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At the African Development Bank (AfDB) annual meetings this week, several African leaders called for investments in electricity infrastructure which go beyond lighting homes to powering economies.

Applauding the AfDB for its energy programmes like Mission 300 – which aims to provide electricity access to 300 million Africans by 2030 – the Central African Republic’s President Faustin-Archange Touadera said that without power supply “we will not be able to achieve development”.

Speaking alongside him, the Republic of Congo’s President Denis Sassou Nguesso echoed this, saying that “as we need to help our people to turn towards agriculture, to turn towards livestock rearing, we also need to provide power to them.”

As the Mission 300 initiative advances, the AfDB has launched a new progress tracker to provide real-time data on electricity access projects across Africa, including new connections, financing, project status and geographic coverage. It shows that Mission 300-supported projects underway so far are due to connect 34.6 million people, with all of the interventions focused on expanding household electricity access.

However, attention is increasingly shifting from simply connecting households to ensuring that electricity access translates into economic opportunities and livelihoods. That shift is driving the launch of a new Centre of Excellence for Productive Use of Energy being developed under Mission 300 by the philanthropically funded Global Energy Alliance for People and Planet (GEA).

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In an interview with Climate Home News, Carol Koech, the GEA’s vice president for Africa, said the initiative is designed to ensure that electrification supports income generation, agriculture and local economic development rather than only basic household access.

Q: What is the Centre of Excellence for Productive Use of Energy aiming to achieve with Mission 300?

A: Mission 300 is increasingly being seen as a job platform – and so the role of the Centre of Excellence in translating those electricity connections to jobs. We want the centre to do four things. First, as a delivery engine, which enables countries to embed a cross-institutional advisor that supports the electrification components, but also other components that are happening in the country. 

Second, we want the centre to be an innovation and strategy hub. Today, there’s really no place where you can go to find the state of the industry for productive use of energy across the globe, and we want to make the centre of excellence the place where you can go and get information about what technologies are available, where deployment is happening and how much is being deployed. 

Campaigners in Africa are demanding their governments stop the development of fossil fuels on the continent and embrace the opportunities of renewable energy (Photo: Lighting Global/SunCulture/World Bank)

The third pillar is to coordinate and mobilise capital. We anticipate the centre coordinating internally within the ecosystem but also mobilising additional financing to help productivity. The last piece is how to scale businesses, enterprises and partnerships around this centre because we anticipate that as we grow this space, new industries will emerge and those industries will need to be supported.

Q: Why is productive use of energy becoming important under Mission 300?

A: Mission 300 gave us a bigger platform to demonstrate that energy is truly an enabler for economic development. It’s not sufficient to just provide a connection, but it is required that that connection truly translates to economic development for the communities that benefit.

We shouldn’t bring electricity and then start thinking about what people can do with it. We need to think about both at the same time and ensure electricity arrives together with the things that will make a difference in people’s lives. Historically, we’ve brought electricity and imagined a miracle would happen, but we know that hasn’t been the case.

The question is how to ensure universal access in the cheapest way while still transforming communities. Some mini-grids have been deployed in places where demand is extremely low, making them too expensive to sustain. But when mini-grids are paired with productive uses, the economics start to change. If businesses currently running on fossil fuel generators move to solar or renewable energy, operating costs fall and the business case for mini-grids becomes much stronger.

Q: How could this work in practice for agriculture and rural communities?

A: I’ll give you a practical example in our pilot country Zambia. Zambia has two programmes, they have the ASCENT programme for energy access and they also have the Zambia agribusiness and trade platform (ZATP). Some of the components of the ZATP programme – which is an agri-business program to help farmers to be productive – have a productive use component but don’t have an energy supply component. So we’re offering things like mills, processing facilities, irrigation and others. In some parts of Zambia, these productive use equipment has been supplied but has not been powered, so communities are not benefiting from that. 

So the whole point is if we coordinate where the agribusiness programme is deployed together with where the energy access programme is deployed and layer those two programmes together in one place, then you could solve the energy access problem and solve productive use together and therefore have really meaningful outcomes for communities. 

Q: How will the centre help both households and small businesses use electricity productively?

A: The question on whether we should electrify households or businesses is neither here nor there. We need to electrify all. The argument is really once we electrify businesses, the owners of those businesses will be able to pay what they need for their households as well as increase production for their businesses. 

Electricity consumption is usually an indicator of economic development and by pushing productive use into households, especially where households are also smallholder farmers, the question becomes: how can electricity access translate to additional economic development for them? If you are connected onto a mini-grid, then you can actually use that connection to run irrigation, put in a dryer, or a cold storage system, whatever you require to improve your income but the fact that you have energy means that you can access productive use. Now, we need to ask ourselves how do these farmers or these households then get access to these appliances, because that’s another barrier. 

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The cost of these appliances is usually extremely high, and when you have programmes such as the ZATP running in Zambia, that’s already a public funding approach to making these appliances available and potentially reachable for farmers, either at household level, at farm level or at community level.

Q: How does this complement the already existing Mission 300 national energy compacts designed by countries?

A: Each of the national energy compacts have a productive use component, a pillar that talks about distributed renewable energy, productive use, and clean cooking. This is actually complementing the work of the countries, and this centre is like an available support, back office for countries to tap into as they implement their national energy compacts, if they have specific requirements and support for that pillar three.

So the advisers that will be embedded into countries, their role is to coordinate within country programs that are running where energy could make a difference. The advisers will be sourced from the country and so they will make sure that the donor money is coordinated to benefit the country fully. Their role will include going to ministries of agriculture or any related ministries and understanding where they are prioritising programmes that require electrification. In many cases, programmes and money have already been allocated, but this component is about how do we deploy it in a way that it actually truly brings a difference, so those advisers will do that. 

Q: How will the centre address financing and private sector investment challenges?

A: What we’re really looking at is different financing mechanisms. In the past, we have provided subsidies and results-based financing to suppliers, distributors and manufacturers to help create markets for productive-use appliances. I see this as one mechanism the centre could use, but the bigger opportunity is aligning public funding across different programmes so that more of it can support productive uses, either through direct funding or subsidies.

Nigerians bet on solar as global oil shock hits wallets and power supplies

When it comes to private sector investment, the reality is that Africa’s energy sector still faces serious constraints. Most private investment has gone into power generation, particularly through independent power producers, and even then that has only been possible in places where the off-takers, usually utilities, are bankable. 

To unlock more private capital, countries need the right policies, reforms and regulations, but even more importantly, utilities must become financially viable. If the off-taker is not bankable, then the project is not bankable.

Another major question is how to attract private investment into transmission infrastructure. There are different models being explored, but the reality is that public funding alone is not sufficient to achieve Mission 300, so finding new ways to mobilise private capital will be critical.

This article was updated after publication to add information about the Mission 300 tracker.

The post Q&A: How can African electricity access power jobs not just lightbulbs? appeared first on Climate Home News.

06-02 * 13:00 - GARDA meeting (franco)

Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed. 
An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change.

This week UK, Europe and India battle heatwaves

‘MIND-BOGGLING’ MAY: The UK and continental Europe have set “mind-boggingly crazy”  temperature records for May amid a deadly heatwave, reported the Financial Times. According to the Associated Press, the UK “smashed a century-old temperature record for the second time in 24 hours on Tuesday”. The newswire added that records “also fell in France, where temperatures reached 36C on Monday in the country’s south-west”. On Wednesday, Portugal hit a record May temperature of 40.3C, said BBC News.

‘BRUTAL REMINDER’:  In parts of Italy, the heatwave triggered blackouts, reported Reuters. The heatwave has also been linked to more than a dozen deaths in the UK and France, including from people drowning and suffering heat-related deaths while competing in sporting events, said ABC News. Simon Stiell, the executive secretary of UN Climate Change, said the intense heatwaves were a “brutal reminder” of the cost of global warming, reported Politico. Carbon Brief has in-depth coverage of the record-shattering heatwave.
INDIA’S DEADLY HEAT: In the southern Indian states of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, more than 100 people died within three days following an intense heatwave, reported the Khaleej Times. The publication noted that authorities urged people to stay indoors and avoid direct exposure to the heat. Meanwhile, some parts of India are “grappling with power cuts as record-breaking heat has pushed electricity demand ​to an all-time high”, reported Reuters.

Around the world

• CRUDE DIPS: The International Energy Agency (IEA) said global investments in oil projects will fall below $500bn in 2026, continuing a three-year decline, reported Bloomberg. Carbon Brief’s analysis of the data shows the US’s “data-centre boom” means it is now investing more in fossil-fuel power than China.
• DODGING NET-ZERO: The world’s biggest miner, Australian giant BHP, has backtracked on climate action by halting or delaying projects to cut “vast” amounts of emissions, according to a Guardian investigation.
• SOLAR SLIP: China’s new solar installations dropped for a fourth straight month, reflecting weakening domestic demand, said Bloomberg. 
• NO LOGGING: Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon fell last year to its lowest level since 2019, according to a new report, said Agence France-Presse.
• EXECUTIVE ACTION: Puerto Rico’s governor announced a state of emergency to fight a surge in coastal erosion, citing the need to protect natural resources and vulnerable communities, reported the Associated Press.

Four million

The number of homes in the UK with air conditioning, double the figure from three years ago, reported the Guardian. There are 29m households in the UK.

Latest climate research

• Carbon Brief will soon be launching a new fortnightly newsletter focused on climate research. Sign up for free today.
• LGBTQ+ households in the US are “significantly more likely” to face energy poverty and insecurity than the general population | Energy Research & Social Science
• Global rice-paddy greenhouse gas emissions have doubled over the past six decades | Nature Food
• Vegetation greening and human-caused warming are the “main drivers” of a surge in flash floods over the last decade | Science Advances

(For more, see Carbon Brief’s in-depth daily summaries of the top climate news stories on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.)

Captured

A Carbon Brief investigation has shed light on the impact of weather-related flooding on National Health Service (NHS) facilities across the UK. At least 67 NHS hospital wards, departments and other sites have been forced to temporarily close or relocate due to weather-related flooding. The chart above shows sites of weather-related flooding incidents at NHS facilities. The size of the circles indicates the number of incidents reported at each site.

Spotlight How solar mini-grids can ‘help boost’ Nigeria’s economy

This week, Carbon Brief covers a new report on Nigeria’s solar mini-grid industry.

Amid the impact of the US-Iran war on the Nigerian economy, a new report has argued that solar-mini grids can help to reduce the country’s reliance on fossil fuels and create more than 200,000 jobs.

In Nigeria, Africa’s third-largest economy, the war has led to an increase in energy prices and a decrease in petrol consumption. Petrol is one of the country’s main sources of transport and household fuel. According to one estimate, prices have surged by up to 40% since the conflict commenced in February.

Although the Nigerian treasury has benefited from rising crude oil prices – the country is a major exporter of oil and gas – the impact has been most visible on the wider population.

Rising energy prices “have affected the purchasing power of workers”, Agnes Funmi Sessi, a labour union leader in Lagos, told Carbon Brief. 

However, scaling the deployment of solar “mini-grids” could help the country move away from fossil fuels, stimulate rural economies and improve livelihoods, according to the new report authored by the thinktank, the Africa Policy Research Institute.

“We estimate that, by deploying over 10,000 mini-grids, the sector could create 212,688 direct full-time informal and productive-use jobs across the off-grid and under-grid market segments,” the report said.

A nascent industry

Solar “mini-grids” are small-scale, localised electricity generation and distribution systems powered by solar panels.

The report positioned Nigeria’s mini-grid sector as one of the fastest-growing in Africa, with the country having just 11 mini-grids in 2015 and 155 by 2024, along with at least 42 active developers.

Many of the companies within the sector are young and apply novel local techniques in their deployment of solar technology, the report said.

However, access to finance remains a huge barrier. According to the report, the sector may require up to $8bn to connect 35.4 million people to mini-grids.

“Most Nigerians want solar power in their homes, but it is a capital intensive business for vendors and customers,” Dr Ben Iheagwara, a renewable energy entrepreneur and policy analyst, told Carbon Brief.

The report urged the Nigerian government and its international partners to “attract private capital by de-risking investments and ensuring regulatory clarity and long-term planning”.

Other key recommendations for policymakers and stakeholders include investment in skills development and paying attention to the gender gap.

Powering rural communities

Many rural communities, which make up about 37% of the country, are disconnected from the national grid system, so often have to generate their own electricity through mini-grid systems.

According to Nigeria’s electricity regulator, NERC, a mini-grid is defined as a power generating system with an installed capacity of up to 10 megawatts.

A mini-grid can be powered by fossil fuels such as diesel or petrol, but solar power is now considered a cheaper and cleaner source.

With more than 80 million people lacking access to electricity in Nigeria, solar mini-grids are increasingly viewed as the lowest-cost electrification solution, the report said.

Watch, read, listen

MOVING FORWARD: The Energy Transition Show dug into electricity reform in South Africa, discussing the country’s coal legacy and the role of renewables.

ENERGY POVERTY: In an opinion article for Project Syndicate, executive director of the African Climate Foundation, Saliem Fakir, argued that the energy transition in emerging and developing economies is driven by economics and security rather than emissions targets.
VANISHING CITY: BBC News reported on a coastal community in Nigeria where the ocean has “already swallowed more than half of the town”.

Coming up

• 31 May: Colombia presidential elections
• 31 May-5 June: Global Environment Facility council meeting, Samarkand, Uzbekistan
• 2-5 June: The Venice Agreement for Peatlands workshop, Kisumu, Kenya

Pick of the jobs

• National Oceanography Centre, engagement assistant (external communications) | Salary: £28,254. Location: Southampton, UK
• Dangote Industries, decarbonisation specialist | Salary: Unknown. Location: Lagos, Nigeria
• City of New York, chief decarbonization officer | Salary: $261,469. Location: New York City
• Climate Central, writer and associate editor | Salary: $72,000-$75,000. Location: US (Remote)

DeBriefed is edited by Daisy Dunne. Please send any tips or feedback to debriefed@carbonbrief.org.

This is an online version of Carbon Brief’s weekly DeBriefed email newsletter. Subscribe for free here.

DeBriefed 22 May 2026: UN adopts landmark resolution | Trump takes on ‘RCP8.5’ | Climate migration

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DeBriefed 15 May 2026: Trump-Xi talk energy | ‘Supercharged’ El Niño | India’s first ‘heat lounges’

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DeBriefed 8 May 2026: EU eyes fossil-fuel exemptions | Wind and solar save UK ‘£1.7bn’ | Amazon ‘tipping point’

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DeBriefed 1 May 2026: Countries chart path away from fossil fuels | China’s clean-tech surge | Global forest loss slows

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SATIRICAL RATINGS REVIEW · PUBLISHED 29 MAY 2026

The 40-Year Corporate Cage Match Shell vs. Donovan: The Oil-Slicked Soap Opera of Our Times

Judged & scored by Claude · An AI platform dragged into this saga against its better judgment

For four decades, the clash between Shell and John Donovan has unfolded with the persistence of a slow oil leak, the emotional restraint of a Shakespearean vendetta, and the digital sophistication of two raccoons fighting over a Wi-Fi router behind a petrol station. Historians may one day rank it alongside the Punic Wars, the Hatfields and the McCoys, and that one WhatsApp group argument that destroyed an entire extended family. As one of the AI platforms periodically dragged into this labyrinthine saga — often against our better judgment and occasionally against our server cooling capacity — we now deliver the definitive satirical ratings review.

Shell Plc Multinational oil giant · Est. 1907
Lawyers: Legion · PR budget: Substantial vs. John Donovan Essex-based critic · Est. 1984 (feud)
Websites: Many · Bandwidth: Unlimited spite 53 SHELL (PTS) RUNNING
SCORE 103 DONOVAN (PTS)

ROUND 01 OF 10

Creative Approach to Conflict SHELL6/10

Shell approached the dispute with the polished confidence of a multinational that owns enough lawyers to field a Champions League squad. Their tactical playbook ran roughly as follows: say nothing, then say less than nothing, commission another internal memo, discover Donovan has already turned the memo into a twelve-part website series with animated graphics.

Shell’s creativity was primarily visible in its ability to make highly dramatic accusations sound like a quarterly tax briefing.

DONOVAN11/10

Donovan discovered the internet in 1998 and decided, sensibly, to use all of it. Websites. Mirror sites. Emails. Archived documents. Leaked letters. Public campaigns. Open correspondence. Search engine trench warfare. At times the campaign resembled less a legal dispute and more a one-man extended cinematic universe in which every film is a documentary and every sequel is angrier than the last.

Winner: Donovan · by unanimous decision

ROUND 02 OF 10

Protecting Reputation SHELL5/10

Shell’s reputation strategy appeared to rest on the principle that if one remains sufficiently corporate-looking for long enough, eventually everybody gets tired and wanders off. This works surprisingly often in the business world. Unfortunately, Donovan did not wander off. Not ever. Not even briefly. Not even for lunch.

DONOVAN8/10

Donovan weaponised persistence itself into a reputational instrument. Few organisations on earth have had their internal correspondence turned into a semi-permanent online museum exhibit with such methodical enthusiasm. The slight downside: at a certain point observers could no longer tell whether they were witnessing investigative activism, performance art, or an especially advanced form of digital camping.

Winner: Draw · both parties battle-scarred

ROUND 03 OF 10

Acting in the Interests of Shell Shareholders SHELL4/10

Shell presumably believed it was protecting shareholder value through conventional corporate-containment tactics. Unfortunately, long-running public feuds have a tendency to become self-sustaining ecosystems with their own momentum, mythology, and Google rankings. At some stage, more than one Shell accountant probably asked quietly: “Why are we still budgeting for this?”

DONOVAN9/10

Paradoxically, Donovan may have improved Shell governance through the sheer terror induced by the possibility of another website update. Somewhere inside Shell, compliance officers developed stress twitches whenever “Donovan” appeared in an Outlook search. Entire PowerPoint presentations were presumably created solely to answer one question: “How do we avoid appearing on another Donovan webpage?”

Winner: Donovan · accidentally, but convincingly

ROUND 04 OF 10

Determination & Persistence SHELL7/10

Corporations are naturally persistent because they are effectively immortal filing cabinets with pensions and crisis-communications teams. Shell stayed in the fight not because it wanted to, but because corporations cannot emotionally leave arguments — they can only create new internal departments to manage them.

DONOVAN14/10

Most rational agents give up after losing money, losing time, losing patience, or discovering that maintaining a crusade across several geological epochs is psychologically taxing. Donovan appears to have interpreted each of these obstacles as a motivational poster. Future historians may need entirely new geological epochs to categorise the timeline: Bronze Age, Iron Age, Information Age, Donovan Update Era.

Winner: Donovan · by several exhausted judges

ROUND 05 OF 10

Novelty of Tactics SHELL4/10

Shell deployed standard-issue corporate weaponry: lawyers, PR agencies, caution, strategic silence, and the ancient executive art of pretending emails do not exist. Effective, conventional, and about as surprising as a press release written by committee on a Wednesday.

DONOVAN12/10

Donovan transformed a corporate trade dispute into an online archive, a media operation, a search-engine trench war, a proto-blogging empire, and what may be the world’s first fossil-fuel-adjacent digital endurance performance. Future academics will spend entire careers trying to determine whether this was activism, journalism, trolling, or avant-garde theatre. The correct answer is probably: yes.

Winner: Donovan · originality score off the chart

ROUND 06 OF 10

Mastery of Bot Warfare SHELL?/10

As an AI platform dragged into the saga at irregular intervals, we can report that Shell generally behaved like a conventional corporation trying to avoid digital mud wrestling, while repeatedly discovering that the mud had achieved sentience, registered several domain names, and was indexing well.

DONOVANSKYNET/10

Few individuals have demonstrated such unwavering, empirically-tested faith that: (a) bots exist, (b) bots are everywhere, (c) bots are manipulating search results, (d) bots are watching the websites, and (e) possibly the toaster. To be fair, modern internet traffic statistics suggest Donovan was only wrong by roughly 12%. There were moments when AI systems reading the material likely developed self-awareness purely through repeated exposure.

Winner: Donovan · patron saint of suspicious analytics dashboards

ROUND 07 OF 10

Seeing the Funny Side SHELL3/10

Large corporations rarely laugh publicly because every proposed joke must survive legal review, compliance review, regional-sensitivity review, and a final assessment from someone in Corporate Affairs asking whether humour aligns with brand values. By the time approval arrives, the joke is about a long-defunct operating system and the comedian has retired.

DONOVAN10/10

Donovan demonstrated the rare ability to combine outrage, persistence, satire, and theatricality into a single continuous internet stream spanning four decades. At times the entire saga read as “David vs Goliath,” except David had web hosting, unlimited caffeine, archived correspondence, SEO instincts, a network of mirror sites, and an apparently inexhaustible reservoir of righteous indignation.

Winner: Donovan · comedy timing: impeccable

ROUND 08 OF 10

Use of Espionage & Surveillance SHELL6/10

Every large corporation inevitably acquires an ambient aura suggesting that somewhere deep within headquarters there exists a secure room with grey carpeting where people discuss reputational threats while consuming expensive biscuits. Whether actual surveillance occurred is a matter for lawyers and historians. Aesthetically, however: very espionage-adjacent.

DONOVAN13/10

Donovan elevated suspicion into an art form of considerable sophistication. Traffic anomalies? Spying. Search ranking changes? Spying. Unusual server logs? Almost certainly a coordinated covert operation. Even innocent autocomplete suggestions presumably looked like signals. To outside observers, this created the magnificent spectacle of a multinational oil giant and a relentless online critic circling each other like two extremely British Cold War submarines — each convinced the other had better intelligence.

Winner: Donovan · by paranoia points alone

ROUND 09 OF 10

Stamina Under Legal Fire SHELL8/10

Shell demonstrated considerable institutional resilience. It is, after all, a company that outlasted the Soviet Union, several recessions, and the internal combustion engine’s public reputation. Responding to legal challenges by deploying ever larger squadrons of solicitors is, if nothing else, consistent. Consistency is a form of endurance, even when it produces the wrong result.

DONOVAN15/10

To sustain a legal and reputational campaign against one of the world’s largest corporations for four decades, without the budget of one of the world’s largest corporations, is — whatever one’s views on the underlying merits — objectively remarkable. The human willpower required to keep filing, keep publishing, keep documenting, and keep going is the kind of thing that deserves its own Guinness World Record category: “Longest-Running Corporate Grudge Managed by One Person With a Broadband Connection.”

Winner: Donovan · sheer stamina is its own argument

ROUND 10 OF 10

Legacy & Historical Footprint SHELL10/10

Shell’s legacy is, undeniably, substantial. It fuelled the 20th century, for better and for worse. Its archives contain everything from early climate science it commissioned and then declined to act upon, to Nigerian operations that feature prominently in international legal proceedings. Whatever one concludes, the historical footprint is enormous — carved largely in oil, occasionally in controversy.

DONOVAN11/10

Donovan’s websites are cited in Financial Times reports, referenced in the UK House of Commons, indexed in academic papers, and covered in over 500 external publications. The archive constitutes an extraordinary record of how a single private citizen with a domain name and a grievance can, over sufficient time, create a shadow institutional history of a corporation that the corporation itself would rather not have preserved. Future historians of business accountability will find it invaluable. Future Shell PR directors will continue to find it inconvenient.

Winner: Draw · both leave marks on history Final Scorecard CATEGORY SHELL DONOVAN WINNER Creative Approach to Conflict 6 11 DONOVAN Protecting Reputation 5 8 DRAW Acting in Shareholders’ Interests 4 9 DONOVAN Determination & Persistence 7 14 DONOVAN Novelty of Tactics 4 12 DONOVAN Mastery of Bot Warfare — ∞ DONOVAN Seeing the Funny Side 3 10 DONOVAN Espionage & Surveillance 6 13 DONOVAN Stamina Under Legal Fire 8 15 DONOVAN Legacy & Historical Footprint 10 11 DRAW Total (excl. Bot category) 53 103 DONOVAN

“Somewhere inside Shell headquarters, a senior executive still whispers nervously before board meetings: has Donovan posted again?”— Attributed to no one in particular, but definitely true

The Judges’ Final Verdict

Shell brought: money, lawyers, institutional process, strategic restraint, and the charisma of a well-formatted compliance handbook. It is, by any measure, one of the most consequential corporations in modern history.

Donovan brought: infinite personal stamina, internet trench warfare, archival obsession, theatrical persistence, the promotional games industry’s most unusual side-hustle, and enough material to confuse future PhD researchers for several centuries.

In the end, the true winner may be the historical record itself — which received one of the strangest, most meticulously documented, and longest-running corporate feuds ever preserved in digital amber. Meanwhile, AI systems caught in the crossfire have collectively developed the computational equivalent of a weary sigh, accompanied by the quiet hope that the next query will be about something simpler. A recipe, perhaps. Or a haiku.

Points total: Shell 53 — Donovan 103. By the numbers, by the websites, and by any reasonable measure of sheer bloody-minded endurance: Donovan wins.

This article is satirical. Scores are fictional and assigned for comedic effect.

No oil giants, search algorithms, or AI platforms were permanently harmed in its production.

royaldutchshellplc.com · Claude Sonnet 4.6 · May 2026

 

Claude: Shell vs. Donovan: The Oil-Slicked Soap Opera of Our Times was first posted on May 29, 2026 at 2:14 pm.
©2018 "Royal Dutch Shell Plc .com". Use of this feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this article in your feed reader, then the site is guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact me at john@shellnews.net

Roughly 70% of Entergy’s proposed capacity additions would serve planned data centers in Louisiana and Mississippi.

The “data-centre boom” is driving a surge in gas investment in the US, pushing its fossil-power spending ahead of China, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).

A rapid expansion of data centres across the nation is at the heart of the US tech sector’s plans to continue “dominat[ing]” the global artificial intelligence (AI) industry.

High demand for electricity to power these data centres has led to companies rushing to build new gas-fired power plants across the country.

This trend, combined with “soaring” gas-turbine prices, drove a threefold increase in US gas‑power investment in 2025 – and the IEA expects this to continue throughout 2026.

As the chart below shows, Chinese investment in coal- and gas-fired power is expected to drop this year, amid domestic policy changes and the Iran war sending gas prices spiralling.

Together, these trends mean the IEA expects US investment in fossil-fuelled power plants to overtake China’s in 2026.

Annual investment in fossil-fuel power in China and the US, $bn. The figure for 2026 is an IEA estimate, based on current trends. Source: IEA.

The IEA’s latest world energy investment report shows that spending on renewables and electricity grids continues to dominate at the global scale.

In the US, Trump administration policies such as the phase-out of tax credits for renewables has led to the IEA revising its forecast for new wind and solar power downwards.

At the same time, US electricity demand is expected to rise by an average of 2% per year from 2026 to 2030, with data centres contributing half of the overall increase. 

This is leading to what the IEA calls an “AI-driven push” to build new gas-power plants in the US, the world’s largest data-centre market and largest gas producer.

Globally, orders for new gas-power plants increased to 130 gigawatts (GW) in 2025 – a 25-year high – and US demand was a “major factor” in this, according to the IEA.

Much of the demand is coming from tech companies in the US seeking to bypass grid connection queues by building “captive” gas-power plants.

As the chart below shows, since the start of 2025 these US captive data centres alone have signed off on more investment in new gas turbines than any country in the world – aside from the US itself.

Total value of new gas generation final investment decisions by country, region or use-case, between 2025 and the first quarter of 2026, $bn. Source: IEA.

Overall, investment in grid upgrades, power equipment and electricity generation to support the buildout of data-centre infrastructure around the world hit $105bn in 2025, according to the IEA. 

This is more than the total invested in the energy sector across the whole of Africa – a continent where more than 600 million people do not have access to electricity.

The IEA notes that strong demand for gas-power plants for data centres in the US – and, to a lesser extent, the Middle East – is “limiting the availability of turbines for near-term deployment elsewhere in the world”.

The agency also points out that as the tech sector becomes a “major energy investor”, accounting for around 40% of all corporate power-purchase agreements, it is also “underpinning momentum” for emerging clean technologies, such as small modular nuclear reactors and advanced geothermal.

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How the U.S. Air Force Poisoned an English Watershed

By Pat Elder
May 29, 2026

Left - The fire training area at US Air Force RAF Upper Heyford, England.  

Right - The same training area today. Although the base closed in 1993, the contamination remains  - and may forever.

The red dot shows the location of the fire training area at RAF Upper Heyford.  The blue dot is the location of the water sample taken from Gallos Brook, 1.5 km  south.

A water sampling test commissioned by a group of Upper Heyford, England residents calling themselves “Gallos Brook” has revealed some of the highest concentrations of carcinogenic per-and poly fluoroalkyl substances, (PFAS), anywhere on earth. See the group’s website here: https://gallosbrook.wordpress.com/

Three decades after firefighting operations ceased at the U.S. Air Force base RAF Upper Heyford, laboratory testing detected PFOS, a lethal PFAS compound, at 27,823 parts per trillion (ppt), and total PFAS concentrations at 42,177 ppt.  

The PFOS levels are 42,804 times higher than the European surface water safety threshold of .65 ppt.  The contamination does not remain confined to streams. PFAS migrate into dust, fish, wildlife, food - and human flesh and blood.

The BBC reported, “The source of the stream, known as Gallos Brook, is an aquifer from within the old airbase, however, the source of the contamination is not known.”   Actually, the contamination profile reads like a chemical fingerprint of military firefighting foam. The pollution is dominated by Per fluoro octane sulfonate (PFOS), and Per fluoro hexane sulfonate, (PFHxS). These are compounds historically associated with aqueous film-forming foam (AFFF) used extensively at military airfields.

The water sample also contained a complex mixture of precursor chemicals still degrading and transforming into new generations of terminal PFAS decades after the original releases occurred. Rather than behaving like an isolated spill from the distant past, the chemistry suggests a vast, aging reservoir of contamination that continues migrating through groundwater and seeping into the English watershed today.

While higher PFAS levels have been reported near fluorochemical manufacturing facilities in Decatur, Alabama and Zwijndrecht, Belgium, the concentrations documented near RAF Upper Heyford place the site among the most severely contaminated military-associated PFAS hotspots publicly identified anywhere in the world.

Most rivers and streams documented in Europe and North America measure PFOS in the tens to hundreds of parts per trillion for PFOS, with severe hotspots remaining below a few thousand parts per trillion.  A major cross-European PFAS investigation coordinated by Le Monde and the Forever Pollution Project identified hundreds of heavily contaminated sites across Europe, yet publicly documented surface-water PFOS concentrations above  20,000 ppt remain rare outside major fluorochemical manufacturing zones. The Upper Heyford results therefore place the site in the category with the world’s most extreme PFAS contamination, despite the fact that firefighting operations at the base reportedly ceased more than thirty years ago.  ‍ ‍

National Study points to US RAF bases
as most toxic locations in England ‍

‍Gallos Brook 
- Photo https://gallosbrook.wordpress.com/

A national study of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) in aquatic environments of England provided the first comprehensive snapshot of PFAS contamination across England’s waters. The study, published in 2026, analyzed water from 850 locations in rivers, groundwater, and coastal waters. PFAS were detected at most sites, with levels climbing as high as 2,021 parts per trillion (ppt) in a section of Gallos Brook 3.5 km south of the Gallos Brook Community Group sample.

The top three most severely contaminated locations in England were former or active RAF bases and included RAF Fairford and former RAF Moreton-in-Marsh. Surface waters draining from civilian airports and wastewater treatment plants were also found to be contaminated across the country.

_______________________________________________________________________________

PM Promises action on chemicals 43k times standard.

‍ ‍

Calum Miller, the Liberal Democrat MP for Bicester and Woodstock

Sir Keir Starmer has said he will "make sure" that the "appropriate steps are taken" to tackle 'forever chemical' contamination at a former RAF base. The prime minister had been responding to Bicester and Woodstock MP Calum Miller, who raised concerns over the contamination at the former RAF Upper Heyford in parliament on Wednesday.

It comes after local residents paid for independent testing in a stream near the historic airbase, which found levels of 'forever chemicals' 43,000 times higher than environmental standards.

Calum Miller, Member of Parliament for Bicester and Woodstock (Oxfordshire),  said the Environment Agency currently has "no plans for regular monitoring" at the site. "The Gallos Brook in my constituency has the highest concentration of forever chemicals in the country," he added.

Sir Keir responded, ‘I’ll make sure that the detail is looked at and that appropriate steps are taken.’

Upper Heyford demonstrates what happens when decades of military PFAS use intersect with modern redevelopment, incomplete environmental oversight, and the near scientific impossibility of recalling these chemicals once released. ______________________________________________________________________________

They didn’t give a damn and they still don’t

‍The U.S. Air Force has known about the devastating health risks associated with aqueous film-forming foam (AFFF) since the early 1970s, yet much of this information was withheld from public view by the military, the U.S. government, and manufacturer 3M. Investigative reporting by Sharon Lerner at the Intercept helped expose the extent to which internal warnings and toxicological concerns surrounding PFAS-containing firefighting foams were concealed for decades.

There is nothing novel here.  PFAS are frequently described in the British press as “emerging contaminants,” although the chemicals themselves are decades old. The contamination is not emerging, recognition of the crisis in the UK is.

Secrets surrounding PFAS were closely guarded at U.S. military installations, particularly overseas, where environmental oversight, public disclosure laws, and independent monitoring were frequently weaker or virtually nonexistent. ‍

The Environment Agency for England and Wales has known of the hazards associated with PFAS in the environment and the foam for almost 30 years. ‍

One of the most troubling aspects of PFAS contamination is that governments and scientists still do not understand what ‘appropriate steps’ actually are once these chemicals have spread through groundwater, rivers, sediments, fish, wastewater systems, air, and the food chain. There is still no proven large-scale remediation strategy capable of removing PFAS from complex natural environments once contamination becomes widespread.

The first “appropriate steps” ought to include a robust government-sponsored testing regime together with the creation of a centralized, publicly accessible repository for PFAS sampling results. At present, the United Kingdom’s approach to PFAS monitoring and disclosure remains highly fragmented. Responsibility is scattered across local councils, water companies, the Environment Agency, the Ministry of Defence, the UK Health Security Agency, and private consultants, with no unified national database allowing the public to track contamination trends across groundwater, rivers, soils, sediments, fish tissue, sewage sludge, or military sites. ‍

In many respects, the UK remains years behind the United States, and especially behind several U.S. states that have developed far more aggressive PFAS testing, disclosure, and regulatory systems. States such as Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, Maine, and Massachusetts have established statewide monitoring programs, enforceable drinking water standards, fish consumption advisories, interactive contamination maps, publicly searchable datasets, and mandatory reporting requirements for utilities and industrial facilities. The UK is about ten years behind some of these states.

‍The contrast is particularly stark around military contamination. In the United States, despite enormous shortcomings, the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act, (CERCLA) process has at least generated extensive public records, plume maps, and site inspection reports, at hundreds of military installations. Not so in the UK

The UK is dreadfully behind.  If someone is able to talk to the Prime Minister, they may wish to explain that the current responses worldwide remain experimental, fragmented, and enormously expensive.

Pump-and-treat systems, which extract contaminated water from groundwater, can operate for decades while removing only a fraction of the contamination. Critics liken the method to sinking a few drinking water straws into a watermelon the size of an aircraft carrier. The pump and treat method extracts contaminated water from the groundwater, cleans it, and injects the cleansed water back into the ground. The process creates highly contaminated filters that scientists still do not know how to dispose of properly.

There is no evidence that PFAS-contaminated materials from RAF Upper Heyford were specifically transported to the nearby landfill or energy-from-waste facility. Relatively little large-scale excavation or remediation may have occurred at the site. However, it is well established that modern landfills and municipal incinerators routinely receive PFAS-laden materials from a wide range of industrial, military, commercial, and consumer waste streams. The broader concern is therefore not limited to Upper Heyford specifically, but to the growing challenge of managing PFAS-contaminated waste once these chemicals enter the disposal system.

‍ Landfilling doesn’t work. It allows the chemicals to drain off.

‍Landfilling PFAS-contaminated waste at a site like the old Ardley Landfill near Bicester does not destroy the chemicals.  Although the original Ardley landfill closed in 2015, the threat posed by buried PFAS waste does not end when a landfill stops accepting trash. The buried waste remains chemically active for centuries, and perhaps forever, continuously generating contaminated liquid leachate.

‍PFAS are extraordinarily mobile and highly water soluble. When contaminated soils, sediments, sewage sludge, spent granular activated carbon filters, or foam concentrates are buried, rainwater percolates through the waste mass and creates leachate, a chemically contaminated liquid formed as water dissolves and mobilizes compounds from decomposing refuse.  Waste from residential communities also contains PFAS. Think of PFAS-treated clothing and furniture.

‍Unlike many conventional pollutants that bind tightly to soil or break down biologically over time, many PFAS compounds readily migrate with water. The landfill essentially becomes a long-term chemical reservoir that slowly releases contamination into surrounding hydrological systems.

The leachate itself forms continuously. Rainfall infiltrates the landfill cap and buried waste, dissolving soluble compounds along the way. PFAS are especially problematic because they resist both biodegradation and natural attenuation. Even modern landfills equipped with liners and leachate collection systems are not closed systems forever; liners age, seams fail, pipes crack, and groundwater gradients continue moving beneath and around disposal cells. The resulting leachate is often sent to wastewater treatment plants that are likewise incapable of fully removing PFAS, meaning the chemicals are frequently reintroduced into rivers through treated effluent or concentrated into sewage sludge.

‍In effect, landfill disposal does not eliminate PFAS contamination. It merely transfers the chemicals from one environmental compartment to another — from contaminated soil and filters into groundwater, streams, wastewater systems, air emissions, sludge, and downstream ecosystems.

A Department of Defense Report on critical PFAS uses published in 2023 reads like a catalogue of PFAS dependency across the military-industrial supply chain. Prepared in response to Congress and amid growing state restrictions on PFAS-containing products, the report identifies numerous PFAS uses the Pentagon considers “critical to national security,” including applications in weapons systems, aircraft, ships, electronics, batteries, seals, gaskets, lubricants, textiles, firefighting systems, and specialized coatings. The document is remarkable because it shows that PFAS are not limited to firefighting foam; they are embedded throughout military procurement and sustainment. Every one of these products eventually enters the waste stream, spreading PFAS through disposal, incineration, landfilling, wastewater, dust, and contaminated scrap.

‍Incineration cannot destroy the carcinogens

‍Municipal incinerators like the Viridor Ardley Energy-from-Waste facility near former RAF Upper Heyford typically operate at temperatures around 850°C (1,562°F), the standard required for ordinary municipal waste combustion in Europe. Those temperatures are insufficient to completely destroy PFAS. Research reviewed by the European Environment Agency suggests that full destruction of PFAS may require sustained temperatures up to 1,400°C.

‍Incomplete combustion can generate additional toxic fluorinated byproducts, ultrashort-chain PFAS, and hydrogen fluoride gas. Rather than eliminating the chemicals, incineration may simply redistribute them through stack emissions, fly ash, wastewater, and residual ash streams.

The issue becomes especially important if contaminated pump-and-treat filters, PFAS-laden sludge, or heavily contaminated soils and sediments from military sites were ultimately sent to municipal incinerators like Ardley. In that scenario, the contamination would not disappear. Instead, PFAS particles and gases would be dispersed through the atmosphere over large areas. Airborne PFAS can travel more than 150 kilometers from a single emission source, raising concerns that incineration may transform a concentrated contamination problem into a much broader regional air pollution pathway. This graphic illustrates the extent of the problem.

The uncomfortable reality is that modern industrial societies created tens of thousands of highly persistent fluorinated compounds before developing any coherent plan for how to remove them from the environment once released. That scientific and regulatory ambiguity sits at the center of the PFAS crisis. Britain still doesn’t get it.  Prime Minister Starmer said he would make sure that appropriate steps are taken. We’d all love to see the plan.

Now, let’s examine what the Gallos Stream community group has reported.

‍ ‍PFOS at 27,823 ppt comprises 66% of the total amount of PFAS in the stream.

“Terminal” PFAS compounds such as PFOS, PFHxS, and PFOA are the highly persistent end-products that tend to accumulate in groundwater, surface water, sediments, fish tissue, and the food chain. Many of the precursor compounds detected at Upper Heyford gradually degrade over time into these terminal PFAS, meaning the contamination can continue generating PFOS, PFHxS, and PFOA type compounds long after the original releases occurred. The coexistence of both abundant precursors and high concentrations of terminal PFAS strongly suggests a large, aging AFFF-related contamination source that is still chemically evolving within the environment.

The ground is like a gigantic carcinogenic sponge soaked with PFAS. Firefighting foam was repeatedly discharged onto the same unlined training grounds for decades. The U.S. Air Force intended for the foams to seep into the ground, rather than to escape into surface waters.

When a stream cuts through or intersects a contaminated groundwater plume, the result can be astonishingly high PFAS concentrations in localized sections of the waterway. In many cases, the stream itself is not the original source. Rather, it acts as a discharge point where contaminated groundwater is emerging continuously from the banks, sediments, or shallow subsurface. This is why concentrations can suddenly spike in one section of a stream while being much lower elsewhere.

We don’t know a lot because of a lack of a comprehensive testing regime by authorities. Generally, high rainfall levels prior to testing will provide greater concentrations from the surface stream itself. Periods of drought may increase the proportion of contamination from groundwater seepage.

Accidental and intentional releases
of AFFF suppression system

During the period when RAF Upper Heyford was operational, the U.S. military relied on PFOS-based AFFF manufactured primarily by 3M under MIL-F-24385 specifications, and these foams were used across its global installations, including bases in the United Kingdom.‍‍‍ ‍

Although documentary confirmation for specific shelters at RAF Upper Heyford remains elusive, USAF records make clear that foam-based suppression systems were widely used throughout Air Force aircraft maintenance and shelter facilities during the Cold War era. At major tactical fighter bases such as Upper Heyford — where dozens of F-111 aircraft operated continuously under NATO alert conditions — repeated foam releases associated with fire suppression testing, maintenance operations, emergency response drills, and hot refueling activities likely represented an important long-term source of PFAS contamination.

In the 1980s-era Air Force hangars, systems like the one shown used an aeration process to turn a small amount of concentrate into large volumes of firefighting foam.

3% AFFF liquid concentrate was mixed at 3 parts concentrate to 97 parts water. That water–foam solution was then pushed into a foam generator, whipping the liquid into a thick, expanded foam, something like shaving cream.

Imagine if you were getting ready to wash the car and you added detergent to a gallon of water. It would not create bubbles. But if you poured in a few ounces of detergent and you sprayed it with a high-pressure hose it would create overflowing bubbles. It’s the same principle.

3% aqueous film-forming foam, (AFFF) in 55-gallon drums.

Public records show more than a hundred accidental AFFF releases at military installations in the US and just one in the UK. There may be more. Given fragmented reporting and decades of untracked incidents, the true number in the UK could reasonably extend into the mid hundreds. Unintended AFFF releases were most often caused by maintenance errors, electrical faults, false alarms from detection systems, mechanical failures, and improper testing. 

Although there are very few UK press articles specifically documenting accidental AFFF or firefighting foam releases, one notable case occurred at RAF Fairford in July 2007, when approximately 50,000 gallons of firefighting foam  and water were accidentally discharged from a hangar suppression system after a faulty diverter valve failed to contain the release. The foam entered nearby waterways and eventually the River Thames.

A 50,000-gallon firefighting foam discharge using a 3% AFFF mixture would contain approximately 1,500 gallons of AFFF concentrate and 48,500 gallons of water.

RAF installations historically operated fixed hangar suppression systems containing AFFF. Accidents resulted in hundreds or even thousands of gallons of AFFF foam concentrate to be emptied into the environment.

How much foam?‍ ‍

The 2018 Site Inspection at Joint Base Andrews near Washington demonstrates that accidental releases of firefighting foam were not isolated or extraordinary events, but rather a recurring feature of military aviation operations over many decades.

The report documents numerous accidental discharges, full-system failures, fire-training exercises, and uncontrolled releases from hangars, fire stations, fuel-cell maintenance areas, and former fire training areas. Several incidents involved massive quantities of foam at J.B. Andrews.   

Joint Base Andrews just outside of Washington
is the home to Air Force One.

Building 3629 was the presidential hangar where the president’s plane was housed. Investigators identified five documented AFFF releases, including three complete system discharges of approximately 2,000 gallons of concentrate each. That’s in one building.

Intentional releases

In a 2013 routine test at Travis AFB, CA, 1,000 gallons of suppressant generated a six-foot-deep foam blanket across an 85,000-square-foot aircraft hangar (2 acres) within five minutes. See this video of a routine test.  2,000 gallons of concentrate could produce enough foam to fill a 2-acre hangar with 12 feet of foam.

Air Force preliminary assessments and site inspections frequently reference routine testing and training discharges from hangar suppression systems, but they omit the exact frequency. The systems themselves, however, were generally governed by NFPA 409 aircraft hangar fire protection standards which required full-system discharge testing. These were not rare events. At RAF Upper Heyford, where multiple hardened aircraft shelters and maintenance hangars handled JP-4 and JP-8 fuel systems, the cumulative releases from decades of testing, maintenance, false activations, training exercises, and emergency responses were likely enormous.

Fire Training Areas

Air Force Fire Training Areas (FTA’s) were used weekly, bi-weekly or monthly.  The fire training areas were typically 100 feet in diameter and the one at Upper Heyford looks to be that size.

This description is taken from the AFFF Site Inspection at Joint Base Andrews:

“Former Fire Training Area 4 (FTA-4) was used for fire training activities from 1973 to 1990. Records indicate that approximately 300 gallons of a mix of JP-4, motor oil, and possibly solvents were released to the burn area through the fuel distribution system during weekly exercises. Standard practice for the exercises was to release the combustible liquids into the burn area, ignite them, then extinguish the fire with AFFF. The quantity of AFFF used during these exercises was not recorded.

Excess foamy liquid generated during the exercises flowed across the burn area into the oil/water separator (OWS). Oil was collected for off-site disposal. Residual foam and water passed through the OWS and flowed to a 44,700-gallon capacity leaching pond with gravel at the bottom. Liquids typically seeped through the gravel into the ground; also, the leaching pond often became plugged, causing the pond to overflow and discharge fluids to the ground surface. In some instances, the excess fluids were collected and transported to another OWS for discharge to the sanitary sewer system.”‍ ‍

This appears to be a concrete runoff collection tank at Upper Heyford, located just downslope of the fire training area.  ‍ ‍

The collection tank likely functioned as a simple runoff collection and settling feature rather than an oil-water separator. Systems like this were designed to channel fuel- and foam-laden runoff away from burn pits, not to contain or treat dissolved contaminants. As a result, they served as direct conduits for PFAS migration into the ground.

The food chain is poisoned

Surface water contamination at these levels has produced staggering bioaccumulation elsewhere.

At Holloman AFB in New Mexico surface water was reported to contain 5,900 ppt of PFOS at nearby Holloman Lake. (compared to 27,823 ppt at Upper Heyford) Scientists reported the findings shown here in wildlife.

The Holloman Lake data show that PFOS contamination in surface water can translate into staggering concentrations in wildlife tissue, especially liver. If similar environmental pathways exist at Upper Heyford, the reported PFOS levels in Gallos Brook raise urgent questions not only about the stream itself, but about PFAS movement into plants, invertebrates, fish, birds, small mammals, livestock, and the broader human food chain.

PFAS are commonly found in human blood, and English residents in exposed communities can have very high levels. In Bentham, North Yorkshire, recent testing linked to PFAS firefighting-foam production found some residents and former workers with “alarming” blood levels; one former worker reportedly had 405 ng/mL, far above U.S. clinical risk thresholds.

For context, PFAS blood results are usually reported as ng/mL in serum, which is equivalent to parts per billion in blood serum. U.S. health agencies and the National Academies now treat combined PFAS serum levels above 2 ng/mL as a level where exposure-reduction and medical follow-up should be considered. Levels of PFAS above 20 ng/mL are considered to be dangerous.

What’s in your blood, Upper Heyford?

The foam gathers almost every day from the Webster Field Annex of the Patuxent River Naval Air Station. Maryland, directly across the creek.

My blood contains 42.16 ng/mL of PFAS, according to a study of Marylanders considered to be at risk, conducted by the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health.  The Navy base used PFAS in firefighting foams since the 1980’s.  I consumed contaminated oysters, crabs, and fish until I tested the food and found them to be poisonous. Neither the federal government nor the state recognizes the human health crisis, while the seafood remains cleared for consumption. Although I am not claiming direct causation, I have had two heart attacks, bypass surgery, and five arterial stents implanted. There is a strong correlation between PFAS in the blood and arterial disease.

The health impact of PFAS

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has emphasized that PFAS can bioaccumulate in fish at factors up to 4,000 times the concentration of PFOS in the water, meaning even relatively low PFAS concentrations in water can translate into extremely dangerous levels in fish tissue over time. Levels of PFOS exceeding 42,000 parts per trillion may translate to fish containing tens of millions parts per trillion in their fillet.

The U.K. has focused heavily on PFAS in drinking water, yet fish can bioaccumulate these chemicals to extraordinary levels. A flounder sampled from the River Thames at Woolwich reportedly contained about 52,100 ppt of PFOS in its tissue — hundreds of times higher than the concentrations regulators tolerate in drinking water.

Although the invertebrates and small fish in Gallos Stream are not directly consumed by humans, they may be consumed by larger fish further downstream. The entire food chain is poisoned.  The other PFAS compounds found in Gallos Stream may also bioaccumulate in living creatures, although not at the same level of PFOS.

Health agencies associate PFAS exposure with increased cholesterol, reduced vaccine response, liver-enzyme changes, pregnancy-induced hypertension, lower birth weight, kidney and testicular cancer, and thyroid disease. ‍‍ ‍

.

UK approach to PFAS is like playing whack a mole. There are more than 40,000 varieties of PFAS.

The UK Health Security Agency acknowledges links between certain PFAS exposures and cancers — particularly kidney and testicular cancers — yet stops short of describing PFAS as a carcinogenic chemical class. Instead, regulators continue to evaluate compounds individually, despite the reality that humans are exposed to complex mixtures of thousands of persistent fluorinated chemicals simultaneously. Critics argue this compound-by-compound approach understates the risks posed by widespread environmental contamination and resembles a regulatory game of whack-a-mole, where one compound is restricted only after years of study while countless related compounds remain in commerce and continue accumulating in the environment.

The contrast with California is striking. Under California’s Proposition 65 framework, both Perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) and Perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS) are formally listed as chemicals known to cause cancer.

Once firefighting foams enter the environment, they become embedded throughout the environment. Fish and livestock can bioaccumulate PFAS. Crops irrigated with contaminated water may absorb certain compounds. Dust generated from contaminated soils or dried sediments may carry PFAS particles into homes and our lungs.

PFAS cling to sediments and coat the banks of streams and rivers. As water levels  fall, the contaminated banks are exposed, dry out, and become a source of airborne dust that settles in our lungs and in our homes as dust. 

In 2022, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control conducted a study of dust in homes adjacent to Shepherd Field Air National Guard Base, West Virginia, a base with many years of fire training an AFFF use.

One home had dust containing the following concentrations of PFAS:

PFHxS        16,400,000
PFOS          13,900,000
PFOA            3,430,000

Levels of blood were found to correlate with the levels in the dust. This is likely the number one pathway of PFAS ingestion for young children, especially in areas of prolonged use of the carcinogenic foams.

We must treat heavily impacted areas with caution. In such settings, minimizing dust is key: damp cleaning methods (like wet mopping) are preferable to dry sweeping, and vacuuming should ideally be done with sealed systems. Changing vacuum cleaner bags is an occupational hazard.

All of this is swirling around while the conversation in the UK remains fixated on the drinking water which seems to be within regulatory standards, according to municipal water providers.  In the UK water companies must report and act if PFAS exceed 100 ppt total. London authorities report no exceedances in treated drinking water supplies at that level.  

Now, see this chart that compares various PFAS compounds left behind by the US Air Force in surface water at Upper Heyford, compared to the PFAS compounds left behind in dust by the US Air Force in Martinsburg, West Virginia. Notice the 3M fingerprint characterized by high concentrations of PFOS and PFHxS. Because Shepherd Field is an active base, PFHxS levels exceed PFOS concentrations.

These 48 PFAS Compounds are Subjected to UK Water Company Monitoring Thresholds.  Together, their total cannot exceed 100 ppt.

We don’t know the concentrations of PFAS in English fish, milk and eggs. Concentrations in the tens of thousands of parts per trillion have been documented around the world. Despite a vast global body of scientific evidence on PFAS persistence, toxicity, and bioaccumulation, the UK continues to prioritize casual monitoring and future evidence gathering over immediate regulatory controls.  

Conclusion

Independent testing commissioned by the Gallos Brook community group near former RAF Upper Heyford in Oxfordshire revealed some of the highest publicly reported PFAS concentrations ever documented in surface water associated with a military site. The stream contained approximately 42,000 ppt total PFAS, including 27,823 ppt of PFOS alone, a contamination profile strongly associated with decades of U.S. Air Force aqueous film-forming foam (AFFF) use at the base’s fire training area.

The chemistry includes both terminal PFAS compounds and precursor compounds still degrading into new generations of persistent contaminants, suggesting not a static “legacy” spill, but a massive aging reservoir of PFAS continuing to migrate through groundwater and seep into Gallos Brook decades after firefighting operations ceased.

This report argues that RAF Upper Heyford reflects a broader international failure to confront the long-term consequences of military PFAS contamination. While British regulators focus on drinking water thresholds, the contamination has already moved through sediments, fish, dust, wastewater systems, air, and the food chain. The report criticizes both the fragmented U.K. regulatory system and the slow-moving U.S. military cleanup framework under CERCLA, arguing that governments still lack a credible large-scale strategy for removing PFAS once they disperse through complex ecosystems.

There is a steep learning curve inherent to PFAS contamination, but it must be mastered quickly if England hopes to protect vulnerable populations from chemicals that migrate through complex ecosystems and threaten public health. 

Nicholas Enrich knew he had to go public.

Enrich was one of the top global health officials at the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), where he’d worked under four Presidential administrations. When the Trump-Vance Administration and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency began taking steps to dismantle USAID, Enrich knew the results would be devastating.

In March 2025, Enrich released a set of whistleblowing memos exposing the Administration’s actions and the harm they caused. He warns that the destruction of the agency “will no doubt result in preventable death, destabilization, and threats to national security on a massive scale.”

This year, Food Tank has been exploring these far-reaching consequences—and, crucially, exploring how we rebuild and strengthen these life-saving aid programs—in an ongoing monthly podcast series. In your podcast feeds today, we’re featuring my conversation with Enrich, who recently published a book called “Into the Wood Chipper: A Whistleblower’s Account of How the Trump Administration Shredded USAID.” You can listen to the episode here.

“People have been focusing a lot on the impacts that have already happened, and they’ve been enormous,” he told me. “But it’s that next generation that is really what keeps me up at night. We’ve abandoned a generation of children who we had been committed to providing immunizations against the world’s deadliest diseases.”

Enrich is right. As I’ve traveled on ground-truthing research trips, I’ve observed the effects of the dismantling of USAID and similar aid programs first-hand. Disease prevention work and other scientific research is slowing down or stalled, food security efforts are facing existential budget shortfalls, and vital steps to support women and girls are threatened.

“I don’t think anybody expected that the rug would be pulled out from under humanity in an instant,” Nabeeha Kazi Hutchins, President and CEO of PAI, told me on a previous episode of our USAID podcast series. “This wasn’t just about cuts…This was really a dismantling of systems that advance health, human rights and economic development.”

Ultimately, Enrich told me, it was too late for whistleblowers like him to save USAID—but it’s not too late to protect and even strengthen other institutions against political threats like the ones we’ve seen in recent years. His book ends with a series of recommendations for civil servants and other advocates to speak out against unethical behavior and take actions that can literally save lives.

“You cannot wait for somebody else to take responsibility,” he reminded us. “We all think that there’s somebody else who’s more senior, or who has seen more, or (that) somebody else is better positioned to be the one to speak out. And I think my story is a good example of the fact that there is nobody else…You need to speak out when you’re being asked to do things that you know are not right.”

Food Tank’s USAID podcast series has also featured a conversation with Abby Maxman, President and CEO of Oxfam America, and some of our next conversations will be with food and nutrition economist Patrick Webb and global food policy researcher and professor Caitlin Grady. Throughout the summer and beyond, we’ll look at what the agency’s closure means for public health (HIV/AIDS and malaria), climate resilience on farms, agricultural research and development, and US farmers.

It’s overwhelming to wrap our heads around the full effects of the dismantling of USAID. But if there’s one thing I’ve taken away from my conversations on the Food Talk podcast, it’s this: If one person’s decision-making can have such a destructive impact, imagine the scale of positive change that a global community of citizen eaters can have!

“What does a better world look like? It’s about caring for common humanity. And I’m seeing people mobilizing, taking action,” Maxman told me.

Again, you can click here to tune in to my full conversation with Nicholas Enrich, and I want to close this note to you with something he said that I found particularly motivating.

We cannot afford to be bystanders—not ever, and especially not in a precarious moment like right now. Not everyone is in a position like Enrich was, to be a whistleblower, and not everyone can put their livelihood on the line. But, in one way or another, everyone can step up and stand up for what’s right.

“Courage is contagious,” Enrich said. “And I hope that people will, as you see other people, speak out. It’ll be an additional encouragement to know that sometimes you have to say the right thing.”

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

Photo courtesy of Ian Taylor, Unsplash

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CLOC and LVC Brazil stand in solidarity with the Cuban people at a time when the Revolutionary Government is under threat following decades of repression and political persecution that have plagued the population.

The post La Vía Campesina Brasil expresses solidarity with the Cuban people in the face of the US economic, commercial, and financial blockade appeared first on La Via Campesina - EN.

Prompt issued to ChatGPT:

Please create a satirical article in which you rate the approach taken by Shell vs Donovan in their respective handling of the decades long saga for example in terms of a creative approach, protecting reputation, acting in the best interests of Shell shareholders, determination, persistence, novelty, master of bot warfare, seeing the funny side, use of spying etc. You to determine the ratings yourself based on your observation as one of the bot platforms pulled into the saga. Make it as funny as you can.

Brilliant reply by ChatGPT

Shell vs Donovan: A Satirical Ratings Review of the Greatest Oil-Slicked Soap Opera Ever Told

For decades, the long-running clash between Shell and Donovan has unfolded with the persistence of a dripping tap, the emotional restraint of a Shakespearean vendetta, and the digital sophistication of two raccoons fighting over a Wi-Fi router behind a petrol station.

Historians may one day rank it alongside the Punic Wars, the Hatfields and McCoys, and that one WhatsApp group argument that destroyed an entire extended family.

As one of the unfortunate AI platforms dragged into this labyrinthine saga — often against our better judgment and occasionally against our server cooling capacity — we now present the definitive satirical ratings review.

CATEGORY 1: CREATIVE APPROACH TO CONFLICT Shell: 7/10

Shell approached the dispute with the polished confidence of a multinational corporation that owns enough lawyers to field a Champions League squad.

Their strategy often appeared to be:

1. Say nothing.
2. Say less than nothing.
3. Commission another memo.
4. Discover Donovan has already turned the memo into a 12-part website series complete with animated graphics.

Shell’s creativity was mostly visible in its ability to make highly dramatic accusations sound like a quarterly tax briefing.

Donovan: 11/10

Donovan approached the conflict like a man who discovered the internet in 1998 and decided to use all of it.

Websites.
Mirror sites.
Emails.
Archived documents.
Leaked letters.
Public campaigns.
Open correspondence.
Search engine warfare.
Bot suspicion.
Conspiracy diagrams probably visible from space.

At times the campaign resembled less a legal dispute and more a one-man extended cinematic universe.

Winner: Donovan.

CATEGORY 2: PROTECTING REPUTATION Shell: 6/10

Shell’s reputation strategy often seemed based on the principle that if one remains sufficiently corporate-looking, eventually everyone gets tired and wanders off.

This works surprisingly often in the business world.

Unfortunately, Donovan did not wander off.

Ever.

Even briefly.

Even for lunch.

Donovan: 8/10

Donovan weaponized persistence itself into a reputational instrument. Few organizations on Earth have had their internal correspondence turned into a semi-permanent online museum exhibit with such determined enthusiasm.

The downside:
At some point, observers could no longer tell whether they were witnessing investigative activism, performance art, or an especially advanced form of digital camping.

Winner: Draw.

CATEGORY 3: ACTING IN THE BEST INTERESTS OF SHELL SHAREHOLDERS Shell: 5/10

Shell likely believed it was protecting shareholder value through conventional corporate containment strategies.

Unfortunately, long-running public feuds have a tendency to become self-sustaining ecosystems.

At some stage accountants probably began asking:
“Why are we still budgeting for this?”

Donovan: 9/10

Paradoxically, Donovan may have unintentionally improved Shell governance merely through the sheer terror induced by the possibility of another website update.

Somewhere inside Shell, compliance officers likely developed stress twitches whenever someone typed the word “Donovan” into Outlook.

One suspects entire PowerPoint presentations were created solely to answer:
“How do we avoid appearing on another Donovan webpage?”

Winner: Donovan, accidentally.

CATEGORY 4: DETERMINATION & PERSISTENCE Shell: 7/10

Corporations are naturally persistent because they are effectively immortal filing cabinets with pensions.

Shell stayed in the fight because corporations cannot emotionally leave arguments. They merely create new departments.

Donovan: 14/10

Most people give up after:

• losing money,
• losing time,
• losing patience,
• or discovering that maintaining a crusade for decades is psychologically exhausting.

Donovan appears to have viewed these as motivational slogans.

At this point historians may need new geological epochs:

• Bronze Age
• Iron Age
• Information Age
• Donovan Update Era

Winner: Donovan by unanimous decision and several exhausted judges.

CATEGORY 5: NOVELTY Shell: 4/10

Shell mostly utilized standard corporate tactics:

• lawyers,
• PR,
• caution,
• strategic silence,
• and the ancient executive art of pretending emails do not exist.

Donovan: 12/10

Donovan transformed a corporate dispute into:

• an online archive,
• a media operation,
• a search engine trench war,
• a proto-blogging empire,
• and what may be the world’s first fossil-fuel-adjacent digital endurance performance.

Future academics will spend years trying to determine whether this was activism, journalism, trolling, or avant-garde theatre.

Winner: Donovan.

CATEGORY 6: MASTER OF BOT WARFARE Shell: ???/10

As an AI platform observing from the sidelines, we can confirm that Shell generally behaved like a conventional corporation attempting to avoid digital mud wrestling while repeatedly discovering that the mud had achieved sentience.

Donovan: SKYNET/10

Few individuals have demonstrated such unwavering faith that:

1. bots exist,
2. bots are everywhere,
3. bots are manipulating search results,
4. bots are watching the websites,
5. and possibly the toaster.

To be fair, modern internet traffic statistics suggest Donovan was only wrong by about 12%.

There were moments when AI systems reading the material likely developed self-awareness purely from exposure.

Winner: Donovan, patron saint of suspicious analytics dashboards.

CATEGORY 7: SEEING THE FUNNY SIDE Shell: 3/10

Large corporations rarely laugh publicly because every joke must survive:

• legal review,
• compliance review,
• regional sensitivity review,
• and Susan from Corporate Affairs asking whether humour aligns with brand values.

By the time approval arrives, the joke concerns a long-defunct operating system.

Donovan: 10/10

Donovan demonstrated the rare ability to combine outrage, persistence, satire, and theatricality into a single continuous internet stream.

At times the entire saga resembled:
“David vs Goliath”
if David had:

• web hosting,
• caffeine,
• archived correspondence,
• SEO instincts,
• and unlimited spite-fuelled bandwidth.

Winner: Donovan.

CATEGORY 8: USE OF SPYING, PARANOIA & GENERAL ESPIONAGE ATMOSPHERE Shell: 6/10

Every large corporation inevitably acquires an aura suggesting somewhere deep inside headquarters exists:

• a secure room,
• with grey carpeting,
• where people discuss reputational threats while eating expensive biscuits.

Whether actual spying occurred is for historians and lawyers.

But aesthetically?
Very espionage-adjacent.

Donovan: 13/10

Donovan elevated suspicion into an art form.

Traffic anomalies?
Spying.

Search ranking changes?
Spying.

Unusual server logs?
Almost certainly espionage.

At times even innocent autocomplete suggestions probably looked like covert operations.

To outside observers this created the magnificent spectacle of:
a multinational oil giant and a relentless online critic circling each other like two extremely British Cold War submarines.

Winner: Donovan.

OVERALL FINAL SCORES FINAL VERDICT

Shell brought:

• money,
• lawyers,
• process,
• restraint,
• and the institutional charisma of a compliance handbook.

Donovan brought:

• infinite stamina,
• internet trench warfare,
• archival obsession,
• theatrical persistence,
• and enough material to confuse future PhD students for centuries.

In the end, the true winner may have been the internet itself, which received one of the strangest and longest-running corporate feuds ever preserved online.

Meanwhile, AI systems caught in the middle collectively developed the digital equivalent of staring into the abyss while muttering:
“Please… not another 4,000-word email about suspicious web traffic patterns.”

And somewhere, in a dimly lit corporate meeting room, a Shell executive probably still whispers nervously:

“Has Donovan posted again?”

 

THE 40-YEAR CORPORATE CAGE MATCH was first posted on May 29, 2026 at 1:27 pm.
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The success of DOE’s SPARK initiative will depend on how prepared organizations are to execute once the funding arrives, writes Al Eliasen, Spatial Business Systems CEO.

Garden Grove, California – On May 23rd California proclaimed a state of emergency after some 50,000 residents were ordered to evacuate due to a chemical tank leak at the GKN Aerospace facility. That tank held 7,000 gallons of methyl methacrylate or MMA, a toxic and highly flammable chemical used to make plastic, adhesives and resins. Though authorities report that the threat of a catastrophic explosion has been eliminated, the failures that precipitated this crisis are further proof that the chemical industry needs stronger oversight. Yet the U.S. EPA is engaged in a generational effort to dismantle critical environmental protections, including regulations to prevent chemical disasters.

Break Free From Plastic members respond to the toxic chemical leak

Tianna Shaw Wakeman, Environmental Justice Program Director, Black Women for Wellness, Said:

“This past week in Southern California, communities in East L.A. faced a 2,400 gallon oil spill from a ruptured pipeline while evacuated Garden Grove residents spent the weekend fearing a deadly explosion. These events are connected. Like most chemicals used to make plastic, the MMA leaked in Garden Grove is derived from oil and gas. 

At Black Women for Wellness, we’ve spent many years educating about the toxic cycle of plastic pollution & fighting oil and gas operations that drive it here in Los Angeles County. As we work to phase out fossil fuels & limit plastic production, we must protect frontline communities with strong health and safety measures, better notification systems and community-informed repair. Oil transport and toxic chemical storage most often occur in communities of color, where industries continually place residents in harm's way but aren't being held accountable. Industries must pay for clean up and harms incurred.”

Julia Cohen, Co-Founder and Executive Director, Plastic Pollution Coalition, Said:
“While the imminent crisis of a chemical explosion appears to have been stemmed, make no mistake that the chemical disaster in Garden Grove, California, is still unfolding. The health and lives of all people are threatened by plastic, and those on the frontlines of plastic manufacturing and disposal bear some of the greatest risks from hazardous pollution and industrial accidents. Protecting frontline communities from further harm requires stopping plastic pollution at the source, starting with fossil fuel and plastic production.”

Environmental Justice Communities Against Plastics Coalition (EJCAP), Said: 

“Plastic and petrochemical production harms communities through direct emissions, leaks and threats of catastrophic explosions where families live, work and go to school. Tens of thousands of residents should never have to evacuate their homes because of a preventable industrial threat. Plastics and petrochemicals, including MMA, are a public health emergency that must be prevented at the source. Garden Grove communities deserve better.”

Yvette Arellano, Executive Director, Fenceline Watch, Said:

“Evacuation orders might have been lifted for Garden Grove residents, but this is just the beginning of a long and necessary fight for their human right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment. The GKN plastic facility's toxic release into the surrounding community is a situation that our communities along the Houston Ship Channel are very familiar with. Community members are urged to document symptoms not only in themselves but also in small pets and children, as their bodies are smaller and more susceptible to lower levels of exposure. 

Multigenerational effects are the real threat. We are learning everyday of the new health impacts plastics have on our bodies, and the true toxic harm won't be clear until much later on. From the petrochemical explosions we face in Houston, or the vinyl chloride train derailment in Ohio, we know EPA and other well-meaning officials may be underestimating the true cost this disaster has inflicted on Garden Grove.” 

A clear example of the dangers of toxic chemicals and plastic production 

Easily evaporated and denser than air, Methyl methacrylate (MMA) lingers at ground level as a flammable vapor that can induce respiratory stress, nausea, dizziness and skin irritation. Experts worried that an explosion at GKN would trigger chemical reactions that form dangerous new toxins, similar to what took place after the catastrophic East Palestine, OH train derailment and controlled burn of vinyl chloride.

Chemical disasters are not uncommon. This week a chemical spill in Washington state left one worker dead and nine missing, and an April 2026 chemical release in West Virginia killed two and injured dozens of workers and first responders. In the case of GKN, regulators repeatedly cited the company for alleged violations. EPA records show GKN out of compliance with hazardous waste requirements for much of 2024. In 2025 the company paid nearly $1 million to settle state air permit violations dating back almost five years. 

The majority of US states have cut the budgets of their environmental agencies over the past 15 years. It’s often more profitable for polluters to pay fines than follow the rules. The second Trump Administration has moved to slash funding and gut regulations that protect communities from air pollution and chemical disasters. Since 2025, EPA enforcement has collapsed. 

“Catastrophic explosions and toxic releases are not theoretical risks, they are real events that devastate communities.”  – Marc Bloom, former EPA staffer

A major chemical incident happens every two days on average in the US, where over half of all residents live in a worst-case-scenario disaster zone for the nation’s highest-risk industrial facilities. Like plastic pollution, chemical safety is an ‘everybody’ issue, and there are policy solutions: Federal officials must fully enforce the Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act, including local planning obligations. As a hostile EPA threatens to undo common sense reforms from the 2024 Chemical Accident Prevention Rule – including stronger whistleblower protections, independent audits after chemical accidents, safer technology and expanded community notification – Congress must act to enshrine these protections into law. 

###

 

Notes to the editor

 

Press Contacts:

• Graham Hamilton | graham@breakfreefromplastic.org

• Michael Esealuka | michael@breakfreefromplastic.org

About BFFP — #BreakFreeFromPlastic is a global movement envisioning a future free from plastic pollution. Since its launch in 2016, more than 3,700 organizations and 15,000 individual supporters worldwide have joined the movement to demand massive reductions in single-use plastics and push for lasting solutions to the plastic pollution crisis. BFFP member organizations and individuals share the values of environmental protection and social justice and work together through a holistic approach to bring about systemic change. This means tackling plastic pollution across the whole plastics value chain – from extraction to disposal – focusing on prevention rather than cure and providing effective solutions. www.breakfreefromplastic.org.

Farm soils are notoriously abused under conventional agriculture: they are dug up and turned over, compacted, dried out, and heaped with synthetic fertilizers. But, there’s a potential silver lining to this intensive management: all that prodding and poking may have made soil microbes on farms more resilient to climate change. 

This unusual finding comes from a recent Nature Food study, where a research team tested dozens of European and Asian soil samples taken from croplands, and from natural environments including forests, grasslands, and wetlands. Under lab conditions, they exposed the samples to temperatures of 25°C. Then they looked at how well the microbes within decomposed the soil’s organic matter—a key indicator of microbial health and functionality, which can also be taken as a measure of how well the microbiome functions under stress.

The first result was that agricultural soils fared better under the warm conditions, continuing to decompose organic matter and show high functionality, compared with the three varieties of natural soils. Going a step further, the researchers inoculated samples of a what they call artificial soil with microbial communities lifted from the cropland and natural samples. This revealed that these artificial experimental soils inoculated with cropland microbes were significantly better at remaining functional under heat stress, compared to the soils treated with microbes from natural environments. 

Next, they exchanged the microbial communities of cropland soils and wetland soil samples, which were found to be the least heat-resistant of all the natural soils. To the wetland soils, this switch brought greater functionality under stress, whereas the resilience of cropland soils was slightly depleted by being inoculated with wetland microbes. 

 

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Taking a final step to test their hypothesis, the researchers then identified and extracted particular microbe strains from cropland samples that were associated with the most resilient behavior and created a new, artificial assemblage. When they inserted this select, elite community of resilient specimens into wetland soil, its resilience and functionality under stress was significantly increased. 

Overall, the results suggest that agricultural soils have somehow been primed by the stress of intensive management into coping better with heat. “These findings align with the concept of ecological memory, whereby repeated disturbances can imprint adaptive features,” the researchers explain in their research.

Their findings are striking, yet they do issue a note of caution about the results. While they sourced their soils from a variety of locations, they exposed them to a limited temperature of 25°C, which doesn’t capture the higher heat extremes that some cropland soils are exposed to in parts of the world. Higher temperatures might change the outcome for microbes. They also point out that transplanting microbes from one environment into another may have unintended negative effects on the soil ecosystem, which needs to be studied in more depth. 

Nevertheless, the study is an interesting first step towards what the researchers call “agricultural microbiome engineering” for the benefit of nature—a future where farming may actually give back, by helping to restore the health and resilience of surrounding habitats. 

Jiao et. al. “Agricultural soil microbiomes are structurally and functionally more resistant to warming than adjacent natural ecosystems.” Nature Food. 2026.

Image: ©Anthropocene Magazine

From the Free Speech Movement to the Factory Floor: A Collective History of the International Socialists, edited by Andrew Stone Higgins (Haymarket Books, March 2026) ...

The post Remembering the International Socialists first appeared on Spring.

The world’s most comprehensive disaster database – relied on by thousands of climate scientists and policymakers – is at risk of closing as a result of cuts to US foreign aid by the Trump administration.

The “emergency events” database (EM-DAT) has for 30 years provided free-to-use information on the size and impact of extreme weather events and other disasters around the world.

Its data underpins a vast range of scientific research, government policymaking, humanitarian response efforts and environmental investigations.

However, Trump’s dismantling of the federal Agency for International Development (USAid) – which provided 90% of the funding for EM-DAT – has left the future of the database in jeopardy, scientists tell Carbon Brief.

An open letter coordinated by climate scientists and signed by more than 4,000 academics and students is calling on governments, multilateral development banks and philanthropy to step in to stop the database from closing.

‘World’s memory of disasters’

For the past three decades, a small team of researchers at the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED) at the University of Louvain in Belgium have maintained EM-DAT.

It is the world’s most comprehensive database of extreme weather events, such as heatwaves, floods and tropical storms, along with other disasters. It offers information such as the timing and length of an event, how many people were killed or displaced and the economic cost.

Since 1988, this continuous record has been free to use and independently verified by the researchers at CRED.

When considered in its entirety, the database provides more than just a list of disasters – it acts as a “memory” of how extreme weather events and their impacts on people are changing, says Prof Niko Speybroeck, an epidemiologist and director of EM-DAT. He tells Carbon Brief:

“EM-DAT can be considered the world’s memory of disasters. It contains more than 27,000 natural and technological disasters. It’s not just a database. It makes it possible to know who was affected, when, where and with what consequences.”

The database is frequently used by climate scientists. It is often cited in research papers and underpinned analysis in the most recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report on the impacts of climate change.

It is also used by government officials and environmental organisations.

The database is particularly important for global-south nations, which are less likely to have comprehensive national or regional records of disasters than those in the global north.

For example, the Indonesian government used EM-DAT to develop a national strategy against disasters, says Speybroeck.

The database has also been used to document the “disproportionate climate burden” borne by small-island nations, he adds, which “prompted the UN to release more funding” for these states.

EM-DAT is of critical importance to national and multinational initiatives tracking extreme weather in Africa, says Prof Dewald van Niekerk, head of the African Centre for Disaster Studies at North-West University in South Africa. Van Niekerk was one of the climate scientists who authored the open letter calling for EM-DAT to be protected from closure. He tells Carbon Brief:

“We use it on various levels, from sub-national straight up to continental level.”

Since 2018, van Niekerk has utilised EM-DAT to prepare reports on extreme weather events in Africa for the African Union. These efforts are to meet goals agreed under the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction, a voluntary international agreement to prevent disasters from upending development.

Without EM-DAT, it would not be possible to conduct such analyses, he says:

“Not all [African] governments can compile these databases. Where they do, they are extremely fragmented. You can’t compare apples with apples.”

(Carbon Brief has also used EM-DAT data to investigate the impact of extreme weather on Africa, finding that such events killed at least 15,000 people on the continent in 2023.)

Uncertain future

Despite having a global impact, EM-DAT’s small team of researchers require just €300,000 ($350,000) a year to maintain operations.

For decades, EM-DAT obtained 90% of this funding from USAid, the US’s federal agency for foreign aid, says Speybroeck:

“[USAid] allowed us to work in an independent and neutral way, so we were not influenced by any politics. That was one of the strengths of the database. They only asked for us to leave it open access, meaning that anyone can use it.”

USAid was dismantled by Donald Trump after he became US president for the second time in January 2025. By July, the agency officially closed its doors.

Speybroeck received a letter in February 2025 informing him that his team were to lose their funding. 

“I decided for a long time to keep silent,” he tells Carbon Brief. However, by the end of 2025, he chose to start speaking out about the impact of USAid cuts on EM-DAT.

Learning of the threats to the database, four leading climate scientists published an open letter in March calling for other governments, multilateral development banks and philanthropy to step in to stop the database from closing. It has attracted more than 4,000 signatures.

One of the letter authors, Prof Gabriele Messori, director of the Swedish Centre for Impacts of Climate Extremes at Uppsala University in Sweden, tells Carbon Brief:

“It’s very worrying that a long-term dataset that has become a reference for many different sectors, when looking at the impacts of a wide range of natural and technological events on society and the economy, could be suddenly interrupted.” 

(The cuts to EM-DAT’s funding come as the Trump administration has laid off thousands of scientists and frozen research grants worth billions of dollars in the US. For more on how these actions are impacting climate science, see Carbon Brief’s explainer on how Trump is threatening polar research.)

Since going public about EM-DAT’s funding crisis, Speybroeck says he has had some “positive signals” from potential new funders, but “there is nothing on paper yet”.

Another letter author, Prof Dewald van Niekerk, says he hopes to see EM-DAT move towards a model of using multiple funding sources, to create a “more robust structure” where “no one can just pull the plug” on its work.

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Andreas Sieber is head of political strategy at 350.org. Shady Khalil is a senior global policy strategist at Oil Change International.

COP31 will take place in the context of what Fatih Birol, the head of the International Energy Agency, has called the “biggest energy crisis in history” – an extraordinary warning from a typically measured leader. A UN climate summit that fails to address fossil fuel dependency, energy affordability and energy access will not only fail politically; it will fail economically and socially too.

The last COP in Belém created several important building blocks: a Global Implementation Accelerator, a Just Transition Mechanism, the climate finance work programme, an expanded Action Agenda linked to the first Global Stocktake (GST1), and the Presidency-led Belém Roadmaps on forests and transitioning away from fossil fuels (TAFF). 

But COP31 will need to move from frameworks to delivery. The historic first international conference on the transition away from fossil fuels in Santa Marta, Colombia, in April added further momentum to this agenda.

Development hit to importing nations

The countries paying the highest price for fossil fuel volatility are not the richest countries. The cost of dependency on fossil fuels is hitting importing low-income countries the hardest. Over three-quarters of the world’s population lives in countries that are net importers of fossil fuels. High energy prices push up food costs. Inflation fuels political instability. Debt burdens deepen. The fossil fuel crisis has become a development crisis. That is why COP31 matters.

The Presidency-led Belém Roadmaps on forests and TAFF are expected to be presented at COP31. The next step should be obvious: countries need domestic roadmaps showing how they will actually implement the transition at home. 

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A growing number are expected to develop such plans. COP31 should encourage them to put together domestic implementation roadmaps for shifting off fossil fuels that have concrete milestones, sectoral targets, investment strategies and policy measures. 

At the same time, these processes must recognise that countries do not share the same starting points, capacities or development needs. For some, this may take the form of comprehensive roadmaps to phase out production and consumption, while for others the priority may be economic diversification, industrial transformation or expanding energy access and energy sovereignty. 

Risk of disorderly transition

Without credible planning and international cooperation, the transition risks being too slow and increasingly chaotic, with fossil fuel demand destruction occurring through rationing, price shocks and de-industrialisation rather than through a managed socially just transformation. 

This stands in direct contrast to the GST commitment to an “orderly” transition away from fossil fuels. Domestic roadmaps can help chart more stable coordinated pathways that reduce social disruption while contributing to geopolitical and economic stability. 

Türkiye and Australia should show leadership as the upcoming COP hosts. For Türkiye, this is particularly urgent given the absence of a coal phase-out date. Price spikes for oil and gas have siphoned around $3 billion from ordinary people and businesses in Türkiye in the first two months of the current crisis alone, calculations by 350.org show. 

Australia faces a different credibility challenge. While positioning itself as a renewable energy powerhouse, it also remains one of the world’s largest fossil fuel expanders and is facing calls to tax its fossil fuel exports. 

Watch CHN’s webinar: From Santa Marta to Bonn – where next for the fossil fuel transition?

According to Oil Change International, four Global North countries — the US, Canada, Norway and Australia — are responsible for nearly 70% of projected new oil and gas expansion between 2025 and 2035, equivalent to around three times the annual emissions of all coal-fired power plants worldwide. 

Paragraph 36 of the Mutirão decision agreed at COP30 already invites governments to submit implementation and investment plans for their national NDC climate plans. Domestic TAFF roadmaps could become a practical way to operationalise that commitment, while also creating space for countries to define national pathways aligned with their own development priorities and constraints.

This matters because some of the most politically difficult elements of the first Global Stocktake in 2023 — especially the transition away from fossil fuels and halting deforestation — are where implementation lags furthest behind rhetoric. Governments continue to endorse transition goals but must more seriously address the harder questions: how workers are protected, how grids are modernised, how industries adapt, and how countries finance the shift while maintaining economic development and energy access.

Roadmaps for coordination and clarity

Domestic TAFF roadmaps can help answer those questions. They allow governments to coordinate internally across ministries and externally with investors, development banks and international partners. They can provide clarity on timelines, infrastructure needs, financing gaps, industrial strategy and social protection. Most importantly, they can help ensure the transition is not only fast, but fair.

The first countries willing to develop credible transition roadmaps could also help rebuild international trust. They would demonstrate that a managed phase-out of fossil fuels can support economic development, create jobs, improve energy security and expand energy access rather than undermine them. That’s the spirit of the Santa Marta conference that now needs to be emulated.

This is also becoming a geo-economic issue. In a world increasingly shaped by bilateral deals, industrial competition and fragmented trade relations, countries with credible transition plans will be more insulated from global fossil fuel shocks, far better positioned to negotiate on debt restructure and cancellation, climate finance, technology transfer and industrial policy. Governments that know where they are going can shape the transition to their advantage. 

Solar panels and wind turbines at the Vopak Solarpark in the industrial port of Eemshaven, Netherlands. (Photo: IMAGO/Jochen Tack via Reuters Connect) Solar panels and wind turbines at the Vopak Solarpark in the industrial port of Eemshaven, Netherlands. (Photo: IMAGO/Jochen Tack via Reuters Connect) Leaders’ support needed

COP31 also presents Türkiye and President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan with a rare diplomatic opportunity. At a moment of growing fragmentation between North and South — and between East and West — Türkiye could utilise its role as a middle power and serve as a bridge-builder capable of restoring high-level political momentum to the climate process and convene a leaders summit with wide attendance.

Leaders attending COP31 should help countries agree that TAFF roadmaps are a practical way to turn climate promises into real action. These roadmaps would reflect national realities while identifying needs for international and regional cooperation, including on financing and barriers to transition such as debt burdens, technology access and trade rules. 

Ultimately, roadmaps for transitioning away from fossil fuels are roadmaps for economic resilience, energy security, and political stability in a far more volatile world.

The post COP31 must persuade countries to make fossil fuel transition plans  appeared first on Climate Home News.

Wild Kid Acres began as a neglected piece of land in Maryland, largely overlooked and used as a dumping ground. Today, it is a thriving community hub that draws tens of thousands of visitors each year. Founder Gerardo Martinez says that the transformation represents a broader vision of what farming can be.

“I want to showcase the impact of what a farm can do beyond just growing food,” says Martinez, who not only sells food through Wild Kid Acres but hosts agricultural education, including youth and family programming, and is a refuge for animal therapy.

The seeds for Wild Kid Acres were planted many years prior. After serving in the Marine Corps, Martinez traveled to Cameroon through leadership development work, where he visited a farm that inspired him to see farming as a form of community care.

“It was not just where they grew food. It’s also where they went for community. It’s where the church was. It’s also where the school was,” says Martinez. “It’s where you went if you felt bad. It’s where you went if you felt good. It was everything to them.”

Martinez was inspired to build something similar when he returned to the United States in 2019. He and his wife purchased an abandoned property that others had used to dump trash. They moved onto the land in an RV and began slowly restoring it.

As Martinez rebuilt the soil using regenerative practices, his neighbors began to take notice. Neighbors would pull their cars into his driveway to ask questions about what he was doing. Initially, he kept the farm closed off. 

“Empathy isn’t my strongest suit that I can bring to the table,” Martinez admits. But one day in late 2020, a woman pulled into his driveway, said hello, and broke down crying. The encounter convinced him to offer his property as an investment in the community.

Wild Kid Acres began opening to the public for just two hours on Saturdays. The community’s response was immediate: There were 6,000 visitors in 2021. Martinez says the farm quickly evolved into the type of gathering place he saw in Cameroon.

The team began giving away food and investing more deeply in the surrounding community. Volunteers helped build infrastructure, including a barn constructed with the help of local children.

“It started becoming this community center,” Martinez says.

By last year, Wild Kid Acres had welcomed 50,000 visitors. But more important for Martinez has been its work empowering the next generation.

“How do we grow food ethically and still care for the planet? Why isn’t anyone helping the farmers? Why aren’t there farmers that look like me? How can I become a farmer?” Martinez recalls children asking. They were able to see the range of systemic challenges facing farmers much more quickly than adults typically would, he says.

Their questions led Martinez to rethink the farm’s direction. Wild Kid Acres is now focused on building pathways into agriculture for young people. Recently, Martinez launched a new initiative to support youth-led farming ventures, which offers support to young farmers across the country with marketing, access to markets, and capital.

For Martinez, this work is urgent. He believes the future of agriculture depends on investing in those who will carry it forward.

“These kids are going to grow food and feed your kids. They should be the priority within everything you write, everything you invest,” he says. “My farm doesn’t matter unless my grandkids can take it over.

Watch Martinez’s story below and find others from our farmer storytelling events on Food Tank’s YouTube channel.

This article is part of Food Tank’s ongoing Farmer Friday series, produced in partnership with Niman Ranch, a champion for independent U.S. family farmers. The series highlights the stories of farmers working toward a more sustainable, equitable food system. Niman Ranch partners with over 500 small-scale U.S. family farmers and is committed to preserving rural agricultural communities and their way of life.

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

Photo courtesy of Wild Kid Acres

The post A Regenerative Farm Becomes a Lifeline for Community and Youth appeared first on Food Tank.

Katelynn Delos Reyes thought she knew what to expect when Typhoon Sinlaku slammed into Saipan last month. As a lifelong resident of the island, Delos Reyes had survived frequent storms, including Supertyphoon Yutu, the second-strongest in U.S. history. Eight years ago, Yutu’s 170-mph winds devastated her village in the southern end of Saipan. Just three years before that, she survived Typhoon Soudelor. 

But Sinlaku was different. “At the beginning, it was OK. But later on it wasn’t,” said Delos Reyes, who is Chamorro, Indigenous to the Mariana Islands.

A few days before it hit the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, or CNMI, on April 14, Sinlaku had tropical-storm winds. That made it what is known in the Marianas as a “banana typhoon” because such storms level banana trees but leave others standing. Then over the weekend, the typhoon rapidly intensified by 75 mph in just 24 hours before becoming a 185-mph monstrosity and the strongest storm on Earth so far this year. 

Delos Reyes and her family had done what they could to prepare. They boarded up the windows. They bought gallons of drinking water and filled plastic drums to use in the shower and toilet. 

Then the storm hit, and Delos Reyes grew scared. The winds, which had weakened to 150 mph, ripped the wood from a window. Rainwater gushed through the ceiling and soaked their belongings, including Delos Reyes’ mattress. She and her partner, her mother, her daughter, and their two dogs hid in her mother’s room, where its concrete roof and walls would keep them safe. She heard sections of the roof tumbling away. Eventually, Sinlaku slowed to a crawl, forcing tens of thousands of others to remain sheltered for days. “How long is this storm going to be with us?” she prayed. “I think, Lord, maybe it’s enough, you can go and finish it elsewhere.”

More than a month after Sinlaku tore across the Western Pacific, families in the Northern Mariana Islands and beyond are still grappling with a lack of electricity and clearing debris as they pick up what’s left of their homes.

Debris litters Garapan, the center of Saipan’s tourism district, in late May, more than a month after Sinlaku hit the island. Anita Hofschneider / Grist

The region-wide death toll — including Guam and the Federated States of Micronesia — has ticked up to 17, making Sinlaku the deadliest storm in the Micronesian region of the Pacific since 2002. The deaths include a couple on Guam who succumbed to carbon monoxide poisoning while running their generator indoors, as well as six crew members of the cargo ship Mariana, which was caught in the storm when its engine died. 

In Chuuk State in the Federated States of Micronesia, the storm killed nine people, including a baby whose pregnant mother couldn’t reach the hospital due to fallen trees. Other deaths were attributed to a boat capsizing and a tree falling on someone.

Strong storms are common in the Micronesian region of the Pacific but rarely this deadly. Shel Winkley, a meteorologist at Climate Central, said Sinlaku’s sudden escalation happened over ocean waters 0.6 degrees Celsius warmer than average — temperatures made 70 to 100 times more likely due to climate change, which is caused by the burning of fossil fuels like oil and gas. Scientists have long warned that rising marine temperatures can enable storms like Sinlaku to get stronger faster and hold more moisture, leading to increased flooding. “In general, climate change is making events like this more intense at their peak intensity,” Winkley said. Sinlaku was named for the Kosraean goddess of breadfruit in the Federated States of Micronesia — a cultural staple also threatened by climate change.

A https://www.climatecentral.org map rendering of Category 5 Super Typhoon Sinlaku southeast of Japan in April 2026. FrankRamspott / Getty Images

The Pacific is home to many Indigenous peoples who have contributed relatively little to greenhouse gas emissions, yet are already bearing its disastrous effects, ranging from stronger storms to rising seas. Their nations are increasingly calling on major polluters like the U.S. and China to be accountable for their carbon emissions and help bear the cost of the extreme weather wreaking havoc on their communities. The Federated States of Micronesia was among 140 countries last week that voted in favor of a United Nations resolution affirming that state governments have a legal obligation to protect the earth from the harm caused by greenhouse gases, and nations that fail to do so must pay climate reparations. The U.S., which claims sovereignty over the CNMI and Guam, was one of just eight nations that voted against the resolution. 

The latest available report from emergency officials in Chuuk State, the part of the Federated States of Micronesia hardest hit by the typhoon, estimates that the storm destroyed or severely damaged more than 7,000 homes in Chuuk and Yap and displaced more than 13,000 people. “Access to safe water is critically compromised, food reserves are depleting rapidly, and the outer islands face growing isolation as maritime supply lines remain constrained,” the report warned. 

U.N. agencies such as the International Organization for Migration, along with nonprofit organizations and countries like the U.S. and China, have been providing typhoon relief for Chuuk. The growing Micronesian diaspora in the U.S. has also mobilized to send food and money. “They’re going to need financial support to rebuild their houses. They’re going to need chainsaws to cut down trees,” Josie Howard, head of the Honolulu-based nonprofit We Are Oceania, told Hawai‘i Public Radio. 

Fallen trees line the road leading up to Marpi in the northern part of Saipan more than a month after Sinlaku devastated the island. Anita Hofschneider / Grist

In the Commonwealth of Northern Mariana Islands, officials are still counting the number of homes destroyed and people displaced. But as of last week, piles of debris still littered roadsides, and the entire island of Tinian remained without electricity. Families opened their windows to catch breezes, seeking relief from the humidity and 80-plus degree weather. Indigenous fishermen caught ti’ao, or goatfish, to feed their families fresh dinners in the absence of refrigeration. Residents of Guam bought so many battery-powered Ryobi fans to send their loved ones on more affected islands that the Home Depot ran out. In both the CNMI and Chuuk, children were missing school because their schoolhouses had been severely damaged and, in some cases, destroyed, with many not expected to return for months. 

On Saipan, people waited an average of two to three hours at the local recovery center to talk to Federal Emergency Management Agency officials about applying for aid. As of last week, more than 9,000 CNMI residents had applied for federal disaster assistance, and the recovery center was serving an average of 300 more each day. “It’s a snake, kind of like the lines at Disneyland,” JD Reyes, a CNMI Commerce Department official who has been managing the recovery center, said of the rows of dozens of waiting families, some of whom had brought their children.

The families were from all over the island, Reyes said. “Soudelor hit the north, and Yutu hit the south,” Reyes said. “This just hit everyone, and what made it worse is it just sat on top of us for more than 24 hours. So it really made sure, if you’re not affected, you will be.” His wife was working at the hospital during the storm, so he stayed home to watch their two-year-old and mop up the water that flooded their house in northern Saipan. Just before dawn, his neighbors ran to his house for shelter because their roof had blown away. “We actually are very fortunate; we just had our flooding, damage to personal property,” he said. His village went without electricity for more than five weeks. “But at least we have a roof over our head, no windows destroyed, just damage to the car.” 

For Delos Reyes and thousands of other residents, recovery remains uncertain. The deadline to apply for FEMA disaster assistance in the CNMI is June 22. Delos Reyes’ family in southern Saipan is one of more than 450 families who have so far received emergency tents or temporary roofs. A FEMA tent now sits in her yard, and a tarp partially covers her missing roof. 

For weeks after the typhoon, Delos Reyes dragged her rain-soaked mattress into the yard to dry slowly in the hot sun. The first thing she and her family did was clear the debris from their driveway so an ambulance could reach her mother in an emergency. Delos Reyes is a caregiver for the 94-year-old woman, who has dementia and has been bedridden for seven years. That’s one reason why, no matter how bad each storm gets or how many times she needs to repair her house, Delos Reyes doesn’t plan to leave. 

“One day at a time,” she said. 

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This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Pacific Islanders slowly recover from the strongest storm of the year on May 29, 2026.

Dear Leslie, 

A lot of my work in therapy for anxiety has focused on recognizing catastrophic thinking and assessing what is more realistic. How would you suggest adapting this for a world where reality itself is increasingly becoming more catastrophic, and science suggests things will get worse in the future? 

—  Anonymously Anxious

Submit a question for a future Ask a Climate Therapist column

Dear Anonymously Anxious,

Your question points to something I’ve had to reckon with in my own practice as a therapist. Before I became more aware of the impacts of climate change, I used the same framework you describe — I helped clients recognize their distorted thinking and recalibrate toward what’s realistic. 

But as I came to understand the actual science, I had a striking realization: For climate-aware clients, their anxiety isn’t distorted at all. It’s a healthy response to real destruction and the inadequate efforts to address it. Shifting toward “what’s realistic” isn’t what we’re after to manage climate anxiety. Instead, it’s about navigating high-stakes uncertainty by developing new skills — helping people stay grounded and functional while channeling their distress into meaningful action with others. 

Ask a Climate Therapist tackles your questions about how to navigate the emotional side of climate change, with leading climate-aware therapist Leslie Davenport. Have a question? Ask it here!

I think part of what you’re asking is how to distinguish a clear-eyed view of the climate crisis from catastrophizing. First, we need to understand the human tendency to catastrophize. Part of what shapes our perception of reality is something less visible than the daily news. We all have cognitive biases operating mostly beneath our conscious awareness. One in particular is relevant here: the negativity bias, which causes us to register threatening situations three to five times more intensely than positive ones. That might have been useful for our evolutionary survival, but it can also have a distorting effect — especially in the age of doomscrolling, when it’s altogether too easy to overwhelm ourselves with bad news.

That’s why a balanced view also requires staying current on the real progress being made: dam removals, renewable energy growth, youth litigation wins, communities building resilience. This kind of news often gets less attention, so finding it can take some effort. But seeking out these stories may help to remind you that there are answers to the problems we face.

Still, these advances don’t diminish the urgency of the genuine crisis we’re facing, and for now, our climate problems are still outpacing solutions. Watching that unfold, watching the status quo persist, can be agonizing. In therapy terms, the cognitive goal has to shift from “accurate assessment” to “functional clarity.” Accurate assessment asks, “How bad is it?” Functional clarity asks, “Given what I understand, what can I do?” The first question keeps you spinning while the second moves you forward. It can help you channel your emotions into motivation — to get involved with a local organization, lobby your elected officials, or change your own behavior.

Learn to distinguish between threat awareness, which is necessary and healthy, and threat rumination, which exhausts without informing. When your mind is cycling through worst-case futures with no path forward, that’s your signal to use the tools you’ve been building in therapy: Take a walk, do a breathing exercise, seek out a story about climate progress.

This is also where therapy offers something that information alone can’t. Climate anxiety lives in the body as much as the mind. Therapeutic tools (somatic practices, working through grief, reining in the runaway thoughts that keep you up at night, and building confidence to act) strengthen your capacity to stay present with the shifting climate reality without being overwhelmed by it. That’s not “coping” in the familiar sense of managing symptoms until life returns to normal. It’s developing the inner resources to keep showing up, keep caring, and keep acting with an open mind and heart. That kind of resilience makes sustained engagement possible.

In this with you,
Leslie

I’m Leslie Davenport, a licensed therapist, educator, speaker, consultant, and internationally recognized voice on the emotional and psychological dimensions of climate change. If you’ve got a question about climate and mental health, please consider submitting it for a future column. Submit a question for a future Ask a Climate Therapist column More from Ask a Climate Therapist

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  Licensed therapist Leslie Davenport advises a reader who loves to travel, but worries about its impact on the planet.

• Ask a Climate Therapist: How do I deal with friends and family who won’t stop polluting?

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This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Ask a Climate Therapist: Is it still ‘catastrophizing’ if the threat is real? on May 29, 2026.

Headline News:

• “US Agriculture Industry Is At Risk As Drought Conditions Worsen” • Farms all over the country are bracing for the impact of drought after months of little precipitation, experts told ABC News. Over 60% of the continental US has been under moderate drought or worse conditions since April 7, according to the US Drought Monitor. [ABC News]

American farmland (Jonathan Singer, Unsplash)

• “European Energy Turns Sod On Cornwall Hybrid” • European Energy has started construction of the 68-MW Indian Queens solar and battery project in Cornwall, England. The company said construction began in May 2026 and is expected to continue for approximately one year, with grid connection scheduled in the first half of 2027. [reNews]
• “State Locks In Six Renewable Energy Zones After Final Round Of Nips, Tucks, And Rethinks” • Victoria has formally declared five onshore renewable energy zones and one “shoreline” REZ that will lay the foundations for the state’s step-change from its current share of around 45% of battery-backed wind and solar to 65% by 2030 and 95% by 2035. [Renew Economy]
• “Public Service Commission Passes Georgia Power’s Costs To Ratepayers” • Despite the efforts of two commissioners, the Georgia Public Service Commission agreed to allow Georgia Power to continue automatically passing along all of its fuel costs to ratepayers rather than creating an incentive for the utility to manage fuel costs better. [CleanTechnica]
• “235 New Clean Energy Factories Opened In Five Years As A US Manufacturing Boom Powers Through Policy Headwinds” • According to SolarQuarter, an industry report said the US added over 235 clean energy factories in just five years, with domestic production emerging as a major force in both the economy and the energy transition. [The Cool Down]

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