Green News

Michigan is investing $7.5 million to research geologic hydrogen — a clean energy source buried beneath the state that experts say could help power a transition away from fossil fuels. That’s because when hydrogen fuel burns, the only byproduct is water. There are no greenhouse gases or other harmful air pollutants emitted, unlike fossil fuels.

If used as a fuel or in fuel cells, a large store of hydrogen could help clean up the state’s high-emissions industries, such as trucking and steel as well as cement manufacturing, said Kevin Mehren, director of the Michigan Infrastructure Office. Energy production, including at natural gas plants, and transportation are the top sources of greenhouse gas emissions in both Michigan and the country at large.

Geologic hydrogen “is a major decarbonization tool, I think one of the strongest that we have come across,” Mehren said. “It has massive potential across all aspects of our economy, just to fill gaps and provide a new energy source for us.”

A 2025 study from the U.S. Geological Survey mapped out areas around the country with a lot of potential for buried hydrogen, with Michigan on the higher end. The study prompted Governor Gretchen Whitmer in January to direct state resources into more research, from which the recent funding announcement stemmed. Companies in Kansas, Nebraska, and Iowa — states also highlighted in the USGS survey — are currently drilling for geologic hydrogen, according to Sandia National Laboratories.

Mehren hopes this potential can translate into a new industry in Michigan, depending on what further research reveals. “The goal here really is to determine: Is it there? Can we access it? And can this be the tool that we hope it is?” he said.

A portion of this initial funding will support research in the areas that researchers think might store a lot of natural hydrogen, like around Michigan’s lower peninsula.

The state sits on top of what’s called the Midcontinent Rift. It’s where the North American continent started splitting apart more than 1 billion years ago, then stopped. That created the Michigan Basin, a geologic formation that left younger, newer rocks in the middle of the state and deeper, older material — places where hydrogen might have formed — closer to the basin’s edges, including near urban areas like Detroit and Traverse City.

Existing infrastructure for drilling in the region might also make it a good spot for research, said Brian Ellis, an associate professor at the University of Michigan and co-director of MI Hydrogen, the school’s hydrogen research program.

Wells for oil and natural gas drilling already dot northern Michigan, and the region is home to some of the most productive gas fields in the state. The existing equipment can also be used to search for geologic hydrogen.

Read Next What’s geologic hydrogen? What to know about the clean energy source buried under Michigan. Vivian La

“We haven’t typically been looking for hydrogen in the past when we’ve drilled these wells,” Ellis said. “So there’s opportunity to potentially data-mine information that we already have and see if there’s hydrogen.”

Ellis hopes that some of the initial state money can also attract federal funding in the future. The U.S. Department of Energy set aside about $20 million in 2024 for projects related to geologic hydrogen through its Advanced Research Projects Agency–Energy program, and national laboratories have conducted early research in the growing field.

“That’s the kind of thing the federal government should be supporting. Those high-risk, high-reward opportunities where we really grow our knowledge base,” he said.

Despite the Trump administration’s hostility toward clean energy, experts said they’re optimistic this research matches federal priorities. President Trump has pushed for more domestic oil and gas production by expanding drilling and rolling back environmental regulations.

Mehren noted how geologic hydrogen might be a uniquely bipartisan issue.

“You are ostensibly drilling — ‘drill, baby, drill’ is the catchphrase they use — for zero-emission energy,” he said. “It’s a domestic resource, but you are providing a new clean resource that could be an economic driver, decarbonize industry, [and] help fight climate change.”

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.'); toolTips('.classtoolTips4','The process of reducing the emission of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases that drive climate change, most often by deprioritizing the use of fossil fuels like oil and gas in favor of renewable sources of energy.');

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Michigan invests $7.5M to find out if it’s sitting on a clean energy gold mine on Sep 2, 2026.

Heat networks judicial review challenge Channel News brendan 2nd September 2026 Teaser Media

Governments must slash emissions further and faster, and keep every climate promise they have made for the planet to be able to return to 1.5C of warming by the end of the century after an inevitable overshoot, a group of prominent climate scientists has said.

In a flagship new report sketching out a way not to lose the most ambitious Paris Agreement goal, the scientists said that global temperatures need to peak at no higher than 1.8C above pre-industrial levels to give the world “a fighting chance” to reverse course. They added that plans to suck carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere can only play a limited role in this effort and cannot substitute for emissions cuts. 

A return to the 1.5C warming limit will only be reached in an optimistic scenario that sees governments turn their full national climate plans – known as NDCs – into reality and meet their additional, more ambitious targets to reach net zero emissions, said the report published by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP). 

Actual government policy is far off that track. Current measures to cut emissions that are funded and in force put the world on course for around 2.8C of warming by 2100, UNEP has previously found. 

Comment: Keeping to 1.5C of warming is no longer possible – but we must still limit the overshoot

Joeri Rogelj, professor of climate science and policy at Imperial College London and one of the report’s authors, said it is necessary to keep the temperature peak as low as possible as there are limits to how fast the world can reverse global warming.

That is because the scale of carbon dioxide removal (CDR) interventions that can be implemented sustainably and in a just way will otherwise not be sufficient and some measures, such as tree-planting or forest management, will be less effective at higher temperatures, he added. 

Commenting on the report, UN Secretary-General António Guterres called for the 1.5C overshoot to be “as small and short as possible”. This, he added, “demands an overshoot of ambition”, involving accelerating the phaseout of fossil fuels and pursuing the renewables revolution, slashing methane pollution, and protecting land, forest and oceans.

“Governments must over-deliver on national climate plans, net-zero commitments, and beyond,” he urged in a video message. “The fight for 1.5 degrees is the fight for humanity.”

Overshoot, peak and decline

The report comes out nearly a year after the UN conceded for the first time that it is inevitable that global warming will exceed 1.5C temporarily and the world should focus on making that overshoot as small and short as possible.

UNEP’s Executive Director Inger Andersen told journalists that 1.5C remains the key goal, but “we now need a different approach from above”, while stepping up efforts to adapt to a warming world. 

“A return to 1.5C is not assured,” she added. “But limiting the magnitude, duration and consequences of overshoot, while preserving the possibility of bringing temperatures back down, is the best remaining option to protect vulnerable people, reduce losses and secure a livable future for all.”

Battle over cleaning up shipping set to resume at London talks

Scientists warn in the report that warming above 1.5C should not be seen as safe or acceptable. Climate risks above that threshold intensify with every additional fraction of a degree of warming, they said. The report paints a grim picture of expected climate impacts: glaciers could lose more than a quarter of their remaining mass by 2100 and global food production could fall by as much as 14% by 2050 without effective adaptation.

Some small island developing states and low-lying coastal cities could be partially or completely submerged, while damaged ecosystems could further accelerate climate change.

To tackle these impacts, the report emphasises that adaptation and emissions-cutting measures are mutually reinforcing approaches and must advance together, while being responsive to emerging risks, which could be non-linear and arise abruptly.

“This report is a ‘fork in the road’ moment for the planet,” said Surangel Whipps, Jr., president of the Pacific island nation of Palau. “It is a further glimpse into a perilous future that has already arrived. To continue to have a fighting chance, calls for greater ambition are no longer enough – we need to see an urgent and unprecedented increase in political will and investment in a climate-safe future.” 

Cut emissions first, remove carbon after

The authors call for a three-phase approach to bringing temperatures back down: an “immediate response” of deep and rapid emissions cuts and urgent protection for the most vulnerable as warming approaches and passes 1.5C; a “coping and containment” phase focused on reaching net-zero emissions and building resilience as temperatures peak; and a “long-term resilience” phase of net-negative emissions through carbon dioxide removal (CDR) and lasting adaptation as temperatures eventually decline.

Richard Betts, who leads climate impact research at the UK Met Office, said CDR is not a “get-out-of-jail-free card” and should only be additional to emission reductions that need to be achieved with “even more urgency than before”.

• Sep 1, 2026 Comment From firefighting to future-proofing: Preventing wildfires must be the priority While many countries remain locked in a reactive cycle of disaster response, public policy can shift investment upstream to build resilience and cut risks Read more
• Aug 28, 2026 Politics Despite African walkout, fractious land COP ends without drought deal A strong push for a drought protocol by African countries failed in contentious talks, with negotiations postponed for another two years Read more

Critics of CDR have long pointed to the technology’s record of overpromising and underdelivering, and warn it has been exploited by the fossil fuel industry and some oil-producing states to try to delay the clean energy transition.

Not everyone was fully convinced by the UNEP overshoot report. Veteran climate scientist Bill Hare from Climate Analytics said it “does a good job of describing the hole we’ve dug ourselves into” but “a poor job of showing us that there is a way out”. He argued that its thin treatment of the need for a fossil fuel phase-out and ambitious mitigation pathways to cut emissions risk “turning it into a call to apathy rather than a call to arms”.

“Host of challenges” with CDR

Debra Roberts, honorary professor at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa, told journalists that limiting global warming to around 1.8C is needed to give the world “a realistic and fighting chance” of returning to the 1.5C limit because of the “questionable” feasibility of interventions above that threshold. 

CDR comes with “a whole host of challenges”, she added, including the impacts on food and water security of rolling out large-scale programmes and the unanswered questions of whether newer technologies will work at scale and who will foot the bill. 

“It’s going to happen in a very, very complex decision-making space where the risks and impacts are dramatically becoming more complex and interrelated,” she said. “That’s why the pressure there is keep those emissions as low as possible because they give us the greatest fighting chance of the return to 1.5C in a more equitable and just way.”

The post UN sets out narrow path back to 1.5C warming after inevitable overshoot appeared first on Climate Home News.

En español

Earlier this summer, Xinka People in Guatemala and their allies around the globe gathered online and in person to celebrate something remarkable: nine straight years of standing guard against the Escobal silver mine. Day and night, in rain and heat, community members have taken shifts watching the road, making sure it stays closed to mine related traffic. It is one of the longest-running Indigenous resistance encampments in the world.

But this anniversary wasn’t just about nine years. Speaker after speaker connected their struggle to something much older–500 years of Indigenous women refusing to disappear.

Drawing on a history of resistance

Marisol Guerra, president of the Xinka Parliament Women’s Commission, put it simply: her people have never been known for traditional dress or a widely-spoken language, in fact, the Xinka language nearly vanished under centuries of pressure to erase it. What defines the Xinka people now, she said, is this fight itself. “My people are no longer being rendered invisible thanks to this tireless struggle.”

That struggle has deep roots. Dr. Alfonso Solorzano Contreras reminded the crowd that the Xinka were fierce enough to resist Spanish colonization outright and that Sunday’s celebration, with their banners raised together, was proof that the same unity is still alive today.

Women leading the way

Women have driven this resistance from the start. Daniel Orantes, who keeps watch at the encampment, described how mining company allies have tried to spread rumors specifically targeting the women who show up for shifts, hoping to turn husbands against wives and break the community apart from the inside. It hasn’t worked.

Marisol answered those attacks directly. The encampment, she said, has become a second home. “We women have also played a fundamental role in this struggle.” 

Last year, she traveled to Vancouver with fellow delegate Marta Muñoz to tell Pan American Silver, the Canadian company behind the mine, exactly where the Xinka People stand. Asked whether any deal, even a majority stake in the mine’s profits, could change their minds, Marisol didn’t hesitate: “Even if they offered us 50% or 70% share in the operations, the answer is no… We simply want them to go away.”

Health and environmental impacts from the mine

This isn’t resistance for resistances’ sake. Experts hired by the Xinka People have documented arsenic and heavy metals in local wildlife and water. Wells that once supplied drinking water have dropped by as much as 120 meters. A sacred archaeological site was bulldozed down to a single mound. And the mine’s tailings dam, which is projected to be more than 150 meters tall and hold millions of tons of waste, sits in an earthquake zone prone to landslides.

In May 2025, after nearly seven years of a court-ordered consultation process, the Xinka People delivered their final answer: no consent for the mine to reopen. Pan American Silver has yet to publicly acknowledge that decision.

Remembering the past and determining the future

The Xinka People describe their fight not just as opposition to a mine, but as an act of remembering. Derek Mazariegos, a researcher with the Chiviricuarta Collective, spoke about youth recovering place names, oral histories, and traditional knowledge alongside the fight over water. Telling their own story, he said, is itself a form of power: it “shapes the way it has been represented and strengthens its capacity to determine what kind of future we want as a people.”

Nine years of holding a roadblock is extraordinary on its own. Doing it while also rebuilding language, recording history, and training the next generation of leaders is something else entirely. As Marisol said, closing out the anniversary: “For life and our territory, here we are, here we remain.”

Pan American Silver has still not publicly recognized the Xinka People’s decision to deny consent for the Escobal mine. Subscribe to email updates for opportunities to take action.

The post Here We Remain: Xinka People on Five Hundred Years of Resistance appeared first on Earthworks.

In English

A principios de este verano, el Pueblo Xinka de Guatemala y sus aliados de todo el mundo se reunieron en línea para celebrar algo extraordinario: nueve años consecutivos de vigilancia frente a la mina de plata de Escobal. Día y noche, bajo la lluvia y el calor, miembros de las comunidades se han turnado para vigilar la carretera, asegurándose de que permanezca cerrada al tráfico relacionado con la mina. Se trata de uno de los campamentos de resistencia indígena más longevos del mundo.

Pero este aniversario no se limitó a los nueve años. Un orador tras otro vinculó su lucha a algo mucho más antiguo: 500 años de mujeres indígenas que se niegan a desaparecer.

Inspirándose en una historia de resistencia

Marisol Guerra, presidenta de la Comisión de la Mujer del Parlamento Xinka, lo expresó con sencillez: su pueblo nunca se ha caracterizado por su vestimenta tradicional ni por una lengua de amplia difusión; de hecho, la lengua Xinka estuvo a punto de desaparecer tras siglos de presión para erradicarla. Lo que define ahora al Pueblo Xinka, afirmó, es esta misma lucha. «Mi pueblo ha dejado de ser invisibilizado por esta lucha incansable».

Esa lucha tiene raíces profundas. El Dr. Alfonso Solórzano Contreras recordó a la multitud que el Pueblo Xinka fueron lo suficientemente valientes como para resistirse abiertamente a la colonización española y que la celebración del domingo, 14 de junio, con sus pancartas en alto, era prueba de que esa misma unidad sigue viva hoy en día.

Las mujeres al frente

Las mujeres han impulsado esta resistencia desde el principio. Daniel Orantes, que monta guardia en el campamento, describió cómo los aliados de las empresas mineras han intentado difundir rumores dirigidos específicamente contra las mujeres que acuden a los turnos, con la esperanza de enfrentar a maridos contra esposas y dividir a la comunidad desde dentro. No ha funcionado.

Marisol respondió directamente a esos ataques. El campamento, dijo, se ha convertido en un segundo hogar. «Nosotras, las mujeres, también hemos sido parte fundamental en esta lucha». 

El año pasado, viajó a Vancouver junto con la también delegada Marta Muñoz para comunicar a Pan American Silver, la empresa canadiense responsable de la mina, cuál es exactamente la postura del Pueblo Xinka. Cuando se le preguntó si algún acuerdo, incluso una participación mayoritaria en los beneficios de la mina, podría hacerles cambiar de opinión, Marisol no dudó: «Aunque nos ofrecieran un 50 % o un 70 % de participación en las operaciones, la respuesta es no… Simplemente queremos que se vayan».

Repercusiones de la mina en la salud y el medio ambiente

No se trata de resistencia por el simple hecho de resistirse. Los expertos contratados por el Pueblo Xinka han documentado la presencia de arsénico y metales pesados en la fauna y el agua locales. Los pozos que antes suministraban agua potable han descendido hasta 120 metros. Un yacimiento arqueológico sagrado fue arrasado con excavadoras hasta quedar reducido a un simple montículo. Y la presa de residuos de la mina, que se prevé que tenga más de 150 metros de altura y albergue millones de toneladas de residuos, se encuentra en una zona sísmica propensa a los deslizamientos de tierra.

En mayo de 2025, tras casi siete años de un proceso de consulta ordenado por los tribunales, el Pueblo Xinka dio su respuesta definitiva: no dan su consentimiento para que la mina vuelva a abrir. Pan American Silver aún no ha reconocido públicamente esa decisión.

Recordar el pasado y decidir el futuro

El Pueblo Xinka describe su lucha no solo como una oposición a una mina, sino como un acto de memoria. Derek Mazariegos, un investigador con el Colectivo Chiviricuarta, habló de cómo jóvenes investigadores están recuperando topónimos, historias orales y conocimientos tradicionales, en paralelo a la lucha por el agua. Contar su propia historia, dijo, es en sí mismo una forma de poder: «cuando un pueblo narra su propia historia construye una forma en la que ha sido representado y fortalece sus capacidades sobre qué futuro queremos como población».

Nueve años manteniendo un bloqueo de carretera es algo extraordinario de por sí. Hacerlo al tiempo que se reconstruye la lengua, se registra la historia y se forma a la próxima generación de líderes es algo completamente distinto. Como dijo Marisol al clausurar el aniversario: «Por la vida y nuestro territorio, aquí estamos, aquí seguimos».

Pan American Silver aún no ha reconocido públicamente la decisión del Pueblo Xinka de denegar su consentimiento para la mina Escobal. Suscríbete a las actualizaciones por correo electrónico para conocer las oportunidades de actuar.

The post Aquí seguimos: el Pueblo Xinka y sus quinientos años de resistencia appeared first on Earthworks.

What whale are we talking about this month?

Today we’re looking at the elusive narwhal (Monodon monoceros), the “unicorn” of the sea.

Oh, come on. There’s no way those are real.

I get your skepticism, but narwhals exist. They live in the Arctic, where relatively few people see them. And yes, just as you might see in cartoons, male narwhals have a single spiraling “horn” on the front of their faces. Technically it’s called a tusk, but it’s actually a really long tooth.

 

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Only males? Unfair, if you ask me.

It’s not completely exclusive. A few female narwhals have been documented with tusks, although it’s rare.

If it’s any consolation, male narwhals take about twice as long to reach maturity as females — as much as 20 years.

That tracks. So what are the tusks for?

Biologists are still not entirely sure. Some sources say the tusks help to attract mates or achieve dominance among males (who often cross tusks like two swordsmen preparing to duel, a behavior known as “tusking”).

 

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Other research points out that they’re jam-packed with nerve endings — millions of ’em — that may help narwhals understand what’s going on around them, especially temperature changes.

Still other sources say tusks are for fighting or feeding.

Feeding? Do they spear their prey?

No — it would be hard to get a fish back off the tusk to eat if they did that. But the reality is even weirder: Some narwhals have been observed whacking cod with their tusks, stunning them or knocking them out and making them easier to eat.

We learned about that in 2016 — after 400 years of wondering what the tusks are for — thanks to drone-mounted remote cameras, which continue to help with narwhal research. A 2025 study observed narwhals chasing an Arctic fish species called char and “using their tusks to hit, manipulate, and influence the behavior of fish.” Some of this could almost be described as playing with your food. They didn’t always get to eat the char, though; gulls sometimes stole the fish, a behavior called kleptoparasitism.

That should be on one of those word-a-day calendars. Hey, what’s the deal with narwhals’ name? It’s kinda different from most other whales.

“Narwhal” comes from their Old Norse name, nárhval, which translates to “corpse whale.” It seems their gray, mottled skin resembles … well, you can probably connect the dots.

Gross.

Well, that’s the Vikings for you.

That Norse name seems to have stuck in the public consciousness worldwide, but these whales had a few other names around the Arctic. The Inuit call them tuugaalik, qilalugaq, or qilalugaq qernertaq.

You said people don’t see them very often. Why not?

Well for one thing, they live in remote, ice-covered parts of the Arctic: central Canada, Greenland, and Russia. The mostly Indigenous peoples in those regions have long traditions of living with narwhals — they figure into a lot of cultural traditions dating back millennia. But the Arctic’s still not a popular tourist destination (although several narwhal sightseeing tours operate on Baffin Island and other Arctic sites).

They’re also deep divers and have been known to swim more than 7,000 feet below the surface, which isn’t exactly hospitable territory for you and me.

And, of course, narwhals — like all whales — don’t do well in captivity, so if you don’t see one on TV you’re probably not going to see one. The few attempts to display them in aquariums ended in tragedy (some might say predictably) more than 50 years ago.

That sucks. Are they endangered?

Not officially. The IUCN, which assesses the extinction risk of species around the world, used to list them as “near threatened.” The latest assessment, published in 2017, moved them up the scale to “least concern,” with an estimated global population of at least 123,000 mature individuals. But that report cautioned that we don’t know the health of several subpopulations, especially in Russia.

A more recent study published in 2022 found that one narwhal population in Greenland shrank between 2007 and 2019. This is one of the few areas where narwhals have experienced much hunting, and that’s caused a decline in the percentage of females (who are slower and easier to catch) and juveniles (who need moms to begin with, obviously).

It’s great they’re not at risk right now. Still, climate change must pose a threat for an Arctic species like this.

Most likely. Narwhals live in icy environments. We just don’t know how well they’ll fare if ice patterns keep changing. Research suggests they’ll be vulnerable, though. A 2010 paper found that they species’ “extreme morphological and physiological adaptations enabling year-round Arctic residency … limit behavioral flexibility for responding to alternations in sea ice.” Specifically, the paper found narwhals have a narrow temperature preference — they avoid areas about 35 degrees (2° C). They can also only travel about nine-tenths of a mile before coming up for air, which is fine under “normal” conditions, but climate change could cause more ice to break free and congregate into large, impenetrable masses. If climate change alters temperature levels and changes ice patterns, the whales could be in trouble.

More recent research, published in 2020, studied narwhal genetics and found that they have low genetic diversity, presumably due to geographic constriction during the last glacial period. That suggests they’ll be vulnerable in the future.

Right now, though, the biggest threats to them seem to come from oil and gas development and commercial shipping. Human activities like this really stress them out — and narwhals don’t do well under stress.

That sounds like the other whales we’ve discussed. Any other cool facts to share?

A few! They’re closely related to beluga whales — in fact, if you take off the tusk and paint a narwhal white, they’d look pretty much the same.

(PS: Don’t do that.)

One of their physical similarities between the two species is their large melons, a mass of fatty tissue seen in all toothed whales (including dolphins and porpoises, who aren’t really whales, but don’t get me started).

The melon remains a bit of a mystery, but scientists have linked it to communication, which for narwhals includes echolocation.

Like bats?

Yup. It helps them find prey and avoid barriers — a useful tool deep underwater, past where the sun can reach.

Narwhals also have a wide range of other vocalizations, and they’re one of the whale species that seem to have different calls from pod to pod, a sign that they have learned behaviors that might be akin to culture in humans.

On a more physical level, narwhals are uniquely adapted to Arctic life, with slow-twitch muscles that reserve oxygen — I’ve seen them described as “greyhound-like” — and a thick blubber that protects them from the cold.

So what’s your favorite thing about narwhals?

Well, for me, it’s just that they’re so damn easy and fun to draw. They don’t have prominent dorsal fins (or many other extraneous details), they have big goofy heads, and the tusks are just magical. I’ve drawn them as cartoons and done several narwhal paintings, which always lead to fun conversations about whales and conservation in general.

 

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Go figure! So what whale are we talking about next month?

Haven’t decided yet. There are just so many interesting whale species, both in the news and out of the public eye. I guess you’ll just have to wait and see…

Can I sing the narwhal song now?

Sure, just wait for me to leave the room.

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

Whale of the Month: Minke Whale

The post Whale of the Month: Narwhals appeared first on The Revelator.

Gill Einhorn is head of the Forest Future Alliance and Natalie Çilem is community lead of the Global Wildfire Leadership Network.

Wildfires have devastated communities across the world this summer, claiming lives, displacing thousands of people and leaving billions in economic damage in their wake. In Europe alone, wildfires have already caused an estimated €19 billion in losses this year.

They are an economic, financial and public health challenge that is growing faster than many governments and markets are prepared for – and exposing the real costs of poor land management.

A system built for recovery, not resilience

Far more money is currently spent responding to the disastrous effects of wildfires than preventing them in the first place. The United Nations Environment Programme estimates that more than half of wildfire-related spending goes towards response, while planning receives only around 0.2 percent. This problem is not limited to wildfires; over 95 percent of disaster aid between 2005 and 2017 was allocated to response, and less than 4 percent was directed towards prevention or preparedness.

Forests are critical, but without investment in how land is managed and protected, their value is neither stable nor guaranteed. Protecting forests requires investing not only in conservation, but in the conditions that keep forests standing.

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Each dollar invested in wildfire-resistant construction could save around $210 in avoided future economic losses, according to a report by the World Economic Forum and Forest Future Alliance. Despite this evidence that prevention can significantly reduce future costs, wildfire resilience remains chronically underfunded.

This spending discrepancy is creating significant challenges for insurers, asset owners and financial institutions. Global insured losses from natural catastrophes reached $107 billion in 2025, with wildfires, floods and storms accounting for 92 percent of claims.

In this context, insurers are reassessing where and how they are willing to underwrite risk. Around 56 percent of global wildfire losses between 2000 and 2023 were uninsured. In some high-risk areas, insurers are scaling back coverage altogether, leaving homeowners, businesses and governments to shoulder a growing share of the costs – making it increasingly difficult to break even.

Proven solutions are already paying off

In many regions, wildfires are driven not by natural causes but by the deliberate clearing of land for agriculture. Degraded landscapes are becoming drier, more flammable and increasingly vulnerable to catastrophic loss, creating a vicious cycle of deforestation, economic damage and rising emissions.

The answer is not simply stronger firefighting capacity. Governments, investors and businesses must work together to shift capital upstream into prevention, resilience and long-term landscape stewardship of healthy forests. That means planting appropriately, investing in heat-resistant species, exploring approaches that minimise fire footprints through active management, and exploring the AI and technology solutions that are burgeoning.

A burnt olive tree in an area affected by a wildfire in Ano Sichaina near Patras, Greece, August 14, 2025. REUTERS/Louiza Vradi A burnt olive tree in an area affected by a wildfire in Ano Sichaina near Patras, Greece, August 14, 2025. REUTERS/Louiza Vradi

Solutions to this already exist and are proven to have an impact. Following devastating wildfires year-on-year, Portugal shifted its approach to wildfire management, increasing prevention spending within its national rural fire management system from around 20 percent in 2017 to approximately 60 percent in 2022. While many countries remain locked in a reactive cycle of disaster response, public policy can shift investment upstream and make resilience a priority before fires occur.

Indigenous communities have long used proactive land stewardship to reduce wildfire risk while supporting healthy and productive landscapes. For example, the Cheslatta Carrier Nation in British Columbia traditionally managed fuels through cultural fire practices but now implements mechanised fuel removal methods under commercial agreements. By combining Indigenous stewardship with sustainable forest management, Cheslatta is generating community benefits while also boosting wildfire prevention.

Resilience can also be strengthened through finance and technology. FireSat, a partnership led by Earth Fire Alliance with Google.org, the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation and Muon, is a satellite constellation designed for rapid wildfire detection. Scanning every 20 minutes, it can detect fires 400 times smaller than current systems and track them through smoke and darkness in almost real time. In California alone, FireSat could prevent up to 350,000 acres from burning each year. It has recently received significant new investments allowing it to expand towards a constellation of more than 50 satellites that will monitor every point on Earth every 20 minutes or less.

In Brazil’s Pantanal, the Embrace the Forest initiative uses AI-powered detection towers across 2.5 million hectares to support earlier intervention and faster response. During the severe 2024 fire season, the initiative contributed to a 40 percent reduction in burned area compared to 2020.

A drone view shows burnt cars following a wildfire in Dymi, near Patras, Greece August 14, 2025. REUTERS/Louiza Vradi A drone view shows burnt cars following a wildfire in Dymi, near Patras, Greece August 14, 2025. REUTERS/Louiza Vradi

These examples illustrate what is possible when resilience is treated as an investment priority rather than a recovery cost. But we must ensure funding for these measures is scaled before disaster strikes. Initiatives like the Global Wildfire Leadership Network (GWLN) are key, bringing together corporate decision-makers, investors, insurers, governments and Indigenous leaders to direct investment towards prevention and align finance, technology and stewardship to protect nature, safeguard communities and strengthen future economic stability. With a goal of doing more together than the sum of our parts, the network focuses on Forest Future Alliance GWLN Solutions Labs – where partners sign up with the intent to collaborate.

Rewarding prevention

Financial incentives must be created that reward prevention. This can be done by scaling public-private partnerships, supporting long-term landscape stewardship, investing in community capacity including Indigenous wisdom and technology. Ultimately, our terrestrial natural reserves are critical infrastructure that support resilient economies and thriving communities.

One in three people are dependent on forest services, goods and economic opportunities for survival, so it’s in all our interests to protect what we have. Forests support cooling, water and food security – and are a very cost-effective way of removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, where done appropriately.

UN chief warns climate crisis “in overdrive” as El Niño threatens to fuel the fire

No sector can solve this challenge alone. The benefits of wildfire resilience are shared across communities, governments, insurers, investors, utilities and businesses. A single intervention can protect homes and livelihoods, reduce insurance claims, secure water supplies and lower future public costs. Because the benefits are shared, the solutions must be too. Coalitions of actors can take proven approaches further than any one individual or organisation could alone.

As wildfires continue to burn at an unprecedented scale, the opportunity now is to roll out solutions, shift investment upstream and build a future where resilience, rather than recovery, becomes the foundation of thriving economies.

The post From firefighting to future-proofing: Preventing wildfires must be the priority appeared first on Climate Home News.

Recent fires in Spokane, Washington, and Reno, Nevada, illustrate the risks from suburban sprawl, experts say. In both cities, encroaching flames burned homes built at the edge of wilderness.

Read more on E360 →

This fall, 54 million K-12 students are headed back to the classroom for another year of lessons in all the classic subjects: math, English, history, biology. But there’s another subject that’s been sneaking into school curricula: plastics.

A new report from the nonprofit Plastic Pollution Coalition documents the many ways the plastics industry has been inserting its agenda into classrooms across the U.S. — including through lesson plans and worksheets, hands-on science experiments, and a program called “PlastiVan” that travels from city to city teaching students about “the contribution plastics make to modern life.”

Industry interests offer these resources to teachers for free or for cheap, according to the report. The materials tend to highlight the necessity of plastics while downplaying their significant downsides to human health and the environment. 

“When that information is provided to kids, it obfuscates the true impacts of plastic pollution,” said Madison Dennis, senior policy and advocacy manager for Plastic Pollution Coalition and one of the report’s main authors. Besides harming marine life, plastics can expose people to hazardous chemicals, clog storm drains and contribute to flooding, and release planet-warming greenhouse gases. The Plastic Pollution Coalition is calling for stricter school policies against the use of industry-sponsored learning materials. 

The report lays out four case studies of plastics industry “propaganda” for schoolkids. One involves the Society of Plastics Engineers, or SPE, a trade group that recently became a division of the Plastics Industry Association. SPE’s lesson plans include activities like a “plastic scavenger hunt,” which aims for students to “understand that plastics are ubiquitous and their importance to society and their personal life.” A video titled “Your Bottle Means Jobs” explains how plastics recycling supports local employment. 

Another case study highlights the American Association of Chemistry Teachers, an initiative of the Dow Chemical Company. One of the association’s lesson plans teaches elementary and middle school students how to compare the strength of various types of plastic bags that can be found in a grocery store. After a brief experiment, the lesson invites them to “pretend [they] are an employee for Dow Chemical Company” and are designing a plastic bag for a customer. 

Eve Vitale, chief executive of SPE Foundation, inside a classroom at Warren Mott High School in Michigan in 2024. The SPE’s PlastiVan program tours schools around the country to teach kids the science behind plastics and generate interest in a future career in the industry.
Nic Antaya / The Washington Post via Getty Images

While many of the materials claim to support STEM learning objectives, they do so while promoting familiar industry talking points, emphasizing the affordability and safety of plastics. Some acknowledge plastic pollution as a serious problem, but they blame irresponsible consumer behaviors and, instead of recommending less plastic be produced, propose more recycling as the primary way to address it. 

In reality, only 9 percent of all plastics are recycled worldwide, and scientists have repeatedly warned that recycling will be unable to keep up with projected growth in plastic production. Investigative reporting has shown that industry groups knew this decades ago, but promoted recycling anyway in order to defuse growing concern over plastic pollution.

Wendy Johnson, a science education specialist at the National Center for Science Education, said the industry’s lesson plans and worksheets don’t reflect good pedagogy. Materials claiming to be aligned with state-level STEM standards don’t say which standards they support, or how they’re aligned. Lesson plans instruct students to read teachers’ notes, or list industry-specific vocab terms like “stretch blow molding” or “thermosetting.”

“By using all of these technical terms, it’s tricking people into thinking … that they’re doing science,” Johnson told Grist. What the materials really teach, she said, is “ideological perspectives about the economy,” like the desirability of cheap consumer goods. 

“It’s so clear that the purpose isn’t to make really clear, easy-to-use materials,” Johnson added. “The idea isn’t to teach,” but to get industry talking points into classrooms. The report documents plastics propaganda finding its way into schools since at least the 2000s. Between 2009 and 2011, for example, a plastics trade group lobbied the California Department of Education to add a section on “The Advantages of Shopping Bags” to the state’s high school textbooks. The PlastiVan initiative has been ongoing since 2011, and SPE claims it’s reached over 132,000 students in total.

Plastic Pollution Coalition suggests that the problem is particularly significant in schools located near petrochemical facilities. In Beaver County, Pennsylvania, for example, Shell operates a 386-acre plastics production complex and has invested millions of dollars in the development of plastics-related curricula and recycling programs, both for grade schoolers and for community college students. It has also donated hundreds of backpacks filled with school supplies, and bought one school a basketball court — seemingly in exchange for incorporating plastics recycling into the curriculum.

Shell didn’t respond to Grist’s request for comment. Neither did SPE, the American Association of Chemistry Teachers, nor the school district in Beaver County.

The report hints at a broader problem with STEM education in U.S. public schools. Teachers often lack the time and money needed to design their own curricula, or to buy high-quality materials and lesson plans needed for in-class labs or science projects. When vested interests come along offering support — whether it’s the tobacco industry, the junk food industry, the pesticide industry, or the fossil fuel industry — it can be hard to say no. 

Read Next The plan to make climate science harder to erase Kate Yoder

“As a teacher, I’m always looking for free stuff,” said Suzie Hicks, a K-8 environmental educator in California who consulted on the Plastic Pollution Coalition report. Hicks said their education and background make them comfortable vetting materials for greenwashing — but that’s likely not the case with most teachers. 

Dennis recommended that school boards adopt policies banning educational materials sponsored by the chemical, fossil fuel, and plastics industries. She also emphasized the need for better school funding more generally, so that teachers and districts aren’t so desperate for ready-made learning materials.

One way to achieve this would be to eliminate tax breaks for petrochemical processing and plastics production facilities, which deprive communities of much-needed cash.

Katie Allen, executive director of Algalita, a California-based environmental nonprofit that develops educational materials on plastic pollution, pushed back against the idea that schools should ban all industry-sponsored content.

“Once you start banning one thing, where does it end? What I want to do is give educators the benefit of the doubt and allow them to make their own decisions,” she told Grist. She argued that teachers should be trusted to properly contextualize industry materials — and that they could even use them to teach critical-thinking skills.

That said, there are plenty of educational materials on plastics that are developed by non-industry sources. Algalita, for instance, offers free lesson plans on topics like plastic garbage patches in the oceans and biomagnification — the phenomenon where plastics build up inside sea creatures as you move up the food chain. The Story of Stuff, another nonprofit, offers a broader high school curriculum focused on the costs and consequences of producing consumer goods — including those made from plastics.

Those learning materials still come from organizations with an agenda. But Hicks argued they’re more trustworthy, since nonprofits usually aren’t trying to sell something.

Another option is for teachers to simply design their own curricula. That’s what Jacqueline Omania, a recently retired elementary school teacher in Berkeley, California, did in 2015. She turned her classroom into a zero-waste laboratory, and each year for 11 years, Omania and her students developed a set of zero-waste classroom agreements, vowing to minimize their plastics use — by swapping individual glue sticks for a communal tub of glue, for example — while also advocating for more systemic change, like by campaigning for a policy requiring Berkeley restaurants to stop giving out single-use plastic foodware.

“There are so many challenges in the world, but plastic is something tangible,” Omania said. “It’s right there in front of them, and they can see the difference that they’re actually making through their actions.”

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This story was originally published by Grist with the headline When plastic companies write the lesson plans on Sep 1, 2026.

Burnham affirms climate commitments Channel News brendan 1st September 2026 Teaser Media

As tech giants have expanded their reach into every corner of public and private life, their products and services have increasingly come to be seen as impossible to replace or reject. Yet although the cost of leaving the current technological ecosystem is immense, the price of staying in big tech’s grip is even higher. So, how can societies resist “digital colonialism”? An interview with Renata Ávila Pinto, CEO of the Open Knowledge Foundation. 

This interview took place on 24 April, 2026, on the outskirts of the European Green Academy in Brussels. It has been edited and condensed for clarity and length. Some answers have been reordered thematically.

Amir Hashemi: What is digital colonialism to you?

Renata Ávila Pinto: I started using the term nearly two decades ago. At the time, I had many discussions with my colleagues in academia about the increasingly extractive practices of big tech companies. Some of them saw digital colonialism as the continuation of other colonialisms, but for me, this relationship has never been a Global South vs Global North issue. Rather, it’s a one-per-cent-against-the-99-per-cent problem.

Europeans and North Americans feel very uncomfortable when being described as colonised by a small group of people in California that, until recently, held little political or cultural power over them. “We have the rule of law, human rights principles, and strong institutions, so we’re safe,” they would say. But whether we like it or not, our culture, our way of living, and the way we interact with one another on the street are all being wiped out.

Many of us are only realising now that much of the public infrastructure we used to have – and even things as simple as a paper map or a physical menu – is disappearing fast. Now, everybody is glued to their small screens, constantly surveilled and feeding the systems that have taken control of so much of our lives.

Why have governments been unsuccessful at stopping this?

The current tech landscape is like a crumbling house whose owners keep increasing the rent without providing any maintenance. For the vast majority of people, there is no possibility of thriving in this environment. Big tech makes you pay several times for everything it provides you with: You have to pay through your taxes because, increasingly, all your government administration is done inside this ecosystem; you have to pay for an ever-expanding list of subscription services; and you are also made to pay with your data and knowledge. And as the AI race rages on, you have to pay with your planet. This is the devil’s deal that these companies get us into.

Governments and institutions use regulation as the primary way to keep tech giants in check. But this is like putting on a helmet and a safety vest and hoping to be safe when the walls collapse on you

Leaving this collapsing building requires courage and a choice – one that is political, commercial, and pragmatic. But governments and institutions say getting out is too costly. Instead, they choose to use regulation as the primary way to keep tech giants in check. But this is like putting on a helmet and a safety vest and hoping to be safe when the walls collapse on you. It hasn’t worked so far, and it will not in the future. The only viable tactic of resistance is to walk out of this crumbling building and deal with the consequences later.

How should this resistance be organised? Should governments take the lead, or is this primarily a choice for individual users?

One of the things that annoys me about certain currents of the environmental movement is their emphasis on individual choices and their belief that the general public is a big part of the problem. To me, this is victim-blaming, and it doesn’t solve the bigger issues. That said, I think we need to go for big wins, and for this, everyone has to play a role.

For all the damage that they inflict on society – on mental and public health as well as the environment – tech companies contribute very little value because their profits go to tax havens. Ongoing efforts in the EU and individual countries to ban social media use for children are a good start, but they are not enough and only chip away at the edges of the problem. Both civil society and governments can put pressure on tech multinationals through other means, including strategic litigation and refusing to engage with emerging, unnecessarily complex technologies. It is also important to expose how deeply we have come to depend on a handful of companies for everything ranging from basic services to satellites. The invisible hand of big tech must be made visible.

Assuming we are willing and able to leave behind this structural dependency on big tech and its products, what replacement should we aim for?

At the Open Knowledge Foundation, we have been pushing for public-interest technologies – tech solutions that are good enough for the purpose they serve, while staying climate-friendly, accessible, and sustainable. One proposal that we are pushing for is the local stack. A lot of what we use technology for can stay local, small, manageable, and accountable. Do we really need to go through two American corporations just to take care of our government administration or talk to the people we love?

Likewise, nowadays we see teenagers using advanced AI to make memes or edit photos. Memes are great, but we don’t need sophisticated, expensive technology to make them. You can do the same thing with a much smaller dataset. If we are going to consume vast amounts of energy and water, there should be good justification, like solving the world’s most pressing problems.

With its growing financial, political, and cultural power, big tech is increasingly closing off space for innovation. Today, if you want to release an app, you first have to agree to the terms and conditions of Apple and Alphabet. In other words, even for the simplest of tasks you have to go all the way to Silicon Valley and back. But things weren’t always like this. In the early days of the web, there was a lot more freedom to play with technology and innovate. It is this same openness that we have to aim for today to break big tech’s monopoly.

You have reinterpreted the term “digital transition”, which typically refers to the adoption of digital technologies, to describe the need to wrest these technologies out of big tech’s hands. Would you characterise this as a sort of technological degrowth?

It’s not necessarily degrowth. It is recalibration. And for Europe, it is also decoupling. There is no reason for my dating life, my medical records, and the way I interact with the state to all be in the same data centre.

The transition that I call for is from a sphere of submission to a space of control, autonomy, and more importantly, accountability. This vision is not anti-tech: it acknowledges the fact that technology mediates our lives, but refuses to accept that the current tech landscape is our best and only choice.

Such a transition also embraces friction. Without friction, you are trading away your rights for convenience or speed. In that way, it resembles and can learn from the green transition. For instance, riding a bike somewhere might take longer than taking the car, but in the eyes of those who wish to pollute less, do physical exercise, and avoid getting stuck in traffic, it is a trade-off worth going for.

What is the AI boom, coupled with the continued “enshittification” of tech platforms, doing to our knowledge systems?

It is very naïve to think that these companies will keep their services available free of charge for everyone, forever. This presents a profound danger, as more and more people get stuck in these ecosystems through years of intense interaction. And when you reach that point, it doesn’t matter whether you have a university degree or not. Everyone is vulnerable.

Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression. But nowadays, freedom of information is no less important and no less under threat.

The system was already flawed, with browsers ranking content and burying webpages – the equivalent of a very censored library. Now, AI has made things much worse, removing the human element of knowledge seeking, curation, and presentation. We no longer have access to the “books”. There is only a voice reading certain information to us and omitting others, for reasons that we don’t know, and I think that’s terrifying. Another likely outcome is that AI companies will embed the nasty system of marketing in their products. If this happens, it will be very hard to differentiate facts from opinion, suggestion, or manipulation.

There are, of course, those who are trying to use advanced artificial intelligence for good, such as climate activists and digital rights campaigners, but there is no guarantee that access to these technologies will remain open.

Tech companies present the uncontrolled spread of advanced AI as inevitable while at every step fighting efforts to make the industry more transparent. For instance, Palantir’s “manifesto” disparages public discussions about the development of AI weapons and other digital technologies as “theatrical debates”.

Tech oligarchs often make these remarks, and they are nothing but pure rhetoric. What they want in reality is not a project of how they see the world. It’s just economic gain, power, and control. We know that one of the most polluting industries in the world is the military, and we know that one of the most polluting technologies is AI. What Palantir and its likes sell is fear, control, and global destruction.

This is precisely why openness is key, and why defending and advancing public information sources should be one of our top priorities. As Greens have correctly pointed out, large corporations have become the biggest hoarders of data, including public-interest data. This has to change.

That said, we’re not powerless to stop this. One of the things I learned from my years on Julian Assange’s defence team is that we often have far more space to act against injustice than we think we do. We have to keep pushing the boundaries and asking uncomfortable questions. There is now a small window of opportunity for this fight as well, since at no previous point have we had so many technologies that could help us map power and understand how it works in real time.

If social movements and political partisans recognise and seize this unoccupied space, I think the tech minority cannot circumvent the majority. But first, as I mentioned earlier, it is essential to get out of big tech’s playing field. If we only fight them in their own spaces, using the same platforms that they comfortably employ as megaphones, we will lose. But if we abandon their broken building, they will be shouting their empty prophecies to the walls.

The change of seasons gives us a chance to reflect on the environmental issues that affect us all.

Here are several new books about wildlife, climate change, and biological diversity that offer intriguing insights into the transformations occurring in our world and ways we can enjoy, protect, and observe the transformation from summer to autumn.

We’ve adapted the books’ official descriptions below, and the link in each title goes to the publisher’s page. You can also find any of these titles through your local bookseller and library.

The Savage Landscape: How We Made the Wilderness

by Cal Flyn

From the black sand beaches of Iceland and rivers of the Amazon to the barren beauty of Antarctica, wildernesses make up some of the world’s more alluring natural landscapes. Flyn sees a powerful, ancient concept at the intersection of landscape, philosophy, and ecology. For thousands of years, people have sought out uncharted nature in search of religious epiphany, self-actualization, and an escape from daily life. More recently these “pristine” places have been seen as the subject of a last effort to repair a planet imperiled by humans.

This book takes us into the breathtaking wilds — dark forests, mountaintops, and the hearts of deserts — asking provocative questions about the nature of wilderness, its preservation, and its meaning.

Recomposed: Music, Climate, Crisis, Change

by Kyle Devine

Can music save the world? We’re witnessing a climate-oriented transformation of what music is and how it comes to be. Recomposed shows how musicians around the world are using the cultural power of music to link climate awareness to climate action.

Award-winning author and academic Kyle Devine profiles EarthPercent, founded by Brian Eno and others to help funnel money from the music business to climate causes. Devine enrolls in a course led by ClimateEQ, which teaches carbon literacy for the music industry. He investigates a platform to help musicians finance solar energy and embeds himself in a dynamic cast of manufacturers and inventors seeking ways to make records more sustainable, from recycling old vinyl to making discs from bioplastic. At the center of this multifaceted story is the climate impact of music festivals and touring musicians.

End Times Fascism and the Fight for the Living World

by Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor

As the planet burns and shared reality melts, a new iteration of the far right is on the march. How can we understand this dangerous new development, and what resources can we draw on to resist it? In their assessment of the contemporary scene, activists and authors Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor explore how the religious fundamentalists, Silicon Valley technologists, and ethno-nationalists who make up this apocalyptic alliance share more than one might think: They’re united in their belief that some kind of cleansing cataclysm is coming, whether through the manifestation of messianic prophecy, the rampages of a resource- and job-consuming artificial intelligence, or the purported existential threat of immigration and cultural replacement. Rather than avoiding this conflagration, they welcome it, convinced they’ll be among the saved on the other side.

End Times Fascism is the ideology of the actors who strive to make the world unlivable and then seek to protect themselves from the fallout — whether by repairing to luxurious private islands, rocketing off to Mars, or bunkering the nation to keep their enemies at bay. The new survivalists have accumulated power, but they are far from impregnable. As Klein and Taylor show via original reporting and analysis, their many internal conflicts and contradictions and their nihilistic inability to envision a shared future, even for their ostensible allies, leave them vulnerable to a new kind of “pro-life” politics — rooted in reverence for our shared existence and regard for the earth we inhabit and must protect.

Water Lines: A Life on Marshes, Rivers, Seas and In the Rain

by Riverhorse Nakadate

A collection of essays from Riverhorse Nakadate — angler, musician, conservationist, and lifelong nomad — whose devotion to wild places and the healing power of water pulses through every page. For readers of Edward Abbey, Barry Lopez, Mary Oliver, and Jim Harrison, this book is a soulful invitation to step off the grid and into the current.

Across 32 essays Nakadate paddles, hikes, casts, surfs, and canoes through landscapes as varied as the alpine lakes of Colorado, the salt marshes of his native Texas, the trout streams of Minnesota, and the mangrove swamps of the Yucatán. Whether he’s chasing redfish in a hurricane, rescuing baby squirrels or migrating monarch butterflies, or honoring his mother’s legacy with a canoe ride and a slice of sweet potato pie, Nakadate reflects on solitude, friendship, loss, and the quiet heroism of those who strive to protect our wild spaces. A celebration of living deliberately and listening deeply to the rhythms of the earth.

The Shell Seeker: Encounters With Thirty Seashells

by Juli Berwald

Seashells are marvels; beachcombing adults and children alike are transfixed by their natural beauty and striking architecture. Discover all the incredible details of these stunning homes for mollusks and other marine life. Renowned science writer Juli Berwald draws on her passion for the ocean and its great treasures to reveal the remarkable and surprising features of 30 shells found on the shorelines of North America and oceans around the worl

Books for kids and young readers, including titles that can be paired with several of the selections above.

The Green Kids Club Books

Kids will love this collection of engaging wildlife-centered stories that help them understand the importance of nurturing our planet and its animal inhabitants. Founder Sylvia M. Medina saw a need to introduce kids to a range of animal species from around the world, exploring real issues related to habitat protection, wildlife survival, and the people working to help them.

This eye-opening book collection features stories from the wolf matriarchs of Yellowstone to a family of red foxes in the San Juan Islands to a baby elephant in Botswana and lion cubs in the African savanna. Many of the books are based on true stories, including the popular Grizzly 399 titles, one of the most famous and heavily reported-on bears in the world. All Green Kids Club titles include a science section in the back with photos and animal facts. Many have documentary films for kids to watch in synch with reading the books. The company also offers books that use Noah Text® to help make the stories accessible to all kids, including those with dyslexia as well as young English language learners.

This Book Will Make You a Scientist

by Dr. Sheila Kanani, with Ellen Surrey (Illustrator)

This book encourages kids to get excited about and become scientists by exploring 25 different scientific concepts inspired by ground-breaking scientists through history.

Children can learn to measure the speed of light like Albert Einstein, or train to be an astronaut like Mae Jemison and communicate with chimpanzees like Jane Goodall. This fact-filled book of step-by-step science experiments for kids are easy to try at home so children can explore subjects like DNA, electricity, evolution and gravity. This imaginative book is jam-packed with ideas for aspiring scientists everywhere.

Felix Powell, Boy Squirrel

by Erin Entrada Kelly and illustrated by Erin Entrada Kelly

Felix Powell loves to climb trees. He loves to run and jump and hide. But he’s never shoved acorns into his cheeks. He’s never gnawed at twigs to build a nest. And he’s certainly never worried about being eaten by hawks. Until now.

When his magic blanket turns Felix from an eight-year-old aspiring zoologist into a squirrel, Felix discovers that there’s more to squirrelhood than meets the eye. Will Felix triumph, avoiding predators and helping his new squirrel friend? Will he learn to jump and leap and climb? And will he turn back into a boy in time for dinner with his grandmother?

We Are the Keystones: Animals That Hold Habitats Together

by Katy S. Duffield with Hannah Salyer (Illustrator)

Meet keystone species — the hidden heroes of the natural world — and learn about the ecosystems they support in this marvelous nonfiction picture book.

Keystone species are plants, animals, or other organisms that have a huge effect on the environments around them. From beavers to elephants, alligators to hummingbirds, keystones help themselves and other species survive. Whether it’s creating habitats for themselves and other animals, leaving behind leftovers that fertilize the soil, or clearing out harmful algae, keystones live up to their name in their essential contribution to the harmony of our natural world.

That’s it for this month, but you can find hundreds of additional environmental book recommendations in the “Revelator Reads” archives to help make the end of summer fun and engaging for yourself and the young people around you.

And let us know what you’re reading: Drop us an email to ccrary@biologicaldiversity.org

The post New Environmental Books: Summer-to-Autumn Reads for the Whole Family appeared first on The Revelator.

Five days after a calamitous flood washed through Rasuwa, Nepal, the death toll continues to climb. Authorities said Monday that 903 people have been confirmed dead, while another 4,247 are missing, as the country reels from a disaster that experts say may be linked to the melting of glacial ice. 

Read more on E360 →

In 2024, an interdisciplinary team of social and marine scientists set out to examine whether the prevalence of marine heat waves — prolonged rises in ocean temperatures that are becoming more frequent and more intense because of climate change — has any impact on child and maternal health outcomes. “I was very ready to find nothing,” said Clark Gray, a human geographer and professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, who led the research.

The researchers published their report this month, which revealed some distressing results. The team discovered that for every standard deviation increase in the number of marine heat waves in a 24-month period — or roughly three more marine heat waves than normal — child mortality increases by 5.4 percent. Child wasting and child stunting, which can result from malnutrition, also increased — by 6.5 and 8.8 percent respectively. 

The ways in which marine heat waves might influence extreme weather on land are still being studied. This study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is not without its limitations. The authors specifically looked at health data from low- and middle-income countries. The data analysis also only demonstrates a correlation between marine heat waves and health; the authors are still not sure why or how child malnutrition and mortality spikes when oceans warm. 

For example, marine heat waves have been shown to disrupt oceanic food chains. It’s possible that these warm-water events are causing vital fish or shellfish populations to die off. However, the authors pointed out that other mechanisms — such as terrestrial heatwaves or the spread of mosquito-borne infectious diseases — cannot be ruled out as other drivers.  

Katy Seto, an associate professor of environmental studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz, called the research important nevertheless. She noted that high-level findings such as these create an opportunity for refining future research. “It is definitely like a first pass at understanding for whom this could be a big problem and what the solutions might be,” she said. 

Moreover, the report’s findings are consistent with existing research on the relationship between global warming and human health. “I’ve been doing research on the social impact of climate for a while, and I’m continuously surprised by how consistently negative the warming effect on health is,” Gray said. “It really shows up pretty much everywhere on every outcome.”

Read Next El Niño is here, and it’s already scrambling fisheries throughout the Pacific Joseph Winters

One of the ways that Gray and the other study authors attempted to narrow their analysis was to group countries by whether they’re more or less dependent on small-scale fishing. “We do see that the negative effects are concentrated in the countries that depend on small-scale fishing, which is what you would expect,” said Gray. Industrial fishing operations are more likely to have the technology to evade heat waves; their fishing boats, for example, could move further out away from the shore. 

But that distinction still does not illuminate why, exactly, these health declines happen in more vulnerable coastal regions. 

It is not the case, for example, that all countries relying on small-scale fishing necessarily depend on those catches for their own diets, said Seto.  Those harvests could still be traded locally or regionally — meaning that maybe marine heat waves contribute to loss of income, driving malnutrition in a more roundabout way. 

Oceans absorb the majority of the planet’s excess energy, but scientists are still working to understand the full range of impacts on marine systems. Marine heat waves, which are complex, three-dimensional events, have not gotten as much attention as, say, sea-surface temperature rises or ocean acidification, said Seto. Still, this study comes at a time when ocean temperatures are the highest in recorded history, so some conclusions can be drawn. Marine heat waves are “very bad in this current moment,” said Gray, and in the broader context of global warming, they “are going to get worse.” 

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline When ocean temperatures increase, so does child malnutrition on land on Aug 31, 2026.

New York City has more than 500 miles of coastline. The city’s coastal zone is home to around 1 million people as well as billions of dollars of residential and commercial property, and no two miles of the waterfront are quite the same. The marshy areas of southern Queens, the housing projects in waterfront Brooklyn, and the towers of Manhattan’s Financial District are all vulnerable during high tides and major storm events, and each of these areas is vulnerable in a different way.

The city learned these lessons the hard way in 2012 when Superstorm Sandy sent almost 14 feet of storm surge up New York Harbor and flooded thousands of structures across the five boroughs. In the aftermath of the disaster, the city embarked on one of the most ambitious climate adaptation efforts in U.S. history. Leaders spent billions of dollars to elevate and armor the lower reaches of Manhattan with flood gates and berms, rebuild the destroyed beaches in Queens, and buy out homes in the low-lying neighborhoods of Staten Island. 

Each stage of this effort faced delay and controversy, but the post-Sandy effort is now almost complete. The elevated East River Park in Manhattan is now partly open to sunbathers and tennis players. Farther down the island, construction crews are installing rolling-track flood walls that will be deployed during major storm surge events. These flood defenses will be operational by the 2027 hurricane season, but Mayor Zohran Mamdani is already laying the groundwork for what comes next. 

Last month, the mayor announced a major expansion of the Bureau of Coastal Resilience, promising to add almost 70 new staff members to a unit that had been on a shoestring budget under prior mayor Eric Adams. The first members of this new team will deploy the flood gates and clear the coastal zone in the run-up to big storm events.

“There was this huge investment of over a billion dollars to build these gates, and once you build it, you have to maintain it,” said Lisa Garcia, the new commissioner for the Department of Environmental Protection, which will oversee the flood system. (Garcia was the director of Grist’s climate solutions lab from 2019 to 2021 and later worked as a regional administrator in the Environmental Protection Agency.)

The new bulkhead at the rebuilt East River Park in Manhattan, with the Williamsburg Bridge in the background. New York City has been working to elevate the waterfront park since Superstorm Sandy flooded thousands of homes on the Lower East Side in 2012. Jake Bittle / Grist

But managing the gates is the easy part. The harder task for Mamdani will be to decide what the city’s next big flood protection effort should be. The stakes of this decision are higher than almost anywhere else in the United States, or for any other climate adaptation in New York. While heat waves, smoke, and flash floods all pose big risks to the city, sea level rise and storm surge have the potential to wipe out huge sections of the city’s most populous areas and cripple its economy. 

“I don’t think that there’s anyone who is saying we can protect all 520 miles of coastline,” said Garcia. “So part of it is this… What lessons can we take to other boroughs or to other communities?” 

Mamdani will have to make some big decisions about where and how to spend the city’s limited capital budget. Is it better to fund marsh restoration in outer Queens, or a coastal park in Harlem, or a bulkhead in the waterfront of Brooklyn? If you want to do all of those things, which of them do you do first?

These decisions are fraught with political and economic risks. When Norfolk, Virginia, another coastal city, created its master resilience plan, city officials made the controversial decision not to build flood protections for areas that were at high risk of flooding but didn’t have the high-value property that would justify the enormous expense. Under its plan, Norfolk would instead help those residents of the “yellow zones” live with rising waters or relocate elsewhere. In other coastal areas like California and North Carolina, efforts to promote “managed retreat” from vulnerable areas have met forceful blowback from residents who want structural protections. 

For its part, New York City says it’s still in the early phases of planning for future protections. Mamdani won the mayoral election last year by assembling a coalition that spanned the lower-income neighborhoods of the outer boroughs, and he took office promising to make life more affordable for the city’s lower and middle classes. The Department of Environmental Protection said it plans to start its master plan (which Garcia wants to analyze both stormwater flooding and coastal risk) next year, with a goal of finishing by 2031. It’s too early, then, to say how Mamdani’s governing philosophy will affect the city’s approach to the risks of climate change. 

New flood walls under construction beneath an elevated highway in downtown Manhattan. New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani announced last month that he plans to hire dozens more city staffers to manage this new flood wall system and others under construction around the city. Jake Bittle / Grist

There is no shortage of underserved areas that need flood protection. Perhaps the most glaring example is the western edge of Coney Island, which faces routine “backdoor” flooding during heavy rain as the ocean rushes up through creeks and out of the drainage system. This flooding often makes it impossible for children to walk to school. Even though Coney Island was one of the neighborhoods hit hardest by Sandy in 2012, the city still hasn’t built new flood defenses there.

“After Sandy, neighborhoods in Manhattan had millions and millions of dollars invested,” said Pamela Pettyjohn, the founder of the Coney Island Beautification Project, a neighborhood group that advocates for flood protection and quality-of-life improvements. “There hasn’t been any investment at all in Coney Island other than development — a lot of new development, new buildings, but nothing for the infrastructure.” The city government is now holding meetings with Coney Island residents to decide how to reduce flood risk along local creeks.

In other areas, architects and planners have sketched out possible defenses for which there is no available money. In East Harlem, for instance, the city worked with architecture firm One Architecture to design a plan that would drain stormwater that pools in low-lying streets and elevate the esplanades along the river. The plan has been around for almost a decade, but the city has not been able to raise the money to build it.

In other cases, flood defense efforts have fallen through due to budget constraints. The city pivoted its proposed flood adaptation project in the Hunts Point neighborhood of the Bronx to a cheaper project that will provide off-grid backup power to the area’s critical food depot, said Amy Chester, the director of Rebuild by Design, the organization that led the post-Sandy adaptation effort.

“We can plan for it, but it’s all about priorities,” said Chester.

The other problem is that people often disagree about how a given area should defend against flooding, and about what counts as sufficient investment. Garcia has said that in some cases a flood gate or bulwark may be the best scenario, while in other cases home buyouts or nature-based living shorelines may work better. 

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City officials have already encountered pushback over at least one project. The city broke ground late last year on a project in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Red Hook, which was also hit hard by Sandy. The effort will elevate streets and install new bulkheads along the water, but residents and activists say it’s inadequate: it is only designed to protect against “10-year storms” that have a 1-in-10 chance of happening in a given year, not the much larger “100-year storms” that the Lower Manhattan projects will protect against. The city has said that local topography and privately owned waterfront land make a Manhattan-esque barrier impossible.

The issue of flood risk has also come up farther north in the gentrified neighborhood of Greenpoint. In that area, a real estate developer is proposing to build a large new apartment complex that will contain more than 1,300 homes. The new towers will have steel bulkheads that the developer says will protect them from flooding, but some activists have protested that the bulkheads will push water onto nearby areas. 

These two controversies highlight the extent to which the city’s current flood defenses are a patchwork of individual neighborhood projects. That approach will lead to conflict over each investment and over where the city chooses to invest, says Matthijs Bouw, an architect with the firm One Architecture who helped conceive the flood barrier project that now surrounds lower Manhattan and who has also envisioned flood protections in East Harlem and other areas.

“You can’t build this stuff in isolation; you need to find a way to make sure that you align whatever you design with the way the city changes over time,” he said.

In theory, planners could come up with a comprehensive process for deciding where and how to spend its money, but there are tough choices involved in such a process. Lower Manhattan was an easy place to start after Sandy, since it was home to both the all-important cluster of downtown skyscrapers and a dense neighborhood of vulnerable public housing. Figuring out where to go next is harder.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Manhattan’s flood walls are almost done. What will Mamdani do next? on Aug 31, 2026.

Anuradha Barua, Aakriti Wanchoo and Swapan Mehra are from Iora Ecological Solutions, a New Delhi-based company focused on nature-based solutions, climate action, conservation and environmental policy.

When Rojo Neog’s village in northeast India was hit by a power cut in July, he headed out to buy candles. Three days later, his body was recovered – swept away by surging floodwaters. His niece said the water had risen from knee- to neck-level in about half an hour.

The devastating floods highlight how climate risk across India is becoming harder to confine to a season or a disaster bulletin. Just weeks before the disaster in Assam, authorities in Mumbai rationed water as reservoir storage fell to just over 10%.

India does not lack warnings about climate risk. The more difficult task is making sure money, institutions and communities are ready to act before those warnings become disasters. Adaptation should not be just an obligation once a crisis has arrived, but an investment made while there is still something to protect.

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As governments head towards COP31 in Antalya this November, India should push not only for more adaptation finance, but for finance that arrives earlier and can be traced to outcomes on the ground.

That is the gap India needs to close if we wish to become truly resilient in the face of the changing climate. Money must move with risk, institutions must know what to do before an emergency is declared, and long-term spending must reduce vulnerability before it becomes loss.

India’s adaptation disconnect

This year the disconnect has become painfully clear in Assam, where more than 100 people have died due to the flooding, with nearly 140,000 people across seven districts affected. More than 450 villages remain inundated, while some 49,000 people are taking shelter in relief camps after losing everything.

No financing mechanism can stop a river from rising. But timely measures can change what happens before it does. If forecasts and river levels triggered financing before the water arrived, authorities could position boats and stock shelters, and evacuate people where needed, while families could move cattle, seed, medicines and documents before roads disappeared.

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

India already has much of the information needed to address climate change. High-risk states and districts should agree in advance which local thresholds trigger action, who is responsible and how funds will be released, so officials do not have to negotiate responsibility and budgets from scratch once risk becomes an emergency.

Linking community know-how to financing

Our work in Majuli, a river island district in Assam, shows why this matters.

Across 64 villages, communities helped identify flood and erosion risks, assess their capacity to respond, and to develop resilience measures with indicative budgets and possible funding sources.

Communities often know what would help; the harder task is connecting that knowledge to institutions and finance that can act on it.

Extreme heat costing India’s poorest workers 2% of GDP, survey finds

Public health offers an example of how systems can adapt as risks change. In New Delhi, vector-control workers who once prepared for a defined “dengue season” now remain on alert throughout the year, using surveillance and hotspot mapping to identify risks earlier.

The next step is to make these systems more predictive by integrating climate forecasts into public health planning.

India needs sustained investment in drainage, health systems, wetlands, water security and climate-resilient agriculture. Some will remain public responsibilities; others, including water reuse, efficient irrigation, resilient cold chains and risk-proofed infrastructure, can generate savings or revenue and attract private capital if projects are prepared well.

The economic case for adaptation is not always about generating new revenue. Often, it is about avoiding future costs. Flood shelters, public-health preparedness, early-warning systems and support for the poorest households will still need public or grant finance. The point is to match the finance to the risk rather than treat adaptation as a single financing problem.

A sugarcane farmer removes weeds which have grown in floodwater in Kolhapur district, Maharashtra, India. Credit: Meenal Upreti A sugarcane farmer removes weeds which have grown in floodwater in Kolhapur district, Maharashtra, India. Credit: Meenal Upreti Rising disaster bill shows cost of inaction

India is already spending heavily on adaptation, with related expenditure reaching 5.6% of GDP in 2021-22. Yet tracked adaptation finance was only about $15 billion annually, almost entirely from domestic public sources, against estimated needs of about $100 billion a year through 2030.

Internationally, the shortfall is wider: developing countries may need $310 billion-$365 billion annually by 2035, compared with just $26 billion in international public adaptation finance in 2023.

For governments repeatedly paying for flood, droughts and heat relief, the cost of inaction can quickly exceed the cost of building resilience, though not all the costs of inaction appear neatly on a balance sheet.

In floodplain landscapes such as Assam’s Kaziranga National Park, animals move towards higher ground every monsoon as the floodplain fills, crossing roads and leaving the park in search of safety. During the 2024 floods, 215 animals died, including 13 one-horned rhinos.

Development plans in such sensitive landscapes must leave room for water, wildlife and communities to move safely. A wetland may not generate monetary revenue, but the floodwater it stores has real value. The cost of losing that capacity may only become visible when the next flood arrives.

Comment: Climate adaptation in Africa needs investment, not imported solutions

Success should not be measured only by how quickly relief follows a disaster. It should also be measured by what never had to be replaced: people and animals moved before the water rose, seeds kept dry, medicines waiting at the shelter, a wetland that still had room to hold water, and a family that could leave while the road was still open.

Adaptation becomes an investment when it preserves those choices before they disappear.

The post India needs climate adaptation cash to be an investment, not a quick fix appeared first on Climate Home News.

The only climate scientist teaching at West Point, the U.S. Army’s military academy, was fired after he resisted an order to stop teaching about the human causes of the climate emergency, a lawsuit claims.

Dr. Adam Kalkstein, a civilian professor of geography at the New York institution, was terminated after the spring semester this year, six months after a testy meeting with Brig. Gen. Shane Reeves, then dean of West Point’s academic board, the court filing said.

According to Kalkstein, who taught Army cadets there for 17 years, he told the dean at a November 2025 meeting that an order to cut from the curriculum content about the human causes of climate change was immoral and potentially illegal.

It “would be like trying to teach the law without being able to even mention the Constitution,” he said.

Reeves responded by “storming out” of the meeting after telling Kalkstein that Donald Trump was commander in chief and set the agenda for West Point, the lawsuit alleged.

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The developments were reported on Wednesday by Stars and Stripes and The New York Times.

Kalkstein’s lawsuit is the second legal action over the stifling of academic freedoms filed by an educator at West Point.

Tim Bakken, the academy’s longest-serving law professor, had a similarly fiery meeting with a uniformed colonel, John Gregory, last year after standing up to a new Trump administration policy ordering civilian colleagues to seek approval before publishing papers or giving speeches, The Washington Post reported in July.

According to Bakken’s lawsuit, Gregory ordered him to “stop talking and sit down” during a meeting of dozens of faculty members. “We’re a military institution. We follow orders,” Gregory is alleged to have said.

The U.S. Military Academy, West Point’s formal name, dropped its challenge to a preliminary injunction against the policy obtained by Bakken’s lawyers this month, military.com reported, and the parties have agreed “in principle” to work toward a permanent solution.

Kalkstein’s attorney, Michael Sussman, told the Times that his client was a conservative Republican who believes military students need to know the truth about the causes of the climate crisis as a matter of national security.

“He is loyal to the cadets and the academy,” he said. “And to his perspective, edicts that he can’t say what’s true in a classroom is beyond his tolerance and totally counterproductive.”

In further comments to Stars and Stripes, Sussman said Kalkstein’s position was not ideological. “There are certainly people who, anything Donald Trump does, they want to complain about it and scream and yell about it. He’s not that guy,” Sussman said.

The lawsuit alleges that Kalkstein first became aware his position was under threat in May 2025, when West Point leaders announced plans to reduce civilian staffing levels, while at the same time opening a new humanities center requiring new geography teachers.

They offered to let him stay as a “term employee,” Stars and Stripes said, and Kalkstein, fearful that colleagues would have to pick up his classes if he quit, accepted a loss of tenure and entitlement to a large severance package to stay.

The order to ban teaching about human contributions to climate change came in September, the lawsuit said, followed by the angry meeting with Reeves a month later. Reeves retired in April after a 30-year military career and is now president of the University of Wyoming’s board of trustees.

Kalkstein’s lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, accuses West Point of breaching his First Amendment rights to free speech.

In a statement to the Guardian, the academy said it was “aware of the allegations and take[s] such matters seriously,” but declined further comment citing pending litigation.

The Guardian has also approached the White House for comment.

Trump has flipped between calling the climate emergency “a hoax” or “a scam” to admitting it exists but insisting that climate scientists are politically motivated and that the climate “will change back.”

Since taking office for a second time last year he has also attempted to impose numerous cultural changes on U.S. military institutions.

In April last year, Trump’s defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, ordered the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, to purge books found to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion, resulting in almost 400 being removed after review. The books were returned a month later after the Pentagon reversed course.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline West Point’s only climate scientist fired after continuing to teach human causes of climate change on Aug 30, 2026.

Roughly 160 people are dead and hundreds more — including dozens of international tourists — are missing after flash floods hit a region on the mountainous border of Nepal and Tibet on Wednesday. Devastating footage posted to social media shows people fleeing a wall of water that washed away buildings and vehicles.

Initial analysis of satellite imagery and reports from the Nepalese government indicate that the flooding was likely triggered by a landslide caused after a piece of a glacier fell hundreds of feet.

As the region warms, its ice is becoming increasingly unstable, raising the risk of catastrophic flooding.

“The glaciers over there are definitely in retreat,” said Joseph Shea, an associate professor of geography at the University of Northern British Columbia. “There’s a lot of glacier mass up there, but we’re seeing thinning, we’re seeing retreating.”

Since 2000, the world’s glaciers have lost 5 percent of their ice, with much more drastic impacts in certain regions. Nepal’s glaciers lost nearly a quarter of their area between 1970 and 2010. More than 160 smaller glaciers in the country, research has found, have vanished entirely.

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A recent study finds that 40 percent of the world’s glacial ice could disappear if the world does not keep warming under 1.5 degrees Celsius.

The impacts of warming on glaciers in Nepal can cause cascading effects. Shea pointed out that retreating glaciers can help trigger landslides as they get smaller and can no longer hold back sediment. As these glaciers retreat, many are leaving large, dammed lakes at higher elevations. “If you have a landslide suddenly into a lake, you get an overtopping of the dam, and then the whole thing can collapse catastrophically,” Shea said. Known as glacial lake outburst floods, two of these events hit Nepal last year, and research shows millions are living in harms way around the world.

Wednesday’s disaster was more likely due to a glacial collapse that fell into the valley below. Daniel Shugar, a geologist at the University of Calgary in Canada, told The New York Times that satellite imagery suggested that a 2,000-foot-wide piece of ice may have fallen almost 4,000 feet, “[pulverizing] the ice into water” with the force of its fall. And while Shugar emphasized that it was still too early to make conclusive statements about the cause of the floods, he noted to Reuters that snow that was present on the glacier earlier in the week may have melted due to warm temperatures.

The collapse and debris flow were so large and forceful, they registered as a magnitude 5.2 seismic event, according the U.S. Geological Survey.

Glaciers elsewhere have broken apart with destructive results. That includes the collapse of a Swiss glacier last year that buried a town while on a smaller scale, a glacier collapse in Italy in 2022 killed 11 mountaineers. Both were linked with rising temperatures.

There’s a lot of factors in a warming world, Shea said, that can play on each other to destabilize glaciers.

“It’s summertime,” he said. “There’s lots of warming, lots of melt happening, lots of water around. There’s also things like alpine permafrost thaws: the ground temperatures warm up, and big blocks and chunks that would have been frozen in place are now suddenly becoming mobile.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline How rising temperatures likely contributed to Nepal’s deadly flood on Aug 29, 2026.

Nevada officials have long presented themselves as a voice for compromise and conservation in debates over the Colorado River. The Las Vegas area, home to two-thirds of the state’s population and most of its economy, has become a model of urban water conservation. As the river has declined from overuse and a decades-long drought exacerbated by climate change, southern Nevada water planners built extensive water reuse facilities and implemented tight restrictions on new turf and fountains, dropping the region’s per capita water use by 58 percent in roughly 20 years. Meanwhile, in interstate negotiations over the management of the Colorado River, state representatives have positioned themselves as bridge-builders, sometimes referring to themselves as the “middle basin” between the river’s divided upper and lower basin states. 

When the federal government’s new management plan for the river was announced earlier this month, most observers thought Arizona, which stands to take the largest immediate cuts, would launch the first lawsuit over the plan’s implications for its water supplies. So it came as a surprise to many Colorado River experts when Nevada became the first to sue the federal government over the plan this week.

“I expected that there would be litigation, but it was surprising to me that Nevada fired the first shot,” said Anne Castle, former chair of the Upper Colorado River Commission,

Nevada’s lawsuit comes after more than two years of negotiations among the seven Colorado River states and the federal government over how to reduce water use on the declining river. The states failed to reach a long-term agreement before the river’s current management procedures expire in October, leaving the Interior Department to impose its own plan. The federal government’s plan largely relies on cuts to water use among the Lower Basin states — Arizona, Nevada, and California — to prop up water levels in the river’s largest reservoirs. Those reservoirs have been draining so quickly that the dwindling water depth could threaten hydropower and dam operations within months without intervention. 

Nevada argues that the federal government’s plan illegally forces it to take too much of those cuts. In a worst-case scenario, the plan could allow for a 71 percent cut to the Las Vegas area’s water supply, the state argued, calling it an unacceptable risk to the state’s largest population center and economic hub. Nevada believes this outcome results from a misreading of the law and also claims the government didn’t consider important alternatives to such drastic cuts.

This worst-case scenario, which experts say is an interpretation of the plan’s implications by Nevada, would become possible if reservoir levels continue to drop and if Nevada couldn’t reach an agreement with Arizona and California to help it absorb more of those cuts. Those three states already have such an agreement, which is incorporated into the federal plan and meant to last through 2028, at which point the plan allows the states to update the operations with a new agreement. Without an agreement, the federal government will implement cuts based on preexisting water rights and agreements, cutting the most from Arizona and leaning increasingly on Nevada and California as potential shortages increase. The plan was created through a decision-making process required under the National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA, which mandates that federal agencies gather public input and consider environmental and socioeconomic impacts of major decisions.

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At first glance, the lawsuit seems like a departure from Nevada’s long-standing posture as the river’s conciliator, advocating consensus among the river basin’s seven states and 30 tribes, which hold vast water rights but are not formal members of interstate negotiations. John Entsminger, the state’s negotiator on the river, has repeatedly portrayed compromise as the state’s preferred path, telling a Las Vegas water conference just a week before the lawsuit that negotiation and cooperation were the state’s “first, second, and third choice.” 

But Nevada has consistently paired its call for consensus with a warning that it would defend its water if negotiations failed, and the state’s case seems less surprising in light of the drastic cuts it claims are possible under the federal plan. Unlike other states, Nevada sends its Colorado River water almost entirely to urban areas. That means cuts fall directly on the Las Vegas area, while other states can cushion the blow by fallowing agricultural fields.

“There is an absurdity to a plan that would require Las Vegas to cut 71 percent. That’s existential. Of course Nevada sued,” wrote John Fleck, water expert and author in residence at the University of New Mexico’s Utton Center, in a recent blog post. 

The lawsuit can also be read as a continuation of Nevada’s advocacy for consensus among the basin states and tribes. With the states unable to reach a long-term agreement and the federal government moving ahead with its own plan, Nevada is now using a different tool to make the same basic argument: that a federal decision without full buy-in from all the states can’t accommodate all their needs and find the innovative solution needed to manage the river.

Nevada argues in its suit that the legally required decision-making process that led to the federal plan failed to account for economic consequences to the Las Vegas area or consider creative alternatives to such drastic water cuts, such as changes to the structure of Glen Canyon Dam. Nevadans argue the process was too narrow and failed to consider solutions that would have avoided such massive theoretical water shortages in a major metropolitan area.

“Nobody can deny that the federal government did a ton of modeling and scenario analyses, but in terms of where the rubber meets the road, what were all the inputs, and what were some of the other analyses that could have been done?” said Kyle Roerink, former director of the Great Basin Water Network, an advocacy group for rural Nevada water resources.

How a court will see that issue has become complicated in the wake of a series of Supreme Court cases that reshaped the federal government’s responsibilities when conducting reviews under NEPA, especially with decisions that involve large, multifaceted infrastructure systems.

The suit, experts say, isn’t the cannonball-splash Colorado River experts have feared for years. That case, in which Arizona challenges the Upper Basin states — Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming — on whether they have met their obligations under the 1922 Colorado River Compact, may still materialize. Such a case could force judges to determine fundamental questions about who bears responsibility for the river’s decline. The resulting court battle could last years and remove states’ control over the fate of the river. Castle describes this scenario as where the “really big risks are.” 

Still, Nevada’s lawsuit has cast uncertainty over the river’s near-term operations. Nevada hasn’t yet asked for an immediate restraining order against the federal government, which would request that a judge immediately vacate the plan. But if the state convinces a court to rule against the federal plan, it could throw a wrench in the initial two-year arrangement that was expected to keep Lower Basin states afloat in the near future. 

“We are disappointed to see Nevada filing suit here, and are concerned about what the ramifications will be for the operations plans in 2027 and potentially 2028,” said Jay Weiner in an interview, speaking in his capacity as counsel for the Fort Yuma Quechan Indian Tribe, a senior water rights holder along the Colorado River in Arizona and California.

But experts agree this move, and even a theoretical Arizona suit, don’t strike a death knell for collaboration and negotiation on the river. States in the lower part of the basin may still negotiate regular arrangements to share shortages while litigation proceeds, while the possibility of a full seven-state agreement remains possible if negotiations resume.

Speaking at the Paris Las Vegas casino during the Colorado River Water Users’ Association conference in 2024, Navajo Nation Chief Counsel Bidtah Becker reminded the audience that water litigation and negotiation are not mutually exclusive: “You can get along and argue at the same time, and you develop long-term relationships through that.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Nevada preached peace on the Colorado River. Now it’s suing to protect its water. on Aug 28, 2026.

The African continent’s hopes for a legally binding agreement to combat drought have been dashed again, as UN land restoration talks in Mongolia passed the issue onto the next set of talks in Egypt in two years’ time.

For over a decade, Africa has pushed for a UN protocol on drought risk management that would acknowledge drought as an issue requiring a regional and global – not just a national – response, potentially paving the way for more finance to help ensure water is available when drought hits.

A formal protocol would enable countries to transition from reacting to drought once it hits to “a proactive enabling mechanism to address drought and its effects such as migration”, said a Tunisian negotiator on behalf of the African Group of countries last week. Once land is regularly too dry and infertile to grow crops or graze animals, people often leave to seek a living elsewhere.

But this effort to adopt a protocol, led by Africa, has been resisted at successive land restoration COPs under the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), mainly by developed countries, which argue that a legally weaker alternative – a framework – would be faster and cheaper to set up.

A traditional Mongolian Ger tent at COP17 (Photo: Anastasia Rodopolou/IISD ENB)

Governments at the previous COP in Saudi Arabia in 2024 failed to reach agreement despite talks running past midnight, while this year’s saw African officials coordinate a walkout from negotiating rooms on Wednesday morning, according to two sources at the talks.

Drought deal delayed until 2028

The IISD’s Earth Negotiations Bulletin, a non-governmental organisation which unlike the media is allowed to watch and report on closed-door talks, said a call to suspend negotiations on Wednesday showed negotiations had reached “boiling point” and “made some jaws drop”.

Negotiations resumed after a lunchtime meeting with the Mongolian COP presidency although governments were only eventually able to agree that they could not find consensus in Ulaanbaatar and should resume talks on an instrument to deal with drought in 2028.

Christine Colvin, WWF’s head of freshwater policy, told Climate Home News that, with droughts hitting from Honduras to the English region of Hampshire, something concrete – whether a protocol or a framework – is needed urgently “rather than the can being kicked down the road for another two years as will now happen with the protocol procrastination”.

Negotiators talk at COP17 (Photo: Anastasia Rodopolou/IISD ENB)

But, in a closing press conference on Friday, the Mongolian minister presiding over talks celebrated that governments had reached consensus on several “contentious” issues and that agenda items blocked at this year’s COP17 would be put on the agenda for COP18 in Egypt.

US blocks agenda items

Other agenda items that divided countries were on measuring land degradation’s effects on women, enhancing the involvement of civil society and women in land COPs, and the UNCCD working more closely and effectively with the UN’s climate and nature conventions.

On the COP’s opening day two weeks ago, the US representative said the Trump government objects to these agenda items “on their premise and no amount of negotiation will allow us to join consensus on these items. As such we request that they be struck from the agenda at which time we will then be able to approve it, saving us valuable negotiating time.”

A US State Department spokesperson later told Climate Home News that the US wants the UN “to get back to basics by refocusing on its core mandate, eliminating overlap, and reducing competition for scarce resources”.

The spokesperson added, “that means prioritising the concrete work member states created [the UN] to do – rather than diverting limited time, attention, and resources toward social and political agendas, including gender-related initiatives.”

A protester calls for Indigenous Peoples, local communities, women and youth to be on the agenda of COP17 (Photo: Anastasia Rodopoulou/IISD ENB)

On COP’s first day, the European Union and Brazil pushed back against the blocking of these agenda items, with a Brazilian negotiator saying his country attaches “great importance” to them. But the Mongolian presidency directed governments to adopt the rest of the agenda without the controversial items, which were discussed privately with countries throughout the two weeks.

An EU statement, read out later by Irish minister Timmy Dooley, accused “some parties” (meaning national governments) of having adopted a “less constructive approach” and preventing “discussions on important matters from even commencing”.

The agenda items the US refused to engage with were never discussed and were only placed onto the agenda for the next COP on the last day. Those talks will take place in Egypt in two years’ time, with Donald Trump due then to be in his last year as US president.

No restoration without women

The blocking of the gender agenda item has stymied attempts, agreed on by governments at the last COP, to develop gender-specific indicators for the UNCCD’s next overall framework and to facilitate more women delegates at COPs. Women made up only about a quarter of delegates to COP15 in 2022, UNCCD analysis with the latest data shows

Criticising the move to keep gender off the agenda, the EU said in a statement that it welcomes “the attention being given at COP17 to women pastoralists and herders, recognising their contribution to sustainable land management and resilient rural livelihoods”.

The head of the UNCCD, former Egyptian environment minister Yasmine Fouad, said on Friday that “regardless that the agenda item was blocked”, she was proud that she and COP17 President Batmunkh Battsetseg had led the COP as women and attended the gender caucus (a meeting of groups supporting women at the talks).  

Yasmine Fouad and Batmunkh Battsetseg talk at the COP17 closing press conference (Photo: Kiara Worth/UNCCD)

“Without the women,” she told the closing press conference on Friday, “we will not be able to restore land, restore hope, restore life or restore even our children and grandchildren. And we will keep on pushing that agenda.”

The civil society agenda item aimed to allow NGOs to attend land COP negotiations, as they do at climate COPs, and included terms of reference for an Indigenous Peoples Caucus.

A representative of Indigenous Peoples told the COP’s closing plenary meeting that the group had “deep disappointment that the agenda of this COP has removed the dedicated space for indigenous peoples”. “We cannot restore the land while removing the voices of those who care for it,” she said. 

On Tuesday, the UNCCD’s deputy head Andrea Meza was asked about Indigenous Peoples’ participation. She said that the blocking of “one agenda item” is “generating uncertainty in the progress” towards creating caucuses for Indigenous Peoples and for Local Communities within the talks.

Because of the “complex geopolitical situation” making it hard to obtain consensus, coalitions of the willing have become more important, she added. 

Mining out, money in

Outside the formal negotiations, the summit was marked by a focus on the strongly Mongolian issues of the role played by pastoralists and rangelands like grasslands, as well as mining, in both degrading and restoring land.

Part of the conference was sponsored by Australian mining company Rio Tinto and its local partner Oyu Tolgoi. Their presence was protested by campaigners wearing T-shirts calling on the companies to “stop wasting drinking water” and to “get out of Mongolia”.

A campaigner protests at COP17 on Thursday (Photo by IISD/ENB | Anastasia Rodopoulou)

The UNCDD and others praised the success of the summit in raising more finance for land restoration. The COP saw institutions like the Asian Development Bank and Global Environment Facility pledge money to combat land degradation, with the UNCCD estimating that $645 million of new commitments were made.

An estimated $355 billion a year is needed through 2030 to meet global land restoration commitments, compared with around $77 billion currently invested. Private finance accounts for only around 6% of global investment, according to the UNCCD.  

UNCCD chief scientist Baron Orr told a press conference that many of the announcements were public-private partnerships that use government money to “even the playing field” for companies that want to protect land, in a bid to ensure they are not disadvantaged compared with those that do not.

Such partnerships are a “huge opportunity”, he said, especially as “we’re not in a moment of public finance – public finance is tight in every country.”

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