Northrop. et al. “Speeding incurs substantial environmental and economic costs nationwide for negligible travel time savings.” Communications Sustainability 2026.

Image: © Anthropocene Magazine.

Sixty years after surveyors first uncovered evidence of a sprawling coral reef off the West African nation of Benin, scientists have at last found the reef.

Read more on E360 →

Miatta Fahnbulleh has been appointed secretary of state for energy security and net zero in the new Andy Burnham government.

She replaces Ed Miliband, who has become foreign secretary.

Miattta Fahnbulleh. Photo: UK Government

Ms Fahnbulleh, the MP for Peckham since 2024, was previously a junior housing minister (September 2025-May 2026) and a junior minister at the department of energy security and net zero (July 2024-September 2025).

In 2024, the Guardian said of her:

“Fahnbulleh has pushed hard for serious action on the climate crisis and has advocated more urgency in the UK’s response. She is likely to be the big brain of the party’s soft left.”

She told LabourList in 2025 the route to long-term savings in energy was “weaning ourselves off fossil fuels and wholesale on the global market, which is why we are moving to deliver clean home-grown energy at such pace”.

She said:

“When we started, people were quite sceptical if we could get to clean energy by 2030. I think everyone has been staggered at the pace that we are driving through the things we need to do; removing the ban on onshore wind, the biggest ever auction that’s been delivered for renewables.

“We are absolutely driving it – and in the end, that is the way in which we will get bills down.”

Before becoming an MP, Ms Fahnbulleh was chief executive of the New Economics Foundation (2017-2023). She also worked as the director of policy and research at the Institute for Public Policy Research and was head of cities in the policy unit at the Cabinet Office (2011-2013).

She studied philosophy, politics and economics at University of Oxford and has a PhD in economic development from the London School of Economics.

She was born in Liberia and was brought to the UK in 1986 as a five-year-old by her parents fleeing the country’s civil war.

Reaction

Friends of the Earth energy lead, Imogen Dow, said:

“As someone who’s been vocal about the need to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels and did a lot to shape the government’s Warm Homes Plan under Ed Miliband, it’s encouraging that Miatta Fahnbulleh has been appointed as his successor.

“She will, of course, inherit the same challenges. She must hold the line against harmful fossil fuel expansion – including the highly contentious Jackdaw and Rosebank fields – make cheap, clean energy available to all and build on Ed Miliband’s efforts to scale up our renewable power capacity.

“Today’s announcement to cut VAT from energy bills is certainly a step in the right direction, but this should come alongside a new social tariff to help those on the lowest incomes, which will make a meaningful difference in the long-term. Insulating more homes and boosting Britain’s homegrown wind and solar power production are how we can also drive down bills and slash climate-warming emissions for good.”

Other cabinet appointments

Chancellor: John Healey, former defence secretary and treasury minister

Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster: Louise Haigh

Foreign secretary: Ed Miliband

Home secretary: Shabana Mahmood

Defence: Wes Streeting

Health and social care: Yvette Cooper

Education: Lucy Powell

Work and pensions: Pat McFadden

Housing: Angela Rayner

Business: Jonathan Reynolds

Equalities (minister): Bridget Phillipson

Culture: Lisa Nandy

Justice and Lord Chancellor: Alex Norris

Transport: Heidi Alexander

Environment: Angela Eagle

Northern Ireland: Chris Bryant

Scotland: Douglas Alexander

Wales: Stephen Kinnock

Chief secretary to the Treasury: Emma Reynolds

Chief whip: Anneliese Midgley

Attorney general: Ellie Reeves

Leader of the Commons: Alan Campbell

Leader of the Lords: Baroness Angela Smith of Basildon

Intergovernmental relations (minister): Hamish Falconer

Artificial intelligence (minister): Kanishka Narayan

Housing (minister): Matthew Pennycook

Updated 12.31 with reaction from Friends of the Earth to appointment of new energy secretary

Last night, I slept beneath the stars in the mountains and wondered. As darkness dissolved the contours of the trees into shadow, the night sky revealed itself in astonishing detail. In that vastness, my thoughts wandered between the known and the unknown.

For as long as humans have existed, we have looked toward the stars and the horizon, asking enduring questions: Where did we come from? Who are we becoming? And how do we shape what comes next?

Across cultures, answers to these questions often emerged through food and our relationships with the living world. In the origin stories of communities across Southwest China, the Himalayan foothills, and Southeast Asia, humans emerged from a gourd. In the Maya creation story, humans are formed from maize. In other traditions, people emerged from rice, yams, coconuts, animals, fertile landscapes, and the earth itself. In Abrahamic traditions, humans are created from the earth and placed within a garden, where nourishment shapes humanity’s earliest story.

Food was origin. Across cultures, humanity understood itself emerging from the living world. These origin stories explained our beginnings and expanded humanity’s sense of what was possible. Wonder has always done this. It expands the boundaries of what we believe is possible, allowing us to imagine futures that do not yet exist.

For more than 95 percent of our existence as a species, we lived within the living world by hunting, gathering, fishing, foraging, and moving with the rhythms of landscapes, seasons, and the migrations of other living beings. Then, over thousands of years, communities in different parts of the world began one of humanity’s most consequential expansions of possibility: saving seeds, domesticating plants and animals, and cultivating the landscapes that would eventually give rise to villages, civilizations, and the food systems we know today.

Agriculture emerged as people responded to changing conditions with necessity, curiosity, and imagination. The first cultivators learned by observing the living world: the relationships between seed and soil, rain and harvest, seasons and scarcity. Perhaps they noticed seeds sprouting in the disturbed soils around campsites and wondered what might happen if those seeds were planted with intention. Through generations of experimentation, gathering gradually gave rise to cultivation, one of humanity’s defining transformations.

Agriculture reshaped humanity’s relationship with food, living systems, and one another. People remained rooted in place as trade routes connected distant landscapes through the exchange of foods, seeds, knowledge, culture, and conquest. Villages and new forms of governance emerged. Communities formed around shared labor and stewardship. Farmers, seed keepers, tool makers, healers, artisans, traders, and storytellers all became part of the living web that allowed communities to flourish. Like every food systems transformation, agriculture expanded possibility while creating new responsibilities and unintended consequences.

These relationships shape food systems around the world. I have witnessed them with remarkable clarity in one of the most biodiverse and resilient food systems I have ever encountered: Akha communities in Yunnan Province in the Upper Mekong River Basin.

For the Akha, a food system is community. The food system does not create the community. Communities co-create the food system with the living world.

Over time, I asked Akha elders what makes a community. They taught me that a community is created through the relationships and elements that sustain life across generations: seeds, fire, the shaman, the knowledge of cultivation, the silversmith who forges the agricultural tools, and the tools themselves. No single element creates a community. It is the relationships among them that allow a community to emerge and flourish.

People plant trees for their grandchildren that they themselves may never harvest. In that simple act lies a profound understanding of what sustains life.

Food systems are often defined by their structures and functions: the people, places, institutions, and activities that produce, process, distribute, consume, and dispose of food. Those structures and functions matter, yet they emerge from something deeper. A food system is the living web of relationships that sustains life across generations.

The relationships we cultivate shape what becomes possible. When those relationships flourish, food systems flourish. We flourish.

Food systems transformation begins by reimagining our relationships and what we believe is possible and who are we becoming.

For millennia, stars guided humanity toward horizons it could not yet fully see, from the way finders of Polynesia to cultures around the world guided by the night sky.

Food systems transformation is much the same. We know the world we are leaving behind. There is gratitude for what has sustained us, relief for what we are ready to release, and loss for what may not come with us. While we cannot fully see what lies beyond the horizon, wonder invites us forward.

Years ago, while preparing a seminar on what I had learned throughout my career, I realized that the familiar arc of scientific discovery never captured the whole story. When I shared this with my husband, he responded, “Talk about the liminal space.” That idea stayed with me.

Derived from the Latin limen, meaning threshold, anthropologists use liminality to describe the space between one way of being and another, where familiar assumptions begin to dissolve before new ones have fully emerged.

Liminality is often mistaken for uncertainty. From the perspective of history, the liminal space is where innovations are born. Innovation is not always invention; sometimes it is the rediscovery of enduring relationships in new contexts.

As the health of people and the planet comes under increasing strain, our capacity to understand and shape the future is expanding in extraordinary ways. Just as we have long looked to the stars, we are discovering new universes closer to home, in our soils, our food, and our gut. Artificial intelligence is synthesizing relationships across ecosystems, molecules, microbes, and human biology at a scale and precision previously beyond our reach, opening new frontiers of discovery. Regenerative agriculture is restoring relationships with soil and biodiversity while drawing upon knowledge cultivated across generations.

Wonder has always expanded what we believe is possible. Now it invites us to decide what possibilities we pursue, what relationships we carry forward, what values guide us, and ultimately, who we are becoming and how we shape what comes next.

In my early years of teaching food systems, I noticed something unexpected that now seems obvious. As students moved deeper into their degree program, many began to lose hope. Complexity does not necessarily expand our sense of possibility; without hope, imagination, and resilience, it can narrow it. It made me question how we teach food systems and the stories we tell about them. In preparing food systems leaders, we need to cultivate knowledge, hope, resilience, and the capacity to imagine and co-create what comes next.

Resilient people create resilient communities, and resilient communities co-create resilient food systems with the living world. Every day, we make decisions that shape the food system that future generations will inherit, from the crops farmers plant and how they steward their land to the meals families prepare, the investments funders support, and the policies that govern our food environments.

We often search for a single innovation or policy that will transform everything. History suggests otherwise. Innovation may expand our capability, but it cannot tell us what future is worth creating. That remains profoundly human.

The most enduring transformations emerge from cultivating the relationships and values that shape what becomes possible.

Systems thinker Fritjof Capra reminds us that the horizon is not a destination but a guide. As we move toward it, it moves with us. We never fully arrive because every horizon reveals another beyond it. The same is true of food systems transformation. Every discovery reshapes our understanding. Every challenge reveals new possibilities. Every possibility reveals another horizon.

As I look back to the stars, I wonder what stories my daughter and the generations that follow will tell about who we chose to become and the relationships we chose to cultivate with the living world.

We are becoming the ancestors of future food systems.

This essay is part of Food Tank’s Flourish Series: Food and Health from Molecules to Systems, authored by Selena Ahmed, exploring how food connects us to the living world while asking what it means to flourish. For more in the series, click here. 

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.

The post Op-Ed | Food Systems at the Threshold: Wonder Between What Is and What Could Be appeared first on Food Tank.

Headline News:

• “Construction Surge Pushes US Wind Outlook Higher” • The US wind industry is on track to connect more than 50 GW of capacity through 2030, Wood Mackenzie said in its US Wind Energy Monitor Q2 2026 report. The research group raised its five-year outlook, noting that construction starts increased 8% from Q1 2025 to Q1 2026. [reNews]

Wind farm (Ørsted image)

• “Deal Sealed To Unlock 3.56 GW Capacity In NSW Renewable Energy Zone” • The New South Wales government’s planned South West Renewable Energy Zone is closer to delivery after EnergyCo signed a Project Development Deed with Transgrid to upgrade a key section of the grid to support 3.56 GW of new renewable energy capacity. [pv magazine Australia]
• “Oil Prices Rise As Fighting Between US And Iran Intensifies” • Oil prices rose as fighting between the US and Iran intensified. Oil prices jumped in early trading as the US announced attacks for a ninth consecutive night. Iran responded to the strikes by targeting US allies across the Middle East. Benchmark Brent crude rose 3.2% to $90.95 per barrel. [Euronews]
• “Court Orders EPA To Implement National Soot Standard” • The US District Court for the Northern District of California ruled that the US EPA must follow the law and implement the strengthened health-based 2024 National Ambient Air Quality Standard for particulate matter (PM2.5) air pollution, commonly called soot. [CleanTechnica]
• “The US Needs 5,000 Miles Of New High-Voltage Lines Every Year. It Only Built 392” • Some transmission experts say the grid needs about 5,000 miles of new lines. The additions reached almost 4,000 miles in 2013. In 2025, the industry added 402 miles. Before we supply AI with electricity, we have to know where it will come from. [OilPrice.com]

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

The NFU believes that the NPF must prioritize five policy pillars: generational renewal; growing local markets and regional trade; food security through food sovereignty; long-term public agriculture research; and climate resilience.

The post Canada: The Next Agricultural Policy Framework Must Centre Food Sovereignty, says NFU appeared first on La Via Campesina - EN.

When the Strait of Hormuz first closed at the start of the 2026 Iran war, the world braced for the “largest energy crisis in history.” Before the conflict began, almost 20 percent of the world’s traded oil passed through the narrow waterway between the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman. Iran’s blockade of the strait effectively erased 15 million barrels per day from circulation overnight. 

Many experts and commentators predicted that the supply gap would have catastrophic consequences. Australia expected fuel rationing, the European airline industry warned of mass flight cancellations, and Goldman Sachs predicted widespread oil shortages. The International Monetary Fund warned of a potential global recession, and some traders worried that oil prices could hit $200 a barrel.

But a little over four months into the war, little of that has come to pass. 

TimelineHow the oil market has handled the Iran warFebruary 28The United States and Israel launch a joint military operation against Iran.MarchIran retaliates and announces that it has closed the Strait of Hormuz. Benchmark oil prices rise above $100 a barrel.

The International Energy Agency announces a coordinated strategic reserve release of around 400 million barrels from more than 30 countries, including the United States.

Governments across Asia introduce energy-saving measures such as remote work mandates and restrictions on who can drive.AprilThe United States and other countries increase domestic crude production and exports, filling the gap created by the closure of the strait.MayBrent crude rises toward around $120 a barrel, its highest level on the year, as traders fear a prolonged supply disruption.JuneOn June 17, the United States and Iran sign a ceasefire agreement. Commercial shipping resumes through the Strait of Hormuz, and benchmark oil prices fall back to about $70 per barrel.JulyThe ceasefire breaks down. The U.S. announces a new blockade of Iranian oil and Iran announces new transit requirements for the Strait of Hormuz. Prices rise back to about $85 per barrel.

True, oil prices have gone up around the world, and there have been critical shortages of products such as cooking oil in some places, but rationing and recession have largely not arrived. Instead, a series of emergency measures have helped avoid the predicted crises: Oil exporters including the United States stepped in to fill the gap, either by drawing down strategic petroleum reserves or increasing production. Countries that were most reliant on fossil fuel imports from the Middle East took emergency conservation measures to reduce their demand. 

Here’s how the world has averted the worst of the oil shock so far, and what experts say might happen next if the conflict continues to drag on.

Finding alternative sources of oil

In the months since Hormuz cut off access to Iran’s main oil supply, the world has scraped every corner to find substitute barrels of crude oil. Many countries had stockpiles of oil saved up for an emergency, and in March, the International Energy Agency coordinated a historic release of oil from those reserves. That put on the market more than 400 million barrels, enough to fill about 20 days’ worth of the supply from Hormuz. 

A U.S. flag flies over Marathon Petroleum Corp’s Los Angeles Refinery, one of the largest oil refineries in North America in March 2026 in Carson, California.
David McNew / Getty Images

In addition, oil producers around the world ramped up production to take advantage of elevated prices. The United States, Venezuela, and Norway all pumped out more crude in the first half of the year than they had in previous months, with those additional barrels going to countries that had previously relied on shipments from Iraq and Saudi Arabia. South Korea, for instance, doubled its oil imports from the United States between February and April of this year. Iraq and Saudi also routed more than 6 million barrels of oil per day through land pipelines that were operating below capacity, skirting the strait altogether.

China, the world’s largest oil importer, also helped stabilize the world market. It stopped buying oil for its own strategic reserve after the war began, and it also stopped purchasing crude for its own domestic refineries, shutting them down for months. To generate electricity, it pivoted to coal and solar. These measures together freed up another 5 million barrels per day for the world market.

Using less oil

Even as the world scrambled to replace Middle East oil, the Asian countries that rely on it moved aggressively to slash their usage. Many nations idled their factories and industrial facilities that use petroleum-based liquids, which shaved off a few million more barrels a day. Some increased imports of electric vehicles or accelerated plans to adopt solar and wind technology to reduce their dependence on foreign oil and gas. But the vast majority of imported oil is used for transportation and power generation, so in order to weather the crisis, countries also needed to change consumer behavior.

Read Next The Iran war is destroying oil demand. Could it also spark a shift to clean energy? Kate Yoder

More than 100 countries enacted some form of conservation measure, ranging from limits on elevator usage to outright restrictions on when people could drive. The Philippines, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka all moved to a four-day work week, and Myanmar restricted gas vehicles to driving every other day based on the number of one’s license plate. Bangladesh limited air conditioning temperatures to 77 degrees Fahrenheit and closed public university buildings. This helped reduce demand on a power grid that runs on imported oil and liquefied natural gas, much of which also comes through Hormuz.

Some wealthier countries in Europe got even more ambitious: The Netherlands, for instance, allowed citizens to trade in gas cars for electric ones, and Sweden halved the cost of public transportation fares.

Consumers wait to fill gas cylinders at the Nepal Oil Corporation depot in Kathmandu, Nepal, in March. Across much of Asia, cooking gas is in sort supply due to the Iran conflict.
Subaas Shrestha / NurPhoto via Getty Images

These conservation measures likely prevented an out-of-control price spiral, giving importers time to procure more oil from other nations. They also likely saved Asian countries from needing to impose extended periods of rationing the way the United States had to do during the oil crisis of the 1970s, the largest previous disruption to the world’s oil supply.

“There have been multiple measures taken by governments both on the supply and demand side, but mainly on the demand side for large oil importers,” said Kevin Morrison, an analyst at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis who focuses on oil and gas in Australia. “This is a trend that is likely to continue as the uncertainty around future oil supplies remains uncertain.”

How long can these tactics last?

Even though the most dire early predictions haven’t borne out, the closure has not been easy. In the early days of the crisis, before countries procured substitute fuel, price spikes and supply disruptions in Asia altered millions of lives. Taxi drivers in Myanmar lost their livelihoods and funeral homes shut cremation services for lack of fuel. A lack of fertilizer during key rice planting times in Asia will likely hamper harvests later this year, contributing to higher food prices.

Aside from crude oil, the war has caused shortages of other goods like helium and sulfur, shipments of which also pass through the Strait of Hormuz. This has contributed to broader inflation for everything from nickel to semiconductors.

A natural gas delivery worker waits at a red light with tanks of gas strapped to their motorcycle in Bangkok, Thailand, in April The cost of living in Thailand is increasing as petroleum prices skyrocket amid the U.S.-Israel war on Iran.
Matt Hunt / Anadolu via Getty Images

The market shifts of the last few months have had consequences even in places like the United States that could afford a consistent supply of oil. Refiners around the world have produced more jet fuel to keep airlines supplied, but that means they have also produced less gasoline for cars. As the U.S. heads into the peak summer driving season, its gasoline inventories are as low as they have been in a decade. Supplies could drop even lower this fall as companies perform delayed maintenance on their hard-working refineries, said Bob McNally, the founder of the analysis group Rapidan Energy Group, who also advised the administration of President George W. Bush on oil policy.

It may soon get a lot worse. Even though global oil prices have fallen from their peak, there’s still a fundamental mismatch between oil demand and oil supply. As a result, experts say the world could still experience severe economic disruption later this year if the strait remains closed. Some vessel traffic resumed through the Strait of Hormuz last month following a tentative agreement between the United States and Iran, but the ceasefire has collapsed and Iran now says the strait is closed again. 

Read Next The war in Iran could plunge the world into hunger Ayurella Horn-Muller

“The market decided at the end of Round 1 to price for perfection” in an Iran deal, McNally said. “Instead, we’re getting Round 2. We played some tricks and some cards, but all these things … are either wearing off or already known.”

Those “tricks” have run their course. Most countries’ emergency stockpiles are close to depleted, and the U.S. strategic petroleum reserve has fallen so low that its structural integrity is starting to strain. At the same time, China has ended what McNally called its “crash diet” and has started to buy oil for its refineries again. 

This leaves the world without the buffer that it had during the first round of the crisis. 

“Hormuz 1.0 was about supply and inventory,” said McNally. “In Hormuz 2.0, prices will have to do more of the work. And they have to go really high, because the problem is demand is inelastic — you’ve got to eat.”

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This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Why the Iran war hasn’t caused a global oil crisis — yet on Jul 21, 2026.

Low-income Indian workers, many of them migrants from rural areas hit by climate change, are paying for worsening extreme heat through lost working days and health complications, with the cost equivalent to 2% of national GDP per year, new research shows.

The International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), a London-based think-tank, worked with local organisations to survey around 540 households of informal workers in three Indian cities: Ajmer, Delhi and Agra. Most had migrated from rural areas to find work in industries such as construction, brick-making, garment manufacturing and food packaging.

The survey found them struggling through long working days with little access to shade, cooling, rest or water, as well as few toilets for women. And even when they go home, many live in makeshift shelters or airless cramped rooms with barely a single fan, bringing almost no respite.

Outdoor workers are losing about 24 days of work a year due to heat, costing them nearly a tenth of their annual earnings, while indoor workers sacrifice roughly 15 days. On top of losing income, they are also bearing the cost of health problems like heat exhaustion, psychological stress and kidney damage brought on by repeated dehydration.

If the survey’s findings are extrapolated to a national level, the IIED researchers estimate that the decline in productivity and effects of kidney disease combined add up to lost wages of $78 billion each year.

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Vishram Meena, 45, from Alwar in Rajasthan, has worked on construction sites in Ajmer for more than a decade, toiling for 10 to 12 hours a day carrying materials and mixing cement in the full sun.

In May 2024, on one of the hottest days, he collapsed after feeling dizzy and suffering a nosebleed. His wife and colleagues managed to get him to hospital where he was diagnosed with heat stroke. He has since returned to the same building work because the family needs the money.

“I went back because what else could I do? We are not machines. We are human beings. The heat is killing us slowly,” he was quoted as saying in a report on the survey’s findings.

“Victorian-era” conditions

Ritu Bharadwaj, IIED’s director of climate resilience, finance and loss and damage, described some of the stories from workers about their experiences of extreme heat as “genuinely horrifying”.

Kusum, a tailor at a garment manufacturing and export unit in Kapashera, Delhi, recounted how the machines for ironing finished garments are in the same tiny room where workers are making the clothes, with steam and hot air building up through her shift.

Fans are too far apart to move the air and nothing has changed in over a decade, she said, adding that “in summer, the unit feels like a furnace”.

“These are Victorian-era working conditions and they’re completely unacceptable in the 21st century,” said Bharadwaj. She called for stepped-up social protection from the government to pay people for days they are unable work due to heat, as well as micro-insurance schemes with payouts triggered by temperature measurements.   

This money would help families buy food and pay medical bills when their income dips if they fall ill or cannot work their usual hours due to soaring temperatures.

Climate change-driven heatwaves hit Delhi’s Red Fort market traders

The aim of the IIED study, Bharadwaj added, is to get policy-makers’ attention by showing the scale of damage extreme heat is doing to India’s GDP in an economy whose growth relies on service-led industries. “If the workers within them start falling sick, you know it’s the economic growth which is going to get impacted,” she told a webinar to present the research.

“Whether [policymakers] care about the workers or not, at least they would care about the GDP, and therefore then invest in the care that is needed for them,” she explained.

Labour code leaves out heat

However, Bharadwaj noted that a 2026 reform to India’s labour law bringing a range of regulations together in one code does not include heat-related protections for workers and only applies to businesses above a certain size. She urged the government to introduce a temperature threshold above which all workers would be able to stop their activities.

IIED and its partners have also carried out a similar study in Bangladesh which will be published later this month, showing that extreme heat is costing its workforce the equivalent of nearly 1.4% of GDP.

Shakirul Islam, chairperson of the Ovibashi Karmi Unnayan Program (OKUP) in Bangladesh, said the government had introduced stricter safety policies for garment-making companies after the Rana Plaza complex collapsed in 2013. But, he said, these rules are rarely followed by manufacturers, especially at the level of smaller subcontractors.

The workers’ welfare centres that do exist are open mainly during work hours so they are difficult to visit. Some companies also make saline water available for heat stress, which is no good for those with high blood pressure, he noted.

For Indian women workers, a just transition means surviving climate impacts with dignity

Archana Shukla Mukherjee, CEO of India’s Change Alliance, which also partnered with IIED on the survey, said it was time to hold both the government and businesses accountable for finding solutions to the intensifying problem of extreme heat’s effects on workers.

She said that employee state insurance schemes should identify heat stroke as an occupational disease while companies along the whole supply chain should start putting in place heat protection measures, including for informal workers and migrants.

If the tools and mechanisms available to help workers do not reach the most vulnerable and marginalised people, “then I think we are not doing something right,” she said.

The post Extreme heat costing India’s poorest workers 2% of GDP, survey finds appeared first on Climate Home News.