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Are WA lawmakers about to take your climate funds? Joëlle Robinson Fri, 02/27/2026 - 10:41 am

On Thursday, the Warner Bros. Discovery board decided to abandon its plans to sell the company to Netflix in favor of a Paramount Skydance bid.

In addition to offering $31-per-share to purchase the massive entertainment and news conglomerate, Paramount agreed to pay a $2.8 billion breakup fee to Netflix to walk away.

After WBD initially accepted Netflix’s offer for the company earlier this year, Paramount made a series of hostile bids for the company, aided by President Trump’s expressed preference that ownership transfer to his political ally and Paramount owner David Ellison and his centibillionaire, MAGA-loving father, Larry.

Free Press Co-CEO Craig Aaron said:

“The Netflix deal was disastrous but this new one is even worse. The idea that Paramount should be allowed to control CBS and CNN should be unthinkable, especially given their record of turning the Tiffany Network into a trash heap. The Ellisons have already promised the Trump administration that they’ll make sweeping changes to CNN given the chance, and we know what that means: firing journalists, spiking important stories, and replacing the news with empty propaganda.

“This deal endangers our democracy by giving a family of pliant billionaires even more control of vast swaths of our news coverage, TV stations and movie studios. Allowing more mergers in the already highly concentrated movie business will harm filmmakers and industry workers when Paramount delivers on its promise to make deep cuts to please its Wall Street backers. While a few Hollywood execs and sovereign-wealth fund managers in the Middle East might get rich from this deal, thousands and thousands of American workers will lose their jobs.

“In any normal administration this merger would be a non-starter. In this one, the corruption and capitulation of the Ellison family is the main selling point. They’ve already shown a willingness to bend to Donald Trump’s will and change their coverage and personnel to please his whims. Trump wants to control the news, and his Justice Department has been largely purged of anyone who might ask too many questions of a deal like this. State attorneys generals had better wake up to the serious dangers of this deal before it’s too late.”

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Preventing methane emissions is one of the fastest ways we can slow Earth from overheating right now. Methane isn’t just a damaging waste product. It is also a valuable commodity that is marketed as “natural gas,” which is produced alongside oil. When it leaks into the atmosphere, however, methane massively traps heat and warms our planet at an accelerated rate.

Methane was discovered in Italy 250 years ago due to bubbles arising from marshes. When collected and ignited, methane lit on fire and was initially called “swamp gas.” Although methane (chemical name CH4) has been steadily present in the Earth’s atmosphere at low levels for tens of thousands of years, its volume has increased dramatically since the Industrial Revolution due to increased fossil fuel use, agricultural expansion, and landfill development. In 2025, methane levels were at the highest ever recorded.

This increase in methane accounts for a roughly 0.5°C increase in global temperature, or nearly 30 percent of “forced” or human-made warming to date, which makes tackling methane pollution a pressing climate concern.

What makes methane so dangerous?

While carbon dioxide acts like a heat-trapping blanket around our planet, methane acts like an electric blanket with much more warming power. Methane has a lifetime of about a decade before it reacts to form other climate gases. Over a 20-year span, methane is over 80 times more powerful than carbon dioxide at warming the planet. As methane and other greenhouse gases build up at today’s elevated levels, their “blanketing” effect traps far too much heat. The greater the buildup, the greater the risk of life-threatening, property damaging, and costly extreme weather, wildfires, flooding, and other harms.

As well as being a climate concern, methane also causes substantial problems on the ground. Methane contributes to the formation of ground-level ozone, known as smog. Methane is also co-emitted with deadly contaminants and air toxins that kill and sicken people near where it is released. For example, benzene, a known carcinogen, can accompany methane when gas leaks from wells, flares, tanks, pipelines, chemical plants, and furnaces. Deadly hydrogen sulfide can be co-emitted with methane from oil and gas wells. And super-emitting methane sources that are present in very large volumes can explode and cause fires.

What are the main sources of methane?

The fossil fuel industry, landfills, livestock, and agriculture are the major human-made sources of methane, making up about 55 percent of current methane pollution. Natural sources, like wetlands, swamps, and thawing permafrost, produce roughly 45 percent. Different places have different shares of methane.

Methane is invisible, usually odorless, and under high pressure. This means it can readily leak in every stage of the oil and gas supply chain. It is easily emitted from landfills when food and other organic waste decompose. Some crops release methane as they grow. And animals, like cattle, expel it as a waste product.

How can we cut emissions?

The best place to slash methane is to start where we can make the most immediate impact. Methane from fossil fuels is a prime target because the methane in gas is a valuable commodity that is widely traded. Preventing gas from escaping means that companies can recoup money and prevent exposure to harmful impacts. Stopping leaks, reducing venting, and limiting flaring can quickly cut energy waste and curb methane emissions.

For landfills, a suite of tools is available to stop methane pollution at waste sites. These include reducing food waste, diverting food waste from the waste stream away from the disposal sites to anaerobic digesters or composting facilities, improving landfill cover practices, and enhancing gas capturing efficiency.

Cutting methane from livestock involves changes to waste handling and animal diets. Promising experiments are taking place with novel cattle feeds that reduce overall emissions. And reducing methane emissions from agriculture calls for changes to cultivation practices and other new control methods.

As a backstop, there is also work underway to study methane removal. As this powerful greenhouse gas builds up in the atmosphere, there may be a role to develop methods in the future for its removal in addition to efforts underway to cut methane emissions in each sector.

How can data accelerate action?

To tackle leaks and ultimately prevent them before they happen, we need to make invisible methane visible. This requires sensors and checks on the ground to make sure equipment is working as it should, as well as aerial surveys and even satellites to catch leaks as they happen.

Data-to-action efforts involve updated infrastructure, improved monitoring, and tighter regulations to enable faster responses to unexpected events that can reduce methane releases. The greatest opportunities in tackling methane emissions lie in more accurately measuring the emissions and reducing reliance on the industry’s self-reported emissions, which leads to emissions undercounting, as the exhibit below from Texas illustrates.

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What is being done at the international level to prevent methane pollution?

Countries at COP26 in 2021 signed on to the Global Methane Pledge, which calls for a 30 percent reduction in 2020 methane levels by 2030. The 159 country signatories currently represent roughly 50 percent of the total methane emitted today.

Other initiatives involve incentivizing the production of low-methane oil and gas. The European Union’s methane regulations, which came into force in 2024, apply strict measures, including bans on venting and flaring and a low-methane standard that gas importers must meet.

How is RMI involved in tackling methane?

RMI works at multiple points to slash and prevent methane pollution. Our initiatives help to quantify and visualize methane to support policy adoption and advance market activation.

RMI’s Oil Climate Index plus Gas (OCI+) is an open-source analytic tool that estimates and compares the life-cycle greenhouse gas emissions intensities, including methane, of a majority of oil and gas resources worldwide from extraction to consumption.

RMI also quantifies methane emissions from oil and gas and waste sectors for ClimateTRACE, a coalition tracking greenhouse gas emissions from every global sector.

Through WasteMAP, a partnership between RMI and Clean Air Task Force, we’ve created an open, online platform that aggregates and maps reported, modeled, and observed waste methane emissions data worldwide.

We are also part of the CarbonMapper coalition, which helps shed light on major emitters. Last year, RMI was part of the launch of the Tanager-1 satellite, which has been hard at work tracking super-emitters and speeding solutions.

Source: SpaceX.com footage.

MiQ, a voluntary certification standard developed by RMI and SystemIQ that grades gas production on an A–F scale, has certified a volume of 24 billion cubic feet per day of low-methane-leakage gas. In July, we released an analysis showing that, with Pennsylvania acting as the keystone producer, US output of certified low-leakage gas can meet demand from both domestic and international buyers.

RMI has also mapped the vast number of uneconomic and end-of-life wells —  marginal wells — across the United States. Future work will focus on pinpointing high-emitting marginal wells and stopping their emissions.

What are the benefits from reducing methane?

Methane has a much shorter lifetime in our atmosphere than carbon dioxide. This means that reducing methane now immediately prevents it from warming Earth in the short term. Methane also takes longer to react into dangerous air pollutants, like smog. Any action to prevent or more quickly stop methane leakage protects our health and safety. Rapidly attending to large methane plumes and preventing explosions can prevent risk to people and property.

Driving down methane emissions buys us crucial time to accelerate new technologies and scale the energy transition. Cutting methane means a cooler planet, a healthier environment, and clearer skies — and wasting fewer energy sources.

The post Methane 101: Why it matters, where it comes from, and how to tackle it. appeared first on RMI.

Gold extended gains on Friday as mounting geopolitical tensions in the Middle East kept markets on edge, driving investors towards the safe haven metal.

Spot gold rose as much as 1.2% to above $5,250 an ounce, on pace for another weekly rise. Silver, too, surged by 6% to $94 an ounce.

Live Gold Price Chart and Real-Time Updates

Precious metals have been trending higher in recent days amid a tense standoff between the US and Iran. Talks over a nuclear deal remain at a standstill, with both sides agreeing to reconvene next week.

Meanwhile, US President Donald Trump has ordered a large build-up of military assets in the region as the deadline to reach a deal draws closer. Bloomberg sources have indicated that US officials left the latest round of talks disappointed with the progress.

Driven by the Middle East tensions, bullion has been slowly recovering from last month’s selloff that saw prices drop over 10% — its largest single-day decline since 1980. Despite this, the safe-haven metal remains up by 20% for this year, finding support above the $5,000-an-ounce level.

As the market has stabilized, investors have also been adding to their holdings in gold-backed exchange-traded funds, hedging against the ongoing geopolitical and economic risks. Inflows this week more than offset the end-of-January crash.

Should Friday’s move hold, bullion would record its seventh straight monthly gain, for its longest streak since 1973.

Meanwhile, traders are also watching for clues on the Federal Reserve’s next move on interest rates. Fed Bank of Chicago President Austan Goolsbee said this week that several cuts are possible this year if inflation declines.

(With files from Bloomberg)

Australia’s Dateline Resources (ASX: DTR) is expanding into the “heavy” rare earth element (HREE) exploration space with the addition of a second project in California.

On Friday, the company announced its acquisition of the Music Valley project, which comprises 57 mining claims in Riverside County covering 1,140 acres of land.

The broader Music Valley area was previously explored by the US Geological Survey, and its first rare earth was identified in 1954. Past work by the USGS showed that the mineralization has a fractionated HREE
signature.

Strategically, HREEs are considered vital to national security, as they are essential to building defence systems, advanced electronics and next-generation energy technologies. However, supplies of these minerals are heavily concentrated outside the US.

According to Dateline, historical sampling by the USGS returned high grades of heavy rare earths such as yttrium and dysprosium. Overall, the rock chip samples had total rare earth grades of between 6.69%-15.04%.

Dateline Resources’ shares surged more than 17% by market close in Australia, giving the company a market capitalization of A$1.5 billion.

Expanded US portfolio

“Music Valley gives Dateline direct exposure to heavy rare earth mineralization in California with
historically reported high-grade TREO results and strong heavy rare earth enrichment,” Dateline’s managing director Stephen Baghdadi said in a press release.

As part of the acquisition, Dateline will invest $1 million in the project’s owner, Fermi Critical Minerals, which focuses on uranium exploration in the US.

“Our $1 million investment in Fermi provides additional leverage to a substantial US uranium
and rare earth portfolio, including drill-permitted projects in Wyoming and Colorado,” Baghdadi said.

US Interior publicly backs rare earth mine next to Mountain Pass

The project adds to the Australian miner’s presence in California, where it is also exploring the Colosseum project situated in the Mojave Desert.

The company previously noted that the Colosseum project shares the same geological setting as Mountain Pass, currently the only producing US rare earth mine. Both Colosseum and Music Valley also have a history of gold mining, with the former holding a JORC-2012-compliant gold resource of 1.1 million oz.

To advance the Music Valley project, Dateline said it will conduct further geological mapping as well as review and integrate the historical USGS data.

West Virginia bill to ban harmful food chemicals from schools clears key vote Iris Myers February 27, 2026

CHARLESTON, W.V. – Today the West Virginia Senate passed a bill, introduced by West Virginia Sen. Brian Helton (R-District 9), to protect school children in the state from harmful food chemicals. 

The Environmental Working Group supports the bill, S.B. 745. If enacted, it would ban West Virginia public schools from serving food containing 23 additives.

The additives are: titanium dioxide, butylated hydroxytoluene, butylated hydroxyanisole, tert-butylhydroquinone, sodium benzoate, propyl gallate, azodicarbonamide, aloe vera, propylparaben, potassium bromate, butylparaben, acetaldehyde, propylene oxide, ethoxyquin, acrolein, aspartame, sucralose, acesulfame K, diacetyl, octyl gallate, dodecyl gallate, calcium bromate and calcium sorbate.

All 23 chemicals listed in the bill are linked to health problems, including harm to the reproductive and hormone systems and even cancer.

The following is a statement from Scott Faber, EWG’s senior vice president for government affairs:

Food served to children shouldn’t contain chemicals that can harm their health or make it harder for them to learn. 

Yet decades of broken federal oversight have left thousands of food chemicals on grocery store shelves and in school meals without thorough safety reviews. Some have not been reviewed in more than 40 years. 

The Food and Drug Administration has no plan to fix that. In the absence of federal leadership, West Virginia’s Senate Bill 745 is a commonsense step toward protecting kids by removing harmful additives from school foods. 

This is practical and doable: The vast majority of the substances S.B. 745 addresses aren’t widely used in school meals today, and food companies have shown they can reformulate quickly when required.

Faber testified on Feb. 17 in support of S.B. 745 in front of the West Virginia Senate Health and Human Resources Committee.

The legislation is the most recent in a series of state-led efforts to regulate harmful food chemicals. In 2025, eight states passed laws banning or restricting use of various food chemicals in public schools, and others, including Utah, Virginia and West Virginia, have passed statewide bans.

S.B. 745 will next be heard in the West Virginia House.

###

The Environmental Working Group (EWG) is a nonprofit, non-partisan organization that empowers people to live healthier lives in a healthier environment. Through research, advocacy and unique education tools, EWG drives consumer choice and civic action.

Areas of Focus Food & Water Food Toxic Chemicals Food Chemicals Press Contact Iris Myers iris@ewg.org (202) 939-9126 February 27, 2026

Valerie V. M. Jefferson is a dedicated labor and community advocate based in New Orleans. She made history as the first female President of Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1560 (2019–2022), representing more than 300 transit workers. During her tenure, she gained national recognition for her leadership throughout the COVID-19 pandemic and Hurricane Ida, including a high-profile legal battle defending transit workers’ rights.

She currently serves as Southwest Regional Representative for the ATU International Black Caucus (as of May 2025). Beyond labor leadership, Jefferson is President of Women of Action of New Orleans, and holds executive board roles with the NAACP New Orleans Branch and the Independent Women’s Organization. She also hosts the radio show “Advocate for Justice” on WAMF 90.3FM LP and works as an outreach consultant.

Originally from Illinois and raised in Mississippi, Jefferson has deep roots in Louisiana. She studied at Alcorn State University, Southwest Mississippi Community College, and the University of New Orleans. After beginning her career as an educator and law enforcement dispatcher, she became a bus operator with the Regional Transit Authority in 1993, serving for 27 years.

Jefferson is an active member of Franklin Avenue Baptist Church and New Jerusalem Missionary Baptist Church. Her advocacy spans workers’ rights, women’s rights, voting access, and environmental justice, including the fight for clean air and water. She is married to John A. Jefferson and is the proud mother of one adult child.

The post March 2026 LNS Spotlight: Valerie V. M. Jefferson first appeared on Labor Network for Sustainability.

Throughout the week of February 2-8, the Labor Network for Sustainability joined partners across the country to celebrate Transit Equity Day under the theme Transit Moves Democracy. Together, workers, riders, unions, and community organizations uplifted public transit as essential climate infrastructure and as a public good worth protecting.

This year, many transit agencies and advocacy partners took to social media to celebrate the day, sharing stories, rider testimonials, and calls to action. Several agencies honored the legacy of Rosa Parks by symbolically saving a seat on buses in her memory, while others made fares free for the day.

Check out LNS’ Instagram to see the transit equity content we shared throughout the week!

Here are some examples of actions from across the country:

In Pittsburgh, Pittsburghers for Public Transit hosted a press conference celebrating two years of grassroots wins that brought new bus shelters and safer sidewalks to riders.

In Buffalo, the Buffalo Transit Riders Union organized a “Bowl for Better Buses” tournament, building community support for reliable and inclusive transit.

In Madison, Madison Area Bus Advocates partnered with their local library for a Transit Justice book display spotlighting equity and mobility.

At a time when privatization, union-busting, and service cuts threaten public transit systems nationwide, Transit Equity Day was a reminder: every bus line defended is a vote defended. Public goods are the foundation of democracy, and they must be funded and protected.

The post Transit Equity Day first appeared on Labor Network for Sustainability.

Ahead of the annual AFGE Legislative Conference, more than 1,000 workers and students braved frigid temperatures Feb. 7 to participate in the first-ever Young Worker March on Washington, organized by AFGE National Vice President Dr. Kendrick Roberson, AFGE’s, AFGE’s National Y.O.U.N.G. Committee, and AFGE’s Women’s and Fair Practices Department.

Participants marched to and from the Capitol before hearing from labor activists about the ability of collective action to effect meaningful reforms for current and future generations. The event was centered on a “Young Workers, Real Demands” platform to secure stability and dignity for the youth workforce.

A common thread repeated during the rally was a call for higher wages for high-value workers.

“Young workers are fed up with being told to work harder, and harder, and harder, meanwhile, we take home less and less and less,” Roberson said. “We will not quietly accept a destiny as a livestock workforce, such that this country can give us the minimum to survive, while milking us for our astonishingly high value.”

Another focus for these young workers was on affordable housing.

“In 2026, it feels like you need a lottery ticket — not a paycheck — just to afford a place to live,” AFGE Y.O.U.N.G. National Committee Chair Aaron Barker said.

The Young Worker March and rally showed immense solidarity across the labor movement and provided hope for the next generation of labor leaders.

Read more at AFGE.

The post Young Workers March first appeared on Labor Network for Sustainability.

Podcast on Youtube: Redneck Gone Green with Special Guest Joshua Dedmond

Our Executive Director, Joshua Dedmond, was a guest on the Redneck Gone Green podcast with David Cobb! Here’s a sneak peak of what he discussed:

Same Boss, Same Enemy: Why Workers and Environmentalists Win Together—or Not at All

For too long in the United States, environmentalists and organized labor have been told that they stand on opposite sides of an unbridgeable divide: jobs versus the planet, paychecks versus polar bears. That framing has always been a lie—one carefully cultivated by corporations that profit from both ecological destruction and worker exploitation. Building durable unity between labor and environmental movements is not a “nice idea” or a messaging tweak: It is a strategic necessity for anyone serious about democracy, economic justice, and ecological survival.

Watch/listen to the full podcast.

The post LNS ED on Redneck Gone Green Podcast first appeared on Labor Network for Sustainability.

Downtown Minneapolis demonstration January 23, 2026. Photo credit: Creator:Lorie Shaull, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0

On the ground resistance by the people of Minneapolis to violent armed occupation by ICE has led the Trump administration to announce an end to its violent “surge” of attacks on immigrant workers and withdraw hundreds of its stormtroopers from the city. It has swung public opinion nationwide against ICE and to sympathy with immigrants. And it has led Democrats in Congress to temporarily halt funding for the Department of Homeland Security. Whether these achievements will persist currently hangs in the balance.

An interview with Kieran Knutson, the president of Communications Workers of America Local 7250 in Minneapolis, described the role of community self-organization, immigrants, and Minneapolis unions:

“In the neighborhood that my wife and I live in, for example, there are 700 people in the rapid response network. There are eight or so similar neighborhood networks across the Twin Cities.” These networks mobilized instantly through social media chat groups to converge on the location of ICE raids with whistles, cameras, and cell phones.

“The immigrant portions of the working class are an incredibly important part of the working class in the Twin Cities and have really strengthened it to be much more pro-union and more militant. Some unions are heavily immigrant, so what’s been going on can’t help but affect them.

“It’s an attack on oppressed sections of the working class, some of the poorest paid sections of the working class, and sections of the working class that have the least rights. I think that unions which want to be fighters for the working class have to be a part of this fight. This army that’s being constructed could just as easily be unleashed against workers who are organizing or on strike, or on social movements.”

The idea for the climactic Day of Truth and Freedom came out of the labor movement.

The unions built the coalition which includes a lot of faith groups and community organizations, ones that represent the Somali community, the Latino community, Native American groups. There’s this problem in U.S. labor law where almost every collective bargaining agreement has a [no-strike] clause. And while this action was not able to avoid that, what it did do was create a situation where tens, maybe hundreds, of thousands of workers were absent from work, almost like a mass sick out.

For full interview:
https://inequality.org/article/labors-role-in-minnesotas-ice-resistance/

The post Minneapolis vs. ICE first appeared on Labor Network for Sustainability.

Photo Credit: Chad Davis, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0

More than 1400 Google workers have petitioned the company to halt its contracts with DHS, CBP, and ICE. Their petition said:

We are Google workers appalled by the violence inflicted by United States Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs & Border Protection (CBP). In cities across the country we have witnessed these agencies conducting paramilitary-style raids, kidnapping hundreds of civilians, and murdering protestors and legal observers. Just in the last month, Keith Porter, Renee Good, and Alex Pretti have been murdered by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) agencies ICE and CBP. ICE’s detention & deportation machine has killed at least 35 people in detention centers since July 2025.

They point out many specific ways that “Google is powering this campaign of surveillance, violence, and repression.”

“Through its ICE operations, DHS is violating civil and national law as well as civil and human rights. We must end our complicity in powering them. As workers of conscience, we demand that our leadership end our backslide into contracting for governments enacting violence against civilians. Google is now a prominent node in a shameful lineage of private companies profiting from violent state repression. We must use this moment to come together as a Googler community and demand an end to this disgraceful use of our labor.”

For text of the petition: https://www.googlers-against-ice.com

The post Google Workers Demand: Stop Powering ICE Violence first appeared on Labor Network for Sustainability.

Youtube video: Social Strikes

Znetwork has just released a series of seven short videos based on Jeremy Brecher’s LNS report “Social Strikes: Can General Strikes, Mass Strikes, and People Power Uprisings Provide a Last Defense Against MAGA Tyranny?” They include vivid footage of social strikes around the world.

To view “Social Strikes” videos:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLzkWWI6eVu3_aM1tv8I8wv6OVHPSEmyFi

The post See It Now: Social Strikes first appeared on Labor Network for Sustainability.

Photo credit: Jens Buurgaard Nielsen, Wikimedia Commons, public domain

A new study finds that just 32 fossil fuel companies were responsible for half the global carbon dioxide emissions driving the climate crisis in 2024.

Source: Half of world’s CO2 emissions come from just 32 fossil fuel firms, study shows | Fossil fuels | The Guardian

For full report: Carbon Majors

The post In Case You Haven’t Heard… first appeared on Labor Network for Sustainability.

If Trump won’t ban glyphosate, he can at least reduce kids’ exposure to it JR Culpepper February 27, 2026

Last week, President Donald Trump invoked the Defense Production Act to boost the American supply of glyphosate-based herbicides, declaring the controversial weedkiller essential to national security. 

For many in the “Make America Healthy Again” movement, the grassroots army of health-conscience voters who helped propel him back into office, it was an utter betrayal.

On the campaign trail in 2024, Trump promised to crack down on pesticides in food. He embraced Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s long-running crusade against toxic chemicals like glyphosate and pledged to put him in charge of cleaning up the nation’s food supply.

Kennedy, now secretary of Health and Human Services, has repeatedly warned that glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup, can cause cancer. As a plaintiffs’ attorney, he was part of the legal team that helped secure multimillion dollar verdicts against Roundup maker Bayer-Monsanto for failing to warn consumers about glyphosate’s dangers.

Who dictates pesticide policy?

Although Kennedy frequently promised to curtail pesticide use when he was supporting Trump’s presidential campaign, he does not control U.S. pesticide policy. That authority rests with Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin, who is also a member of President Trump’s MAHA commission, which Kennedy chairs. If Kennedy is to deliver on his promises, the administration must take action on pesticides soon or risk revealing his campaign promises as a cynical ploy to convince people to support Trump. 

In December 2025, Zeldin promised the EPA would soon unveil its own MAHA agenda.

But months later, that agenda has yet to materialize. 

Now many MAHA leaders are openly calling for Zeldin’s removal, saying his policy actions run counter to the movement’s mission. Those actions include rolling back or weakening protections targeting air and water pollution and toxic chemicals, greenlighting at least five pesticides that contain the “forever chemicals” known as PFAS, and renewing approval of the herbicide dicamba.

But there is a concrete step that Zeldin – and Kennedy – could take in response to something that’s been moldering in the EPA’s inbox since Trump’s first term. 

In 2019, EWG and nearly 20 companies formally petitioned the EPA to drastically lower the allowable “tolerance” – the amount that may remain in food – for glyphosate residues in one particular food: oats. Oat-based foods, from breakfast cereals to granola bars and snack products heavily marketed to children, are among the leading sources of dietary glyphosate exposure in the U.S. 

The current federal tolerance stands at 30 parts per million, or ppm. EWG asked the agency to drastically reduce that limit, to 0.1 ppm, arguing that the higher threshold fails to account for the pesticide’s association with cancer risk and the especially high dietary exposure faced by children.

Why oats? 

Lowering the tolerance could in turn lead to less glyphosate on food, kids’ exposure and associated health risks.

EWG has found high levels of glyphosate in these foods, compared to other foods, such as bread. Glyphosate is typically applied pre-harvest to control weeds. It’s also applied as a desiccant, a way to dry out the crop more quickly and make it easier to harvest. 

Although use of glyphosate as a desiccant for oats isn’t common in the U.S., it is permitted in Canada, a major supplier of oats to American food manufacturers. 

That means glyphosate residues can make their way into food sold to U.S. families, with children facing disproportionate exposure. 

The petition submitted to the EPA by EWG and other groups calls on the agency to close this loophole and explicitly lower the allowable level of glyphosate in oats grown for the U.S. market.

EPA has the power to act

EWG’s petition lays out in painstaking detail the toxicological data, dietary exposure assessments and cancer risk calculations. Yet it has languished for years at the EPA without resolution, even while the agency received more than 100,000 public comments urging action.

If Zeldin is serious about aligning the EPA with MAHA principles, he could dust off that petition and make it a centerpiece of his long-promised agenda. Lowering the glyphosate tolerance in oats wouldn’t ban the weedkiller, though that’s what Kennedy promised and many in the MAHA movement demanded. 

But it would signal that the administration is at least willing to consider risks where the scientific evidence and exposure routes intersect most acutely: foods marketed to children.  

Kennedy does not need legal authority over pesticides to wield influence. As a cabinet member and the most prominent face of MAHA, he could publicly urge Zeldin and the EPA to act on the petition’s recommendations. 

He could frame it as a targeted, “gold standard” science-based measure to reduce childhood exposure to the herbicide he has long criticized. It’s a golden opportunity to set themselves apart from the Biden administration, which also failed to act on our petition. 

Lowering weedkiller levels

An EPA (or HHS) response to EWG’s glyphosate petition might not satisfy every MAHA activist angry over Trump’s action to spur glyphosate production and hand Bayer-Monsanto immunity from litigation. But it would lower the levels of the weedkiller in many popular foods millions of children eat every day.

The petition is already submitted. The science is solid. The real question now is, did MAHA leaders in the administration ever mean to protect public health? Or was it always just a scam to con health-conscience voters into supporting Trump?  

Zeldin and Kennedy, here is the glyphosate petition for your review and approval.

Areas of Focus Toxic Chemicals Glyphosate Pesticides Authors Alex Formuzis JR Culpepper February 27, 2026

As humpback whale populations recover, researchers are gaining a richer understanding of these wondrous creatures. A new study suggests it may take years for humpbacks to learn how to successfully serenade a mate.

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Feminist agrarian reform is a struggle against invisibilisation and violence. No genuine agrarian reform will take place if diversities are not recognized as political subjects with equal rights in public policies for land and agrarian reform.

The post Free Bodies, Free Territories: Reflections on the Right to Land, Water and Territories for Gender and Sexually Diverse People in Rural Contexts appeared first on La Via Campesina - EN.

Seven Pacific island nations say they will demand heftier levies on global shipping emissions if opponents of a green deal for the industry succeed in reopening negotiations on the stalled accord.

The United States and Saudi Arabia persuaded countries not to grant final approval to the International Maritime Organization’s Net-Zero Framework (NZF) in October and they are now leading a drive for changes to the deal.

In a joint submission seen by Climate Home News, the seven climate-vulnerable Pacific countries said the framework was already a “fragile compromise”, and vowed to push for a universal levy on all ship emissions, as well as higher fees . The deal currently stipulates that fees will be charged when a vessel’s emissions exceed a certain level.

“For many countries, the NZF represents the absolute limit of what they can accept,” said the unpublished submission by Fiji, Kiribati, Vanuatu, Nauru, Palau, Tuvalu and the Solomon Islands.

The countries said a universal levy and higher charges on shipping would raise more funds to enable a “just and equitable transition leaving no country behind”. They added, however, that “despite its many shortcomings”, the framework should be adopted later this year.

US allies want exemption for ‘transition fuels’

The previous attempt to adopt the framework failed after governments narrowly voted to postpone it by a year. Ahead of the vote, the US threatened governments and their officials with sanctions, tariffs and visa restrictions – and President Donald Trump called the framework a “Green New Scam Tax on Shipping”.

Since then, Liberia – an African nation with a major low-tax shipping registry headquartered in the US state of Virginia – has proposed a new measure under which, rather than staying fixed under the NZF, ships’ emissions intensity targets change depending on “demonstrated uptake” of both “low-carbon and zero-carbon fuels”.

The proposal places stringent conditions on what fuels are taken into consideration when setting these targets, stressing that the low- and zero-carbon fuels should be “scalable”, not cost more than 15% more than standard marine fuels and should be available at “sufficient ports worldwide”.

This proposal would not “penalise transitional fuels” like natural gas and biofuels, they said. In the last decade, the US has built a host of large liquefied natural gas (LNG) export terminals, which the Trump administration is lobbying other countries to purchase from.

The draft motion, seen by Climate Home News, was co-sponsored by US ally Argentina and also by Panama, a shipping hub whose canal the US has threatened to annex. Both countries voted with the US to postpone the last vote on adopting the framework.

• Jan 23, 2026 Politics IMO head: Shipping decarbonisation “has started” despite green deal delay Arsenio Dominguez said the shipping industry’s net zero emissions goal is not in dispute although countries have stalled on adopting a framework to reach it Read more
• Oct 17, 2025 Politics US-led alliance wins a year’s delay in adoption of green shipping deal The IMO’s Net-Zero Framework will be up for approval again in October 2026, after the US and Saudi Arabia persuaded countries not to vote on it as planned Read more

The IMO’s Panamanian head Arsenio Dominguez told reporters in January that changes to the framework were now possible.

“It is clear from what happened last year that we need to look into the concerns that have been expressed [and] … make sure that they are somehow addressed within the framework,” he said.

Patchwork of levies

While the European Union pushed firmly for the framework’s adoption, two of its shipping-reliant member states – Greece and Cyprus – abstained in October’s vote.

After a meeting between the Greek shipping minister and Saudi Arabia’s energy minister in January, Greece said a “common position” united Greece, Saudi Arabia and the US on the framework.

If the NZF or a similar instrument is not adopted, the IMO has warned that there will be a patchwork of differing regional levies on pollution – like the EU’s emissions trading system for ships visiting its ports – which will be complicated and expensive to comply with.

This would mean that only countries with their own levies and with lots of ships visiting their ports would raise funds, making it harder for other nations to fund green investments in their ports, seafarers and shipping companies. In contrast, under the NZF, revenues would be disbursed by the IMO to all nations based on set criteria.

Anais Rios, shipping policy officer from green campaign group Seas At Risk, told Climate Home News the proposal by the Pacific nations for a levy on all shipping emissions – not just those above a certain threshold – was “the most credible way to meet the IMO’s climate goals”.

“With geopolitics reframing climate policy, asking the IMO to reopen the discussion on the universal levy is the only way to decarbonise shipping whilst bringing revenue to manage impacts fairly,” Rios said.

“It is […] far stronger than the Net-Zero Framework that is currently on offer.”

The post Pacific nations want higher emissions charges if shipping talks reopen appeared first on Climate Home News.

Gunnison Copper (TSX: GCU) updated a preliminary economic assessment (PEA) for its namesake project in Arizona, increasing the value by half and advancing towards prefeasibility, permitting and financing.

The update issued Wednesday raises the Gunnison project’s net present value (at an 8% discount) to $1.95 billion, assuming a copper price of $4.60 per lb., compared with the initial PEA from 2024. Mine life rises by three years to 21.

The post-tax internal rate of return (IRR) grows to 23% from 21%, though initial capital costs increase by 18% to $1.54 billion. The site is about 105 km east of Tucson.

“The updated PEA underscores the scale and compelling economics of the Gunnison copper project,” CEO Stephen Twyerould said in a release. “Gunnison offers shareholders meaningful exposure to a large-scale, long-life US copper asset.”

The project dwarves Gunnison’s existing producer – the Johnson Camp mine (JCM) that started output last year – with eight times the size. The heft is going to be needed as the West grapples with a looming copper shortfall in the face of rising demand for the plumbing and wiring metal. Some 60 new copper mines are needed in just four years, Benchmark Mineral Intelligence says.

Enhancements drive NPV

About 83% of the $692 million increase in the net present value over the initial PEA was driven by operational enhancements at the site, Twyerould said. These include the addition of the high-grade Strong & Harris satellite deposit, material sorting and optimization initiatives. The Strong & Harris deposit would add about 25 million tonnes for the open-pit and heap leach operation.

The updated study envisions output of 3.2 billion lb. of copper cathode over the mine life, with average annual production of 174 million lb. in the first 15 years. Like JCM, Gunnison would use solvent extraction and electrowinning processing.

The PEA update follows a year of milestones for Gunnison, when JCM was the first to produce copper cathode using Rio Tinto (NYSE, LSE, ASX: RIO) venture partner Nuton’s sulphide bioleaching technology. Three months before that, Gunnison produced its own cathode, making JCM the US’s newest red metal producer.

Company shares gained 10% to C$0.61 apiece on Thursday, before falling 3.3% on Friday morning to C59¢ apiece in Toronto, valuing the company at about C$254 million ($186 million).

Gunnison’s mother lode

While JCM is more advanced than the Gunnison project, the namesake site hosts 831.6 million measured and indicated tons grading 0.31% copper for 5.1 billion lb., according to the initial PEA prepared by predecessor Excelsior Mining. Gunnison is about 2 km north of JCM.

Inferred resources total 79.6 million tons grading 0.2% copper for 325 million lb. of contained metal. A ton is 0.91 of a tonne. The new PEA did not update Gunnison’s resource.

“The Hub” is a weekly round-up of transportation related news in the Philadelphia area and beyond. Check back weekly to keep up-to-date on the issues Clean Air Council’s transportation staff finds important.

Save the SEPTA Zero Fare Program! Check out Transit Forward Philadelphia’s Week of Action to join the fight for this program.

Image Source: The Inquirer

The Inquirer: Chinatown Stitch, which would cap the Vine Street Expressway, is in limbo after Trump yanked funds. Can it be saved? – $159 million in federal grant money has been rescinded in an unprecedented situation. Federal legislation has taken back $3.2 billion that had been awarded but not yet fully spent, leaving 55 projects across the nation confused about how to proceed. In Philadelphia, Chinatown Stitch would reconnect the north and south sides of the neighborhood by physically capping Vine Street Expressway belowground. Now, despite the public popularity of the project, efforts have paused due to concerns about spending money from other revenue sources, without a guarantee of repayment for these community funds.

Image Source: The Inquirer

6ABC: Public weighs in on future location of Philadelphia bus terminal – The Philadelphia City Planning Commission held an open house for public discussion this week, to hear feedback on where the new Greyhound bus terminal should be located. Three options were presented: 29th and Arch Streets near 30th Street Station, the 1500 block of Vine Street, and the 700 block of Arch Street. The Greyhound station on Filbert Street is scheduled to temporarily reopen in May. This would be for a permanent installation. The public can give further feedback in a survey found here.

Image Source: PennDOT

Fox29: Route 202 detour started Thursday, Feb. 26 in King of Prussia for sinkhole repairs – Route 202 southbound traffic was diverted, starting Thursday of this week. PennDOT addressed sinkholes and to prevent future road problems for the highway in King of Prussia. The section of southbound Route 202 being worked on is also known as Dekalb Pike, between Prince Frederick Boulevard and Henderson Road. PennDOT hasn’t provided a specific end date for the detour, but expects the repairs to fully resolve sinkhole issues in the area.

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