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Guest post: Greenland ice sheet shrinks for 30th year in a row
- Surface mass balance
- Total mass balance
- Surface melt
- Snowfall
- Iceberg calving
- The impact of global weather
- Three decades of decline
- Greenland in the global sea level picture
This guest post is by:
Dr Martin Stendel, climate scientist at the Danish Meteorological Institute (DMI), part of the Polar Portal
Prof Ruth Mottram, climate scientist at DMI and honorary professor at Aarhus University
Greenland has now marked the 30th consecutive year where it lost more ice than it gained.
Over the 12-month period to August 2026, the world’s second-largest ice sheet lost around 135bn tonnes of ice.
This major ice loss came as the region experienced a relatively cool start to summer and less surface melt than in previous years.
In other words, it was not an “extreme” year for weather in Greenland – and, yet, the ice sheet ended firmly in the red.
Three decades of continuous ice loss in Greenland is significant, given that scientists typically need 30 years of data to separate the “fingerprint” of human-caused climate change from natural variations in the climate.
In Greenland, the direction of travel has been the same – downward – every single year for 30 years.
These latest figures come as a new report highlights that ice melting processes seen for decades in Greenland are increasingly being replicated in Antarctica.
Greenland, therefore, is not only the largest present-day source of ice-driven sea level rise – but offers a preview of what is in store for the world’s largest ice sheet.
(For our previous analyses of Greenland’s ice cover, see coverage in 2025, 2024, 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016 and 2015.)
Surface mass balanceOne way that scientists track the health of the Greenland ice sheet is by tracking changes to its “surface mass balance”.
This is the difference between ice gains from snowfall and losses from melt at the surface of Greenland’s ice sheet.
Greenland’s annual ice cycle runs from 1 September through to the end of August. The surface mass balance at the end of this period has, to date, always been positive, because the surface accumulates more snow than it loses from melting ice.
The ice sheet typically gains mass during the colder months of autumn, winter and spring. Then, as temperatures increase from around mid-June, the ice sheet begins to lose more ice through surface melt than it gains from snow.
(Greenland also loses ice when icebergs break off – or “calve” – into the sea, as well when the front of glaciers melt when they meet warm sea water. These losses are included in the “total mass balance” – see below.)
Greenland ended 2025-26 with an overall surface mass balance of 519bn tonnes.
This is the sixth highest in a dataset stretching back 46 years and about 178bn tonnes above the 1981-2010 average of roughly 350bn tonnes.
The map below shows the difference between the surface mass balance in 2025-26 and the 1981-2010 average, where blue shows ice gain and red shows ice loss.
Map showing the difference between the annual SMB in 2025-26 and the 1981-2010 period in mm of ice melt. Blue shows ice gain compared to average and red shows ice loss. Credit: Polar Portal.The blue lines in the charts below show the surface mass balance throughout 2025-26 for individual days (top) and cumulatively throughout the year (bottom). They highlight how Greenland gained ice between September 2025 and May 2026, before starting to lose ice from June onwards.
Daily (upper) and cumulative (lower) surface mass balance (SMB) of the Greenland ice sheet, in billions of tonnes. Blue lines show the 2025-26 surface mass balance year; grey lines and shading show the 1981-2010 average and variability. Red line shows the record-low year of 2011-12. Credit: Polar Portal.Total mass balance
Another way scientists measure the health of the Greenland ice sheet is by looking at its “total mass balance”.
This calculation accounts for ice loss at the surface, as well as the calving of icebergs and the melting of glacier fronts where they meet warm seawater. The latter two components are known as the “marine mass balance”.
It also accounts for a small amount of ice melt at the underside of the ice sheet. This is known as the “basal mass balance”.
In recent decades, Greenland’s total mass balance at the end of the ice cycle year has been negative.
The 12 months to August 2026 were no different. Once all these factors are considered, Greenland lost around 135bn tonnes of ice.
We reached this figure using the same method featured in previous Carbon Brief analyses of Greenland ice cover. This approach is based on an average of three climate models.
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This approach estimates that the ice sheet lost an even greater 173bn tonnes of ice over 2025-26.
(Scientific estimates for ice loss in Greenland vary because there is incomplete information about how thick the ice sheet is, how fast it is moving as well as the rate at which it is melting at the surface. Scientists use different approaches for accounting for these uncertainties.)
The chart below shows how Greenland’s total mass balance has changed since 1985, featuring the higher 173bn estimate for the last ice cycle year.
It shows how 2025-26 was the 30th consecutive year of ice loss in Greenland, with 1996 the last year that saw an annual net gain of ice.
Labels on the x-axis denote the period 1 September to 31 August, where 1987 covers 1 September 1986 to 31 August 1987.The chart below shows how Greenland’s surface mass balance, marine mass balance and basal mass balance have changed since 1985. All of these components are combined to calculate the ice sheet’s total mass balance (red).
Labels on the x-axis denote the period 1 September to 31 August, where 1987 covers 1 September 1986 to 31 August 1987.Surface melt
Winter and early spring in 2025-26 were unusually dry in the southern half of Greenland, leaving around 40bn tonnes less snow on the ice sheet than normal.
Dry winters typically mean high ice melt rates later on, given that heavier winter snowfall often acts as a protective shield that prevents ice loss in the early part of summer.
However, the relatively dry winter was followed by a relatively cool start of summer. Frequent snowfall and extensive cloud cover limited the sun’s ability to warm the surface at the time of year when solar radiation is typically strongest.
The onset of the melt season – the first of at least three consecutive days with melting over more than 5% of the ice sheet – occurred on 5 June, nine days later than the 1981-2010 average.
From the end of June, the weather in Greenland changed markedly, as warm, sunny conditions took hold.
During the first 20 days of July, melting was well above the 1981-2020 average. At its peak on 22 July, melting covered 74.9% of the ice sheet.
(For comparison, July 2025 holds the record for melt area in Greenland, when 81.2% of the continent was melting simultaneously.)
However, the early season fresh snow in June helped to form a cold and bright buffer, reducing the subsequent summer ice melt and runoff.
The map below shows how roughly three-quarters of Greenland’s ice sheet – shaded in red – was experiencing surface melt on 22 July. The chart shows how surface melt on that date (blue line) outpaced the 1981-2010 average (grey line and shading).
Map showing areas of Greenland undergoing surface melt (shaded red) on 22 July 2026. Chart shows percentage of ice sheet area which saw surface melt on 22 July 2026 (blue) compared to the 1981-2010 average (grey). Credit: Polar Portal.Snowfall
As mentioned above, snowfall is the only way for the ice sheet to gain mass.
Because the dry 2025-26 winter did not provide the usual thick layer of snow to act as a protective buffer, the ice sheet started the summer already “behind” on ice levels.
However, even though there was above-average melting during summer, the surface mass balance remained almost constant from mid-June to mid-July. It was only slightly smaller by the end of August.
This was because much of the melt trickled into the snow below and refroze.
South-east Greenland is typically the wettest part of the ice sheet and this year was no exception. Unlike other years though, there was also significant snowfall on the west coast north of Nuussuaq.
Summer snowfall helps to preserve the ice sheet, as fresh snow is brighter than old glacier ice and reflects more of the sun’s energy back to space.
Increases in both snowfall and melt are in line with what scientists expect in a warming climate. Warmer air holds more water vapour, bringing more snow and rain, while higher temperatures drive more ice melt.
Iceberg calvingThe most dramatic ice loss of 2025-26 happened at Greenland’s edges.
On 4 August, a vast tabular iceberg – an “ice island” with nearly vertical sides and a flat top – broke away from the floating ice tongue of Petermann glacier in north-west Greenland.
Sentinel-1 image sequence of the Petermann ice island, before and after the 4 August 2026 calving. Credit: ESA/Copernicus.More than 76 square kilometres (km2) in size, with an estimated thickness of 150 metres, the amount of water frozen in this iceberg would be enough to submerge the entirety of greater London to a depth of 6.65m.
This was the largest loss of floating ice at the Petermann glacier since 2012 and the biggest calving event by any Arctic glacier since 2020.
Similar breakoffs occurred in 2010 and 2012 and the current one had long been expected, given growing cracks in the glacier for several years.
Scientists anticipate more calving events at the Petermann glacier. Two further ice islands, with estimated areas of roughly 94 and 84km2, are expected to detach as existing rifts continue to cut across the ice tongue.
Together, the three would remove about 22% of Petermann’s remaining floating ice.
Because the ice tongue is already floating, this calving does not directly raise sea levels. But Petermann is one of Greenland’s largest marine-terminating glaciers, acting as a brake on ice flowing from the interior to the ocean.
The recent breakaway is a reminder that calving and glacier retreat continue apace in Greenland, even in years when the surface mass budget is unremarkable. (To date, calving and glacier retreat have driven roughly two-thirds of total ice loss on the continent.)
The impact of global weatherGreenland’s relatively high surface mass balance in 2025-26 can be explained, in part, by the hot summer in Europe.
Multiple heatwaves were observed across southern Europe and North America over the summer of 2026, with temperature records recorded in multiple countries.
When high-pressure systems that cause heatwaves become blocked in place, the jet stream – fast-moving winds that blow from west to east high in the atmosphere – is shaped like the Greek capital letter Omega (Ω). This is the pattern that dominated this year.
Warm conditions settle near the cores of high-pressure systems, while cool, wet conditions can be found at the “feet” of the Omega.
This year, Greenland was on the right side of the Omega-shaped jet stream and thus experienced cooler conditions.
If the Omega pattern had been displaced by half a wavelength, Greenland would have likely seen warm temperatures that brought record levels of melt – and a lower surface mass balance.
Three decades of declineSo, why does the milestone of 30 years of ice mass decline in Greenland matter?
A single year, however dramatic, can be strongly influenced by the weather. An extreme melt summer – or an unusually cold, snowy one – says little on its own about the region’s long-term trajectory.
This is why climate scientists typically look at 30-year periods when distinguishing a change in climate from natural variability.
Thirty years of data shows that the annual ice budget in Greenland has ended in the red, without exception, since 1996. This applies to warm years, cold years and snowy years.
The largest single-year loss remains 2012, when around 458bn tonnes of ice disappeared from the ice sheet.
The past two years have been moderate by comparison – yet even these “quiet” years produced losses of more than 100bn tonnes each.
Thirty years of data on ice mass decline means that scientists now can confidently say that Greenland mass loss is due to climate change.
Greenland in the global sea level pictureA new assessment highlights how Greenland’s losses are the largest single contribution from the ice sheets to global sea level rise.
The Ice Sheet Mass Balance Intercomparison Exercise (IMBIE) combines 42 independent estimates of ice sheet mass change from satellite gravimetry, altimetry and the input-output method – including the Danish Meteorological Institute’s surface mass balance estimates detailed in this article – all into a single record.
The latest assessment, published in the journal Scientific Data in September, shows that Greenland and Antarctica together lost 11,309bn tonnes of ice between 1979 and 2023, raising global sea levels by around 32mm.
The two ice sheets now account for almost one-quarter of observed global sea level rise.
Greenland dominates that record. It lost 6,215bn tonnes of ice between 1972 and 2023 – an average of 119bn tonnes per year. Two-thirds of the loss was driven by increased ice discharge and one-third by reduced surface mass balance due to increased melt.
Annual losses from ice melt accelerated from around 60bn tonnes in the 1980s to 264bn tonnes in the 2010s.
In contrast, Antarctica lost 4,780bn tonnes over the same period, raising sea levels by around 13mm.
All of Antarctica’s losses are due to discharge from the ice sheet, concentrated in west Antarctica. East Antarctica, on the other hand, has so far remained relatively stable, with record snowfall in recent years even producing a small mass gain.
This division in sea-level contribution is expected to change. Greenland’s losses to date amount to only a few centimetres of sea level rise, but Antarctica’s ice sheet is roughly 10 times larger and therefore could lead to significantly more sea level rise in the future.
The IMBIE assessment notes that Antarctica’s losses are dominated by marine-terminating glaciers whose stability is hardest to predict.
The processes now increasingly observed in Antarctica – increasing surface melt, shrinking sea ice, loss of ice shelves and seasonal patterns of retreat of outlet glaciers – have been seen in Greenland for decades. We call this the “Greenlandification” of Antarctica.
Greenland, in other words, is not just the largest present-day source of ice-driven sea level rise – it is also a preview of what may come from the far larger ice sheet at the other end of the planet.
Related Q&A: How Trump is threatening climate science in Earth’s polar regions 20.02.2026 Antarctica Guest post: The challenges in projecting future global sea levels 17.02.2026 Greenland State of the climate: 2025 in top-three hottest years on record as ocean heat surges 14.01.2026 Climate modelling Guest post: How the Greenland ice sheet fared in 2025 15.12.2025 GreenlandThe post Guest post: Greenland ice sheet shrinks for 30th year in a row appeared first on Carbon Brief.
National climate plans now promise half the emission cuts expected by UN
Countries’ climate plans would cut global emissions only half as much by 2035 as the UN projected a year ago, its annual assessment showed, after the US exit from the Paris Agreement and weaker new pledges worsened the outlook.
Taking into account the nationally determined contributions (NDCs) of 154 countries, which cover about 71% of global emissions, and current policies in the rest of the world, global emissions would fall to about 6% below 2019 levels by 2035. Last year’s update, based on 113 countries, put the figure at 12%.
According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, emissions need to go down by 60% over the same period to limit global warming to 1.5C – a threshold that is now inevitably going to be breached, at least temporarily.
The latest NDCs put the world on course for between 2.1C and 3.2C of warming by the end of the century, depending on what countries do beyond 2035. That is slightly higher than the 1.9C–3.0C range that the UN climate body estimated in last year’s update, published during COP30.
US exit worsens pictureA major factor is the US, the world’s second-largest emitter. Last year’s UN assessment included the pledge to cut emissions by between 61% and 66% by 2035, made under the administration of former President Joe Biden.
But, since the US has officially left the Paris Agreement, its NDC has been excluded from the tally and its emissions projections have now been derived from current policies, which point to far higher levels of pollution.
US emissions grew significantly last year as a result of growing electricity demand and the policies of President Donald Trump’s administration, which has rolled back support for clean energy and backed the burning of fossil fuels.
Weak new NDCsAnother reason for weaker emission reduction projections is that the approximately 40 new NDCs submitted since last year’s update have been less ambitious than the earlier UN modelling had hoped for.
India, the world’s third-largest emitter, submitted its NDC in April. Its plan would let emissions climb to 6.3 billion tonnes by 2035, almost 64% above 2023 levels, according to analysis by Climate Action Tracker (CAT). Its targets are weaker than India’s current policies and it could meet them as early as 2030.
Saudi Arabia’s plan, submitted at the end of last year, sets no 2035 target, but has only a 2040 goal to reduce, avoid or remove 335 million tonnes a year against an undisclosed baseline. CAT rates it “critically insufficient”, estimating 2035 emissions at between 13% below and 18% above 2019 levels.
About 30 countries, including Egypt, Vietnam and Argentina, have still not produced an updated NDC, which all governments should have submitted more than a year and a half ago.
UN climate chief Simon Stiell said this year’s assessment report demonstrates again that collective progress remains insufficient, that global transitions are very uneven and that many countries face substantial barriers to delivering their targets and pledges.
He added that COP31 in Türkiye can help address some of the key gaps highlighted in this year’s reports, through ambitious outcomes on emission-cutting efforts, adaptation, climate finance and just transitions, as well as presidency-led initiatives on electrification, curbing methane emissions and progressing towards zero waste.
The post National climate plans now promise half the emission cuts expected by UN appeared first on Climate Home News.
Carney Almost as Bad as Trump on Climate, Emissions Watchdog Warns
Canada’s already battered reputation on curbing climate emissions has become drastically worse under the leadership of Prime Minister Mark Carney according to a recent report card from Climate Action Tracker, approaching levels of inaction comparable to the “drill baby drill” Trump Administration.
“Prime Minister Mark Carney has so far been unwilling to recommit to either the 2030 or 2035 targets and has conceded that, under his energy plan, Canada’s emissions will be higher in the near term than previously projected,” warned the report. “If Canada were to officially abandon its 2030 and 2035 targets, it would be the first country after the United States to do so.”
The emissions watchdog didn’t mince words about the pace and scale of Canada’s climate rollbacks.
“What is shocking to us is the true extent to which Prime Minister Carney has rolled back climate policies, largely in favour of the fossil fuel industry,” Bill Hare, CEO of Climate Analytics, a CAT partner, said in a release.
“This Carney climate carnage, while not quite as bad as Trump’s, is rapidly heading in the same direction, despite the country being hit by record wildfires and other devastating climate impacts,” he added.
While Canada’s planned policies were expected to cut emissions by 30 percent below 2005 levels by 2030 two years ago, since Carney has come into office Climate Action Tracker estimates this planned reduction has been cut in half. Current policies are on track to only deliver a 14 percent decrease in emissions.
Carney’s oil-friendly government has swept aside a suite of climate regulations aimed at reducing the massive and growing emissions from the oil sands, which have ballooned by 178 percent since 2005 and now almost equal the entire passenger transport sector.
Subscribe to Desmog Email Address Sign Up Send me intelligence from: All US/Global team UK/Europe team Sign Up --> (function($){ $('.newsletter-container .ijkidr-us').click(function() { $('.js-cm-form').attr('data-id', '2BE4EF332AA2E32596E38B640E905619D07B21962C5AFE16D3A2145673C82A3CEE9D9F1ADDABE965ACB3CE39939D42AC9012C6272FD52BFCA0790F0FB77C6442'); $('.js-cm-email-input').attr('name', 'cm-vdrirr-vdrirr'); }); $('.newsletter-container .ijkidr-uk').click(function() { $('.js-cm-form').attr('data-id', '2BE4EF332AA2E32596E38B640E905619BD43AA6813AF1B0FFE26D8282EC254E3ED0237BA72BEFBE922037EE4F1B325C6DA4918F8E044E022C7D333A43FD72429'); $('.js-cm-email-input').attr('name', 'cm-ijkidr-ijkidr'); }); })(jQuery);Perhaps the single fig leaf remaining to cover this naked climate failure is the long-touted and still not-built Pathways carbon capture and storage (CCS) project.
But this project is nothing more than a boondoggle in waiting, with rapidly diminishing expectations of what Pathways would accomplish and growing estimates of what it would cost.
“These technologies are nowhere near the scale and commercial viability needed to deliver on the needed emission reductions,” Climate Action Tracker concluded.
Pathways was originally hyped by bitumen producers as the largest CCS project in the world that would eliminate 68 million tonnes (MT) of emissions a year, or three-quarters of the oil sands’ entire output. That dubious goal has since been quietly rolled back to 16 MT by 2050, a decline of 76 percent.
The first phase of the Pathways project was supposed to be completed by 2030 to store 22 MT per year, now revised down to 6 MT sometime after 2032. Dilling bravely characterized these massive decreases in sequestered emissions as “slightly smaller”.
Six years into this alleged climate saving megaproject, no design proposals have been made public and not a single shovel has been stuck in the ground. The only things that have tangibly changed are the steadily diminishing projections about what Pathways could achieve if it ever gets built, and the mounting costs of doing so.
Originally budgeted at $16.5 billion, the current costs of building a potentially dangerous 650 km CO2 pipeline to Cold Lake and injecting CO2 into an underground reservoir three times larger than Prince Edward Island have ballooned to as high as $30 billion. Guess what? The same companies that are on track to pocket $100 billion in war-related profits this year expect the Canadian taxpayer to foot most of the bill.
It is increasingly clear that the Pathways project is less about carbon sequestration and more about political leverage. The so-called grand bargain between Ottawa and Alberta explicitly links Pathways with a new pipeline approval to the west coast to further boost bitumen production that has already increased almost 40 percent since 2015, undoing any climate benefits.
“The Pathways project… will not come close to compensating for the new west coast oil pipeline, which could add up to 28 MTA of greenhouse gas emissions every year,” Aly Hyder Ali, Environmental Defence Canada’s senior program manager for oil and gas told DeSmog. “It will require tens of billions of dollars in public support, while capturing only a small portion of the emissions from oil sands production.”
Carbon capture and storage has long been held up as a way to slow down climate consequences while still burning fossil fuels. Despite much industry-funded hype and $40 billion so far spent around the world, CCS only sequesters a puny proportion of global greenhouse gases.
A recent peer-reviewed study of the technology warned, “continued reliance on CCS is a high-cost gamble that risks delaying the deployment of truly effective climate solutions… Despite decades of promotion and investment, [CCS] remains technologically constrained, economically inefficient, and strategically misapplied.”
Even if Pathways worked perfectly it would do nothing to mitigate the tailpipe emissions once bitumen is refined into transportation fuel, which are four times higher than production emissions.
The Pathways project is a diminishing technological fix for a problem that industry has refused to deal with. Alberta oil sands operators have repeatedly stalled taking action, demanded more taxpayer largess, and allowed their emissions to grow north of 92 MT per year – an increase of more than three percent over the previous year due to ballooning production.
The oil patch is Canada’s biggest climate laggard while banking massive profits. Alberta’s bitumen producers raked in $13.3 billion in the first three months of 2026. Yet such wealthy companies still expect the beleaguered Canadian taxpayer to foot most of the bill for another pipeline to the Pacific and the expensive CCS project that makes the pipeline politically possible. Perhaps oil patch lobbyists deserve a raise. To gaslight a country into shelling out billions in subsidies to a wildly profitable sector that is also fuelling an accelerating climate crisis is no small feat. Pathways’ diminishing targets and mounting costs make this outlandish accomplishment even more outrageous.
The post Carney Almost as Bad as Trump on Climate, Emissions Watchdog Warns appeared first on DeSmog.
Delegates at biodiversity COP17 should follow the lead of Global South women
By Valentina Figuera Martínez, GFC Gender Justice and Forests Campaign Coordinator
The original version of this article was published in Mongabay
As global leaders convene in Armenia this week for the U.N. Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) conference of the parties (COP17), it is difficult to ignore how women’s oppression is deeply intertwined with the exploitation of ecosystems. After almost two decades of pledges, biodiversity action remains underfunded, forest loss continues to be a growing threat, socio-ecological transitions are a low priority, and ecosystems are spiraling toward collapse.
The impacts of resulting climate disasters and biodiversity destruction are not felt equally, yet gender justice issues also remain unresolved within these international talks.
In Yerevan, Armenia, countries will consider the first global review of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (KMGBF), which was the first formal assessment to measure progress since its adoption in 2022. COP17 is also poised to advance efforts on biodiversity finance under the umbrella of common but differentiated responsibilities.
But progress cannot be measured only in targets, financial commitments and international mechanisms. We should also ask a more basic question: What can we learn from the people who are already protecting biodiversity in their territories?
Women leading agroecology and community conservation initiatives in Zambia. Image courtesy of Kapyanga Women Association & Zamsof.While hundreds of policymakers spend long hours negotiating decisions to promote false solutions and powerful corporate actors lobby to continue profiting from biodiversity destruction and obstruct environmental regulations, women from the Global South continue working without big cameras or fancy social media presences to protect what is left of their territories. They are ensuring the continuation of life on Earth for you, me, and future generations.
The reality in the negotiation corridors will be very different from the violence, extortion, and environmental destruction in the mining areas surrounding El Callao, in Bolívar state, Venezuela, for example, which is one of the epicenters of the gold rush promoted after the U.S. military invasion of the country earlier this year. Being born and raised in Bolívar, it will be difficult for me to agree in Yerevan that governments are “taking action for nature.”
And after hearing over the last several months from friends and colleagues from the Global South about human rights violations and ecosystem destruction they confront, it is important to remind everyone of an incontrovertible fact: As long as governments fail to address the systemic drivers of biodiversity destruction — especially in the Global South — and continue using domestic policies to expand extractivist sectors while broadening status quo dependency, these failures will persist.
One of the most contentious topics is biodiversity finance. Biodiversity offsets and credits, debt-for-nature swaps, and nature-based solutions are just some of the flawed market-based instruments presented to mobilize finance toward Global South countries. Despite all the widely known controversies, poor performance and human rights abuses, they are increasingly dominating attention while urgent priorities — including allocation of direct resources for community-led conservation actions and giving communities full decision-making power in finance institutional structures — remain unaddressed.
Market-based schemes should be ruled out. They instrumentalize greenwashing and allow brokers, developers, intermediaries and large NGOs to extract funding that should be benefiting communities.
Indigenous women of the Ticuna community of San Francisco de Yahuma in Loreto, Peru, are breaking gender barriers and taking on leadership roles on conservation in their communities. Image courtesy of Joseph Zegarra/Rainforest Foundation US.Women and youth making a difference
Over the last few months, I have been working with friends and colleagues from Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Southeast Asia to understand what real solutions to the climate and biodiversity crises look like. We all have in common a deep reverence for life, respect for traditional wisdom, a great deal of technical forest knowledge, advocacy experience, and a strong commitment to defending territories. And, of course, a tireless stubbornness to fight for systemic changes to the current model of development.
Real solutions might look like an agroecological farming system rooted in traditional knowledge, or a community defending its territory from extractivist industries. They might be women organizing to protect forests, strengthen food sovereignty, or build more equitable forms of community autonomy. I’ve also seen women from Brazil, Colombia, Chile, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Nepal plus researchers from Morocco and Zambia, a peasant from Uruguay, an Indigenous leader from Panama and legal activists from Bangladesh all showing resilience and concrete community-led conservation actions.
All of them remind us that the value of ancestral knowledge, community autonomy, and access to decision-making power cannot be replaced by money or “innovative schemes.” Their real community-led solutions cannot be separated from the political dimensions of life and stay only on the technical side, focusing on reformist approaches to delay urgent systemic changes. They cannot be “scaled up” like the top-down generic schemes presented in international talks.
Real women-led solutions are unique, as every complex ecosystem is, and demand putting power in the hands of environmental defenders. The ancestral ‘nainu’ agroforestry system in the Gunayala autonomous territory of Panama is a hopeful example capable of teaching us what biodiversity action actually looks like, as the Gunadule people create a shield of resistance with a concrete community-led solution centered on traditional knowledge and women’s leadership. The strong understanding of these Global South women about the interconnections between oppression and the exploitation of ecosystems is just as inspiring as the sophisticated strategies they have built to confront mining, agribusiness, colonial legal frameworks, and patriarchal policies.
Working with the women behind these initiatives has also shown me that documenting their solutions is only part of the task. The point is not to turn these communities into inspirational examples for an international audience, nor is it to extract their knowledge and package it into another global model. It is to recognize that these communities have their own knowledge, priorities and political agency, and that biodiversity policy needs to create the conditions for those solutions to flourish.
That means secure rights to land and territory. It also means direct, public and accessible finance. And, it means protecting communities from destructive extractive projects, recognizing traditional knowledge and women’s leadership, and giving communities meaningful power over the decisions and financial structures that affect them.
Working with this group of women and men on a Gender-Just Real Solutions Map for Territories and Communities is a learning path to find answers to a complex crisis. One thing is clear: We must support localized actions which are genuinely community-led solutions that uphold rights, autonomy, socio-ecological transitions and create conditions to fight social inequalities.
The question for COP17 is not whether these solutions exist. They do.
The question is whether governments are prepared to recognize them, resource them, and most importantly, listen to the people who are already putting them into practice.
Valentina Figuera Martínez is a feminist researcher and campaign coordinator at the Global Forest Coalition, where she works with communities and civil society organizations to advance gender justice, biodiversity protection and the rights of women and Indigenous and local communities.
Less is more. So why does more feel greener? 9 studies probe the “sustainable additive bias”
People are drowning in eco-friendly swag—cloth tote bags, reusable water bottles, recycled notebooks, sustainable hotel toiletries, and on and on—distributed by organizations and companies eager to demonstrate their environmental bona fides.
What might be even more sustainable than manufacturing and distributing all these eco-friendly products is to just…stop. The trouble is that consumers have trouble giving brands credit for such restraint, a quirk of human psychology that researchers dub “sustainable additive bias” in a new paper.
“Companies that genuinely try to take eco-friendly actions, such as reducing packaging or promotional giveaways, are often not rewarded,” says study team member Linda Lemarié, associate professor of marketing at Audencia Business School in France. “What we don’t see is hard to take into consideration, and reduction leaves nothing visible, even though it’s often the best strategy from an environmental standpoint.”
In the paper, Lemarié and her colleagues conducted nine different studies to demonstrate how this bias works—and what companies can do about it.
The studies included a field experiment in which hotel guests rated the sustainability of the room they had stayed in, a lab experiment in which business school students chose gifts to hand out to trade show attendees, and seven online investigations in which a total of more than 2,900 participants were asked to evaluate complimentary hotel toiletries, hair care sets, music festival welcome bags, and other collections of products.
Overall, the studies show that consumers see businesses as more sustainable when they provide more eco-friendly items rather than when they remove unnecessary ones—even though subtracting can lead to lower waste and a smaller footprint.
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“We were first surprised by the robustness and consistency of the effect across different contexts and with different metrics,” Lemarié says.
For example, study participants judged a hotel room stocked with a large selection of eco-friendly toiletries as more sustainable than a room with a more modest set of eco-friendly products. They also judged a limited-edition tea box to which eco-friendly tea filters had been added as more sustainable than one from which they had been removed.
“Then we were also surprised by the bias’s resistance to knowledge,” Lemarié says. When items weren’t labeled as being environmentally friendly, participants identified bundles with more items as being less sustainable than those with fewer. “This means that people do indeed correctly associate ‘addition with ‘less environmentally friendly.’”
But when the question of sustainability comes into play, people seem to use visible components as indicators of companies’ effort. The more items, the more effort, and the more effort, the more sustainability—at least, according to our imperfect brains.
Several of the experiments suggest sustainable additive bias can be counteracted when companies prioritize highly recognizable items as sustainability signals (that is, a refillable water bottle counts more than biodegradable glitter). One hints that explaining when items have been removed for environmental reasons might help, too.
But accomplishing this in the real world could be tricky, Lemarié says. “The question our research leaves open is how to effectively demonstrate, without appearing hypocritical or making people skeptical, that reducing elements of a product offering, and thus offering less, is a genuine effort in favor of the environment.”
Source: Lemarié L. et al. “The more, the better? The sustainable additive bias.” Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science 2026.
Image: ©Anthropocene Magazine. AI-generated.
Industry Knew for Decades That Microplastics Could Infiltrate Human Bodies
The chemical industry has known for decades that ingested microplastic particles can reach vital organs, an investigation has found.
Inside the French student revolt
What started as high school students striking for better learning conditions has now become a widespread revolt against austerity, racism, and neocolonialism. Looming over the protests are the threat of an electoral victory for the fascist Marine Le Pen in next year’s presidential election.
The following interviews are a result of collaboration between U.S. revolutionary socialist Janette Zahia Corcelius and French Marxist Jane-Léonie Bellay. They were concluded on October 16, the day before major protests nationwide, when well over half a million faced a ferocious police response featuring explosive weapons and mass arrests.
French trade unions such as the CGT, CNT, CFDT, UNSA, Solidaires, & FSU, FO & Solidaires have announced that they will launch a nationwide general strike on Thursday, November 5.
Jane-Léonie: To set the stage, it is important to note that the high school student movement began in Mayotte, an island in the Indian Ocean near Réunion, which became a French department in 2011. [The protests] then spread to French Guiana, a former French colony that became a French department in 1946. In fact, the high school student movement began on August 31 at the Lycée de la Cité du Nord in Mayotte and then spread across the entire island— with students and teachers acting together in most cases until the school break on October 10. The movement then spread to the Félix Eboué High School in French Guiana on September 7, followed by the Melkior-Garré Comprehensive High School and the Bertène-Jumine High School in French Guiana, and then—as in mainland France—to Martinique, Guadeloupe, Réunion, and Tahiti. Police violence was just as widespread overseas, but as with the high school strikes—and as is customary—not a single word was mentioned in the mainland French press, which remains deeply colonial in its outlook, regarding these events for several weeks. Subsequently, the movement in mainland France took root at the Saint-Exupéry High School in Créteil on September 21, which was the first to be blockaded.
The interviewees are:
- Smael Afnaï, a 16-year-old high school student activist in Montreuil (a Paris suburb).
- Léon, a senior at the Louise Michel vocational high school in Grenoble (France), specializing in health and social technology. At his school, there is no student union; the students have organized themselves. This is generally the case in France.
- Hamet Nimaga, a high school student and representative of the Lycée Jean Macé in Vitry-sur-Seine in the 94th Department, just southeast of Paris.
- Julia, a 23-year-old woman living in Lyon who is preparing for the entrance exam to become a primary school teacher.
Tempest: How did the student movement begin, and what are its main demands?
Smael: The student movement began with the blockade of Saint-Exupéry High School in Créteil (a Paris suburb). The demands centered on a lack of resources at the school and a resulting shortage of staff (teachers, nurses, etc.). This was followed by videos on social media and a wave of blockades at other high schools, as students observed the same lack of resources within the national education system.
Léon: The student movement began at a disadvantaged high school in Créteil, then spread to other disadvantaged high schools, and now all high schools are mobilizing around demands that include more resources for suburban high schools neglected by the government, the end of Parcoursup [a web portal that manages admission to higher education nationwide], the hiring of new teachers, etc.
Hamet: The movement first began at Saint-Exupéry High School in Créteil, then spread to other schools in Val-de-Marne (94th Department), the Île-de-France region, throughout France, and finally to several European countries.
Julia: The movement began at a high school in Val-de-Marne, in the Paris region, at a school where learning conditions are very difficult. The students are calling for more resources for education, more teachers, school psychologists employed by the Ministry of Education, and nurses. Very quickly, a large number of high schools across France joined the movement, demanding not only additional staff but also financial resources to bring a number of schools up to standard and renovate them. Finally, some demands challenge the current learning conditions by criticizing overly packed schedules and selection systems like Parcoursup, which cause anxiety for high school students throughout their high school years.
Pretty quickly, college students joined the movement by organizing through general assemblies and staging their own blockades of their campuses. In Lyon, various campuses were blockaded, including buildings where blockades are very rare. The same was true in Nice, where the College of Arts is in a state of serious disrepair. And surely the same is true in many other cities.
Tempest: How did the French government react?
Smael: The French government responded with heavy-handed police repression (more than 7,000 people taken into police custody to date, 96 percent of whom are minors). Several students were notably injured.
Léon: The government initially resorted to police repression and continues to do so. The only real, concrete measures announced since the movement began have been the allocation of 3,000 substitute teachers.
Hamet: The French government responded with severe repression, deploying law enforcement officers who engaged in acts of violence (beatings, people having their eyes gouged out, broken teeth) and physical assaults against French youth.
Tempest: Why are unions and social movements getting involved, and how? What is the relationship between the student movement, the unions, and the Left?
Smael: Relations between the student movement, the unions, and the Left are generally good. The student movement sets the dates for mobilizations following their general assemblies. (It sets the pace.) The unions join in on those dates, and the Left comes out to support the blockades and participates in the demonstrations.
They are getting involved because, for the vast majority, these are the demands they have long championed—it is their cause. And they are getting involved by participating in the scheduled protests and sharing information about the demonstrations on social media.
Léon: I think the other unions are also mobilizing because this is not a new problem, because the French people are fed up with our government, which doesn’t listen to us, and does nothing but erode the purchasing power of the French by making the rich even richer at the expense of the people.
Hamet: Unions and social movements are getting involved to align the high school students’ cause with that of workers. They are taking concrete action by informing students of their rights in the event of police custody, providing free legal representation, and offering logistical support during protests. All of this is of great help to young people.
As for the Left, it provides us with political and organizational support, but it does not interfere with the high school general assemblies. This preserves our genuine independence and prevents us from feeling patronized.
Julia: The social movement is involved in this mobilization in various ways. First, they are filing strike notices and calling for demonstrations based on the high school students’ demands and by expanding upon them. For example, education unions have championed the high school students’ demands by expanding them to include the working conditions of educational staff. Other unions have also come out in support of the high school students’ struggles, both in terms of their demands and in the face of the repression they have endured.
I believe one of the key challenges for the unions was to protect the high school students from police violence by standing by their side and providing them with material support (megaphones, sound systems, signs, etc.) and legal assistance (a help desk for accessing legal rights, referrals to lawyers, etc.).
Unions and left-wing organizations support the high school student movement in various ways and to varying degrees. Sometimes by being on the ground with them and trying to protect them. I’m thinking in particular of certain elected officials—notably members of La France Insoumise (a left-wing political party)—who have tried to dissuade the police from charging or firing on high school students. They also provide material and legal support without interfering with the students’ general assemblies or their decisions.
Tempest: What is the far right saying, and how might these events influence the 2027 elections?
Smael: The far right obviously supports law enforcement and not the students, arguing that students’ only right is “to go to class, sit down, and keep quiet.” And these events could influence the 2027 elections because they are currently a major focus of public debate.
Léon: The far right is quite pleased with the situation because it’s capitalizing on the anger of high school students, who sometimes vandalize things like trash cans, and it uses this to claim that if it were in power, there wouldn’t be these “problems with delinquency.” It also uses this to attack its opponent, La France Insoumise.
High school students are continuing their struggle despite heavy police repression and the violence used by the police.
Hamet: The far right refuses to listen to young people. It insists that the majority of young people simply want to study and work, adding that at our age, the previous generation faced the same problems. Young people respond that just because past generations endured these injustices without speaking out or rebelling doesn’t mean we have to do the same.
Julia: The far right is taking a nuanced stance. First, some far-right groups, such as Action Française (royalists), are trying to co-opt the movement by arguing that the demands made by high school students are legitimate but that violence is unacceptable. They advocate a return to order and a more peaceful approach to the struggle. Others condemn the movement, claiming it has been co-opted and led by La France Insoumise, and downplay the high school students’ demands. One might hear people say, “We used to have tough times too; young people just don’t want to work anymore.” Finally, some racism is directed toward the mobilized high school students because the movement began in working-class neighborhoods where educational conditions are particularly poor.
Tempest: What type and scale of organization have the students managed to establish?
Smael: The students organize themselves through general assemblies. They gather in committees by high school and college and propose and vote on decisions regarding the next steps in the mobilization. Other general assemblies are sometimes convened, but on a larger scale—by city, for example.
High school students are continuing their struggle despite heavy police repression and the violence used by the police.
Hamet: The students have succeeded in providing unprecedented support to high school students: A convergence of this magnitude between high school and college students had not occurred since May 1968. This has given much greater visibility to all of the demands.
Julia: I would say that this high school student movement is an experience for them in collectively organizing a group, a struggle, a blockade. Decisions are made in general assemblies about what they want to do and how they want to do it. The unions and political youth organizations that have traditionally been at the center of social movements are not behind this mobilization, even though they are present and come to support the high school students. I would say that the way high school students organize can vary: Some are driven by political motives, others by union interests, and still others remain within an organization at the level of their high school or local community. But there is a desire among some of them to become more structured. For example, we’re seeing youth action groups form in several cities within La France Insoumise (and this is surely the case in other organizations as well).
Tempest: Are there clearly defined political factions among the students, and do certain adult organizations play a role in the students’ politics or organization?
Smael: Yes, the left-wing faction is clearly at the heart of the student movement. This is because the movement also champions left-wing demands, more funding for the National Education System and public services in general. But the movement has grown so much that even right-wing students are participating, and some of them are shifting to the left as they listen to and come to understand the movement’s demands.
Léon: La France Insoumise has elected officials that have been coming to the demonstrations and blockades to help the high school students and protect them from violent police.
Hamet: Yes, political factions exist within certain high school student organizations. While this may sometimes appear to be political co-optation on their part, it also brings us visibility in return. Their attempts to influence us do not alter our initial demands, and they help us organize.
The high school students involved in the movement are highly politicized. They sometimes hold very materialist views and are acutely aware of inequalities in life, particularly regarding access to education. But they are also aware of discriminatory inequalities based on where they study and their presumed background. There also seems to be an anti-imperialist or decolonial perspective. This is evident in the number of Palestinian flags and demands related to international issues. One notable connection is the belief that all children should have access to school—which is not the case everywhere, particularly in Palestine. However, I think the movement is diverse, with varying levels of politicization and different political stances. And it seems important not to essentialize high school students.
I believe that “adult organizations”—such as associations, political parties, and unions—provide support. Their role is not so much to help high school and college students organize themselves but to provide support and experience. However, there has been a call for a general strike by the CGT (General Confederation of Labor) on November 5.
Tempest: Is it mainly high school students, or has the movement spread to colleges and universities?
Smael: Initially, it did indeed consist mainly of high school students, but the movement has spread to higher education institutions and universities. On Tuesday, October 6, 90 percent of universities were blockaded.
Léon: Yes, the high school students’ movement has also been joined by college students and others, who are now setting up roadblocks themselves because they’ve experienced the very issues we’re denouncing right now. There are also students coming to help with the high school students’ roadblocks.
Hamet: The movement has gradually expanded to higher education institutions and universities, which has allowed us to increase our visibility and draw much larger crowds during protests.
Julia: The movement began in high schools but is continuing in institutions of higher education. Numerous general assemblies are taking place on college campuses in an effort to organize the struggle. Many blockades have occurred. Students are mobilizing for more funding for higher education, the renovation of a number of buildings, against the elimination of housing assistance, and against the admissions processes via Parcoursup and “Mon Master” [a web portal for admissions to masters programs nationwide].
But some are also adopting an anti-imperialist stance. In fact, this morning at INSA [a network of public graduate engineering schools], only the buildings that have partnerships with arms manufacturers were blockaded. A connection is being drawn to the month-long campaign against the arms industry led by a number of organizations, such as the Stop Arming Israel collective.
Tempest: What impact will all of this have on the elections?
Smael: All of this has a real impact on the elections because this movement is raising awareness and politicizing a huge portion of the youth, who are now aware of the issues at stake and the importance of voting in 2027. And this increase in youth voter turnout in 2027 will play a major role in the victory of the radical Left, led by Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s candidacy.
Léon: The impact this movement will have on the upcoming elections will be a double-edged sword. Because people who have seen the problems will, I think, be more inclined to vote for the Left, but there are also many people who will have seen only what the media reports—and since the media shows only the most striking and violent images—they’re afraid and think this high school movement is just a pretext for causing chaos.
Hamet: The images of repression seen by all French people are making people realize that change must happen as soon as possible. The high school student protests are not intended to wait for the election in six months, but to achieve results as soon as possible.
Julia: This movement brings to the forefront the issues of public services, education, discrimination, and equality—all themes championed by the Left. Furthermore, the support from La France Insoumise and other left-wing political groups for the high school student protests may lead these young people to vote more toward the left. Moreover, this mobilization is creating a dynamic of engagement and politicization among young people, which is positive for the radical left. And as we’ve seen, this is also reflected in the formation of political organizational branches, such as the “Insoumis” action groups. However, the anger on the streets does not always translate into votes at the polls, so it seems to me that we must undoubtedly remain cautious and continue to mobilize without assuming that victory is already assured. And, in my view, we will need to be vigilant against the far right co-opting the movement and against rhetoric that could exploit the movement for racist electoral purposes.
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: Guallendra, Aurelio Cárdenas, Patxi Beltzaitz; modified by Tempest.
The post Inside the French student revolt appeared first on Tempest.
Review: Union Town depicts the fight workers face today
Barbara Kopple’s latest film, Union Town, opens with a series of burn-ins about the staggering number of packages that “are delivered” and food deliveries that...
The post Review: Union Town depicts the fight workers face today first appeared on Spring.
Cuba: To sow is to Resist, and to Resist is to Triumph
We demand an immediate end to the U.S. blockade against Cuba—a silent genocide that violates human rights and condemns our people.
The post Cuba: To sow is to Resist, and to Resist is to Triumph appeared first on La Via Campesina - EN.
High power bills, blackouts land Michigan utilities on the ballot
When 83-year-old Sam Getsinger thinks about the future, she pictures her five grandchildren and the world she wants to leave them. An important part of that world, Getsinger said, is a healthy democracy. So when she first heard about an initiative to limit Michigan utilities’ influence in political campaigns, she immediately volunteered to support it.
“I don’t want our politics to continue so that the person with the most money wins everything,” Getsinger said. “I don’t think that’s a very sound democracy.”
Getsinger spent months knocking on doors throughout northern Michigan. She said nearly all the people behind those doors agreed with her that utilities shouldn’t wield as much political influence as they do.
Keeping corporate money out of elections is notoriously difficult in the United States, but next week Michiganders are going to vote on whether they should try it anyway, with a particular focus on the state’s electricity and gas utilities. Saying they are sick of power outages and high bills, advocacy groups and volunteers are pushing for a ballot measure they say will roll back utilities’ influence over state elections, freeing lawmakers to hold them accountable. Polls from supportive organizations show strong voter approval of the initiative, but even if it passes, and even if it survives legal challenges, some experts say it still won’t get all utility money out of politics.
The ballot proposal comes as customer dissatisfaction with Michigan utilities mounts — the state sees some of the highest utility rates in the country and the least reliable service. Rounds of extreme weather events like ice storms and tornadoes over the last few years left people without power for extended periods of time. Residents are angry at the increasing footprint of data centers in the state and the utilities that power them.
“Everything is more expensive. The quality of service is worse, and we are dealing with more air and water pollution as a result of utility influence in Lansing,” said Christy McGillivray, co-chair of Michiganders for Money Out of Politics, a coalition of local groups that collected 560,000 signatures to put the proposal on the ballot. “So we have to put a stop to it.”
Read Next What’s behind your eye-popping power bill? We broke it down, region by region. Naveena Sadasivam & Clayton AldernThe measure is designed to plug up leaks in Michigan’s laws restricting corporate influence over politics. The state already prohibits corporations, including investor-owned utilities, from giving directly to political campaigns, but corporate dollars have plenty of other avenues into elections. The classic example is for companies to establish and fund nonprofit organizations known as political action committees, or PACs, which then contribute to campaigns or launch political advertisements. Last year, Michigan lawmakers and committees on both sides of the aisle accepted $421,000 in corporate utility donations, according to the Michigan League of Conservation Voters. In the 2022 election cycle, donations totaled more than $1.6 million across state and local races.
Proposal 2 would end some of that spending, prohibiting utility-funded PACs from giving directly to campaigns. It would also go a step further by prohibiting utility executives, board members, and even the family members of those individuals from giving to campaigns or parties. The same would go for other companies that provide services to state or local governments with contracts larger than $250,000.
The measure would also tighten some loose bolts in Michigan’s campaign finance laws, making the funding of certain political ads more transparent and adding legal definitions to online political advertisements.
For Getsinger and many of the voters she spoke to, climate was an important motive in wanting to limit utilities’ political power. Michigan has set ambitious climate goals that require utilities to get 100 percent of their energy from clean and renewable sources by 2040, but utilities in Michigan have been seen as impeding climate and environmental progress.
Michigan utilities have lobbied against community solar, arguing that these programs would increase electricity rates. Legislation that would force utilities to pay to clean up contaminated sites has stalled at the state house because of industry pushback. And previous attempts to introduce legislation on what this year’s ballot proposal aims to do — curb utilities’ influence in the state capitol — have failed.
DTE Energy’s Monroe Power Plant lies on the shore of Lake Erie near Monroe, Michigan. The coal-fired plant is the second largest emitter of greenhouse gases in the United States. DTE says it will close the plant by 2035. Jim West / Universal Images Group via Getty ImagesHowever, it appears that Michigan lawmakers have become aware of the unpopularity of utility influence in politics. When the Michigan League of Conservation Voters launched its “No Utility Money Challenge” in 2025, pushing lawmakers to promise they wouldn’t accept money from utilities or associated groups, fewer than 10 candidates signed on. Today, that number has jumped to 126 candidates for state office, including Democrats and Republicans.
“These pledges are reflective of how toxic utility money has become, and that’s new,” said Karlee Weinmann, a research and communications manager for the Energy and Policy Institute, a think tank that focuses on utilities. “It used to not even be controversial in the state capitol to be connected with the utilities as a lawmaker.”
Critics like utilities and interest groups argue that Prop 2 infringes on freedom of speech and fails to address the outsize influence of out-of-state groups.
John Sellek, spokesperson for the opposition group Protect MI Free Speech, said supporters are using voters’ frustration with high costs of living “to carry out a much wider sneak attack” on Michiganders who can’t support candidates “simply because of who they are related to or contract with.” The group formed after Prop 2 was first proposed in 2025. Protect MI Free Speech has received $232,000 from utility interest groups, out of a total of about $851,000 from all sources, according to campaign finance disclosures tracked by the Michigan Transparency Network. In contrast, Michiganders for Money Out of Politics, also known as Mop Up Michigan, has received more than $8.7 million in contributions from individuals and voter interest groups.
Consumers Energy, one of the state’s largest publicly regulated utilities, said it follows all campaign finance laws and reports political donations transparently.
“Mop Up Michigan’s approach won’t eliminate money in politics — it will simply shift influence away from Michigan companies and toward wealthy national donors and special interests,” said Katie Carey, a spokesperson for the company.
Supporters for Prop 2 in Lansing, Michigan, dropping off signatures for the ballot measure in May.Photo courtesy of Michiganders for Money Out of Politics
Twenty-one states have made it illegal for corporations to donate directly to campaigns, but very few have tried to expand those limits as far as Prop 2 would, and none have done so by specifically targeting utilities. The coalition that helped write the ballot question said the goal was to rein in some of the “worst spenders” in state politics. “Nothing happens in our state legislature if regulated gas and electric utilities don’t greenlight it,” said McGillivray with Michiganders for Money Out of Politics.
Hawai‘i lawmakers passed a law in 2026 that would prevent all kinds of political spending by organizations, whether they’re corporations or nonprofits. (That law has already received two challenges in court.) Montana voters will see a similarly ambitious effort on their ballot in November. And states including Colorado, Connecticut, and Maine have set limits on utilities’ ability to fund political lobbying with ratepayer money.
If voters pass the measure, Michigan will almost certainly test the limits of what states can legally do to limit corporate money’s influence in politics. Though residents of many states might want restrictions like the ones listed in Prop 2, they probably haven’t materialized because the Supreme Court has severely limited their options.
In 50 years of cases, culminating in the 2010 Citizens United case, courts have ruled that political spending is protected as a form of free speech, and that corporations have speech rights like individuals. As a result, governments have limited legal means to control corporate spending on elections.
Governments can ban direct corporate contributions to candidates, courts have said, because it helps prevent corruption and its appearance, as well as the circumvention of contribution limits. States and federal lawmakers can also limit the amount that anyone, including corporate-aligned nonprofits, donates to campaigns. But lawmakers cannot prevent corporations from funding PACs that donate to campaigns. And governments can put almost no limits on some other kinds of political spending, namely expenditures on political advertising that supports a campaign without coordinating directly with that campaign. Corporations can contribute unlimited amounts of money to aligned nonprofit organizations that run these kinds of ads, trying to convince voters in one direction or another.
With those court decisions in place, some experts believe it would take nothing short of a constitutional amendment to put meaningful limits on corporations’ or wealthy individuals’ political spending.
Opposition groups have vowed to sue Michigan if the ballot initiative wins. Experts point to limitations on PAC spending and family members’ political contributions as particularly vulnerable to legal attack.
And even if it beats those challenges, the measure still wouldn’t address the amount of corporate spending on politics, including lobbying and political spending on uncoordinated advertisements.
“If one avenue is closed off to them, they can redirect that money to other entities that can effectuate pretty much the same goal,” said Karley Abramson, a research associate at the Citizens Research Council of Michigan, a nonpartisan research organization.
Advocates for the initiative, like the Michigan League of Conservation Voters, acknowledge the limits on what it can do. It doesn’t matter, they say: Even if the measure can’t satisfy the system-wide frustration voters are feeling, it’s a step in the right direction. And anyway, it will let politicians know how serious their constituents are about holding utilities accountable.
“This is a really solid first step in starting to kind of push forward some more transparency,” said Nick Dodge, senior director of programs for the Michigan League of Conservation Voters.
toolTips('.classtoolTips3','Carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and other gases that prevent heat from escaping Earth’s atmosphere. Together, they act as a blanket to keep the planet at a liveable temperature in what is known as the “greenhouse effect.” Too many of these gases, however, can cause excessive warming, disrupting fragile climates and ecosystems.');This story was originally published by Grist with the headline High power bills, blackouts land Michigan utilities on the ballot on Oct 27, 2026.
As extreme heat worsens, renters are gaining a ‘right to cooling’
Subjecting the incarcerated residents of Texas to extreme heat constitutes cruel and unusual punishment, and prisons statewide must install air-conditioning by the end of 2029.
Although the ruling Judge Robert Pitman issued last month is unique in its invocation of the Constitution’s Eighth Amendment, it is an explicit recognition of an idea increasingly reflected in laws and policies nationwide: As extreme heat becomes more dangerous, even deadly, access to cooling is increasingly seen as a necessity rather than a luxury. This shift has been especially active in housing, where renters often face structural hurdles to accessing cool air, from high costs to explicit bans on the installation of air-conditioning.
This summer, jurisdictions across the U.S. passed policies setting maximum indoor temperatures, requiring landlords to provide AC, or otherwise expanding tenants’ access to cooling. The state of Maryland, for instance, said property owners with 10 or more units must install AC if they renovate. In Spokane, Washington, where 14 people died during a heat wave in July, landlords must now provide “adequate cooling” in at least one room of each unit.
“You can no longer responsibly rent a place if you don’t have a way of keeping it cool, because people will die,” said Brian Henning, director of the Institute for Climate, Water, and the Environment at Gonzaga University and a leading advocate for the Spokane policy.
Indeed, a study from 2024 found that renters were three times more likely than homeowners to need medical attention due to heat exposure at home, and researchers estimate as many as 50,000 people died during the five heat waves Europe experienced this summer. But unlike the incarcerated in Texas, whose protection rests on the Eighth Amendment, renters’ claim to safe indoor temperatures rests on a different and less explicit legal foundation.
It’s based, in part, on the “implied warranty of habitability,” a legal principle requiring landlords to provide the basic necessities for life — things like running water — even when they aren’t explicitly guaranteed in a lease or by law. Heating has long been understood as part of that warranty. As extreme heat poses an increasing threat to health, advocates argue that protection from dangerously high indoor temperatures should be as well.
“You can’t rent a place without heat,” said Doug Ruley, director of the Environmental Justice Clinic at the University of Miami School of Law. “The same is exactly true for cooling. I think the rights framing is powerful, and very consistent with how we Americans tend to think about things we care about.”
Tenants could, in theory, ask courts to recognize heat protection as part of the implied warranty of habitability. But rather than rely on judges, advocates have largely pursued explicit protections through housing codes and landlord-tenant laws.
Exactly what those protections should guarantee — and how they are implemented — is far from settled.
The first question is whether they should require air-conditioning, as the ruling in Texas does, or simply establish a maximum allowable indoor temperature that property owners can comply with however they see fit. Clinton Andrews, director of the Center for Urban Policy Research at Rutgers University, believes the latter approach could encourage passive, energy-efficient methods, like planting trees or installing window shades. A well-designed performance standard also makes clear exactly what landlords are expected to achieve. Unlike a law that simply requires them to install AC or provide “adequate cooling,” a temperature threshold gives tenants and regulators something concrete to measure against.
A Los Angeles woman attempts to keep her infant daughter cool during the heat wave that hit Southern California in September. The apartment she shares with her parents and brother does not have air-conditioning.Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images
Such a standard still requires deciding how hot is too hot, and there’s no universally accepted science on this. Some jurisdictions have settled on 82 degrees Fahrenheit. Others, like several cities in Canada, are exploring a limit closer to 79 degrees F. Stefano Schiavon, a professor of architecture and civil and environmental engineering at the University of California, Berkeley, said this is to some extent influenced by physiology and culture, because people regularly exposed to high temperatures can more readily adapt to hotter weather.
The same flexibility that appeals to Andrews, however, can also be a liability. Some housing advocates worry that a performance standard could allow a landlord to avoid providing the most effective — and costly — means of cooling: air-conditioning.
“The only intervention that is going to protect people’s lives in a heat event is AC,” said Chelsea Kirk, advocacy and policy director for the L.A. nonprofit Strategic Actions for a Just Economy. During a major heat wave, she added, “tree shade is not gonna get us there.”
Jurisdictions are already experimenting with different approaches. Houston’s right-to-cooling ordinance, approved in August, requires AC. It establishes air-conditioning as a health and safety standard for all rental housing, closing a loophole that had allowed landlords to forgo it in apartments with window screens. Spokane stops short of requiring AC, but says landlords must reimburse their tenants up to $500 if they want to install it themselves.
Los Angeles County has taken the performance-standard approach in its unincorporated communities. Beginning January 1, landlords must provide a “safe and code-compliant method” of maintaining a maximum indoor air temperature of 82 degrees F. The city of Los Angeles voted in February to explore a similar measure, though adoption has been delayed.
Other jurisdictions have adopted variations on these protections. Since 2020, New Orleans, New York City, and Austin, Texas, have passed cooling requirements, while Washington and Oregon have barred landlords from prohibiting tenants from installing their own AC units. In Arizona, the attorney general’s aggressive interpretation of housing laws has established what amounts to a de facto statewide AC requirement.
Read Next Extreme heat left this student athlete on life support. He won’t be the last. Tik RootHenning said he’s been in talks with advocacy groups and state legislators about taking Spokane’s right-to-cooling policy statewide, while lawmakers and officials elsewhere in the U.S. and Canada are weighing similar measures.
One hurdle advocates will likely continue to face is cost. Landlords argue cooling requirements will lead to higher rents, though researchers say there’s scant evidence to support that. Some tenant advocates and other experts worry greater reliance on AC could mean higher utility bills. Supporters of such mandates concede that is a significant concern, but not a reason to deprive people of AC.
“Tenants can make their own choices. I don’t think somebody’s going to be, like, ‘Well, I’d rather risk dying tonight because I don’t want to turn on the AC,” said Michele Thomas, director of policy and advocacy for the nonprofit Washington State Housing Alliance.
C.J. Gabbe, an associate professor of environmental studies and sciences at Santa Clara University, said one way to help cover cooling costs would be to expand the federal Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program. The Trump administration fired the federal staff that administered the program last year and has proposed eliminating it, but Congress continues funding it. This month, the administration released about $3.6 billion for the current fiscal year.
Experts Grist spoke with stressed that expanding access to cooling can’t be a substitute for addressing the climate change that is making it increasingly necessary. Ultimately, Henning said, governments must address the underlying causes of the crisis by stopping the burning of fossil fuels. “Otherwise, these problems will continue to outstrip our ability to address them,” he told Grist. “We can’t just AC the world.”
This story was originally published by Grist with the headline As extreme heat worsens, renters are gaining a ‘right to cooling’ on Oct 27, 2026.
The Narrow National Interest: Sacrificing Reconciliation & Climate to “Build Canada Strong”
“Our job is to move together as far and as fast down the path as we can …”
– Prime Minister Mark Carney, Sept. 30, 2026
TIMES ARE CHANGING. This week, this month, the signals are there for Indigenous people: the terrain on which we discuss reconciliation is shifting.
This week, in our home province of British Columbia (B.C.), a Conservative government, which campaigned on expediting resource development, repealing the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act (DRIPA), and a host of other anti-Indigenous commitments — including prohibiting land acknowledgements — was overwhelmingly elected to a majority government. In other words, a party that ran, and won, based largely on anti-Indigenous policies, will govern for the next four years and inevitably fuel the flames of anti-Indigenous racism.
Meanwhile, in advance of the First Ministers’ meeting, also this week, First Nations had an opportunity to discuss reconciliation. Grassroots organizations, angry at the Federal Government’s new approach to the “nation-to-nation” relationship, called for protests. And what is that new approach?
Late last month, on the sixth annual National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, Prime Minister Mark Carney’s address laid out the national agenda. The language of a shared path toward reconciliation sits uneasily alongside a political and economic plan built on accelerating resource extraction, no matter the socio-ecological impacts.
There is a familiar logic here: land becomes commodity, resources become opportunities, and speed becomes a measure of progress. For Indigenous Peoples whose rights, territories, and relationships to land and waters are at stake, the question is not simply how fast Canada can move down the path, but at what cost?These recent signals of the change have a contemporary context. Since the release of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada’s Final Report (2015) only 15 of 94 Calls to Action have been completed. Progress on these actions is further jeopardized by the Supreme Court of Canada’s looming destruction of the largest and most comprehensive body of Indian Residential School records, which is set to take place in September 2027. Multiple reports, inquiries, and investigations outline the ongoing harms caused by residential schools, colonization, genocide, and racism (RCAP, 1996; TRC, 2015; National Inquiry, 2019; Report on Missing Children and Unmarked Graves, 2024). On September 30th of this year, the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal released its finding that Canada “committed the international crimes of genocide… and crimes against humanity” (para. 7). This ruling’s release coincides with increased residential school denialism, including the white nationalist gathering that took place on Tk̓emlúps te Secwépemc territory where the first unmarked graves were confirmed.
Days after this year’s National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, on October 1st, Carney announced the Pacific Link Pipeline (formerly the West Coast Oil Pipeline), which is set to become the first “national interest” project under Bill C-5’s Building Canada Act. This follows the introduction of Bill C-39, the Building Canada Strong Act, and the September 29th support for LNG Canada’s Phase 2 project. In the days surrounding September 30th, these announcements demonstrate that Canada is only interested in reconciliation that sustains its access to our territories, lands, and waters. Such tactics constitute “feigned redress… an inclusion that is nothing more than thinly veiled assimilation” (George 2017, 49).
How will this new approach to “reconciliation” shape Indigenous-Crown relations?
Building Canada or Bypassing Process? Reconciliation as ComplianceAside from the troubling trends above, the clearest evidence we have of the new landscape is Bill C-39. This is the most recent omnibus bill using the purported urgency of the political moment to expedite environmental assessment and permitting processes. It will streamline consultation, increasing pressure on governments and communities to respond to proposed projects quickly. No one yet knows how consultation will unfold under the legislation.
But by constraining the time available for cultural continuity, harvesting, visiting, and collective decision-making, this dynamic contributes to the “politics of distraction,” which serves to further “separate us from our homelands, cultures, and communities” (Corntassel 2012, 91). This expediting demonstrates a similar strategy: community consultations for Pacific Link held to a two-month timeline, despite concerns due to overlapping community, cultural, and harvesting practices (Passafiume 2026). Rather than assessing projects individually, Bill C-39 creates mechanisms through which entire regions and categories of development can be pre-designated in the national interest. Unsurprisingly, given the Carney government’s deprioritization of climate change in favor of “economic advantages,” the Pacific Link pipeline has been greenlit.
Ottawa maintains that Indigenous communities will be offered 10% ownership in Pacific Link, but offering communities an opportunity to invest in a pipeline does not equate to securing their Free, Prior, and Informed Consent (FPIC). Indigenous opposition to Pacific Link is mounting, with many groups considering court action, noting a violation of the Crown’s duty to consult. The Union of BC Indian Chiefs (2026) released a statement in opposition of the project’s “national interest” designation, with Grand Chief Stewart Phillip noting, “We have a duty and an obligation to protect our rights to the fullest extent of the law and we have every intention of doing that. This is not a cake walk, this is not a ‘gimme,’ this will be hard-fought in the court rooms, and if necessary, with boots on the ground” (para. 2).
Carney’s brand of reconciliation depends on a predatory economy built on the extraction and export of natural resources. In essence, the Canadian government seems to be happy to reconcile with Indigenous Nations who say yes to development, while those who say no, or simply need more time, are left to question whether “reconciliation” really means “compliance.” The Costs We Count, and the Costs We Don’tThe Pacific Link will cost Canadians between $35.2 billion and $43.7 billion. While counter-intuitive in light of recent global politics, the outlook for global oil demand actually remains poor, and is projected to reach a “plateau followed by a permanent decline within the next 5-10 years.” This already expensive infrastructure could become another energy-transition related stranded asset. In light of this, the designation of “national interest” does not resolve the underlying question of whether it is, in fact, a sound public investment.
The promotion of economic reconciliation through resource development also raises questions about what this framing looks like in practice. While Indigenous ownership and participation in major projects may be presented as economic opportunities, it does not necessarily translate into meaningful decision-making power, recognition of Indigenous jurisdiction, or consent. Potential financial benefits do not resolve the broader question of who will bear the long-term economic, environmental, and social costs of continued resource extraction amid increasingly volatile environmental and geopolitical conditions.
Canada is already 20 years behind schedule in achieving its international climate commitments, and is on track to be five degrees Celsius warmer by 2100. The Pacific Link pipeline would carry “approximately one million barrels of crude oil a day along roughly 1,250 kilometres,” impacting over 100 Indigenous communities. In recent years, public support for climate action has slipped, while the impacts of climate change are accelerating. In 2026, drought and wildfire devastated river levels in B.C., affecting keystone species like salmon (Pacific Salmon Foundation 2026, para. 8). These watershed impacts are far-reaching, impacting food security, culture, and relationality — costs often not captured within standard risk assessment processes. These impacts also extend beyond human communities, affecting the non-human relations with whom these ecosystems are shared.
The Pacific Link project includes a “sacrifice zone,” which overlaps with the Southern Resident Killer Whale (SRKW) habitat, a unique population of orca that live in the Salish Sea, whose diet consists entirely of pacific salmon. Despite the $1.2 billion dollar pledge for ocean protection announced on September 29th, experts remain skeptical that the increased spending will reduce the “suite of threats” facing the SRKW (para 7). The pledge is “pennies” (Owen 2026, para. 24) compared with Ottawa’s $10-billion contribution to the proposed Roberts Bank expansion,” a major marine container terminal expansion in Delta, B.C., which will grow the port’s capacity by approximately 50%, adding further pressures on the SRKW. The environmental impacts under C-39 will further strain this at-risk population through increased tanker traffic, climate change, noise pollution, and declining salmon stocks. This risk is exacerbated by the proposed weakening of legislation designed to protect the SRKW.
In 2018 and 2025, a mother orca named Tahlequah (J-35) made international headlines by carrying her stillborn calf for 17 days. Tahlequah’s response makes visible a form of care, grief, and relational connection that is deeply recognizable: what is important cannot be reduced to economics. Nor should it be.
Hard numbers aside, the “national interest” test tends to make project-by-project economic benefits visible, while making cumulative, long-term, geographically distributed harms, and harms to non-human worlds much harder to account for. What is Actually in the National Interest?There is an urgent need to reconsider the “national interest” narrative. A framework that privileges economic returns above all else undermines the future it promises to build. If reconciliation is meant to transform the Crown–Indigenous relationship, why does the Crown continue to hold the ultimate authority in determining what constitutes a single vision of our shared future?
We can no longer afford to be shortsighted. Climate change is already here; our plans need to be made for future generations, rather than the gains of a short-term economic boom. B.C.’s newly elected Conservative government is a symbol of troubling times ahead. Combined with residential school and climate change denialism, late-stage capitalism, and support for Carney’s “national interest,” we are preparing ourselves, once again, to stand up for what matters and to protect our territories for future generations.
Whether on the frontlines or in the courts, Indigenous Peoples will continue to challenge visions of our futures that erode our rights and our responsibilities to the life around us. Indigenous rights, jurisdiction, and sovereignty are not political bargaining chips, and our territories are still not for sale at the cost of a vision of national interest.
EndnotesCorntassel, Jeff. “Re-envisioning Resurgence: Indigenous Pathways to Decolonization and Sustainable Self-Determination.” Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education, & Society, vol. 1, no.1 (2012): 86-101, https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/des/article/view/18627.
George, Rachel Y. “Inclusion is just the Canadian word for assimilation: Self-determination and reconciliation paradigm in Canada.” In Surviving Canada: Indigenous peoples celebrate 150 years of betrayal, edited by K. L. Ladner and Myra Tait. Arbeiter Ring Publishing, 2017.
National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls [National Inquiry]. Reclaiming Power and Place: The Final Report of the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls. National Inquiry, 2019, https://www.mmiwg-ffada.ca/final-report.
Office of the Independent Special Interlocutor for Missing Children and Unmarked Graves. Upholding Sacred Obligations. Office of the Independent Special Interlocutor, 2024, https://osi-bis.ca/report/final-report-october-2024-2/.
Passafiume, Alessia. “Indigenous groups given just 2 months to consult on Pacific Link pipeline designation.” Global News, October 2, 2026, https://globalnews.ca/news/12084779/pacific-link-pipeline-indigenous-consultation/.
Pacific Salmon Foundation. “Fraser sockeye forecast reduced by 61% as drought, wildfire grip B.C.” Pacific Salmon Foundation, August 20, 2026, https://psf.ca/blog/2026-fraser-sockeye-forecast-halved-as-drought-wildfire-grip-bc/?st_source=ai_overview.
Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples [RCAP]. Report of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples. RCAP, 1996, https://www.canada.ca/en/library-archives/collection/research-help/indigenous-history/royal-commission-aboriginal-peoples.html.
Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada [TRC]. Honouring the Truth, Reconciling for the Future. TRC, 2015, https://nctr.ca/publications-and-reports/reports/#trc-reports.
Union of BC Indian Chiefs [UBCIC]. “UBCIC Rejects “National Interest” Designation for Toxic West Coast Oil “pacific link” Pipeline.” UBCIC, October 1, 2026, https://www.ubcic.bc.ca/ubcic_rejects_national_interest_designation_pacific_link.
Waters, Shannon. “B.C.’s DRIPA drama — explained.” The Narwhal, May 6, 2026, https://thenarwhal.ca/bc-declaration-act-explainer/.
Citation:
Wale, Janna and Michaela McGuire. “The Narrow National Interest: Sacrificing Reconciliation & Climate to “Build Canada Strong” Yellowhead Institute. Oct 26 2026. https://yellowheadinstitute.org/2026/the-narrow-national-interest-sacrificing-reconciliation-climate-to-build-canada-strong
Artwork by Tyson Brown
The post The Narrow National Interest: Sacrificing Reconciliation & Climate to “Build Canada Strong” appeared first on Yellowhead Institute.
The case for ‘Climate Popularism’: A new politics for an age of ecological crisis
The world’s highest court ruled in favor of climate and environmental protections. Why hasn’t anything changed?
Pilgrimage within the heart: On a trip to Scotland’s Isle of Iona, reflections on poetry and gathering
However you vote, fossil fuels win
Study: The Missing Ingredient in the Fight To End Car Crash Deaths is… Fewer Cars
Communities that drive less and have more mobility options also have fewer deadly crashes, a new study confirms — so why is reducing car dependency so rarely discussed as a life-saving strategy in its own right?
In a fascinating recent study, researchers found that states whose residents drove more miles on average also reported more crashes on average — at least when states recorded those stats on a per capita basis, rather than the misleading per-mile basis on which many US transportation officials rely.
Wyoming, for instance, recorded both the highest average fatality rate across modes and the highest average driving mileage, while New York reported the lowest on both counts.
That finding might seem intuitive to street safety advocates, or anyone who’s taken a vacation to car-light places like Denmark. But when you think about it, it’s weird how little safety leaders tend to talk about reducing car dependency specifically as a tool to save lives — and how infrequently attacks on funding for transit service are received by the public as acts of premeditated road violence.
“I think Safe Systems is great, and we’ve made a lot of progress on road safety over the last couple decades — but in the U.S., we’ve stagnated a little bit,” said Nick Ferenchak, a professor at University of New Mexico and co-author of the paper. “To me, the elephant in the room is that a lot of our places are pretty auto-dependent … [If we have] more driving, we’re going to get more car crashes, and we really need to have a conversation about that.”
Recommended Why ‘Safe Systems’ Are Not Enough to End Road Violence Kea Wilson February 26, 2024Ferenchak’s co-author, Todd Litman, explains that many transportation officials are hesitant — likely for political reasons — to acknowledge that cars are the only common denominator in all car crashes, and prefer to focus on stamping out extra-dangerous “outlier” driving behaviors instead.
“The standard transportation engineering narrative is that driving is not inherently dangerous, so traffic safety programs should be targeted [to] youths and drunks and bad actors,” he added. “The unstated assumption is that reducing driving is so onerous that it would be unfair to force responsible [motorists] to reduce their driving just because of the risks [imposed by] an irresponsible minority.”
But those bad apples tend to stay in the barrel if they don’t have any place else to go. Less-deadly drivers, meanwhile, are human beings who make mistakes too — and because a fallible person piloting a multi-ton, ultra-fast hunk of metal is inherently dangerous, those mistakes often cost lives.
In car-dominated communities, though, most residents lack a good bus route or bike path to take instead, so they remain firmly behind the wheel. In each of the 20 most dangerous states on the researchers’ list, average annual per capita vehicle miles traveled topped 10,000.
“We have graduated licenses; we have special testing for seniors; we have anti-drunk driving and anti-impaired driving campaigns,” Litman adds. “But if we don’t invest in good alternatives? Those fail.”
Recommended California’s State Transportation Officials Say We ‘Need to Drive Less’ Melanie Curry August 8, 2023While the researchers hesitate to say that reducing driving outright causes crash deaths to plummet on roads, they do say there’s enough evidence of a strong correlation to empower transportation officials to change how they operate. Because at the end of the day, making driving non-mandatory doesn’t mean banishing all cars from the face of the earth — and it may actually make motoring better.
“New policy should [work] to make more [travel] possible through safe and practical alternatives,” said Abbas Sheykhfard, who also co-authored the study. “These changes may reduce driving exposure across the system while preserving access and other facilities for people who want to continue to drive.”
More to the point, it won’t take many car-limiting policies to get America a lot closer to Vision Zero.
“The travel behavior shifts to improve safety outcomes would be pretty modest,” added Ferenchak. “We’re not talking about turning the entire USA into Utrecht. Just 10 to 15 percent reductions in car-orientation, and our [road safety] outcomes are on par with some of our international peers.”
Recommended Advocates Warn Short-Term Transit Cuts Could Foreshadow Deeper Long-Term Slashing Kea Wilson September 29, 2026The researchers acknowledge that in many US communities, it’d be political suicide to embrace full-on VMT reduction targets – even if evidence suggests that doing so might save lives, at least in the context of shifting public dollars away from highways and towards great multimodal options.
Still, transportation officials could internally score proposed “safety” projects more highly if they also reduce overall driving — or at the very least promote the life-saving potential of projects that shift people onto other modes, even if that’s not why they were initially launched. Litman offers increasing fuel taxes to stabilize budgets and walk-to-school programs to promote student health as two examples of powerful safety strategies that aren’t usually sold as such.
And by contrast, as lawmakers in Washington take aim at federal transit funding and smear anything that even remotely smacks of “green,” he says it’s more important than ever to call out the fact that axing mode shift strategies costs real lives.
“Any politician that calls themselves conservative should support win-win safety strategies because they deliver so much value,” Litman added. “I understand how these issues have become so ideologically weaponized. But if there is a true conservative out there, they should be very interested in this research.”
Op-Ed: Toronto’s Bike Lane Fight Should Be a Wake Up Call for the US, Too
Donate to the fund to support the Toronto bike lane removal protestors here.
On Tuesday October 13, 2026, at around 8pm, myself and several hundred other people on bikes stood in front of multiple construction vehicles that had been sent to remove lanes in Toronto. After about 45 minutes of Toronto Police officers unsuccessfully trying to cajole cyclists out of the way of the trucks, workers without any animosity advised protestors that if we would allow them to pass, they would go home and not start removing bike lanes that night.
It was a big win in the first on-street battle for safe streets in Ontario Canada’s ongoing bike lane saga.
“Get home safe! Get home safe!” protestors chanted as the workers in their vehicles were escorted out of the crowd and away from the bike lanes they had come to help remove. We weren’t mocking them with our chant. Rather “Get home safe!” strikes to the core of why we were there putting our lives and liberty on the line: road safety, and the benefits separated cycling infrastructure convey to all road users.
How we got hereIn Canada’s largest city, Toronto, our bike lanes have been under attack for nearly two years now by Provincial Premier Doug Ford.
While today he holds an office similar in power to the governor of a state in the US, Ford actually lost a mayoral election years ago that has since spawned into a grudge against the city who rebuffed him. He’s also the less famous brother of Toronto Mayor Rob Ford, who famously declared there was a “War on Cars” — which resulted in our first and only bike lane removals in 2011, and inspired the name of the famous Brooklyn-based podcast.
Doug Ford presents himself as ‘Captain Canada,’ standing up against Donald Trump’s trade war. But the two officials have a lot in common politically — including their fixation on removing bike lanes. Both are men who know how to divide and conquer voters, or whip up culture wars as a distraction.
With sagging approval ratings — another similarity with Trump — Doug Ford and his government have distracted the populace from their decline by targeting people on bikes in Toronto. We’ve seen constant threats and media scrums about the congestion caused by bike lanes, all of which are refuted by data and actual evidence.
For months, local advocacy organization Cycle Toronto has been fighting Premier Ford’s Bill 212, which sets out the provincial power to remove specific bike lanes in Toronto, while practically halting the installation of bike lanes elsewhere in the province.
The legal battle has been a long roller coaster, and after the tough loss for advocates in August, Ford saw a window to go after a stretch of bike lanes quite literally in his own backyard. With record low approval numbers and a base that needs satisfying, this far west end of our growing cycling network was seen as an easy initial salvo by the premier.
But advocates haven’t made it easy for him.
A winning formula — and a call to actionIn the last weeks, groups of cyclists have shown up to defend their bike lanes from early in the morning to late in the night — even though those lanes are seven miles from the downtown core, which is the traditional hotbed of cycling in Toronto.
We have blocked construction and peacefully observed bollards, barriers and bus platforms being torn out of the road, all to demonstrate against the taxpayer-funded removal of taxpayer-funded infrastructure. Throughout, the removals have been guarded by taxpayer-funded police forces that have included riot cop battalions, mounted officers, drones, unmarked vehicles, and dozens of cruisers. Protestors have been threatened and charged criminally under draconian terms of release, which we will be fighting in court.
These protests have been large, like the one that shut down work completely on October 13 or slowed it down markedly on October 14, 15, 16, 19 and 20. Smaller groups, meanwhile, have staged “die-ins” or “critical mass”-style rides down the middle of the roadway to demonstrate what sharing the lanes is going to be like once the bike paths are gone.
The people of Toronto have shown up. And we believe this initial struggle sets the tone for what will be required to remove the remaining proposed 18 kms of bikes lanes, in terms of time, costs, political capital, and police resources.
We hope this community response on the ground — alongside legal and political strategies behind the scenes — will prove to be a winning formula. But even if not, it’s our obligation.
Bike lanes are a matter of life and death. The people of Toronto are amongst the first to wage this scale of a fight, not just across Canada but also in the U.S. Our response, tactics and community-driven solidarity can and should be mirrored in similar fights. We know people on bikes in Minnesota ride in the thousands in deep winter for their murdered community members, Alex Pretti and Renee Good; pedal power is there.
We hope to see solidarity rides or displays in U.S. cities — and when your bike lanes come under attack, you can expect the same from us.
Six Days on the Road and Tuesday’s Headlines May Not Make It Home Tonight
- You need a special driver’s license to ride a motorcycle or drive a big rig, so why do we let just anybody tow a boat with a giant truck or get behind the wheel of what is essentially a race car? (Jalopnik)
- NACTO has a new guide out for designing transit-friendly streets.
- The D.C. Metro and L.A. Metro are seeking federal permission to run automated trains, which are common in the rest of the world but rare in the U.S. (Associated Press)
- Two South Florida commuter rail projects cleared state and federal milestones. (Trains)
- The Pacific Northwest has big plans for passenger rail. Now all the region needs is funding. (Oregon Public Broadcasting)
- A new 1,000-space parking structure has made one of Honolulu’s most dangerous streets for cyclists and pedestrians even worse. (Island News)
- Sound Transit needs to find $10 billion by 2033 to fulfill its promise of building an already-delayed metro Seattle light rail line by the new deadline of 2042. (My Ballard)
- A hit-and-run driver killed a teenage pedestrian in Seattle, later identified as a member of prominent athletic family the Tuiasosopos. Deejay’s relative Matt was formerly a coach for my beloved Atlanta Braves. (KOMO)
- Las Vegas cyclists are rightfully miffed that drivers are waiting in bike lanes to pick up their kids from school. (Fox 5)
- Colorado is not ready for Waymo. (News From the States)
- Car-centric Dallas suburbs are going all in on walkable downtowns. (Morning News)
- In a rare exception to Betteridge’s Law of Headlines, yes, Charleston Post and Courier, safer biking and walking does help the climate.
- YouTube urban planning influencer CityNerd declared Minneapolis the best biking city in the U.S. (Star Tribune)
- Muni service was disrupted over the weekend when a San Francisco driver drove their vehicle into a subway tunnel and abandoned it. (Mission Local)
Monsters 'R Us
Most of Planet Earth now knows cruelty is the point of Trump 2. But if anyone implausibly needs more evidence, meet Rev. Edward Nalwamba, a 79-year-old, pro-democracy Ugandan priest who spent over a year in ICE detention. When he went in, he was fit; at his long-delayed release last week, fellow detainees had to carry him to a car because officials wouldn't let him take his wheelchair that far. To ICE, he charged, "You are an animal...They forget they are dealing with human beings."
In the last 18 months, the Trump regime has deported nearly a million people, and killed at least 60, including two U.S citizens in cold blood and broad daylight. The family of one, Renee Good, has filed two federal civil lawsuits over her Jan. 7 murder, alleging wrongful death, "negligent infliction of emotional distress," conspiracy to conceal evidence, and coordinated campaigns of "aggression and abduction" against ethnic communities and "intimidation and violence" against their allies. And of course it has detained, terrorized, traumatized or shattered the lives of untold thousands, the vast majority with no criminal history.
One was the good Rev. Nalwamba, who arrived in the U.S. in 2002 for a religious conference. Having publicly condemned human rights abuses by the Ugandan government, and subsequently heard from colleagues that government agents were pursuing him, he decided to stay in Colorado and apply for asylum. In 2010, after his application was denied, he began living peaceably in Lakewood under a 15-year ICE supervision order, reporting to immigration officials as required, working as a health aide for people with developmental disabilities, and serving as a pastor at nearby Resurrection Anglican Fellowship until he retired two years ago.
In September 2025 he was arrested by ICE; they charged he was under a removal order dating back to 2010, and that he'd failed to "cooperate with efforts to obtain travel documents" before a deadline, aka to help with his own deportation in a timely manner. He was taken to the GEO Group's private ICE detention facility in Aurora, where for over a year DHS repeatedly vowed to deport him and then didn't. On Oct. 20, after his lawyers filed a second habeas corpus petition, Judge Cyrus Chung ruled feds had exceeded a “presumptively reasonable” six months of holding time with "no concrete plan” to return him to Uganda, and ordered his release.
When he was detained, Nalwamba was a fit 77-year-old who regularly walked, exercised and played ping pong. Inside, his health quickly deteriorated. He caught pneumonia which persisted for weeks, lost over 30 pounds and the ability to walk, developed a stubborn cough, chest pain, scratchy throat, headache and fatigue that were never treated - and besides, "You don’t want to go to the hospital - they shackle you like a bull.” "He walked in. He can't walk now," noted Colorado Sen. John Hickenlooper. "They want the misery of one person to be known by others. It's a low-rent form of terrorism to make people so scared they'll self-deport."
Along with the barbaric cruelty, observers also blasted the "staggering hypocrisy" of a regime that simultaneously charged Biden et al "targeted" Christians yet in their voter intimidation efforts sent ICE into churches, interrogated church staff, and detained and abused a church elder. Last week, because they hadn't alienated Christians enough by picking a fight with the Pope, they also turned a supposed prayer gathering of Catholic bishops into a sleazy photo op, prompting two angry Archbishops to apologize, charge they'd been "manipulated," and clarify this was "in no way an endorsement of the president, his policies, or his party."
In the final, petty degradation meted out to Rev. Nalwamba, detention officials told his attorneys they would ensure his safe passage on release with a wheelchair and escort, and then reneged on it all. The wheelchair couldn't go out to the gate, they insisted, nor could vehicles approach it. Hickenlooper: "There is no excuse for this cruelty. None.” In the end - no surprise here - it was two young mensches also being released who hooked their arms together - one lawyer: "It was heartbreaking and it was infuriating" - carried the reverend to his waiting car, and went on their way: "They didn't even give me a chance to say thank you.".
After his release, a buoyant Nalwamba said he’s “in another world." He talked to his children, he's well fed, he’s staying with a family who lent him an electric scooter to get around. The next day, he visited a health clinic to get a chest X-ray, blood work, TB testing. He looks forward to physical therapy and reconnecting with his church community: "I am a happy man." Except for the monsters, still here. DHS said they were "forced" by "an activist judge" to release "an illegal alien" who "chose to overstay his welcome in violation of our nation's laws." Most vitally, "He remains in the country illegally," under a removal order, without legal status.
So much, or not yet for Obama's Michigan citing of "a decency we should expect from our public officials." Attorneys plan to reopen Nalwamba's asylum case; conditions in Uganda have seriously deteriorated with widespread crime, unrest and targeting of political opponents and a U.S. "Do not travel" advisory in effect. At the same time, says attorney Joy Athanasiou, she has never seen "this inhumanity and cruelty" over 20 years of working with detained clients. Before, there were under 1,000 habeas corpus petitions a year; now there are about 90,000, a demand "100 times greater than what we can provide.”
Nalwamba says his thoughts remain with those innocents still inside a callous, corrosive environment worse than any maximum security prison. He loves the America he has lived in for almost 26 years, he says, and has always thought African and other countries should aspire to be like the U.S. But no more, he adds, not without drastic change. Those other countries, he argues, treat their livestock better than he was treated. "It's as if they've gotten used to treating people that way, like they're taking care of goats or cows,” he said. “I have never imagined human beings treated like I saw in this place."
The Rev. Edward Nalwamba Photo by Resurrection Anglican Fellowship
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