Grist

“Tell you what,” Drew Maciel told his Instagram followers in April, “I’m sick of finding dead moose.” He zoomed in on a dead bull moose lying prone on the ground, running the camera over clusters of ticks nestled within every crevice of the corpse.

Maciel is a shed hunter, meaning he collects antlers that have been naturally “shed” by wildlife. But a winter tick feeding frenzy in Maine, driven by rising temperatures, means that this year he kept finding dead animals. Up to 90 percent of the moose calves tracked by scientists in recent years have been bled to death by ticks — an ongoing crisis in a state that prizes these largest of all deer species.

But where scientists see the hand of climate change at work — average temperatures in Maine have risen 3 degrees Fahrenheit since 1985 — others see the designs of a global cabal. 

“Human engineered biological warfare,” read a comment on Maciel’s video posted by Dries Van Langenhove, a far-right former member of the Belgian government who was recently convicted of violating the country’s Holocaust denial laws. The comment got 32,000 likes. “It’s Bill Gates,” someone else posted.  

Chuck Lubelczyk, a vector-borne ecologist with Maine Medical Center, collects ticks at a site in Cape Elizabeth. John Ewing / Portland Press Herald / Getty Images

These posts are part of a wave of tick-related conspiracy theories garnering millions of views online. In April, a self-proclaimed holistic doctor on Instagram claimed to have spoken with multiple farmers in the Midwest who told her that they were finding boxes of ticks dumped on their properties. “Something is happening with ticks right now, and farmers are starting to talk,” she posted alongside a video that got 10 million views across Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok. The MAHA Moms Coalition, a nationwide group inspired by the Trump administration’s Make America Healthy Again agenda, reposted the claim asking affected farmers to come forward.

The theory dates back to 2023, with viral claims that Pfizer and Valneva, pharmaceutical companies developing a vaccine for Lyme disease, were planting boxes of ticks on farms to drum up demand for their product. 

A separate theory that gained traction around the same time linked a British research program to genetically modify cattle ticks, funded in part by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, to rising cases of red meat allergies in the U.S. The biggest problem with that theory is that the allergy, Alpha-gal syndrome, is caused by the bite of a Lone Star tick — a completely different species from the cattle ticks in the research program.

While all these conspiracies involve different ticks, different diseases, and different alleged culprits, they are often treated as interchangeable evidence of the same broader claim: that rising tick encounters are a part of a nefarious human plot. 

The theories are right about one thing: Ticks are getting worse. Some of the same ecological changes fueling Maine’s winter tick boom are also making tick encounters more common in broad swaths of the U.S. The arachnids are showing up earlier in the year, expanding into new terrain, and biting people more often than they used to. But the force driving those shifts is not a clandestine bioweapons program, a vaccine plot, or Bill Gates — it’s climate change. 

A screenshot of an Instagram post furthering the unproven claim that Midwestern farmers are finding boxes of ticks left behind on their properties. Instagram

Richard Ostfeld, an ecologist at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies, said a warming world is “bringing ticks out earlier in the year” in states like New York, where he lives. “It used to be we were pretty safe in the month of May,” he said. “Now, not so much.”

Tick season is off to an unusually early start across most of the U.S. this year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, or CDC, said in an alert published late last month. Emergency room visits for tick bites in four of the five geographic regions the agency tracks are the highest they’ve been for this time of year since the CDC started keeping tabs on tick-borne illness rates in 2017. 

While the CDC hasn’t said what’s behind the uptick in bites this spring, ample snow cover earlier in the year helped insulate adult ticks from the cold of winter, and an early spring bloom across much of the U.S. likely brought those hungry adults out of the leaf litter earlier than normal. But regardless of the specific dynamics at play this year, rising average temperatures will lead to more robust tick exposure on balance. That’s because warmer temperatures both coax ticks north into territory that was once too cold to host them and also extend the length of time that ticks are active every year.

More tick bites mean more opportunities for infection — and the list of infections doctors are watching for is getting longer. Positive tests for alpha-gal syndrome have increased 100-fold since 2013; nearly half a million people in the U.S. now carry an allergy to red meat. Cases of anaplasmosis, a disease carried by black-legged ticks that hospitalizes roughly 30 percent of the people who contract it, increased 16-fold between 2000 and 2017. Babesiosis, a malaria-like illness also carried by black-legged ticks, has risen roughly 10 percent year-over-year since 2015. It’s not uncommon now for a single tick to carry two or more diseases. 

Ecologists who study ticks see an interwoven mix of factors driving these increases. Land-use and wildlife changes are increasing contact between humans and ticks, invasive and expanding tick species are bringing different disease risks to new parts of the country, and better testing and reporting of tick-borne illnesses is making diseases more visible. But there is widespread agreement in the scientific community that those trends are unfolding against the backdrop of climate change.

Ostfeld worries that the complexity of the factors that lead to higher rates of tick-borne disease, paired with the allure of online conspiracies, will make it harder for people to understand why backyards in some parts of the country are getting more dangerous. “The more I read about people actually believing some of these conspiracy theories, the more I worry that even moderately complex explanations or phenomena we care about — like how likely we are to get bitten by a tick — might be too much,” he said.

Scientists collect Lone Star ticks, which can cause an allergic reaction to red meat, for research. Ben McCanna / Portland Portland Press Herald via Getty Images

It doesn’t help that conspiracies about ticks have now been legitimized by federal government officials. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the Secretary of Health and Human Services, has at various times in his career opined that Lyme disease, which now affects an estimated half a million Americans every year, was created as a byproduct of vaccine research and originally used as a military bioweapon. (This flies in the face of genomic evidence that the bacteria causing Lyme has existed in North America for at least 60,000 years.)

Both Kennedy and Tucker Carlson, one of America’s most prominent Republican-aligned media figures, have hosted the writer Kris Newby on their podcasts in recent years. In both cases, Newby espoused debunked claims about the military origins of Lyme.  

The idea that Lyme disease and other tick-borne illnesses were created by a U.S. military bioweapons program is so pervasive that a formal initiative to investigate the origin has twice been introduced by lawmakers in the House of Representatives. Chris Smith, a Republican representative from New Jersey who spearheaded those efforts, was successful on his second attempt. A directive in the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2026, signed by President Donald Trump last December, includes a provision requiring the Government Accountability Office, or GAO, to investigate whether the military used ticks as biological warfare agents in the middle of the twentieth century. 

“GAO will be fully empowered to leave no stone unturned, and now it’ll have a congressional mandate to get to the bottom of it, because they were weaponizing ticks,” Smith said at a Lyme disease roundtable convened by Secretary Kennedy last year. 

But away from the congressional roundtables and viral videos, the plot begins to lose some of its drama. Even in the Midwest, where millions of social media viewers have been told that boxes of ticks are being dumped on unsuspecting farmers, evidence of foul play is hard to find. Terry Hoerbert and her husband Bob own Little Brown Cow Dairy, a small dairy farm in Delavan, Illinois. The lane down to the farm is short, Terry said, so she would have seen someone dropping off packages of ticks. Had the Hoerberts heard of any other farms in the area receiving packages of live ticks?

“We have not,” Terry told me. “You are the first to enlighten us.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline As tick bites surge, conspiracy theories follow on May 14, 2026.

This coverage is made possible through a partnership between Grist and BPR, a public radio station serving western North Carolina.

In Murphy, North Carolina, a peaceful mountain town once defined by birdsong and swaying trees, a steady electric hum cuts through the calm. The noise from a nearby cryptocurrency mine has intruded on Rebecca and Tom Lash’s lives since it opened in 2021.

“There was nothing in this little pasture but these electric lines,” Rebecca Lash said, as she and Tom stood on the hill overlooking the mine. “And it was just nice and quiet.”

The Lashes came to Cherokee County eight years ago to settle down and enjoy their older age in view of the Blue Ridge Mountains. They grew more and more incensed as three cryptocurrency mines opened near their home within the last five years. 

Now, the landscape is shifting again as one of those mines becomes an artificial intelligence data center.

Western North Carolina is seeing a local manifestation of a national trend. Across the country, communities that spent years trying to stop cryptocurrency mines are confronting a new and potentially larger wave of digital infrastructure that powers AI. As profits from crypto mining have fallen, the companies behind it have begun converting their operations into facilities designed to handle the computing that underpins that burgeoning industry. 

“The big AI centers and the big data centers, there’s some horror stories about people that live near those,” said Tom Lash.

This transition is triggering a growing backlash. Residents and local officials in Cherokee County and beyond fear that these immense operations — which consume as much electricity and water as small towns — will alter rural communities with few land-use restrictions. Towns and counties across western North Carolina have begun passing moratoriums and considering new regulations as they scramble to respond to an industry many say arrived faster than local authorities could understand or control it.

The shift is possible because crypto mines and AI data centers rely on the same underlying resources: enormous amounts of electricity, industrial-scale cooling systems, and large buildings capable of housing thousands of servers that run constantly. That infrastructure has made crypto operations attractive targets for companies racing to build AI computing capacity. 

Political and environmental conditions of Cherokee County are easing the transition, especially in post-industrial communities that need economic invigoration. In Marble, Core Scientific’s cryptocurrency mining site-turned-data-center once housed American Thread, which produced thread for the garment industry until it closed in 2015, taking hundreds of jobs and hundreds of thousands of dollars in annual taxes with it. The region’s abundant water, mild climate, and lack of zoning restrictions make it attractive. 

Late last year, Core Scientific announced plans to merge with CoreWeave, which leases computing power to AI companies. Though that deal fell through in October, Core Scientific has publicly said it is still converting facilities like the one in Marble to handle artificial intelligence workloads. That facility consumes as much power as a medium-sized town. 

Core Scientific did not respond to a request for comment. CoreWeave declined to comment.

Becoming an AI data center has required quite an expansion. According to Cherokee County commissioners and a public records request filed by commissioner Ben Adams, the company submitted a site plan last year that included more than 170 diesel generators, most of which would provide backup power. Records released by the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality after an inquiry by Grist showed that they were exempt from air-quality permitting requirements because they were classified as backup systems.

The site spreads across 250,000 square feet, or 7 acres. The company is working with neighboring utilities to meet its water and sewer needs, and it’s digging three wells to tap the local water table. The data center sought a wastewater contract with the nearby town of Andrews, but Mayor James Reid told Grist officials denied the request because the company lacked an environmental plan. 

Read Next Data centers are straining the grid. Can they be forced to pay for it? Naveena Sadasivam

He’s also not happy that a soccer complex Core Scientific had promised hasn’t materialized. What’s more, he thinks the facility is an eyesore.

“I wouldn’t wish this on any county or entity, ever,” said Reid. “It’s absolutely destroyed Marble.”

Taxes, at least, are back. The county received $268,000 in 2024 from the Marble facility’s last full year of the crypto operation, with a steep drop last year, mostly because of data center construction. In an email, County Tax Assessor Teresa Ricks said her office is working with a contractor to appraise the value of the Marble data center and its equipment in hopes the community will receive every cent it’s entitled to.

Adams doesn’t think the revenue is worth the impact the operation has on the community. He ran on an anti-crypto campaign in 2022. Although he wants to lure new business, he doesn’t want to see the county’s rural nature change and worries the data centers will bring noise and pollution. During a commissioners’ meeting in January, he begged his colleagues to renew a moratorium on crypto mining that expired a year ago and include AI data centers in the restriction.

“If we don’t do something, our little peaceful town’s going to turn into something else and people are going to come here looking to put stuff in our town,” he said at the time.

Another commissioner expressed concern that the Trump administration’s efforts to discourage local regulation of AI would hamstring any county action. “It would require a tremendous amount of resources, money to fight that back,” one commissioner said.

In the end, nothing happened that evening. 

But Cherokee County’s circumstance has alarmed communities throughout the region. Since January, officials across western North Carolina — in towns like Boone and Clyde, and counties like Swain and Clay — and the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians have adopted temporary bans or moratoriums on new data centers. In Canton, where a recently decommissioned paper mill might become a data center, the town council approved a moratorium in February before a crowd so large it couldn’t fit in the town hall building. The temporary bans, like the one that existed in Cherokee County from 2024 to 2025, are meant to give communities breathing room as they consider more permanent limits.

Like Canton’s ordinance, many of the moratoriums were passed before any formal data center proposals emerged. In April, Democratic state representative Lyndsey Prather introduced legislation that would scale back incentives for data centers and require them to pay the full cost of their energy use.

The tide is also beginning to turn against these operations elsewhere in the U.S. Lawmakers in Maine are considering a statewide ban, and similar bills are under consideration from New York to Oklahoma to Michigan. But as Cherokee County shows, a moratorium can come and go without a clear result, even as data center construction continues to hum. 

Adams, who is in his final year in office, is reconvening the county planning board to explore ways to limit new data centers without imposing zoning laws. A pro-business conservative, Adams said he has struggled to reconcile his support for economic growth with what he sees as a need to preserve the county’s rural character and manage its rapid transformation.

“I do believe, one, that we are stewards of our property,” Adams said. “Two, I think we can’t possibly keep out all these bad elements coming in. Three, growth is inevitable, but I hope that we can maintain it and keep it more of a peaceful community.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline First crypto, now data centers: How tech is reshaping this North Carolina community on May 14, 2026.

In the kitchen of Alnice Poxo Munduruku, fresh fish keeps the ancestral traditions of those who live along the vast Tapajós River alive. As the fire burns, the family cleans the fish while keeping a close eye on 11-year-old Aleckson. Born with cerebral palsy, which limits his mobility and speech, he has needed continuous care since birth. Like everyone here, he loves fish.

But the village’s food carries an invisible danger. Tests by scientists from the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation, or Fiocruz, show that Aleckson, his parents, and nearly everyone in neighboring communities have mercury levels above the safe threshold. Research by Fiocruz indicates that the contamination stems from gold mining, where mercury is used to separate the metal and then spreads through the rivers into the food chain.

This poisoning results not only from illegal mining but also from decisions and omissions by the Brazilian government. An exclusive InfoAmazonia investigation has found that Brazil’s National Mining Agency, or ANM, still maintains mining permits with signs of irregularities, such as reported gold production with no evidence of extraction consistent with the declared volumes — a practice identified by oversight bodies as illegal gold laundering.

Aleckson has cerebral palsy, a condition that restricts his mobility and speech. He has required continuous care since birth. Luis Ushirobira / InfoAmazonia

Created in 1989 to regulate mining during the Tapajós gold rush that ran from the late 1970s to the 1990s, Garimpeiro Mining Permits (PLGs) were meant to be a simplified authorization for supposedly small-scale, low-impact operations. Decades later, what began as artisanal mining has become industrial-scale extraction involving heavy equipment, dredges, and mercury. These permits now give a veneer of legality to large-scale illegal mining in Tapajós, sidestepping legal limits.

For more than a decade, oversight agencies have warned the mining authority about the irregular use of PLGs. In 2022, the Comptroller General of the Union uncovered a series of illegalities in an audit. The following year, Operation Sisaque — carried out by Brazil’s Federal Police (PF), Federal Revenue Service, and Federal Public Prosecutor’s Office (MPF) — exposed one of the Amazon’s largest gold-laundering schemes, which relied on PLGs in Tapajós. In 2025, the Federal Court of Accounts reached similar conclusions, identifying structural flaws that enable gold of illegal origin to be legalized.

Even so, our reporting found that between 2022 and 2026, of the 540 PLGs that declared gold sales in the Tapajós River basin, nearly half (263) showed no evidence of extraction consistent with the amounts reported. This suggests these permits may be used to launder gold extracted illegally elsewhere — a practice known as “gold laundering.”

Roughly 70 percent of the mining activity in the region lies within 10 kilometers of the PLGs that declared gold production. This proximity suggests that illegal mining operations, including those operating inside conservation areas and Indigenous lands, may be using these permits to bring their gold into the formal market.

Nearly 60 percent of the gold from legalized mining in Brazil has passed through a Tapajós PLG over the past four years, totaling $2.03 billion (10 billion Brazilian reais) in declared production in the basin during that period.

The information for this investigation comes from the VEIO (Verification and Investigation of Gold Origin) platform, which cross-references mining and deforestation data with mineral production taxes and gold export figures. The tool was developed by InfoAmazonia in partnership with Instituto Dados, with support from the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime.

The PLG is a “sham document” that sustains this system despite the Brazilian government’s inability to put an end to gold mining in the Amazon, according to Danicley Aguiar, coordinator of Greenpeace Brasil’s Indigenous Peoples Front. “It is environmentally impossible for these permits to meet even minimal conditions. Yet they continue to exist because they are part of a structural problem,” he says.

Gold mining along the Tapajós River impacts the health of communities in the Sawre Muybu Indigenous territory. Here, a dredger operates in an area linked to mercury contamination. Luis Ushirobira / InfoAmazonia

PLGs have become the backbone of illegal mining in Tapajós: Without them, gold would have to be transported through clandestine routes, often across borders, before entering the formal market. With them, gold can be declared as legally sourced and leave the Amazon already carrying a stamp of legitimacy.

Multiple mining fronts

Gerson Harlei Selzler, president of the Minuano Cooperative of Miners and Prospectors, previously headed the Cooperativa dos Garimpeiros do Brasil, whose members were investigated in Operation Sisaque for “gold laundering.” Among them were his father, Nelson Selzler, accused of supplying gold to the scheme using falsified documents, and Lillian Rodrigues Pena Fernandes, who, according to the PF, owned a company used to launder gold and ran the operation with her husband, Diego de Mello.

Although not indicted in Operation Sisaque, Gerson reported selling $548,780 (2.7 million Brazilian reais) in gold in 2023 through a PLG whose area shows no signs of extraction, such as deforestation characteristic of mining activity. He also jointly administered a PLG with Nelson Selzler in which InfoAmazonia identified declarations of gold unsupported by evidence of exploitation.

Fragmented into seven individual permits, the Minuano Cooperative garimpo authorized inside the Tapajós Environmental Protection Area (APA) reports gold overproduction in only two PLGs, shown in red. Planet Inc. (09/2025). Source: ANM

Founded in 2022, Minuano began declaring production only in 2024, coinciding with when the main suspects in Operation Sisaque stopped reporting gold transactions. Since then, the cooperative has declared roughly $9.76 million (48 million Brazilian reais) in gold production linked to two PLGs inside the Tapajós Environmental Protection Area (APA), where it operates without authorization from the Chico Mendes Institute for Biodiversity Conservation, or ICMBio, the office responsible for managing federal protected areas in Brazil. According to VEIO’s analysis, the volume declared in these PLGs exceeds by a factor of 10 the extraction estimates cited in studies, which suggest around 20 grams of gold per hectare explored.

The two PLGs used by Minuano are part of a group of eight permits held by the cooperative inside the Tapajós APA. Seven of them are contiguous, extending along the Creporizinho River, a tributary of the Crepori and Tapajós rivers, which run through the conservation unit.

Satellite images show an operation functioning as an integrated whole, despite being formally divided into parcels of up to 50 hectares, the maximum area allowed for individual mining under an ANM resolution issued in 2025. As a result, the work falls under more permissive environmental rules, since each parcel has its own authorization and environmental license issued by the city government of Itaituba. This arrangement enables large-scale extraction under simplified requirements, and satellite images reveal that the mining has already altered the river’s course.

The February meeting in Brasília regarding PLGs in the Tapajós region brought together, from right to left, Diego de Mello (accused by the Federal Public Prosecutor’s Office of “gold laundering”), Fernando Lucas (president of the Federation of Garimpeiros Cooperatives of Pará), state legislator Wescley Tomáz (Avante), and José Fernando (director of the National Mining Agency — ANM).
Instagram

Minuano holds 15 PLGs in total, including the eight within the Tapajós APA, covering 2,200 hectares. According to ICMBio, the cooperative has requested authorization to operate inside the conservation unit, but the application remains under review.

Beyond Minuano’s PLGs, Gerson also holds mining permits as an individual. He recently obtained from the ANM the transfer of rights to conduct gold prospecting on a 3,200‑hectare area, also within the Tapajós APA. For that area, VEIO found that mining was already underway, yet no production had been reported to the regulator. 

Despite mounting evidence and repeated warnings, the ANM continues to engage with suspicious actors in the sector. In March of this year, under the banner of expanding mining legalization in the region, the Pará state government backed the Legal Mining Expedition, an initiative supported by the mining agency and cooperatives.

Itaituba, a city in the Tapajós region, is home to Brazil’s largest mining front. Luis Ushirobira / InfoAmazonia

Diego de Mello, accused by the Federal Police of running the laundering scheme revealed in Operation Sisaque, attended a meeting in Brasília alongside ANM director José Fernando. The expedition held meetings in mining areas and opened channels to help legalize PLGs with applications already filed with the agency.

Mining concentrated in the hands of a few

There are currently 9,101 mining applications to exploit the Tapajós APA, including 6,255 PLGs. This report found that 21 individuals control more than half (3,382) of these applications. Some have declared gold production in more than 30 different PLGs, a situation the Federal Court of Accounts described as a “real circumvention of the area limits established by law.”

One such figure is lawyer José Antunes, who chairs the Environmental Law Commission of the Brazilian Bar Association in Itaituba and holds 162 PLGs of 50 hectares each within the conservation unit, more than 8,000 hectares in total.

José Antunes holds 162 PLGs in the Tapajós APA, spanning more than 8,000 hectares. In 31 of them, highlighted in red, he has reported production — including in areas with no detectable mining activity. Planet Inc. (09/2025). Source: ANM

Between 2022 and 2023, Antunes reported $13 million (64 million Brazilian reais) in gold sales across 31 PLGs. In several of them, there is no evidence of mining activity; in others, the extraction appears to extend beyond licensed boundaries. In December 2024, inspectors from Ibama, Brazil’s environmental regulator, documented active, unauthorized mining in areas covered by Antunes’s PLGs, including illegal mercury use, river alteration, and deforestation in Permanent Preservation Areas (APPs).

Hot gold on the market, mercury in the body

Aleckson was born already contaminated with mercury. He has never walked, uses a wheelchair, and depends on his mother, Alnice, for nearly every task. Soon after birth, he was diagnosed with spastic tetraparesis, a neurological condition that causes weakness and muscle stiffness in his limbs. The disability was attributed to a lack of oxygen during a long and painful labor.

In his most recent test, Aleckson had 6.9 micrograms of mercury per gram of hair (µg/g) in his system, three times the upper safe limit of 2.3 µg/g defined by the World Health Organization and Brazil’s Ministry of Health.

Indigenous residents prepare fish for a meal in the Sawre Muybu Indigenous territory. Luis Ushirobira/InfoAmazonia

“We eat fish almost every day. It’s very hard to change that, because this is how we were raised,” says Alnice, as her son devours a stew of surubim and barbado prepared by her sisters. In one of her tests, Alnice recorded 9 µg/g of mercury, more than four times the safe limit.

Researcher Isabela Freitas Vaz, from Fiocruz, has followed the case since the first tests. “The signs we’ve observed, not only in Aleckson’s case but in many children, point to a high-risk scenario,” she says.

Although a definitive causal link between mercury exposure and the observed clinical conditions has yet to be proven, researchers say the warning signs are consistent: people with high exposure levels exhibit indicators associated with the potential development of mercury-related diseases.

“The next step is to establish this causal connection between contamination levels and the symptoms we are seeing, so it can guide public policy,” explains Isabela Vaz.

A pregnant woman from the Sawré Muybu Indigenous territory participates in a Fiocruz study with researcher Isabela Freitas Vaz on the effect of mercury on Munduruku health. Luis Ushirobira / InfoAmazonia

The Tapajós basin lies in western Pará state, extending into northern Mato Grosso and southern Amazonas. It consists of the Tapajós River and major tributaries such as the Jamanxim, Teles Pires, and Juruena, which converge toward Santarém. Mining is concentrated in the Tapajós Gold Province, centered on Itaituba and including Jacareacanga and Novo Progresso. This area is home to Brazil’s largest active mining front.

In February, InfoAmazonia traveled along stretches of the rivers feeding the basin and accompanied Fiocruz researchers as they collected samples from pregnant women and newborns of the Munduruku people.

The researchers are investigating how mercury contamination in the Tapajós may be linked to Minamata disease, a severe neurological syndrome caused by acute exposure to methylmercury, the metal’s most toxic form.

Identified in the 1950s in Minamata, Japan, the disease struck thousands who were acutely poisoned by large volumes of industrial mercury waste dumped into the fishing bay. Many victims were left with lifelong impairments, and more than 900 died.

A sample of a baby’s hair is collected for Fiocruz research into the effect of mercury on Munduruku health. Luis Ushirobira / InfoAmazonia

Unlike the disaster in Minamata, scientists say contamination in the Tapajós occurs slowly and persistently. It is chronic rather than sudden, and its effects can take years to appear.

“The main source of contamination in the Amazon today is fish consumption. The mercury used in mining enters the river, becomes organic [methylmercury], and accumulates in the food chain,” says Pedro Basta, an analyst with the Special Secretariat for Indigenous Health and a member of the Longitudinal Study of Indigenous Pregnant Women and Newborns Exposed to Mercury in the Amazon.

Because the metal accumulates over time, it remains in the environment for decades, even in places where mining has ceased. In the Tapajós basin, it is most concentrated in carnivorous fish such as barbado, surubim, and tucunaré, species widely consumed by local communities.

Since 2019, when studies began in some villages, nearly half of the children examined have shown heavy metal levels above the safe limit. Among pregnant women, concentrations reach up to five times the recommended threshold, passing the substance to the fetus. “Mercury causes irreversible brain damage. It can cause tremors, numbness, muscle weakness, and long-term neurological problems,” says Basta.

The most significant harm may not be visible deformities but progressive neurological impairment, including delayed development, cognitive difficulties, and reduced learning capacity. For those with levels above 6.9 µg/g, considered high risk, the recommendation is to reduce fish consumption. In practice, that means altering the dietary foundation of entire communities.

Pedro Basta, an analyst with the Special Secretariat for Indigenous Health and a member of the Longitudinal Study of Indigenous Pregnant Women and Newborns Exposed to Mercury in the Amazon.
Luis Ushirobira / InfoAmazonia

In the Tapajós between the Sawré Muybu and Sawré Bap’in Indigenous lands, the water no longer retains its natural color. When we visited in February, a dozen mining rafts churned the river’s emerald green into a murky brown, five operating within a 6,700-hectare PLG authorized by the National Mining Agency (ANM) for the Cooperativa dos Garimpeiros da Amazônia, or Coogam. One raft worked less than a kilometer from the Daje Kapap village.

The area Coogam exploits along this stretch of the Tapajós forms a kind of barrier between the two territories, where the noise and movement of the mining barges are nearly constant. According to ANM records, the cooperative’s PLG authorization (850.796/2009) expired in January 2025; its environmental license expired in June 2024 and was resubmitted only early this year. Even so, the barges continued operating. ANM scheduled a task force to inspect this and other PLGs on the Tapajós, but says the inspection never occurred because of a lack of funds.

A mining dredger releases sediment into the Tapajós River during gold extraction near the Sawré Muybu Indigenous territory. Luis Ushirobira / InfoAmazonia

Between 2022 and 2026, this PLG reported $5.49 million (R$27 million) in gold sales. Coogam holds 32 PLGs in the Tapajós region and has declared $22.97 million (R$113 million) from seven of them over the past five years.

‘Regulatory permissiveness’

In December 2024, the Federal Prosecutor’s Office (MPF) filed a public civil action seeking to suspend all mining permits within the Tapajós Environmental Protection Area (APA). According to Federal Prosecutor Gilberto Batista Naves Filho, who filed the lawsuit, the permits were issued without prior ICMBio analysis, a requirement explicitly stated in Article 17 of Law 7.805/1989 for activities in conservation units.

“We are facing an evident lack of mercury control, an unacceptable risk for rivers and public health, especially for Indigenous and vulnerable populations who depend on the region’s rivers for their survival,” Naves Filho states in the civil action.

ICMBio told InfoAmazonia that mining activities within the Tapajós APA require prior authorization from the environmental agency, which has not been granted in most cases.

While gold miners use mercury, Indigenous communities in the Tapajós basin consume fish contaminated by it. Luis Ushirobira / InfoAmazonia

The result, according to the MPF, is an ongoing environmental collapse. With 83,000 hectares already affected, an area larger than New York City or Chicago, the Tapajós APA has become Brazil’s federally protected area most heavily degraded by mining, according to MapBiomas data compiled by Greenpeace at InfoAmazonia’s request.

ICMBio reports that at least 829 PLGs have been authorized by ANM within the Tapajós APA without any review by the management body. ANM interprets the law differently and argues in the MPF lawsuit that environmental authorization is required only when exploration begins, not when permits are issued.

For the MPF, this interpretation nullifies environmental oversight and turns mining permits into tools that give a veneer of legality to illegally extracted gold. The agency describes ANM’s actions as “merely notarial,” issuing permits without assessing environmental feasibility or the cumulative impacts of hundreds of mining fronts.

The lawsuit seeks $20.33 million (R$100 million) in collective moral damages from the ANM. After an unsuccessful conciliation hearing in March, the case awaits a ruling from the Federal Court.

The Federal Court of Accounts reached similar conclusions. In an audit completed in July 2025, the court identified “regulatory permissiveness” and systemic failures in oversight of the gold supply chain. The report notes that ANM’s omissions enable PLGs to launder illegal gold and artificially fragment areas, making large-scale operations viable under rules intended for small-scale mining.

Children play in the Sawré Muybu village. Luis Ushirobira / InfoAmazonia

The court ordered ANM to cancel irregular authorizations within 90 days. That deadline has passed.

On the ground, the pattern repeats. Between December 2024 and January 2025, Ibama ordered the suspension of 342 PLGs in the Tapajós APA after an operation against illegal mining. Inspectors found multiple violations, including lack of ICMBio authorization, destruction of vegetation, mining in permanent preservation areas, and extensive mercury use.

For Ibama’s director of environmental protection, Jair Schmitt, the issue goes far beyond isolated violations. Even permits considered “regular,” he says, contain structural illegalities, from municipal-level licensing, contested by the federal agency and MPF, to lack of meaningful environmental oversight.

“There is no mercury legally available for mining in Brazil today,” Schmitt says. “For this reason, even PLGs considered regular are not, because there is likely no lawful mercury available for their operations.”

Ibama estimates that producing one gram of gold requires roughly one gram of mercury. But after the Minamata Convention took effect in 2017, Brazil stopped importing the substance and sharply restricted its use. According to Schmitt, this means the current scale of mining cannot be reconciled with any legal scenario.

Although the agency claims it has no authority over the need for prior authorization for exploration in the Tapajós APA, it has begun notifying PLG permit holders within the conservation unit that they must secure ICMBio approval before starting exploration. Still, there is no news of any permits operating within the conservation unit being revoked.

The management plan for the Tapajós APA, in development since 2020, is expected to be completed this year. The proposal includes creating zoning areas within the territory, including an urban-industrial zone, the largest in the unit, to organize landscapes already heavily degraded by mining and deforestation, where ICMBio says there may still be potential for mining. The plan’s drafting has been marked by pressure from groups linked to the mining sector, pushing to formalize the activity within the conservation unit, a move environmentalists criticize because of its environmental and social impacts.

‘Water becomes like milk’

In September 2025, the Public Prosecutor’s Office in Santarém recommended annulling 15 PLGs granted in areas adjoining the Sawré Muybu, Sawré Bap’in, Munduruku, and Sai-Cinza territories, including the Coogam PLG documented during our February reporting trip.

According to the MPF, these permits were issued without prior consultation with Indigenous communities, as required by International Labor Organization Convention 169. The agency also notes that barge and mining operations near the villages violate measures ordered by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights to contain mercury contamination. “It is unacceptable for state-licensed projects to inflict the same harm on Indigenous people as illegal mining,” prosecutor Thais Medeiros da Costa wrote in a recommendation sent to ANM in September 2025.

Chief Juarez Saw Munduruku from the Sawré Muybu Indigenous territory. Luis Ushirobira / InfoAmazonia

“When the prospectors arrive and start working, the water becomes like milk,” said Chief Juarez Saw Munduruku of the Sawré Muybu Indigenous Land. “We can’t bathe anymore; it causes itching. It used to be joyful; children played along the riverbank. Today that’s over,” he says.

According to the chief, mercury exposure has become part of daily life for families, with symptoms resembling those researchers are investigating as possible effects of poisoning.

“My son’s contamination level has reached the limit. He already feels numbness in his legs and arms. We keep wondering … could this be what’s causing these symptoms?” the chief asks.

Deivison Saw Munduruku, the chief’s son, is among the cases with the highest contamination levels recorded by researchers, nearly 10 times above the safe threshold.

Aldira Akai Munduruku, deputy coordinator of the Pariri Indigenous Association and a teacher in Sawré-Muybu village, believes contamination may be linked to some children’s learning difficulties. “We notice that some children struggle to learn, and this is not normal,” she says.

A classroom at the Sawre Ba’ay school in the Sawré Muybu village. Luis Ushirobira / InfoAmazonia

In 2019, the Pariri Association approached researcher Paulo Basta — the father of analyst Pedro Basta and coordinator of Fiocruz’s “environment, diversity, and health” research group — after the death of environmentalist Cássio Beda, who had lived among the Munduruku and developed a severe neurological condition. While mercury poisoning has not been confirmed as the cause, the physician who treated him noted the possibility of “secondary motor neuron disease and mercury intoxication” in a July 2017 report, as reported by Repórter Brasil.

“We monitor the results and try to warn people. But it’s not only the Munduruku who can change this. We need more effective public policies,” Aldira says.

Among the Indigenous residents interviewed, suspected miscarriages, numbness in the limbs, memory lapses, and tremors appeared frequently, symptoms the medical literature associates with high mercury levels.

Aldira Akai Munduruku, vice coordinator of the Pariri Indigenous Association and a teacher in the Sawré-Muybu village. Luis Ushirobira / InfoAmazonia

For Paulo Basta, who coordinates research in the region and is working to determine which symptoms are linked to mercury exposure, one conclusion is clear: continual exposure, combined with precarious living conditions in the villages, creates extreme vulnerability. In this setting, he says, mercury exacerbates existing inequalities, hindering child development and shaping the entire life trajectory of affected populations.

“A child with mental deficits today becomes an adult with mental deficits tomorrow. They will struggle in school and later in the job market,” Basta explains.

Paradoxically, when the Tapajós River swells during the Amazon’s winter rains, access to water becomes even more limited. As the river floods, contamination spreads into the streams supplying the villages, bringing mud and mercury.

Indigenous residents swim, bathe, fish, and wash clothes in the Tapajós River. Luis Ushirobira / InfoAmazonia

On February 13, a federal court ruling underscored the severity of the health crisis in the Tapajós, ordering the federal government to provide drinking water to Indigenous communities and recognizing the structural abandonment aggravated by mining-related contamination.

The National Mining Agency (ANM) stated that PLGs with environmental licenses are considered valid and that it is not the agency’s role to “question the validity of the documentation submitted,” saying it relies on licenses issued by other authorities. Regarding the Tapajós APA, the agency acknowledged the requirement for ICMBio approval and said it is working to identify and regularize permits lacking it. The agency maintains it is not responsible for identifying illegalities because it received the licenses “in good faith.”

On the issue of irregularities, ANM said it does not authorize mercury use in PLGs. It acknowledged knowing of evidence of the laundering of gold, a practice linked to weaknesses in the self-declaration system, and said it uses inspections, data cross-checking, and satellite monitoring to detect inconsistencies between explored areas and reported production.

The Sawré Muybu village. Luis Ushirobira / InfoAmazonia

“There are ongoing administrative investigations, some confidential, others public, into indications of irregularities in the gold production chain, including possible cases of laundering,” the ANM stated.

The agency also said it has discussed prior consultation with Indigenous peoples but noted there is no automatic ban on mining within 10 kilometers of Indigenous lands, considered a direct-impact zone. In a statement to InfoAmazonia, it said it had no knowledge of the so-called “Legal Mining Expedition,” supported by the Pará state government, and did not comment on the meeting between representatives of the initiative and one of its directors.

The report also contacted Coogam president Tânia Oliveira Sena, who declined to be interviewed. We also reached out to the defense of Nelson Selzler, who declined to comment on his mention in the Federal Police investigation and the activities of the Minuano Cooperative in the Tapajós APA. The report was unable to reach Gerson Harlei Selzler, Diego de Mello, or his wife, Lillian Rodrigues Pena Fernandes.

Lawyer José Antunes has contested oversight authorities’ findings that no signs of mining were present in the PLGs where he declared production. He argues that the satellite images used to reach this conclusion “are not reliable for the Tapajós biome.” He also disputes the irregularity arising from lack of ICMBio authorization, saying his operations were licensed by Pará’s state environmental agency. Regarding the concentration of PLGs, Antunes claims it “represents almost nothing compared to the area of the Tapajós APA” and insists they “are all fully up to date.”

Aerial view of the Tapajós River beside the Sawré Muybu village. Luis Ushirobira / InfoAmazonia

Responding to Ibama’s citations for illegal mercury use in the area of his PLGs, Antunes said in a statement that the violations “were committed by miners who have no link to me, as they themselves stated.” He also criticized what he called sweeping generalizations in the investigations and argued for greater legal certainty for the sector, insisting he acts in good faith and within the law.

For Danicley Aguiar of Greenpeace, the state’s failure to address the region’s economic dependence on mining ensures the activity will continue to thrive, even under a veneer of legality, while inflicting ongoing environmental and social harm.

“Mining violates human rights in a widespread and systematic way. How can the state tolerate such an activity? How can it claim this is essential for regional development?” he asked. For the Munduruku, the distinction between “legal” and “illegal” areas does little to change daily life. Mining continues to contaminate the river, and the river remains the center of their existence.

Methodology

VEIO uses data from mining processes (SIGMINE) and mineral production declarations (CFEM), both provided by the National Mining Agency for the Legal Amazon. The tool cross-references this information with georeferenced data from DETER/Inpe deforestation alerts, Sentinel-2 satellite imagery and gold export figures from Comex Stat, Brazil’s foreign trade statistics system, to automatically analyze and flag potential irregularities. These alerts are updated weekly and indicate whether illegal activity is affecting Indigenous Lands, Quilombola Territories, Conservation Units or Rural Settlements.

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Translated from the Portuguese original by Matt Sandy.

This investigation was carried out with support from the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime (GI-TOC).

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline The Brazilian government keeps giving out mining licenses in the Amazon – in spite of evidence of gold ‘laundering’ on May 14, 2026.

When the NASDAQ opens on Wednesday morning, the exchange will include a new ticker symbol: FRVO. The company, Fervo Energy, is in the geothermal electricity business and aims to raise $1.8 billion. An initial public offering of that magnitude would be one of the biggest Wall Street debuts for renewable energy in U.S. history and a promising sign for clean tech’s future.

“This is a very, very big deal,” said Gernot Wagner, a climate economist at Columbia Business School. “Money speaks.”

At the simplest level, geothermal generation is the process of harnessing the heat within the earth to produce steam, which then spins turbines to generate much-needed electricity. But locating suitable geology and getting deep enough to make power on a utility-scale isn’t easy. Fervo uses horizontal drilling and fiber-optic sensing to tap previously out-of-reach sources. 

“Innovation is allowing these technologies to cover a wider variety of sites,” said Zainab Gilani, a geothermal analyst with research firm Cleantech Group. Fervo, she noted, is using some of the same techniques that the oil and gas industry uses, with the hope of cutting the price of geothermal from $7,000 to $3,000 per kilowatt as it grows. This initial public offering, or IPO, could prove a bellwether for not only that technology, but cleantech more broadly. 

“If Fervo demonstrates that there is money to be made for investors,” said Wagner, that “is going to draw a lot of attention well beyond just the narrow advanced geothermal community.” 

Fervo has successfully deployed its technology in Nevada, producing enough clean energy to power about 2,600 homes. It is building a much bigger facility, Cape Station, in Utah that would produce more than 100 times that amount of electricity and is slated to go online later this year. The prospect has attracted a slew of high-profile investors, including Bill Gates’ Breakthrough Energy Ventures, and Alphabet, the parent company of Google, which has also signed contracts with the company to supply power to its data centers. 

Now it’s the public’s turn to weigh in. 

When Fervo announced it was going public earlier this year, it said it would sell 55.6 million shares at around $21 to $24 each. Its debut comes as electricity demand is rapidly rising in the U.S. The race to build the data centers needed to sustain the artificial intelligence boom has strained grids nationwide, and has made the appetite for reliable energy seem insatiable. The Iran war has only exacerbated high energy prices, and this week Fervo boosted its target to 70 million shares, at around $25 or $26, which would value the company at $7.4 billion. The line has reportedly been out the door. 

Still, the road ahead won’t be easy, and bringing the price of geothermal down will take time. “They’re just not here yet on any large scale,” said Rob Gramlich, president of Grid Strategies, a power sector consultant. “They are great 2040 and 2050 options.”

Regardless of whether Fervo’s stock sinks or sails in the coming months or years, some see its initial offering as a promising sign for a clean energy industry that has faced political whiplash in recent years. The Inflation Reduction Act that President Joseph Biden signed in 2022 was the nation’s most ambitious climate legislation ever and included billions for solar, wind, geothermal, and other green technologies. But, since returning to office, President Donald Trump and Congress have largely dismantled that legislation, rolled back much of the nation’s wind development, and pushed fossil fuel as the answer to the country’s energy woes. 

While many major projects were canceled in the wake of those changes, Fervo has secured hundreds of millions of dollars in additional financing for Cape Station, and could be about to have a blockbuster IPO. “You’re in this situation where it is very obvious that the oil and gas sector is doing the best it can,” said Jigar Shah, a former senior official at the Department of Energy under Biden. “But the climate sector is the one that’s surging.” 

Earlier this year, Amazon-backed nuclear reactor developer X-Energy raised $1 billion with its public offering and is valued at more than $9 billion. Shah, who is a managing partner at the investment firm Multiplier, says IPOs like these bode well for clean tech. 

“There is a level of confidence coming to our sector, which I think is great,” said Shah. “For a long time, our space has acted as if we’re alternative energy. But when you’re 90 percent of everything that gets added to the grid every year, you’re no longer alternative.”

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This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Wall Street is betting big on clean energy tech on May 13, 2026.

All across Georgia, on the banks of the Coosa, Chattahoochee, and Ocmulgee and other rivers, sit large lagoons filled with coal ash, the toxic residue left behind after coal is burned. These massive impoundments hold millions of tons of toxic stew, and most are unlined. As a result, heavy metals in the coal ash — such as arsenic and mercury — quietly leach into the ground and nearby water bodies. 

In 2015, the Obama administration passed rules requiring utilities to clean up the ponds and implement monitoring requirements, transforming the Environmental Protection Agency into the chief regulator overseeing these sites. States were also given the opportunity to assume this regulatory role — as long as they met minimum federal requirements. 

Georgia was among the first to do so. In 2019, the EPA approved the state’s authority to oversee coal ash management. But in their first official act — a “bellwether” for future decisions — regulators at the state’s Environmental Protection Division approved a permit to leave coal ash partly submerged in groundwater at one of Georgia Power’s plants. Despite outcry from communities and a rebuke by the EPA, the agency continues to hold its regulatory authority and has approved another 20 permits for coal ash ponds at roughly a dozen coal plants across the state. 

The Trump administration is now signaling it wants to transfer coal ash oversight to even more states and roll back federal protections. Five states currently have approved coal ash programs, including Georgia, Oklahoma, Texas, North Dakota, and Wyoming. Oklahoma and Georgia were approved during Trump’s first term, Texas received approval during the Biden administration, and North Dakota and Wyoming were approved in the last year. The Trump administration is also in the process of approving Virginia for local coal ash permitting.

“The state agencies that have programs where they can issue permits, we’ve seen, unfortunately, that they’ve not been rigorous in enforcing standards,” said Nick Torrey, a senior attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center. “We know that they are underfunded, underresourced. The utilities are often the most powerful entity in the state and call the shots.”

A spokesperson for the EPA stressed that the agency maintains “backstop authority and will use it” if states fail to meet federal standards. The agency can conduct reviews as necessary, and state programs are only approved if they are at least as protective of public health and the environment as the federal requirements, the spokesperson noted. “If state staffing or funding proves inadequate — or if implementation is otherwise deficient — EPA will address it through these reviews,” they said.

The coal ash decision is part of a broader campaign to shift environmental regulation to the states. During Trump’s first term, the EPA handed over wetlands permitting in Florida to state regulators — the first state to apply for and receive the authority in 25 years. In January, the administration began the process of accepting so-called “Good Neighbor Plans” from eight states. These plans had previously been rejected by the Biden administration for failing to prevent ozone emissions from crossing state lines. And over the past year, the administration has expanded state authority over underground carbon sequestration, giving West Virginia, Arizona, and Texas supervisory authority of carbon injection wells. 

According to the EPA, there are more than 670 coal ash ponds across the country. The lagoons range in size from a few acres to a thousand or more. Over the years, many of these ponds have repeatedly spilled coal ash into waterways. One of the worst accidents took place in 2008 when a dike at a Tennessee Valley Authority pond failed, releasing more than a billion gallons of coal ash. The flood buried homes, and residents are still reporting health issues. Similar incidents have occurred on the Dan River in North Carolina and in eastern Kentucky.

The Obama administration’s 2015 rules — the first oversight of coal ash — required utilities to monitor groundwater near coal ash ponds for contamination and for new ponds to be lined. In cases where there was evidence coal ash was leaching into water, the companies were required to close the ponds, either by draining them or excavating the ash and moving it elsewhere. 

But the rule had major loopholes and didn’t cover all coal ash disposal sites. Lagoons that weren’t actively receiving new material and located at retired coal plants weren’t covered. And crucially, dump sites — where coal ash is collected before being moved into lagoons — were not included in the rule. As a result, when testing indicated heavy metals were leaching into groundwater, utilities could point to the dump sites and claim they were to blame. 

“Utilities would point to these areas and say, ‘We don’t have to clean up our groundwater pollution because we think the pollution is coming from these exempt areas. Therefore, the pollution is exempt,’” said Torrey. 

About six years ago, the Altamaha Riverkeeper, a local nonprofit, tested groundwater near the coal-fired Plant Scherer in Monroe County, Georgia, and began notifying residents that their well water was contaminated with compounds found in coal ash. The county eventually ran water lines, but some low-income residents unable to afford water bills still rely on church waterfilling stations, said Fletcher Sams, executive director of the Altamaha Riverkeeper. “This is an area where the median household income is $30,000,” said Sams. “It’s pretty rural, and some people can’t afford to run pipe from the road and the hookup and the monthly fee for the water.”

Sara Lips, a spokesperson for the  Georgia Environmental Protection Division, said that the agency has a long history of overseeing coal ash in the state prior to the passage of the Obama-era rules. Their oversight has allowed for “timelier permitting process, quicker response to compliance issues, better understanding of community and environmental needs, and the ability for our permits to be more stringent than the federal requirements.” Lips said the agency added five staff members to help oversee coal ash permitting and that the state’s permits comply with federal regulations. “Georgia’s state rules reference and incorporate the federal rules,” she said. Lips also defended the permit at Plant Hammond, which the EPA noted was deficient, saying Georgia Power installed a cover system that “minimizes infiltration, promotes runoff, and collects precipitation to prevent future impoundment of surface water, sediment, or slurry” at the coal ash pond.  

In 2024, the Biden EPA attempted to close these loopholes by expanding coverage with a new rule that applied to all coal ash disposal sites, including so-called “legacy ponds.” But the Trump administration is now attempting to unwind these protections. In April, the EPA proposed exempting older or inactive coal ash disposal sites from the rules and granting state officials more leeway in overseeing coal ash monitoring plans. In press releases announcing these plans and the EPA’s intent to overhaul how coal ash is managed, administrator Lee Zeldin said that the agency “will advance cooperative federalism to allow states to lead the charge on local issues, with federal support. This is just one of many examples where this agency can and will work with our state partners to deliver for the American people.” 

“State environmental agencies know their communities, their geology, their utilities, and their facilities better than any federal regulator in Washington, and empowering them to run their own permit programs, under a federal floor of protection that cannot be lowered and with continuing EPA oversight, delivers stronger, faster, and more accountable results for the people and resources at stake,” the EPA spokesperson said. 

This move comes at a time when state legislatures have slashed budgets for environmental agencies. According to an analysis by the Environmental Integrity Project, a nonprofit founded by former EPA enforcement officials under both parties, more than half of states have cut funding for environmental agencies in the last 15 years. Mississippi’s budget has dropped by more than 70 percent during this time period, while South Dakota had its budget slashed by 61 percent. Three of the five states overseeing coal ash disposal — Texas, Georgia, and Wyoming — have had budget cuts of at least 20 percent over this time. Georgia has reduced its staffing by about 16 percent. 

Not all states that have applied for coal ash authority have received it. In 2024, the EPA rejected Alabama’s application to manage its coal ash ponds because it did not meet standards set in federal law. “Alabama’s permit program does not require that groundwater contamination be adequately addressed during the closure of these coal ash units,” the agency noted in its decision.

Torrey said the Trump administration appears poised to rubber stamp state requests, putting public health and the environment at risk.

“There’s a real retreat from the EPA doing the job it was created to do,” Torrey said. “When you combine that with the weakening and choking of funds for state agencies, it means that people are getting dramatically less protection from pollution.”

This story has been updated with comments from the EPA and Georgia Environmental Protection Division.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline The EPA wants to shift monitoring of toxic coal ash to states on May 13, 2026.

As the Trump administration continues its push to secure critical minerals like lithium, the U.S. government and private corporations have ignored Indigenous peoples’ rights in Nevada. That’s according to a report released today by Amnesty International, which is calling for the suspension of federal permits for all lithium mines in the state. 

The Silver State has emerged as a key source of lithium, the main component in electric vehicle and other batteries. About 85 percent of the country’s known reserves are in Nevada, and several Indigenous nations and organizations, alongside environmentalists, have been fighting for years against its extraction and the environmental risks that creates, including water contamination and biodiversity loss. “This is our land,” said Fermina Stevens, a member of the Te-Moak Tribe of Western Shoshone and the executive director of the Western Shoshone Defense Project. “We should have a say in what happens. But I know that they don’t want us there because Nevada is so rich in all of these minerals.” 

The three projects Amnesty International highlights in its report are Thacker Pass Lithium Mine, Nevada North Lithium Project, and Rhyolite Ridge Lithium-Boron Project. Each is located primarily on public land that the Western Shoshone and Paiute people consider unceded territory. Thacker Pass is under construction and Rhyolite Ridge is slated to begin construction this year, while Nevada North is in the exploratory phase. 

Amnesty International’s report says all three are violating Indigenous peoples’ right to free, prior, and informed consent. That principle, known as FPIC, is an international standard that affirms Indigenous peoples’ right to approve or deny projects that impact their land and communities. Although the projects were approved by federal agencies, Amnesty International argues the review processes fell short of FPIC and the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, or UNDRIP.

“They’ve got to come down on the right side,” Mark Dummett, the organization’s head of business and human rights, said of the mining companies. “They’ve got to come down on the side of human rights, rather than getting the minerals at all costs.” He added that, regardless of domestic laws in the countries in which they operate, these firms must follow international human rights standards. The report also highlights the impact of the Trump administration’s push for deregulation, including fast-tracked permits and limited environmental review, which reduces the ability of Indigenous peoples to offer full consent. 

In a statement, a spokesperson from the U.S. Department of Interior said, “The climate crazed activists behind this report are notorious for making baseless claims, repeatedly rejected by courts, as part of their pathetic rage against energy production that is not only bipartisan, but proven to benefit the American people.” They also said that a review of lithium projects in Nevada by the federal Bureau of Land Management included extensive environmental review and opportunity for tribal engagement.

Nevada is experiencing a lithium boom that has seen more than 20,000 claims filed. The report also comes amid global resistance by Indigenous peoples to “green transition” mining that they say comes at the expense of their land and rights. Given the increasing demand for minerals like lithium, cobalt, and copper, Dummett said that mining companies around the world are taking advantage of gaps in regulation and human rights enforcement. “The way that this mining has always taken place has been incredibly damaging to the environment and people,” Dummett said. “We don’t want to see the mistakes of the past repeated.”

Stevens said that although her people have experienced a long history of land theft and abuse by the U.S. government and corporations, consultation has grown even more perfunctory amid the worldwide drive for lithium, which has surged since the war in Iran. “War and the military complex is all that they can see,” she said. “And so they’re blinded to the things that are sacred, that are more important for human survival. And I just don’t think that they care about those things.”

Lithium Americas, the owner of the Thacker Pass mine, disputed many of the report’s claims in a response submitted to Amnesty International, including inadequate consultation, environmental risks, and violation of Indigenous rights. Its reply also noted that UNDRIP is not binding in the United States, but argued that the project complies with it anyway. “The Thacker Pass Project has the potential to significantly advance America’s electrification efforts, reduce carbon emissions, and strengthen domestic supply chains for critical minerals — strengthening America’s energy future. LAC has made stakeholder engagement, including with Tribes, an important part of the development of the Project,” its response reads.  

A spokesperson for Ioneer, the owner of the Rhyolite Ridge project, said the company “respectfully but firmly disagrees with the findings released by Amnesty International,” and highlighted the company’s engagement with tribes. “We take great pride in our compliance with all U.S. legal requirements and remain committed to a transparent process that respects tribal sovereignty while delivering a reliable and secure domestic supply of critical minerals,” the spokesperson said.

Surge and Evolution, the owners of the Nevada North Lithium Project, did not respond to a request for comment, but in a response to Amnesty International, Evolution said, “We take all reasonable efforts to conduct proactive and ongoing engagement with Indigenous peoples.”

Indigenous leaders said they do not expect the mining companies to change, but will continue the fight to protect their land. “We can survive without technology, but we can’t survive without water,” Stevens said. “We can’t save the Earth through the energy transition while we’re simultaneously destroying biodiversity.”

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This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Report: Nevada’s lithium boom comes at the expense of Indigenous rights on May 12, 2026.

The cruise ship departed Ushuaia, Argentina, in April with plans to ferry 147 passengers and crew members to some of the most remote places on earth, including Antarctica. But the ship, named the MV Hondius, had its voyage cut short by a rare virus that has killed three and infected several others. 

Hantaviruses are an ancient family of rodent-borne pathogens that likely caused disease in humans long before they first appeared in medical records in the 1950s. The viruses infect people via rodent waste — often through the inhalation of dust containing trace amounts of the excreta. Andes hantavirus, the strain that gripped the MV Hondius on its polar cruise, is one of a few hantaviruses known to cause hantavirus pulmonary syndrome, a rare but often deadly illness.

The Andes strain is also the only known hantavirus that can be transmitted human-to-human — a characteristic turning a rare rodent-borne infection into a multinational emergency, just a few years after the world was caught flat-footed by the COVID-19 pandemic.

The good news is that the Andes hantavirus, while uniquely deadly, is likely nowhere nearly as transmissible as COVID-19. Nevertheless, the outbreak is illuminating the complexity of responding to infectious disease outbreaks as international cooperation on public health issues has become fractured and contentious — all while global pandemics are only becoming more likely overall. A month before the first patients onboard the MV Hondius became symptomatic, Argentina officially completed the process of withdrawing from the World Health Organization, joining the U.S. in leaving a global health alliance that exists in large part to coordinate responses to these very kinds of cross-border disease outbreaks. 

The emergency also points to another growing challenge for global public health: Climate change is altering the rainfall, vegetation, and habitat conditions that influence rodent populations — changes that experts say boost the odds that the pathogens these animals carry will spill over into human populations.

While the hantavirus’s one-to-six-week incubation period means the outbreak could have originated in any of the passengers’ home countries, a possible culprit is the ship’s stop for a birding expedition near Ushuaia, which is home to a landfill that attracts rodents looking for food. Argentina’s health authorities have already documented a sharp rise in hantavirus this season: 101 infections have been recorded since June 2025, about twice as many as there were in the same period a year earlier.

The country’s health ministry hasn’t yet determined what’s behind the surge, but research suggests that climate change may play a role. Argentina and neighboring countries in South America endured years of severe drought between 2021 and 2024, including Argentina’s worst dry spell in more than 60 years in 2023, followed by extreme rainfall last year. Weather extremes exacerbated by global warming change how rodents behave, according to Kirk Douglas, a senior scientist who studies hantaviruses and climate change at the University of the West Indies, Cave Hill, in Barbados.

Prolonged drought sends rats and mice into populated areas in search of food, which can put people at higher risk of contracting the virus. Sudden rainfall following drought causes trees and shrubs to produce a windfall of nuts and seeds, which tend to benefit rodents and boost their numbers — all the while increasing the risk of transmission from animal to human.

That doesn’t mean there’s a one-to-one relationship between global temperature rise and rodent-driven risk, however, and climate change is hardly the only force at play. A complex web of natural and human-made landscape changes can increase or decrease contact between humans and rodents. Increased temperatures and humidity, for example, don’t seem to influence the disease ecology of hantavirus in the same way that drought and precipitation do.

“Hantavirus is sensitive to the changes climate change will bring,” Douglas emphasized. “It’s all dependent on what the prevailing climate impact is.”

That complexity makes hantavirus risk difficult to predict — and easy to overlook. In the United States, hantavirus has been rare since federal surveillance began in 1993. There were fewer than 1,000 total confirmed cases up to 2023, the latest year that data is available. About 35 percent of those cases, almost all of which occurred west of the Mississippi River, resulted in death. 

As in South America, the dynamics of hantavirus in the U.S. may be shifting. The places most at risk, federal scientists reported in a study published last year, are dry landscapes where homes are spread out, many kinds of rodents live nearby, and communities may have fewer resources to prevent or respond to disease — conditions that describe broad swaths of the American West.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline How climate change could help hantavirus find more hosts on May 12, 2026.

When cleaning crews dug deep into New Orleans’ clogged drains in 2018, they pulled up leaves, mud — and 46 tons of Mardi Gras beads. 

The sheer magnitude of waste accumulated over decades of Carnivals — and its impact on the flood-prone city’s drainage system — shocked many residents and city officials. 

“Once you hear a number like that, there’s no going back,” then-Public Works director Dani Galloway said at the time. “So we’ve got to do better.”

But nearly a decade later, New Orleans is generating more Mardi Gras garbage than ever. During the roughly five weeks of this year’s Carnival season, crews collected 1,363 tons of beaded necklaces, beer cans, plastic cups, and other refuse along the city’s parade routes — a 24 percent increase from the year before and the highest total on record. The trash tonnage is the equivalent of 741 cars. In New Orleans terms, it’s roughly the weight of the Steamboat Natchez or more than 1 million king cakes.  

.nola-mardi-gras-trash { --color-primary: #3c3830; --color-secondary: #777; --color-orange: #F79945; --color-turquoise: #12A07F; --color-fuchsia: #AC00E8; --color-cobalt: #3977F3; --color-earth: #3c3830; --typography-primary: "PolySans", Arial, sans-serif; --typography-secondary: "Basis Grotesque", Arial, sans-serif; --spacing-base: 10px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: var(--typography-secondary); margin: 1.5rem auto; padding: 0; position: relative; width: 100%; } .nola-mardi-gras-trash * { box-sizing: border-box; } .nola-mardi-gras-trash svg text { font-family: var(--typography-secondary); } .nola-mardi-gras-trash__title { font-family: var(--typography-primary); font-size: 24px; margin: var(--spacing-base) 0; text-align: left; } .nola-mardi-gras-trash__subtitle { font-family: var(--typography-secondary); color: var(--color-primary); font-size: 18px; margin: 0 0 var(--spacing-base); text-align: left; } .nola-mardi-gras-trash__axis-label { color: var(--color-primary); font-size: 14px; } .nola-mardi-gras-trash .axis-grid line { stroke: #e0e0e0; stroke-opacity: 0.7; shape-rendering: crispEdges; } .nola-mardi-gras-trash .axis-grid .domain { stroke: none; } .nola-mardi-gras-trash .domain { stroke: #3c3830; } .nola-mardi-gras-trash .bar-label { font-family: var(--typography-secondary); font-size: 12px; fill: var(--color-primary); text-anchor: middle; } .nola-mardi-gras-trash__footer { display: flex; justify-content: space-between; align-items: flex-end; margin-top: 0px; gap: 16px; } .nola-mardi-gras-trash__credits { display: flex; flex-direction: column; } .nola-mardi-gras-trash__note { color: var(--color-secondary); font-size: 12px; margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: 4px; display: inline-block; font-style: italic; } .nola-mardi-gras-trash__source { color: var(--color-secondary); font-size: 12px; margin-top: 0; display: inline-block; } .nola-mardi-gras-trash__credit { color: var(--color-secondary); font-size: 12px; margin-top: 3px; font-style: italic; font-weight: bold; display: inline-block; } .nola-mardi-gras-trash__logo { height: auto; max-width: 62px; min-width: 50px; margin-left: auto; padding-right: 20px; margin-right: 0; margin-bottom: 0; transform: translateY(-2px); } Mardi Gras revelers are leaving behind more trash than ever Tons of trash collected from New Orleans parade routes, 2011–2026 *No Carnival in 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Source: City of New Orleans Dennis Dean / Verite / Clayton Aldern / Grist / Alexander Grey / Unsplash (function() { const INIT_KEY = '__grist_nola_mardi_gras_trash_initialized__'; if (window[INIT_KEY]) { return; } window[INIT_KEY] = true; const COLORS = { TEXT: 'var(--color-primary)', BAR: 'var(--color-fuchsia)', BAR_NEGATIVE: '#E57373' }; const BAR_RADIUS = 4; const svg = d3.select('#nola-mardi-gras-trash-bar-chart'); const getSvgHeight = () => parseInt(svg.attr('height')) || 450; const formatCompactWithB = (n) => d3.format('~s')(n).replace('G', 'B').replace('k', 'K'); function calculateYTicks(height, fontSize = 14) { const minSpacing = fontSize * 2; return Math.max(2, Math.floor(height / minSpacing)); } function measureYAxisWidth(svg, scale, chartHeight, formatTick) { const tickCount = calculateYTicks(chartHeight); const TICK_PADDING = 4; const tempGroup = svg.append('g') .attr('class', 'nola-mardi-gras-trash__y-axis-measure') .style('visibility', 'hidden'); const axis = d3.axisLeft(scale) .ticks(tickCount) .tickFormat(formatTick) .tickSize(0) .tickPadding(TICK_PADDING); tempGroup.call(axis); tempGroup.selectAll('text') .style('font-family', 'var(--typography-secondary)') .style('font-size', '14px'); let minX = 0; tempGroup.selectAll('text').each(function() { const bbox = this.getBBox(); if (bbox.x < minX) { minX = bbox.x; } }); tempGroup.remove(); return { width: -minX, tickCount, tickPadding: TICK_PADDING }; } const rawData = [{"Year":"2011","Tons":"930"},{"Year":"2012","Tons":"835"},{"Year":"2013","Tons":"845"},{"Year":"2014","Tons":"895"},{"Year":"2015","Tons":"905"},{"Year":"2016","Tons":"940"},{"Year":"2017","Tons":"1328"},{"Year":"2018","Tons":"1150"},{"Year":"2019","Tons":"1075"},{"Year":"2020","Tons":"1120"},{"Year":"2021","Tons":"0"},{"Year":"2022","Tons":"1145"},{"Year":"2023","Tons":"1165"},{"Year":"2024","Tons":"1065"},{"Year":"2025","Tons":"1100"},{"Year":"2026","Tons":"1364"}]; const categoryColumn = 'Year'; const valueColumn = 'Tons'; const chartData = rawData.map(d => ({ category: d[categoryColumn], value: +String(d[valueColumn]).replace(/,/g, '') })); function wrapSvgText(textSelection, width, lineHeight) { textSelection.each(function() { const text = d3.select(this); const words = text.text().split(/\s+/).reverse(); let word; let line = []; let lineNumber = 0; const y = text.attr('y') || 0; const dy = parseFloat(text.attr('dy')) || 0; let tspan = text.text(null).append('tspan').attr('x', 0).attr('y', y).attr('dy', dy + 'em'); while ((word = words.pop())) { line.push(word); tspan.text(line.join(' ')); if (tspan.node().getComputedTextLength() > width) { line.pop(); tspan.text(line.join(' ')); line = [word]; tspan = text.append('tspan').attr('x', 0).attr('y', y).attr('dy', ++lineNumber * (lineHeight / 14) + dy + 'em').text(word); } } }); } function detectLabelOverlap(labels, bandWidth) { let maxLabelWidth = 0; labels.each(function() { const bbox = this.getBBox ? this.getBBox() : { width: 0 }; maxLabelWidth = Math.max(maxLabelWidth, bbox.width); }); return maxLabelWidth > bandWidth * 0.9; } let rotatedLabels = false; function renderChart() { svg.selectAll('*').remove(); const LEFT_PADDING = 8; let needsRotation = rotatedLabels; const baseBottomMargin = 30; const rotatedBottomMargin = 42; const baseMargin = { top: 12, right: 12, bottom: needsRotation ? rotatedBottomMargin : baseBottomMargin, left: 0 }; const node = svg.node(); const styleWidth = parseInt(svg.style('width')); const attrWidth = parseInt(svg.attr('width')); const bboxWidth = node ? node.getBoundingClientRect().width : 0; const containerWidth = (bboxWidth > 0 ? bboxWidth : 0) || (attrWidth > 0 ? attrWidth : 0) || ((!isNaN(styleWidth) ? (styleWidth > 0 ? styleWidth : 0) : 0) || 600); const svgHeight = getSvgHeight(); const height = svgHeight - baseMargin.top - baseMargin.bottom; if (height <= 0) return; const yMin = d3.min(chartData, d => d.value); const yMax = d3.max(chartData, d => d.value); const yDomainMin = yMin < 0 ? yMin * 1.1 : 0; const yDomainMax = yMax > 0 ? yMax * 1.1 : 0; const y = d3.scaleLinear() .domain([yDomainMin, yDomainMax]) .range([height, 0]); const { width: yLabelWidth, tickCount: yTickCount, tickPadding: yTickPadding } = measureYAxisWidth(svg, y, height, formatCompactWithB); const margin = { ...baseMargin, left: yLabelWidth + LEFT_PADDING }; const width = containerWidth - margin.left - margin.right; if (width <= 0) return; svg.attr('height', svgHeight); const x = d3.scaleBand() .domain(chartData.map(d => d.category)) .range([0, width]) .padding(0.25); svg.append('g') .attr('class', 'axis-grid') .attr('transform', `translate(${margin.left},${margin.top})`) .call(d3.axisLeft(y).ticks(yTickCount).tickSize(-width).tickFormat('')); const xAxis = g => { g.attr('transform', `translate(${margin.left},${height + margin.top})`) .call(d3.axisBottom(x)); const labels = g.selectAll('.tick text') .attr('class', 'nola-mardi-gras-trash__axis-label') .style('fill', COLORS.TEXT) .text(function() { const t = d3.select(this).text(); return t === '2021' ? '2021*' : t; }); if (detectLabelOverlap(labels, x.bandwidth())) { needsRotation = true; } if (needsRotation) { labels .style('text-anchor', 'end') .attr('dx', '-0.5em') .attr('dy', '0.25em') .attr('transform', 'rotate(-45)'); } else { const maxWidth = Math.min(80, Math.max(48, width / chartData.length - 6)); labels .style('text-anchor', 'middle') .call(wrapSvgText, maxWidth, 14); } }; const yAxisGenerator = g => g .attr('transform', `translate(${margin.left},${margin.top})`) .call(d3.axisLeft(y).ticks(yTickCount).tickFormat(d => formatCompactWithB(d)).tickPadding(yTickPadding)) .selectAll('text') .attr('class', 'nola-mardi-gras-trash__axis-label') .style('fill', COLORS.TEXT); svg.append('g').call(xAxis); if (needsRotation ? !rotatedLabels : false) { rotatedLabels = true; return renderChart(); } svg.append('g').call(yAxisGenerator); const chart = svg.append('g').attr('transform', `translate(${margin.left},${margin.top})`); const defs = chart.append('defs'); // Add dashed zero line when data crosses zero if (yMin < 0 ? yMax > 0 : false) { chart.append('line') .attr('class', 'zero-line') .attr('x1', 0) .attr('y1', y(0)) .attr('x2', width) .attr('y2', y(0)) .attr('stroke', '#888') .attr('stroke-width', 1) .attr('stroke-dasharray', '4,4'); } const grayFilter = defs.append('filter').attr('id', 'nola-mardi-gras-trash-greyscale'); grayFilter.append('feColorMatrix').attr('type', 'saturate').attr('values', '0'); const barsMask = defs.append('mask').attr('id', 'nola-mardi-gras-trash-bars-mask'); chartData.forEach(d => { const barY = d.value >= 0 ? y(d.value) : y(0); const barHeight = Math.abs(y(d.value) - y(0)); barsMask.append('rect') .attr('x', x(d.category)) .attr('y', barY) .attr('width', x.bandwidth()) .attr('height', barHeight) .attr('rx', BAR_RADIUS) .attr('ry', BAR_RADIUS) .attr('fill', 'white'); }); chart.append('image') .attr('xlink:href', 'https://grist.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/mardi-gras-sequins-alexander-grey.jpg') .attr('x', 0) .attr('y', 0) .attr('width', width) .attr('height', height) .attr('preserveAspectRatio', 'xMidYMid slice') .attr('mask', 'url(#nola-mardi-gras-trash-bars-mask)') .attr('filter', 'url(#nola-mardi-gras-trash-greyscale)'); chart.selectAll('.bar') .data(chartData) .enter().append('rect') .attr('class', 'bar') .attr('x', d => x(d.category)) .attr('y', d => d.value >= 0 ? y(d.value) : y(0)) .attr('width', x.bandwidth()) .attr('height', d => Math.abs(y(d.value) - y(0))) .attr('rx', BAR_RADIUS) .attr('ry', BAR_RADIUS) .style('fill', COLORS.BAR) .style('opacity', 0.65); const labelYears = ['2017', '2026']; chart.selectAll('.bar-label') .data(chartData.filter(d => labelYears.includes(d.category))) .enter().append('text') .attr('class', 'bar-label') .attr('x', d => x(d.category) + x.bandwidth() / 2) .attr('y', d => y(d.value) - 5) .text(d => d3.format(',')(d.value)) .style('fill', COLORS.TEXT); } if (document.readyState === 'loading') { document.addEventListener('DOMContentLoaded', renderChart); } else { renderChart(); } window.addEventListener('resize', renderChart); })();

“To see the waste go up that much, it’s just absurd,” said Brett Davis, founder of Grounds Krewe, a nonprofit group trying to make Mardi Gras more sustainable through recycling and waste reduction efforts. 

It’s a century-old tradition for riders on parade floats to shower crowds with beaded necklaces, toys, and other items — collectively known as “throws.” Most are cheap plastic trinkets. The beads are often laden with toxic chemicals, including unsafe levels of lead. Many throws are dropped moments after they’re caught, then crushed under feet and eventually swept up and hauled to landfills. 

City officials initially blamed the rise in rubbish on the popularity of this year’s festivities, which ran from January 6 to February 17 and included more than 30 float parades. An estimated 2.2 million people visited downtown New Orleans during the Carnival season, about 10 percent more than in 2025, according to the Downtown Development District, which drew on data from location analytics company Placer.ai.

“The increase from last year was directly associated with the larger crowds,” Matt Torri, the city’s sanitation director, told the City Council in March. “Anybody who was out at this year’s parades definitely took note that there seemed to be more people enjoying the Carnival season, which is great for the city.”

But a Verite News analysis of annual attendance and city cleanup records shows no clear relationship between crowds and trash levels. Overall, Mardi Gras waste tonnage has trended upward over the past decade, regardless of the year-to-year changes in attendance. The Mardi Gras season in 2020, for instance, drew more people — about 2.4 million — but produced roughly 241 fewer tons of garbage than in 2026.

In the early 2010s, trash tonnage hovered around 880 tons. It spiked in 2017, surpassing 1,320 tons, and has not fallen below 1,000 tons since. The only exception was 2021, when no trash was recorded because the city canceled parades and most Carnival festivities due to the COVID-19 pandemic. 

.nola-mardi-gras-attendance-trash { --color-primary: #3c3830; --color-secondary: #777; --color-orange: #F79945; --color-turquoise: #12A07F; --color-fuchsia: #AC00E8; --color-cobalt: #3977F3; --color-earth: #3c3830; --typography-primary: "PolySans", Arial, sans-serif; --typography-secondary: "Basis Grotesque", Arial, sans-serif; --spacing-base: 10px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: var(--typography-secondary); margin: 1.5rem auto; padding: 0; position: relative; width: 100%; } .nola-mardi-gras-attendance-trash * { box-sizing: border-box; } .nola-mardi-gras-attendance-trash svg text { font-family: var(--typography-secondary); } .nola-mardi-gras-attendance-trash__title { font-family: var(--typography-primary); font-size: 24px; margin: var(--spacing-base) 0; } .nola-mardi-gras-attendance-trash__subtitle { font-family: var(--typography-secondary); color: var(--color-primary); font-size: 18px; margin: 0 0 var(--spacing-base); } .nola-mardi-gras-attendance-trash__axis-label { color: var(--color-primary); font-size: 14px; } .nola-mardi-gras-attendance-trash .axis-grid line { stroke: #e0e0e0; stroke-opacity: 0.7; shape-rendering: crispEdges; } .nola-mardi-gras-attendance-trash .axis-grid .domain { stroke: none; } .nola-mardi-gras-attendance-trash .domain { stroke: #3c3830; } .nola-mardi-gras-attendance-trash .line { fill: none; stroke-width: 4px; stroke-linecap: round; stroke-linejoin: round; } .nola-mardi-gras-attendance-trash .line--projected { stroke-dasharray: 6 4; } .nola-mardi-gras-attendance-trash .pulsing-dot { stroke: white; stroke-width: 1.7px; } .nola-mardi-gras-attendance-trash .data-label { font-family: var(--typography-secondary); font-size: 11px; fill: var(--color-primary); paint-order: stroke fill; stroke: white; stroke-width: 3px; stroke-linejoin: round; stroke-linecap: round; } .nola-mardi-gras-attendance-trash__legend { display: flex; flex-wrap: wrap; gap: 6px 16px; margin-bottom: 8px; } .nola-mardi-gras-attendance-trash__legend-item { display: flex; align-items: center; gap: 6px; font-size: 13px; color: var(--color-primary); } .nola-mardi-gras-attendance-trash__legend-color { width: 16px; height: 3px; border-radius: 2px; flex-shrink: 0; } .nola-mardi-gras-attendance-trash__footer { display: flex; justify-content: space-between; align-items: flex-end; margin-top: 8px; gap: 16px; } .nola-mardi-gras-attendance-trash__credits { display: flex; flex-direction: column; } .nola-mardi-gras-attendance-trash__source { color: var(--color-secondary); font-size: 12px; margin-top: 0; display: inline-block; } .nola-mardi-gras-attendance-trash__credit { color: var(--color-secondary); font-size: 12px; margin-top: 3px; font-style: italic; font-weight: bold; display: inline-block; } .nola-mardi-gras-attendance-trash__logo { height: auto; max-width: 62px; min-width: 50px; margin-left: auto; padding-right: 20px; margin-right: 0; margin-bottom: 0; transform: translateY(-2px); } Carnival trash hit a record even as attendance lagged behind 2020 levels Downtown attendance vs. city-wide trash collection during Mardi Gras, 2020–2026 Attendance (downtown) Trash (city-wide, tons) Source: Placer.ai / New Orleans Downtown Development District / City of New Orleans Dennis Dean / Verite / Clayton Aldern / Grist (function() { const INIT_KEY = '__grist_nola_mardi_gras_attendance_trash_initialized__'; if (window[INIT_KEY]) { return; } window[INIT_KEY] = true; const COLORS = { TEXT: 'var(--color-primary)', SERIES: ['var(--color-orange)', 'var(--color-fuchsia)', 'var(--color-turquoise)', 'var(--color-cobalt)', 'var(--color-earth)'] }; const svg = d3.select('#nola-mardi-gras-attendance-trash-line-chart'); const getSvgHeight = () => parseInt(svg.attr('height')) || 400; // Format for line-end labels: 2 decimal places (e.g., 1.64M, 2.26M) const formatCompactWithB = (n) => { // For small values (< 1000), avoid SI prefix notation (which shows "m" for milli) if (Math.abs(n) < 1000 ? Math.abs(n) > 0 : false) { // Use up to 2 decimal places, trim trailing zeros return d3.format('.2~f')(n); } // Use .3s for 3 significant figures, giving 2 decimal places (e.g., 1.64M, 2.26M) return d3.format('.3s')(n).replace('G', 'B').replace('k', 'K'); }; // Format for y-axis ticks: clean round numbers (0, 500K, 1M, 1.5M, 2M) const formatAxisTick = (n) => { if (n === 0) return '0'; const absN = Math.abs(n); if (absN >= 1e9) { const val = n / 1e9; return (val % 1 === 0 ? val.toFixed(0) : val.toFixed(1)) + 'B'; } if (absN >= 1e6) { const val = n / 1e6; return (val % 1 === 0 ? val.toFixed(0) : val.toFixed(1)) + 'M'; } if (absN >= 1e3) { const val = n / 1e3; return (val % 1 === 0 ? val.toFixed(0) : val.toFixed(1)) + 'K'; } return n.toString(); }; function calculateYTicks(height, fontSize = 14) { // Limit to 4-5 ticks for cleaner appearance const minSpacing = fontSize * 4; return Math.min(5, Math.max(2, Math.floor(height / minSpacing))); } function measureYAxisWidth(svg, scale, chartHeight, formatTick) { const tickCount = calculateYTicks(chartHeight); const TICK_PADDING = 4; const tempGroup = svg.append('g') .attr('class', 'nola-mardi-gras-attendance-trash__y-axis-measure') .style('visibility', 'hidden'); const axis = d3.axisLeft(scale) .ticks(tickCount) .tickFormat(formatTick) .tickSize(0) .tickPadding(TICK_PADDING); tempGroup.call(axis); tempGroup.selectAll('text') .style('font-family', 'var(--typography-secondary)') .style('font-size', '14px'); let minX = 0; tempGroup.selectAll('text').each(function() { const bbox = this.getBBox(); if (bbox.x < minX) { minX = bbox.x; } }); tempGroup.remove(); return { width: -minX, tickCount, tickPadding: TICK_PADDING }; } const rawData = [{"Year":"2020","Attendance":"2400000","Trash":"1123"},{"Year":"2022","Attendance":"1900000","Trash":"1155"},{"Year":"2023","Attendance":"2100000","Trash":"1185"},{"Year":"2024","Attendance":"2000000","Trash":"1050"},{"Year":"2025","Attendance":"2000000","Trash":"1100"},{"Year":"2026","Attendance":"2200000","Trash":"1364"}]; const xColumn = 'Year'; // Dual-axis: Attendance on left, Trash on right const attendanceData = rawData.map(d => ({ x: new Date(d[xColumn]), y: +d.Attendance })); const trashData = rawData.map(d => ({ x: new Date(d[xColumn]), y: +d.Trash })); const seriesData = [ { key: 'Attendance', label: 'Attendance', color: COLORS.SERIES[0], values: attendanceData, axis: 'left' }, { key: 'Trash', label: 'Trash', color: COLORS.SERIES[1], values: trashData, axis: 'right' } ]; function renderChart() { svg.selectAll('*').remove(); const node = svg.node(); const styleWidth = parseInt(svg.style('width')); const attrWidth = parseInt(svg.attr('width')); const bboxWidth = node ? node.getBoundingClientRect().width : 0; const containerWidth = (bboxWidth > 0 ? bboxWidth : 0) || (attrWidth > 0 ? attrWidth : 0) || ((!isNaN(styleWidth) ? (styleWidth > 0 ? styleWidth : 0) : 0) || 600); const svgHeight = getSvgHeight(); const baseMargins = { top: 20, right: 20, bottom: 36 }; const height = svgHeight - baseMargins.top - baseMargins.bottom; if (height <= 0) return; const x = d3.scaleTime(); const yLeft = d3.scaleLinear().range([height, 0]); const yRight = d3.scaleLinear().range([height, 0]); // Attendance domain (left axis) — range from ~1.8M to ~2.4M like the original const [attMin, attMax] = d3.extent(attendanceData, d => d.y); const attPadding = (attMax - attMin) * 0.15; yLeft.domain([attMin - attPadding, attMax + attPadding]); // Trash domain (right axis) — range from ~1000 to ~1400 like the original const [trashMin, trashMax] = d3.extent(trashData, d => d.y); const trashPadding = (trashMax - trashMin) * 0.15; yRight.domain([trashMin - trashPadding, trashMax + trashPadding]); x.domain(d3.extent(attendanceData, d => d.x)); // Measure both y-axis widths const leftMeasure = measureYAxisWidth(svg, yLeft, height, d => formatAxisTick(d)); const rightMeasure = measureYAxisWidth(svg, yRight, height, d => formatAxisTick(d)); const LEFT_PADDING = 8; const RIGHT_PADDING = 8; const margin = { top: baseMargins.top, right: rightMeasure.width + RIGHT_PADDING + 8, bottom: baseMargins.bottom, left: leftMeasure.width + LEFT_PADDING }; const width = containerWidth - margin.left - margin.right; if (width <= 0) return; x.range([0, width]); // Each series uses its own y-scale const yScaleFor = (series) => series.axis === 'left' ? yLeft : yRight; svg.attr('height', svgHeight); const firstSeries = seriesData[0].values; const startYear = firstSeries[0].x.getFullYear(); const endYear = firstSeries[firstSeries.length - 1].x.getFullYear(); const totalYears = endYear - startYear; const minLabelSpacingPx = 60; const maxTicks = Math.max(2, Math.floor(width / minLabelSpacingPx)); const approxYearsPerTick = Math.max(1, Math.ceil(totalYears / maxTicks)); const niceSteps = [1, 2, 5, 10, 20, 25, 50, 100]; const stepYears = niceSteps.find(s => s >= approxYearsPerTick) || niceSteps[niceSteps.length - 1]; const xTickInterval = d3.timeYear.every(stepYears); // Grid lines based on left axis svg.append('g') .attr('class', 'axis-grid') .attr('transform', `translate(${margin.left},${height + margin.top})`) .call(d3.axisBottom(x).ticks(xTickInterval).tickSize(-height).tickFormat('')); svg.append('g') .attr('class', 'axis-grid') .attr('transform', `translate(${margin.left},${margin.top})`) .call(d3.axisLeft(yLeft).ticks(leftMeasure.tickCount).tickSize(-width).tickFormat('')); // X axis const xAxis = g => g .attr('transform', `translate(${margin.left},${height + margin.top})`) .call(d3.axisBottom(x).ticks(xTickInterval).tickFormat(d3.timeFormat('%Y'))) .selectAll('text') .attr('class', 'nola-mardi-gras-attendance-trash__axis-label') .style('fill', COLORS.TEXT) .style('text-anchor', 'middle'); // Left y-axis (Attendance) const yLeftAxisGen = d3.axisLeft(yLeft) .ticks(leftMeasure.tickCount) .tickFormat(d => formatAxisTick(d)) .tickPadding(leftMeasure.tickPadding); const yLeftAxis = g => g .attr('transform', `translate(${margin.left},${margin.top})`) .call(yLeftAxisGen) .selectAll('text') .attr('class', 'nola-mardi-gras-attendance-trash__axis-label') .style('fill', COLORS.SERIES[0]); // Right y-axis (Trash) const yRightAxisGen = d3.axisRight(yRight) .ticks(rightMeasure.tickCount) .tickFormat(d => formatAxisTick(d)) .tickPadding(rightMeasure.tickPadding); const yRightAxis = g => g .attr('transform', `translate(${margin.left + width},${margin.top})`) .call(yRightAxisGen) .call(g => g.select('.domain').attr('stroke', '#3c3830')) .selectAll('text') .attr('class', 'nola-mardi-gras-attendance-trash__axis-label') .style('fill', COLORS.SERIES[1]); svg.append('g').call(xAxis); svg.append('g').call(yLeftAxis); svg.append('g').call(yRightAxis); const chart = svg.append('g').attr('transform', `translate(${margin.left},${margin.top})`); const defs = chart.append('defs'); const isDarkMode = (() => { const container = document.querySelector('.nola-mardi-gras-attendance-trash'); if (!container) return false; const bg = window.getComputedStyle(container.closest('body') || document.body).backgroundColor; const match = bg.match(/rgb\((\d+),\s*(\d+),\s*(\d+)\)/); if (!match) return false; 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Since 2020, when the Downtown Development District began tracking visits in the Central Business and Warehouse districts, annual attendance has stayed within a relatively tight range, between 1.9 million and 2.4 million. Still, the trash tally has swung wildly, indicating that other factors are at play. The development district doesn’t track citywide visits, but its annual downtown tally is considered the most accurate indication of Carnival attendance. 

The office of Mayor Helena Moreno and the city’s sanitation department did not respond to requests for comment. 

Parade trash remains a problem for the city’s drainage system. After the infamous bead blockage of 2018, the city began installing temporary filter contraptions, known as “gutter buddies,” at catch basins along parade routes, but conservation groups say the outfalls still spew more litter into canals and Lake Pontchartrain during the Carnival season.

The upswing in trash is occurring alongside a seemingly contradictory trend of waste reduction. In recent years, many parade organizations, called krewes, have cut back on plastic beads and other “junk” throws. They’ve opted for higher-value items like socks, baseball caps, wooden cooking spoons, and metal drinking cups. 

Grounds Krewe and other groups have also expanded their recycling efforts. They set set up stations to collect bottles, cans, and reusable throws, and some volunteers even pick through the parade debris for recyclable items. This year, the groups diverted about 28 tons from landfills. That’s despite the city pulling back its support for recycling this year because of budget concerns. Even if the city government spent the $200,000 it initially earmarked for recycling, “it’s not going to reverse the 24 percent gain” in waste, Davis said.  

There was some hope that the volume of throws would be curbed by rising prices for beads and other trinkets, a result of higher inflation and President Donald Trump’s steep tariffs on imports from China, where most beads are made. Some parade-goers said they noticed the change, taking to social media to complain about stingier krewes.

“We are really perplexed,” Davis said. “All that is happening, with people throwing fewer beads and a lot of krewes switching to higher-quality throws, but waste is still going upward.” 

The swelling tonnage may have less to do with the throwers and more with the catchers. Davis and some city leaders say parade-goers are setting up earlier, staying longer, and bringing even more of the comforts of home: folding chairs, canopy tents, coolers, grills, and wagonloads of food. They’re also chaining together walls of ladders, erecting scaffolding, installing portable toilets, and plunking down generators and old sofas. As the season ends, many of these items are broken, dirty, or too much of a hassle to haul home. 

These abandoned items, which can range in weight from 5 pounds for a folding chair to 300 pounds for a couch, are an increasingly heavy lift for cleanup crews, City Council President JP Morrell said.

“The reality is that they get their use out of this stuff, and then it becomes a tremendous amount of debris that our workers have to deal with because these people had no intention of ever picking this stuff up,” he said. “It goes towards a sense of abject entitlement — that our entire city exists to serve other people’s whims.”

Discarded Mardi Gras beads and trash cover a street after 2014 Mardi Gras celebrations in New Orleans, Louisiana. Gerald Herbert / AP Photo

Many of these gear-laden revelers are territorial, roping off patches of sidewalk or spreading tarps across grassy street medians, known locally as neutral grounds. These public-space appropriators have come to be known as the “Krewe of Chad,” after the name, spraypainted across a large patch of grass, went viral in 2013. 

These “Chadders,” as Morrell calls them, appear emboldened by the recent ebb in the enforcement of the city’s parade rules. Officially, early birds aren’t supposed to set up until four hours before a parade starts, but this rule is regularly flouted. In 2024, the list of banned items grew to include many of the things that have become commonplace — tents, tarps, and viewing platforms among them. A crackdown that year, which included the seizure of truckloads of encampment gear, appeared to briefly change behavior, Davis said. 

But last year, the city announced it would scale back enforcement and prioritize security after a terror attack on New Year’s Day killed 14 people on Bourbon Street. 

Enforcement was further scaled back by the city’s current budget crisis. Amid layoffs and other cutbacks aimed at reducing a $220 million deficit, Morrell admitted that efforts to clear Carnival encampments would be “spotty.”

“How are they going to enforce it? Well, to be honest, we’re hard up for cash,” Morrell said on an Instagram post in early February. He stressed that police and other city departments would “do their best,” but enforcement wouldn’t be as “robust as it could be.”

Torri, the sanitation director, said the city had the capacity to clear large items on just one day before the final cleanup on Fat Tuesday. “Mardi Gras Day was a major undertaking,” he told the council in March. Crews started working at 8 a.m. and didn’t finish until 1 a.m. “It’s a full day of cleaning because of everything that people have brought. Tarps, ladders, tents, coolers, grills are left because they’re disposable things that were only intended to last the weeks of Mardi Gras.”

Davis predicted the trend toward fewer but better throws will continue, and his organization will keep pushing for more reuse and recycling. But, he added, the policies meant to curb parade encampments — and the waste they leave behind — are only as effective as their enforcement.

“Having the krewes throw less is great, but what’s really heavy is a couch and all the stuff people brought out in wheelbarrows,” Davis said. “Unless we have police out there and the trucks to haul it away, this kind of behavior creeps back. And that’s what we’re seeing now.” 

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This story was originally published by Grist with the headline New Orleans wants to fix its Mardi Gras mess. So why is the trash pile still growing? on May 11, 2026.

Two high-profile water crises, juiced up by climate change and industrial overuse, are building in the U.S. From a city in Texas staring down a drought emergency to a decades-long political crisis coming to a head for the states that rely on the Colorado River, water issues in the West will take center stage this summer — and experts tell WIRED that other places should take notes and start planning ahead for their own future.

In February, following a winter of record-breaking heat, snowpack in various mountain ranges across the American West reached record lows. March came in even hotter, smashing records in states across the region.

“What happened in March was unprecedented and stunning and disturbing and out of this world, frankly — we had temperatures the likes of which we have never seen and couldn’t have happened without human-caused climate change,” said Brad Udall, a senior water and climate researcher at Colorado State University’s Colorado Water Center. “We had a crummy snowpack that went from crummy to god-awful in three weeks.”

This snowmelt crisis is having dire impacts on the Colorado River, one of the most crucial water sources in the West, which provides water for 40 million people across seven states. River flow in some areas on the Colorado had slowed to a trickle last week, thanks to the early snowmelt this year.

Read Next The West’s unprecedented winter could fuel a summer of disaster Tik Root

The Colorado River isn’t just a crucial water supply: It also provides power for more than 25 million people through dams at Lake Powell and Lake Mead, the two largest reservoirs in the country. Low water levels in those reservoirs spell trouble for electricity generation. As of Tuesday morning, Lake Mead was sitting at just 17 feet above its record low level, set in July of 2022.

This record dry season is also colliding with a decades-long political crisis on the Colorado River. For years, the states drawing water from the river have sparred over how to equitably divide the supply from the river, as the growth of agriculture and a series of climate-charged droughts have begun threatening the long-term water supply. Alfalfa for cattle feed is the biggest consumer of water from the Colorado, using more water than all of the cities along the river combined. States have missed key deadlines, including one in February, to renegotiate the Colorado River Compact of 1922, which regulates how water in the region is distributed. Each state gets an annual allotment, and the total amount of water is supposed to be divided evenly between an upper basin and a lower basin.

Earlier this month, following dire projections for the summer, the U.S. Interior Department stepped in, announcing a series of actions intended to keep hydropower at Lake Powell running. The government acknowledges that this could lessen hydropower at Lake Mead as well as water availability in states along the lower part of the river.

With all this chaos, there’s a chance, Udall said, that this season’s scarce water could cause a historic first in the next few years: States in the upper basin of the river could fail to deliver enough water to states in the lower basin, violating the 1922 agreement for the first time. This could trigger a potential lawsuit between states.

“What’s frustrating to somebody like myself is this is all foreseeable,” said Udall. “Those of us who are kind of in the know, and that includes a lot of people in the Colorado River Basin, have seen something like this coming for a long, long time.”

Read Next In Texas, Corpus Christi’s water crisis may be a glimpse into the future Rebecca Egan McCarthy

Even with this dire set of circumstances, it’s unlikely that the millions of people who rely on the Colorado River will reach Day Zero, the term for when municipal water sources run dry. No U.S. city has ever gotten to that point.

However, there’s a region that could be inching closer to this kind of catastrophe. Officials in Corpus Christi, the eighth-largest city in Texas, said last week that the city is set to reach a Level 1 drought emergency — what it defines as 180 days of water demand outpacing supply — by September. Some projections say that, barring major weather patterns that bring more rain, municipal water sources could run dry by next year.

People living in Corpus Christi are already under restrictions for their water use, including limits on lawn watering and car washing. Residential water bills also increased by an average of just under $5 this year. City officials said that industrial customers would be asked to cut use by 25 percent in September.

“We don’t want to wreck our economy,” Corpus Christi city manager Peter Zanoni told NBC News of the decision to wait until September to declare a Level 1 drought emergency, which would force those industrial customers to curb their use. “We don’t want to have operations close down.”

Corpus Christi’s water supplies come overwhelmingly from surface water sources. Two of the most important local sources — the Choke Canyon Reservoir and Lake Corpus Christi — have reached critically low levels over the past few years as drought has gripped the region. As of Tuesday, they were sitting at 7.4 percent full and 8.7 percent full, respectively.

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Many of the city’s problems stem from industrial water use. Corpus Christi is a major petrochemical hub, and the largest industrial consumer of water in the area, according to permit statistics obtained by Inside Climate News, is a joint Exxon Mobil and Saudi Basic Industries Corporation plastics plant. The plant used an average of 13.5 million gallons of water each day between 2022 and 2024. The average residential customer, according to the city, uses 6,000 gallons per month. (Exxon Mobil did not return a request for comment.)

The city has discussed building a desalination plant to provide water to its industrial customers — including the Exxon plant, which began operating in 2022 — for years. But the project’s potential costs ballooned to more than $1 billion, while residents expressed concerns about the ecological impacts the plant could have. Last year, regulators voted to pass on the project, with no backup plan for water supply in place. On Wednesday, the Houston Chronicle reported that Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s office had denied Corpus Christi additional funding for a separate desalination plant.

“Some lessons to learn from this situation that are important for a lot of cities, especially in the Southwest, is that water infrastructure projects are getting more expensive with time,” said Shane Walker, director of the Water and the Environment Research Center at Texas Tech University. “If you think you can wait around and get a cheaper deal on a water infrastructure project, it’s probably the opposite.”

This push and pull between attracting business and what a city can maintain waterwise, Walker said, is a common tension for city planners. As more cities in Texas see population growth — and struggle with planning out their water needs — more of them need to be thinking much farther ahead.

“You have to think of a 20-year time horizon as urgent,” Walker said. “If you’re relying on groundwater — groundwater is a finite resource. Lakes are vulnerable to drought. What’s your alternative supply?”

There could be some short- and medium-term relief for both Corpus Christi and the Colorado River. At a water update briefing last week, Zanoni said that recent rains had been “beneficial” to the region, helping to boost water levels in Lake Texana, another water source for the city. Udall said that recent wet weather has also helped stabilize some conditions out West. And the upcoming El Niño phenomenon — forecast to be one of the most intense El Niños on record — could bring a heavy monsoon season to the West this summer.

But both the municipal situation in Corpus Christi and the regional crisis for the Colorado River have specific similarities: a lack of attention to slow-building problems, exacerbated by industrial use. Climate change is pushing water crises like these to a new type of breaking point.

“Around the world we’ve seen climate change events that are really big and massive,” Udall said of the crisis on the Colorado River. “Maybe this is the first worldwide climate change crisis that’s going to force really fundamental policy-level decisions to be made, and fundamental changes in how we operate. Seven states, two nations, 40-plus million people, a whole bunch of farmers, and major cities are going to have to completely rethink how they use this resource.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline This summer, the American water crisis becomes real on May 10, 2026.

Justin Smarsh and his family used to kayak a few times a year on the rivers and creeks near their home in Cherry Tree, Pennsylvania. High on the Appalachian Plateau, northeast of Pittsburgh, he spent hours in the woods and taught his two sons to hunt. Today, Smarsh said, he gets “suffocated just walking.” He has a constant dry cough, and he loses his breath if he bends down to tie his shoes. 

A few years after he graduated from high school and got married, Smarsh went to work in a coal mine in his home county, just as his father and grandfather had. “It was the best-paying job around,” he said. “It still is.” Now Smarsh, 42, has progressive massive fibrosis — the most severe form of coal workers’ pneumoconiosis, or black lung.

There is no cure for Smarsh’s condition. He tries to slow the progression with “piles of meds,” he said, but things will eventually worsen, potentially to the point of heart failure. In patients with advanced disease, a flu or common cold can lead to a kind of drowning as the lungs fill with fluid. Smarsh’s doctors say he won’t live to see 50. 

“Most people think coal mining is a thing of the past,” said Deanna Istik, CEO of Lungs at Work, a black lung clinic in Washington County, Pennsylvania. “Meanwhile, we see more people being diagnosed with black lung disease than we ever have before.” 

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Coal mining has always been a hazardous occupation. But today’s miners face a new danger because they’re inhaling something worse than the coal dust that settles in lungs, triggering immune cells to form nodules, masses, and scarified black tissue. Most of the large coal seams in the mountains of Appalachia are gone now. To reach smaller seams, miners must cut through much more rock with high levels of quartz, which gets pulverized into crystalline silica.

When tiny particles of silica are inhaled, they act like minute shards of glass, leading to severe tissue scarring and inflammation and eventually to progressive massive fibrosis, the most severe form of black lung disease. Researchers from the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, or NIOSH, estimate the disease now afflicts one in 10 working miners who have worked in mines for at least 25 years. Rising rates of the disease have led to stark increases in lung transplants and mortality. Between 2013 and 2017, hundreds of cases of progressive massive fibrosis were identified at three Virginia clinics alone, leading NIOSH to declare a renewed black lung epidemic. Black-lung-associated deaths, which declined between 1999 and 2018, rose between 2020 and 2023.

The disease is on the uptick at a time when the Trump administration is calling for the expansion of coal production. Last fall, the U.S. Department of Energy announced it was investing $625 million in coal projects, and this month, President Trump signed an executive order reaffirming coal as essential to national security, a move that will direct billions of dollars in federal funding to the industry. But while the administration is calling for more coal, it is simultaneously delaying implementation of new regulations that would protect miners from deadly silica. 

In the United States, black lung was officially acknowledged as a workplace-related illness only in the late 1960s, after a highly publicized disaster at a West Virginia mine killed 78 coal miners. Subsequent strikes and protests led to the passage of the 1969 Coal Mine Health and Safety Act, which mandated federal safety inspections of mines, set fines for violations, and established a benefits program to compensate miners with black lung. 

From left: Healthy lung tissue, simple black lung disease, and complicated black lung disease.
National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health

Rates of the disease dropped almost immediately, and by the end of the 20th century, thanks to the implementation of those standards and a strong union presence in mines in Pennsylvania and across Appalachia, black lung was nearly eradicated. 

In the last two decades, U.S. coal production has fallen precipitously. It peaked in 2008 at more than 1,170 million tons, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration; in 2023, production was 578 million tons, a drop of more than 50 percent. 

But in Pennsylvania, says Istik, “this is not a dead industry. We’re still cutting coal.” A 2024 report by the Pennsylvania Coal Alliance counted more than 5,000 mining jobs generating some $2.2 billion in economic output. Nationwide, there are still close to 40,000 coal workers. 

Black lung diagnoses continue to mount. Doctors and miner advocates say the condition is underdiagnosed, as many miners are reluctant to undergo testing for fear of losing their jobs should their employer find out. “I think there’s always going to be that fear of retribution,” said Istik. But eventually, she added, the symptoms become debilitating. Smarsh, a patient of Lungs at Work, didn’t see a doctor about his labored breathing until his wife, Alicia, insisted he had no choice. 

Black lung clinics are seeing more and more patients like Smarsh, who’ve gotten sick in their 30s and 40s. In earlier generations, miners might have needed decades of coal dust exposure to develop serious disease, if they got sick at all. “My dad and my pap were both miners, and they didn’t get it,” Smarsh said. “So, I thought, ‘Who says I’m going to?’” But today’s workers, who are breathing a much higher proportion of silica, can develop a disabling illness in much less time. 

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Smarsh worked mostly as a roof bolter — the person responsible for installing supports to prevent cave-ins — drilling up into rock. He spent eight years underground before his lung condition made it impossible for him to work, or to walk across his own backyard without using an inhaler. 

Experts have understood the dangers of silica dust for decades. In the 1970s, NIOSH suggested regulations that would limit exposure to 50 micrograms per cubic meter of air, averaged over a 10-hour workday in the mine. In 2016, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration adopted the 50-microgram silica standard for other occupations, like construction and manufacturing. But in 2017, the Mine Safety and Health Administration, or MSHA — which is mandated to conduct quarterly inspections of underground mines and enforce safety standards — responded to industry pressure and set the limit for mining at 100 micrograms over an eight-hour workday. 

After a negotiation process that spanned years and multiple administrations and involved mining industry lobbyists, legal groups, and scientists from NIOSH and other agencies, MSHA announced in 2024 that it would issue a new rule reducing the silica exposure limit in mines to 50 micrograms, with enforcement to begin in April 2025. 

The new rule would require operators to use “engineering controls,” such as improved ventilation systems, as the primary means of meeting the standard. Those tools could be supplemented, when necessary, by “administrative controls,” such as clothing decontamination and avoidance of especially dusty areas, to keep miners from breathing unacceptable amounts of silica.

The National Mining Association and other industry groups mounted a legal challenge, arguing that when ventilation systems aren’t enough to bring respirable silica levels below the 50-microgram standard, operators should be able to require miners to use respirators to achieve compliance.

But “respirators are really the last line of defense, because they aren’t foolproof,” Istik said. “Silica is such a small particle; it still comes through.” 

Smarsh wore a respirator some of the time when he was underground. But there were other times, he said, when it was too difficult to see or breathe through it. “Anytime you’re underground, you see dust,” he said. “But it’s not the dust you see that gets you. It’s the little stuff you don’t see.” 

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While respirators are important safety equipment, it should not be the coal miner’s responsibility not to get black lung, said Erin Bates, communications director of the United Mine Workers of America. It is the company, she added, that must ensure a safe work environment for its employees.

When the Trump administration came into office, it cut MSHA’s budget and staff. The agency had already been operating at a disadvantage: According to data from the Appalachian Citizens’ Law Center, MSHA’s coal mine enforcement staff has been cut in half over the last decade. The American Federation of Government Employees reported that another 7 percent of the agency’s full-time workforce accepted the Trump administration’s “Fork in the Road” buyout last year, and 90 newly hired mine inspectors had their job offers rescinded. There were concerns among black lung experts and advocates about the diminished agency’s ability to implement the new silica exposure rule. The loss included people “we desperately needed,” Carey Clarkson, who represents Labor Department workers for the federation, told NPR at the time. “I can’t image how many years of experience we lost.” 

A few days before the April 2025 enforcement date, the rule hit two different roadblocks: The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals granted an emergency stay of the rule in response to a petition led by another industry group — the National Stone, Sand & Gravel Association — and MSHA itself announced it would delay implementation to give operators more time to “come into compliance.” 

The litigation has remained in limbo. Last November, MSHA moved to have the legal proceedings paused as it “reconsiders” parts of the rule, and earlier this month it announced the delay would continue “indefinitely” pending judicial review. The agency did not respond to a request for comment. 

Bates said the union is disheartened. The agency “was literally created for the health and safety of coal miners, but they don’t want to take that into consideration,” she said.

Rebecca Shelton, director of policy for the Appalachian Citizens’ Law Center, which has been advocating for a new silica rule since the late 2000s, said her organization had hoped to see the rule implemented under the Biden administration “because we were concerned about challenges it might face.” The process was slowed by intense lobbying, she said, and MSHA’s need to study the rule’s impact across diverse mining industries. 

“If the Trump administration actually cared about protecting coal miners from black lung, we’d have a strong silica rule in place right now,” she said in a statement issued by the center after MSHA announced the indefinite delay. “Instead, they are hiding behind a ridiculous legal process to delay action while miners get sick and die.” 

Smarsh said his 19-year-old son wants to work in the coal mines. “Me and my wife tell him all the time, you see what I’m going through? All the good coal that was around here is gone. Now there’s nothing but rock and silica.” Gone too, Smarsh said, is any trust he once had in a coal company to keep miners safe. 

“All they’re worried about is ‘you better have that black gold,’” he said. “They say they care about miners, but you go underground, you’re taking the risk, for you to get nothing but sick, and to fill their pockets full.” 

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline In coal country, black lung surges as federal protections stall on May 9, 2026.

Johnny Appleseed was ahead of his time. Not because he fed so many people by planting apple trees (really, he got them drunk instead, as his real goal was encouraging the production of cider), but because he created so much shade to enjoy on hot days. More than two centuries later, American cities are wishing they had better followed Appleseed’s lead, as rising temperatures and a lack of tree cover combine to make urban life increasingly stifling.

A pair of new studies show how simply planting more trees can provide huge temperature benefits, not to mention how the additional plant life would boost biodiversity and improve mental health for urbanites. The first finds that tree cover can cancel half of the heat island effect, in which the urban jungle gets much hotter than the surrounding countryside. The second compares neighborhoods in 65 American cities, finding that canopy-deprived areas suffer up to 40 percent more excess heat than heavily greened spots. 

Places like New York and Atlanta and Los Angeles, then, don’t just have to foster and maintain their “gray” infrastructure — roads and sidewalks and such — but their living infrastructure as well. “Heat is already a major public health threat. It kills 350,000 people a year by some estimates, and it’s worse in cities,” said Robert McDonald, the Nature Conservancy’s lead scientist for nature-based solutions and lead scientist for Europe, who spearheaded the first paper. “The urban heat island effect would be about double what it is now if world cities didn’t have trees.”

By increasing their canopies, metropolises dress themselves like their more comfortable rural counterparts. A vegetated area cools itself both because plants “sweat” by releasing moisture from their leaves, and because trees provide shade. By contrast, concrete absorbs the sun’s energy, driving temperatures up, and releases it throughout the night. That beats back the cooling typically experienced in the evening, meaning urbanites without air conditioning don’t get respite. This is especially dangerous for vulnerable groups like the elderly, and it’s one reason heat kills more Americans every year than all other extreme weather events combined.

Such conditions are especially dangerous for those living in lower-income neighborhoods, which tend to have significantly less tree canopy than richer areas. In industrialized areas, for example, vast stretches of concrete absorb and radiate heat. In urban centers, policymakers may have prioritized building dense housing without incorporating ample tree cover. Compare that to the suburbs, which have plenty of parks, curbside trees, and yards to cool things down.

The differences in greenery between neighborhoods translates into striking differences in temperatures. The second study calculated this “cooling dividend,” or the difference in the average urban heat island in areas with low and high canopy cover. It found gaps reaching almost 4 degrees Fahrenheit. If you’re lucky enough to live where there’s lots of trees, you might experience 20 to 40 percent less excess heat. The report found that this is playing out regularly across the U.S. “I think what maybe was surprising is that there was a dramatic amount of consistency,” said Steve Whitesell, executive editor at the Healthy Green Spaces Coalition, which authored the report. “In other words, they were all showing an impact.”

Read Next Pocket gardens: The tiny urban oases with surprisingly big benefits Matt Simon

The trick is not just planting enough trees, but planting the right kind. The biggest species provide the most shade, of course. But more cryptically, some provide more evaporative cooling than others — drought-adapted trees, for instance, try to retain as much water as they can. A neighborhood might also want to prioritize food production, opting for trees that create both shade and fruit. Favoring native varieties will also help support native animal life, like birds and pollinating insects. 

Climate change, though, is complicating these calculations. Even in rural areas, without the added temperatures of the urban heat island effect, some places are getting so hot that native plants are moving north in search of cooler climes. Within cities, they are blasted with still more heat — and temperatures will only climb from here. So urban arborists aren’t just planting species that will thrive today, but will survive the climate of tomorrow. “I think that for us to use trees as a type of living infrastructure, that can counter those increased temperatures, is paramount,” said Edith de Guzman, a cooperative extension researcher at the University of California, Los Angeles, who studies urban heat but wasn’t involved in either study. “I think it’s pretty much the most important thing we can do.”

But trees alone can’t save urbanites. McDonald’s study found that even if cities planted as many as possible, it would only offset 20 percent of the potential running up of temperatures due to climate change. Designers will have to deploy other techniques, like reflective rooftops, to manage the heat. That’s especially important in poorer nations, whose cities are rapidly growing but have much less tree cover than richer countries, the study found. “It’s just to say that climate change is a big enough challenge that while planting more tree cover helps with temperatures, it won’t do the job by itself,” McDonald said. 

Urban areas have been here before, McDonald added. As the Industrial Revolution kicked in, people in overpopulated metropolises would have to travel to the countryside to glimpse greenery. An exception was London, with its many publicly available green spaces, which Paris took as inspiration when it essentially rebuilt itself in the 1800s and made room for massive parks. Today, planners are similarly bringing some of the country back into the city, blurring the lines between rural and urban. “We know how to increase tree cover, if we put our minds to it,” McDonald said. “But it takes effort and time.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline The solution to urban heat is much, much simpler than you think on May 8, 2026.

Ninety percent of global trade is conducted by giant ships that crisscross the globe, delivering containers of jet fuel, electronics, clothing, and many other goods every day of the week. Seafaring trade on this scale has brought the cost of many products down dramatically, but those ships have historically run on a very dirty fuel — essentially the sludge left over from refining crude oil — causing the shipping sector to contribute about 3 percent of total carbon emissions worldwide. 

Last year, the International Maritime Organization, or IMO, the United Nations agency overseeing global shipping, was poised to adopt a plan to bring that down to zero. But that was before the Trump administration stepped in, threatening countries with visa restrictions, tariffs, and port fees if they supported the effort. As a result, the ambitious plan to decarbonize global shipping has been on the rocks for months. Alternate proposals that dispense with the core function of the original Net-Zero Framework, or NZF — a per-ton fee on greenhouse gas emissions above a certain threshold — seemed to be gaining traction, threatening climate progress in the sector.

But at a meeting of U.N. member countries last week, none of those watered-down proposals received much attention. Instead, a slim majority of countries expressed vocal support for the NZF, indicating that a narrow path to adopting the framework as originally intended still exists. 

“A genuine spirit of collaboration and optimism pervaded the negotiations,” said Em Fenton, a senior director at the U.K.-based climate group Opportunity Green, who attended the meeting in London. “There were people who did not want to see progress, but a vast majority of delegates in the room were working together.”

The Trump administration opposes the NZF on the grounds that it would burden American consumers and businesses. In public documents submitted to the IMO, the administration has drawn a hard line at penalizing carbon-intensive fuel types and the inclusion of an “economic element,” such as a tax or levy, in the framework. 

“The United States submits that the most appropriate path forward is to end consideration of the IMO Net-Zero Framework entirely,” it noted. 

But supporters of the weaker alternative proposals — which were submitted by Japan, Liberia, Argentina, Panama, and others — did not entirely derail the majority’s push to advance the original NZF. The path to adopting the net-zero plan is a long one — and there’s still time for talks to fall apart. Opponents of the framework can tank it by gathering support from one-third of member countries, or from a smaller group of countries if that group controls half of the world’s shipping tonnage, per IMO rules.

Just four countries — Liberia, Panama, Bahamas, and the Marshall Islands — account for roughly half of the world’s registered ships. Ships can be owned by a company in one country, operated by another, and registered — or “flagged” — in a third, much like offshore banking for tax purposes. As a result, these so-called flag countries have extraordinary leverage during IMO negotiations. Since some of these flag states have already voiced their opposition to the NZF, Eveylne Williams, a research associate with the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University, said that “you’re kind of already in that neighborhood of the 50 percent blocking threshold.”

However, “cautious optimism is reasonable” at this stage, she added. “[The NZF] hasn’t been abandoned, but it’s kind of sobering to look at the blocking arithmetic still available.”

While key countries oppose the Net-Zero Framework, the shipping industry itself — the companies that actually own and operate the ships and make their profits from the delivery of goods — has largely backed the effort in the hopes that a single uniform global tax will put every company on the same footing, no matter where they operate. Shippers are already navigating European carbon regulations and want to avoid a patchwork of rules by different countries.

“Our industry needs the IMO as our global regulator,” said David Loosley, CEO and secretary general of BIMCO, a trade organization representing shippers, on LinkedIn after the meeting last week ended. “To arrive at implementable regulations at a global level, we need the backing of all member states. Without consensus, global regulations will be ineffective and will fail to provide a level playing field for a truly global industry.”

At the meeting last week, U.S. delegates distributed leaflets laying out their projections of the country-by-country economic effects of the Net-Zero Framework. One handout, summarizing the effects on Peru, led to nearly $800 million in compliance costs. But experts who examined the figures said the analysis was misleading and utilized outdated assumptions. 

“The data is a clear effort being made by a country acting in strong self-interest and using misinformation and exaggeration to the detriment of other countries’ interests,” said Fenton. 

A spokesperson for the U.S. State Department did not respond to Grist’s request for comment.

Fenton expects countries to continue engaging in bilateral negotiations and technical discussions in the coming months. Several finer points — such as the distribution of funds collected as a result of the framework’s fee — are yet to be decided. After the U.S. intervention last year, a vote to adopt the framework was delayed by a year. As a result, the earliest countries can vote to adopt the framework is November. Talks are scheduled for that month to get the framework — or an alternate proposal — over the finish line.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Trump is trying to kill a carbon tax on global shipping. He may not succeed. on May 8, 2026.

For decades, the U.S. Forest Service has actively managed public lands to reduce wildfire risks by clearing underbrush and trees, or employing prescribed burns — something Indigenous nations have practiced for centuries. Scientists have generally lauded the ecological benefits of what is also known as “fuel treatment.” Now, they say there’s another reason to support this approach: It saves money. 

According to a study published today in the journal Science, every dollar that the agency spent on such tactics avoided $3.73 in smoke, property, and emissions harm. “A lot of people have suggested that there could be potential economic benefits,” said Frederik Strabo, the lead author of the paper and an economist with University of California, Davis. “But it’s been a pretty understudied area.”

The study analyzed high-resolution data from 285 wildfires across 11 Western states between 2017 and 2023 that burned through areas where the Forest Service had reduced the fuel load. On average, the treatments decreased the total area burned by 36 percent and cut the amount of land burned at moderate to high severity by 26 percent. Researchers then modeled the economic benefits of those reductions. 

The paper estimated that fuel treatments prevented $1.39 billion in health and workforce productivity losses tied to wildfire smoke, $895 million in structural damage, and $503 million in carbon dioxide emissions. Overall, that amounted to an average savings of about $3.73 for every dollar the government spent. The research also found that larger treatments — those covering more than 2,400 acres — were the most cost effective. 

“It’s a significant number, but when you compare it to the total cost of wildfires it’s small,” caveated Strabo, noting that the cost of the worst disasters can reach hundreds of billions of dollars. But he also said the boon could be even greater than calculated. The research didn’t, for example, examine any savings or benefits for the multibillion dollar outdoor recreation industry. “We’re only capturing a specific subset of benefits.”

Morgan Varner, the director of fire research at the conservation nonprofit Tall Timbers, called the work “the missing link for a lot of fuels treatment research,” and said that data like this can be extremely helpful in guiding decision-makers. “Studies like this round out the story and provide more evidence for the benefits of these treatments.” 

David Calkin, who until last year was a Forest Service research scientist, also applauded the analysis, calling it “novel.” But he does not find the math entirely convincing, and questions the notion that such an intangible public good can, or should, be assigned a monetary worth. “A lot of the values of fuel management are non-market,” said Calkin, who wasn’t involved in the study. Ecological benefits, for instance, can be hard to quantify, as can things like public recreation access. 

“I’m not trying to reduce the importance of fuel management and the value of it. It’s just highly uncertain,” he said. “I worry about trying to monetize the value of treatments on public lands.”

One issue Calkin notes is that such work on federal lands may not significantly mitigate the costliest fires, which ignite near communities and destroy homes and buildings. “The best way to protect a structure is at the structure itself,” he explained. That means the study could be overestimating the amount of property damage that clearing and prescribed burns avoid.

Strabo disagrees, saying that an unpublished portion of the analysis found that fires that interacted with fuel treatments accounted for a disproportionately large share of structure losses and suppression costs. “That suggests [those fires] were often among the more economically consequential wildfires,” he said, pointing to the 2021 Caldor Fire near Lake Tahoe as an example. “The fire still caused substantial damages, but treatments helped prevent it from becoming even more catastrophic.”

One thing the paper explicitly didn’t account for was the smoke and carbon dioxide emissions that intentional fires produce. “We’re finding that’s not a non-trivial amount in our research,” said Mark Kreider, a Forest Service researcher. Because wildfire is unpredictable, he explained, you inherently have to treat more of the landscape than will actually encounter flames. How to best factor those emissions in is part of Kreider’s ongoing work, but he says it could potentially even flip an analysis like the one in Strabo’s paper. Still, he said, that doesn’t undermine the core point that fuel treatments are effective.

“It’s very clear,” he said, “that on the whole they are very beneficial.”

Not everyone supports such tactics. Critics argue they can harm ecosystems, disproportionately target larger trees, and open forests to logging under the guise of fire prevention. Some opponents also contend that this approach is less effective against extreme fires, while others question whether public funds would be better spent hardening homes and communities.

The federal government’s approach to forest management has shifted since President Donald Trump returned to office. In 2022, the Forest Service released a 10-year wildfire plan that increased forest management and prescribed burns. The Trump administration, which has announced plans to radically remake the agency, has placed greater emphasis on fighting wildfires than preventing them. According the Forest Service, in 2025, the agency reduced vegetation on about 1 million fewer acres than in 2024.

A Forest Service spokesperson attributed most of that decline to elevated wildfire activity in the Southeast. The agency also called 2025 “one the most successful wildfire years in recent history.” But critics worry it is moving away from proactive forest management.

“The takeaway that I really got from this article was that it provides further evidence that the administration’s current policy of full suppression in Western wildfire situations is misguided,” said Heather Stricker, a climate and lands analyst with the Sierra Club. While that approach might sound protective, she said a large body of research shows that it can often backfire. “This paper reiterated a lot of that previous research, but then took it a step further to quantify the cost savings.” 

The Trump administration has also announced plans to increase logging on federal lands. This has added to long-standing fears from environmental groups that instead of thoughtful, well-managed fuel treatment, the government could resort to clear-cutting. Even the paper notes this resistance. “Public pressure and risk aversion,” it reads, “skew wildfire management resources toward fire suppression rather than prevention.”

Strabo is hopeful that by adding to the range of evidence supporting forest management, his paper could help guide policymakers. “We could have these economic and ecological benefits if we scaled it up,” he said. “It’s a critically underfunded public good.”

This story was updated to include a response from the U.S. Forest Service.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline How controlled burns can help save taxpayers billions on May 7, 2026.

Flooding across northern Michigan last month pushed rivers to record levels, testing the limits of the state’s aging dams so severely that officials in one city nearly ordered evacuations as water threatened to spill over the top of a key barrier — a close call that highlights the growing risk that intensifying storms pose to similar infrastructure around the country.

Nationwide, the average dam is 64 years old and most were built for rainfall patterns that no longer reflect today’s changing climate. Thousands are classified as high hazard, meaning their failure could result in the loss of life. Dam safety experts say inspections are uneven and improvements often underfunded.

More than half of Michigan’s dams are beyond their 50-year design life, and the risks became clear as snowmelt and weeks of heavy rain swelled rivers. Rising water came within 5 inches of flowing over Cheboygan Dam in Cheboygan, a city of about 4,700 people, on April 16. In Bellaire, officials deployed about 1,000 sandbags to shore up a century-old dam.

“This needs to be considered not the worst we can experience. This needs to be considered as typical of the future,” said Richard Rood, a professor emeritus at the University of Michigan who studies climate change.

There are about 92,000 dams in the United States. About 18 percent are considered high-hazard. The Association of State Dam Safety Officials estimates repairing all of these aging structures will cost more than $165.2 billion. In Michigan, that estimate is $1 billion.

Communities facing these risks are left with difficult choices. Given the cost of repairing and upgrading dams to withstand stronger storms, removing them is often cheaper. That can reduce long-term risk and restore rivers to a more natural state. But it often faces resistance from property owners and communities with economies built around the reservoirs those dams created.

As floodwaters recede across Michigan, local leaders, dam safety advocates, and experts are renewing calls to bolster safety regulations and deal with aging dams.

Bellaire Dam in Bellaire, Michigan, on April 13, 2026.
Austin Rowlader / IPR News

Bob Stuber, executive director of the Michigan Hydro Relicensing Commission, considers the April flooding a wake-up call and believes the solution is clear: upgrades where feasible and removal where it makes sense. 

“I think every opportunity we have to remove an aging dam, we should take advantage of it because it’s not going to get better,” he said. “It’s just going to get worse.”

Officials in Traverse City came to that conclusion in 2024 and removed the Union Street Dam along the Boardman-Ottaway River as part of a decades-long restoration project that includes FishPass, which will allow key species to pass while blocking harmful invaders like sea lamprey. Engineers said that removal and upgrade most likely reduced flooding impacts when waters surged to near-record levels last month, falling just short of a 500-year flood.

“Upstream would have been under 2 more feet of water, which would have been quite devastating,” said Daniel Zielinski, a principal engineer for the Great Lakes Fishery Commission. “We actually had a really great stress test of the system. It functioned really well.” 

Removals are increasing across the country, according to data from American Rivers. Since 2000, more dams have come down than gone up, and that pace is accelerating as aging infrastructure, safety concerns, and environmental benefits reshape how communities weigh their value. 

In northern Michigan, conservation groups like Huron Pines help dam owners make that decision. It has managed nine removals in the last 13 years and has seen growing interest after the recent flooding, said Josh Leisen, a senior project manager for the organization. Removal reconnects river ecosystems and eliminates the need for expensive upkeep of aging structures, he said.

“There are costs associated with repair and there are risks associated with having a dam,” Leisen said. “Even if it seems to be in good condition, you get extreme weather events like we just had.”

Removing dams is not always straightforward. Beyond the technical challenges, many communities are reluctant to give up the lakes and waterfronts those structures create.

“There’s this emotional attachment to that impoundment,” said Daniel Brown, a climate resilience strategist at the Michigan-based Huron River Watershed Council.

In other cases, dismantling isn’t practical. Some dams provide electricity or drinking water, linking them to local economies and infrastructure. “[Removal] is not really something that’s on the table because they are connected in this very practical way,” Brown said.

Still, Brown said, there are limits to how much aging structures can be adapted to a warming world. “[A dam] is this very long-term, huge, expensive infrastructure that you’ve put on the landscape that’s going to stay there. And that is not how climate change or nature or rivers behave,” Brown said.

Dismantling dams, like upgrading them, can come with steep costs. The Boardman-Ottaway River project — which removed three dams in the largest removal effort in state history — cost $25 million. Huron Pines is managing the removal of Sanback Dam in Rose City next month, at an estimated cost of $4 million.

Half of the expense is funded through a grant program from the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy, or EGLE, launched in response to the 2020 Edenville Dam failure which overwhelmed the downstream Sanford Dam. The twin catastrophes forced the evacuation of more than 10,000 residents, destroyed thousands of homes, and flooded ecosystems in a disaster that investigators later found was avoidable. The $44 million state program funded several dam removals, upgrades, and engineering studies before it ended last year. 

Neil Hawk and his wife Dawn take a rowboat out to a residential part of Sanford, Michigan, to inspect the damage to their neighborhood following extreme flooding throughout central Michigan in May 2020.
Matthew Hatcher / Getty Images

Federal funding is available through programs administered by agencies such as FEMA or U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. But those resources fall short of the estimated $165.2 billion needed to address the issue, and some are at risk of elimination.

State governments regulate roughly 70 percent of the dams in the United States, with the federal government regulating hydropower dams and providing funding and guidance. This means inspection standards, regulations, enforcement, and resources can vary widely.

In Michigan, about 1,000 dams fall under state oversight, while 99 hydroelectric dams are overseen by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. The remaining 1,500 are smaller barriers that don’t fit the criteria for state regulation, according to the Michigan Dam Inventory.

Now, state officials are renewing calls for more money and stronger regulations. “Dam safety may be an issue that isn’t partisan,” said Phil Roos, director of EGLE.

Proposed state legislation would bolster inspection rules, address private ownership, update design standards, and create more funding opportunities for upgrades or removals. “It’s so important to our state that we can come together, and whether it’s passing the legislation that was proposed, or improving procedures, or ultimately funding,” Roos said.

Michigan state Senator John Damoose has expressed concern about private dam ownership since the close call at Cheboygan Dam, which is under both state and private control. About 75 percent of the dams Michigan regulates are privately owned.

“Somebody made a point, ‘Well, we can’t have private companies owning these things.’ I tend to believe in private ownership but they might be right,” Damooose said during a Traverse City roundtable discussion on dam safety.

It’s not just a Michigan issue. Most dams in the United States are privately owned, meaning responsibility for maintenance, upkeep, and potential failure falls on individuals, not governmental agencies, according to the Association of State Dam Safety Officials. 

Climate change is expected to bring more frequent and intense storms. As the world warms, the atmosphere holds more moisture, fueling more intense precipitation, according to Rood at the University of Michigan.

Recent flooding “has shown an incredible vulnerability,” he said. “[Dams] are either going to have to be removed or reengineered. Or they’re going to become a set of slowly unfolding failures.”

Luke Trumble, chief of dam safety for Michigan, said the state is already dealing with conditions that many dams were never designed to withstand.

“It’s a little bit of a misconception that if we fix the dam issue, there’ll be no more flooding,” Trumble said. “There’s still going to be flooding on rivers whenever we get rain like this, or rain on snow.

“What we can do with dam safety legislation is help ensure that flooding is not made worse by a dam failure,” he said.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Close calls at Michigan’s dams are a climate warning to America on May 7, 2026.

For more than half a century, residents of Sampson County, North Carolina have watched their local landfill grow to nearly 1,300 acres, becoming the largest in the state. Garbage now arrives from far beyond the county line, traveling from all over the state. For locals like Sherri White-Williamson, the scale of the operation has become a source of concern. She grew up in the county, and was alarmed by potential for landfill chemicals leaching into residents’ groundwater and the impact it may be having on their health. “Many of the folks out around that landfill are on well water,” White-Williamson explained. “They are drinking in it, they’re bathing in it, they’re using it to water gardens and animals.” 

She worked for years at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, working in its Office of Environmental Justice, where public outreach and education, and coordinating between communities and federal agency staff together with the community were part of her daily routine. Eventually, White-Williamson saw that kind of advocacy was missing in her own backyard. In 2020, she co-founded the non-profit Environmental Justice Community Action Network (EJCAN) to educate and empower communities to advocate for themselves on environmental issues. 

Not long after its first meeting in October of that year, the group began working with residents of Snow Hill, a historically Black rural community near the Sampson County landfill. People described a range of environmental and public health worries. One concern that rose quickly to the top was whether the water — especially the private wells on which many households rely — might be contaminated.

Sherri White-Williamson outside of EJCAN’s headquarters in Sampson County, NC. Cornell Watson

Over the next few years, EJCAN partnered with UNC Chapel Hill and Appalachian State to do free well water testing through some small grants. “The community felt like they were seeing elevated levels of illnesses and [were] convinced what they were seeing was directly related to their proximity to the landfill, and the water that they’re drinking,” White-Williamson said, but there had been little formal research. “There’s never been a health impact analysis in that area, so it’s been all anecdotal,” she explained. The well testing became a first step toward gathering evidence that contaminants from the landfill might be harming residents.

The results were troubling. After four rounds of sampling at homes in the area, they found 13 percent of wells were contaminated with PFAS and other contaminants of concern. Short for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, the synthetic chemicals have been produced in the U.S. since the 1940s, and are used in water-repellent fabrics, nonstick cookware, and fire fighting foam, among other things. 

PFAS are sometimes referred to as “forever chemicals” because of how long they persist in the body and the environment. That includes “legacy” PFAS, substances such as PFOA and PFOS that were widely used for decades, but phased out during the 2000s. It also includes what researchers call “novel” PFAS, or newer chemicals developed as replacements. While initially thought to have fewer health risks, scientists are now questioning if these next-generation products are meaningfully safer. Because they are newer, far less is known about their impacts, according to the Center for Environmental and Health Effects of PFAS at NC State.

“We know that landfills are a common source of [PFAS], because folks have thrown away a range of consumer products,” said Courtney G. Woods, an environmental sciences professor at the University of North Carolina. According to a 2020 report in the academic journal Toxicology, there is mounting evidence that PFAS are implicated in “adverse health outcomes associated with exposure, including reduced kidney function, metabolic syndrome, thyroid disruption, and adverse pregnancy outcomes.” 

Residents raise red flags

Research into Sampson County water quality dates back a decade, thanks to the work of the late Ellis Tatum, who lived in Snow Hill. In 2016, Woods and some of her students met Tatum at the North Carolina Environmental Justice Network Summit, a gathering of environmental justice organizations led by people of color. “He was convinced there was something going on with what was in the water,” explained White-Williamson. 

Tatum invited Woods and some students to partner with his community. After convening neighborhood focus groups, Woods and a student began to test for legacy and novel PFAS, metals, and bacteria in Bearskin Swamp, located on the north side of the Sampson County landfill in Snow Hill. “There was a suspicion that bad things were going into the water from [the landfill],” White-Willliamson explained.

An exterior view of the Sampson County landfill where a constant stream of trucks deliver waste daily. Cornell Watson

On this first research foray, Woods’ team didn’t detect significant contamination upstream of the landfill. But downstream was a different story. “We found elevated levels of legacy PFAS, as well as novel PFAS just near the landfill,” Woods explained. These include newer chemicals like GenX and Nafion, she explained, which some studies have linked to liver damage and other human health effects.

Some of these chemicals match those produced by Chemours, a PFAS manufacturing facility which has dumped in the landfill for years. “We did have some knowledge from Chemours’ permit, as well as knowledge from other folks that Chemours had been sending their industrial sludge for disposal at the Sampson County landfill,” Woods continued. 

Bridging community concern with free water testing 

After Woods’ initial findings, EJCAN worked to establish further relationships with universities to expand water testing in the Snow Hill community. The collaboration marked a crucial step moving community concerns toward independent scientific verification.

The cost of at-home testing can be prohibitive to many households. According to Antrilli, costs for PFAS testing through private labs start around $380. “Considering the population in Sampson County, a lot of folks could not pay to have their water tested,” White-Williamson said.  

In February 2021, EJCAN partnered with Appalachian State University to provide free testing of well water for bacteria and metals for residents. The non-profit sent out a notice to community members asking if they wanted to participate. “There was a fairly decent amount of response,” said White-Williamson. The initial round of testing included professor Rebecca Witter, who focuses on sustainable development, and biologist Shea Tuberty. Rebecca Witter worked to develop a protocol that could be used to derive community impressions of water quality, while Shea Tuberty and his students went door to door collecting samples, testing for bacteria, nitrates, and heavy metals.

Pictured from left to right are Dr. Shea Tubberty, Sherri White-Williamson, Danielle Koonce (Project Director, EJCAN) and Dr. Rebecca Witter during the first weekend of water testing in Snow Hill.
Chris Lang

On subsequent research trips, the team was joined by Woods from UNC, who provided PFAS testing with support from the nonprofit Research Triangle Institute. After sampling about 250 homes, they found over thirty families had PFAS in their water.

As further rounds of testing were conducted, the respective labs mailed letters to residents with their results, as well as called to speak to residents who had concerning results. The scientists also held a meeting with residents, which White-Williamson attended, so that they could ask questions. Woods said the close communication “was absolutely instrumental” for both research and community organizing. 

EJCAN holds a monthly community meeting that is open to the public, which Tuberty sometimes brings his class to attend, “just to be present and answer questions,” he said. “That’s been really useful, because we get more community buy-in when they realize we’re invested long-term.”

The results led White-Williamson to contact the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality’s Division of Waste Management. In November 2023, the department held a community meeting where people who lived closest to the landfill could request sampling of their private wells. State staff initially tested 30 wells, before expanding the effort, Vincent Antrilli Jr., the waste management agency’s environmental program supervisor, wrote in an email. From October 2023 through April 2026, the program had collected 241 samples—about 25 percent (61) of which had exceedences of PFAS for EPA drinking water standards.

Point-of-use filter systems like this one are common throughout the Snow Hill community. Cornell Watson

The program also provides bottled water and home filtration systems designed to remove PFAS. “To date, 87 point-of-use filter systems have been installed or authorized statewide, including 37 in Sampson County,” Antrilli wrote. 

EJCAN has supplemented this by distributing over 50 Clearly Filtered water pitchers, which remove PFAS and other contaminants like lead and arsenic. “We worked with the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services to identify a pitcher that seemed to be pretty efficient in removing a large number of contaminants from drinking water,” White-Williamson said. 

A canceled grant 

EJCAN is still hearing from people who want their well water tested. “We really need thousands of water samples, and we’ve only done hundreds,” said Tuberty from App State.

For about six months, EJCAN, App State, UNC and the Department of Health and Human Services collaborated on an EPA grant application. “The grant would have been for a million dollars over the next three years,” White-Williamson explained. With that support, the coalition would have been able to test up to 250 homes a year and provide follow up support for the homes who had problems. “That would have gone a long way,” she said. 

In February, they learned they’d been approved for the million dollar grant. But in April 2025, as the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) slashed federal programs, the coalition learned the grant might be suspended. Only three days later, Tuberty said, they were told it would be spared. Then in early May, there was another reversal. 

“Before we got a nickel of it, we got DOGE-d,” Tuberty said. “Most of the money was going to go to the community members to mitigate the problems that we identified, which would have been great.”

While the research to date has been supported by a number of smaller grants, Tuberty said, “you need that big money to make a significant impact.” The researchers hope another opportunity will present itself. “I don’t think any of us are giving up on it,” he said. 

With federal priorities shifted, EJCAN is concerned about the unmonitored forever chemicals in their community. “These are hard projects to do, because the communities have just been burnt for so long, for so many decades,” Tuberty said. “They’ve just been overlooked over and over again.”

The Environmental Justice Community Action Network (EJCAN) is a North Carolina–based nonprofit that works to advance environmental justice in rural communities, particularly in Sampson County. The organization supports residents facing pollution and other environmental harms by providing scientific research, water and air monitoring, education, and advocacy. EJCAN also helps communities access legal and technical resources, empowering them to hold polluters accountable and push for cleaner air, water, and soil.

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This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Rural North Carolina fights back against PFAS contamination on May 6, 2026.

On the first day of his presidency back in 2021, Joe Biden revoked a key permit for the Keystone XL pipeline, which would have brought oil from Canada’s tar sands into the U.S. The decision to kill Keystone XL was perhaps Biden’s clearest gift to the environmental movement. 

But now, five years later, a family of Wyoming oil tycoons is bringing the Keystone concept back from the dead — and the Trump administration is signaling its support. Last week, President Trump signed a presidential permit for the so-called Bridger expansion pipeline, which would likely deliver oil from the carbon-intensive Alberta tar sands to a pipeline hub in central Wyoming, 647 miles away. From there, the oil could move through other pipelines to key refineries as far south as the Gulf of Mexico.

“Slightly different than the last administration,” Trump said ⁠at the White House last Thursday when he signed the presidential permit. “They wouldn’t sign a pipeline deal, and we have pipelines going up.”

The presidential permit gives the project the green light to transport oil across international borders, and it’s only the latest step in what appears to be a fast-tracked timeline for the revived tar sands pipeline. Last month, the federal Bureau of Land Management announced that it would begin conducting an environmental review of the project on an expedited schedule. (The Trump administration has shortened many of the environmental review processes required for pipeline construction.) Bridger Pipeline, the company behind the project, says it wants to begin construction next year and start moving oil in 2028.

The pipeline would carry at least 550,000 barrels of crude oil per day. That’s only about two-thirds of what Keystone XL would have carried, but it could expand to a peak capacity even larger than what was originally planned — more than 1 million barrels a day. The similarity between the new pipeline’s path and Keystone’s has led some opponents to call the successor “Keystone Light.” The Canadian portion of the new pipeline would be built by a company called South Bow, which was spun off from TC Energy, the company behind the original Keystone XL line. 

Miles of unused pipe, prepared for the proposed Keystone XL pipeline, sit in a lot outside Gascoyne, North Dakota, in 2014.
Andrew Burton / Getty Images

The proposed pipeline would be one of the biggest new fossil fuel developments of Donald Trump’s second presidency. It comes at a time of growing oil production in Alberta and skyrocketing global crude prices due to the war the president is waging in Iran. The project is being pushed by the True family, a clan of oilmen with a long history of drilling in the Rockies — and a history of oil spills from pipelines across the region.

“We know that there is limited pipeline capacity to move Canadian crude oil, and we have extensive experience in the Rocky Mountains,” said Bill Salvin, a spokesperson for Bridger Pipeline, the True family pipeline company proposing the project.

The True business empire dates back to the 1940s, when a wildcatter named Henry Alphonso “Dave” True Jr. began exploring for oil in Wyoming. He and his three sons expanded their company into a network of almost a dozen corporations that includes a drilling company, a network of local oil pipelines, a trucking company, an oil trading company, an oil equipment company, a geothermal energy firm, and a real estate company called Brick & Bond, according to a Grist review of corporate records. They also invested in cattle ranching, becoming some of the state’s largest landowners. One of True’s sons, Diemer True, served for two decades in the Wyoming legislature.

This corporate expansion has given the four-generation True family outsize influence in a state that doesn’t produce much oil but neighbors the massive Bakken shale formation of North Dakota, which is served by some of the True family pipelines. The family name is synonymous with oil in Wyoming, and True family members have become prominent donors to the University of Wyoming and to a conservative legal foundation in the region. The Trues have also run afoul of the federal government: Several members of the family engaged in a 10-year dispute with the Internal Revenue Service over what the government said was a strategy to evade some taxes by shuttling ranchland purchases between different companies. (The case ended in a multimillion-dollar fine against the Trues, which was upheld by an appellate court in 2004.)

“They’re very prominent, and their business interests have spread all around the West,” said Phil Roberts, an emeritus professor of history at the University of Wyoming and an expert on the state’s oil industry. He noted that families like the Trues have shifted away from oil production as the state’s fields have declined, investing in pipelines and oilfield services to maintain their revenue.

“Those fields have gotten really worn out, so they’ve had to diversify,” said Roberts.

Tad True speaks during the third day of the Republican National Convention at the Tampa Bay Times Forum in 2012. Mark Wilson / Getty Images

Tad True, the grandson of the True who first struck oil in Wyoming, has led the family’s pipeline business for most of this century, expanding its network to more than 4,000 miles across Wyoming, Montana, and North Dakota. He argued as early as 2006 that more pipeline development was needed in order for regional oil producers to remain competitive, and in a 2012 testimony before the House of Representatives he said that the Obama administration’s regulations were blocking the pipelines needed for the fracking boom that was then in full swing. True spoke at the Republican National Convention the same year, accusing Obama of “playing politics” with the Keystone XL pipeline, which the then-president had rejected the previous year. (While the pipeline was primarily intended to carry Canadian shale oil to American markets, it would also have included an “on ramp” for crude from True’s part of the country.)

True’s company, Bridger Pipeline, has a history of oil spills. In 2015, one of the pipelines it operated ruptured underneath the Yellowstone River after fast-moving waters eroded sediment and rock from the riverbed. At least 30,000 gallons of crude oil streamed into the river, contaminating the water supplies of Glendive, Montana. The town had to truck in bottles of drinking water after some residents noticed an odor in their tap water. Then, just a year later, another pipeline operated by one of the company’s subsidiaries leaked 600,000 gallons into a stream in North Dakota — almost enough oil to fill an Olympic-sized pool. Another pipeline broke several years later, dumping 45,000 gallons of oil onto ranchland in Wyoming. The company ultimately paid $1 million in fines to the Montana Department of Environmental Quality for the 2015 spill and $12.5 million for the 2016 spill.

In total, there have been at least 42 spills as a result of pipeline operations by True subsidiaries since 2010. According to data collected by the federal Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, more than a third of those spills had detrimental effects on the environment or people. The data shows that the Bridger Pipeline company alone is responsible for seven of those spills in just the last three years. The most recent spill took place in March near Guernsey, Wyoming. 

“That definitely sets off some alarm bells,” said Kenneth Clarkson, communications director with the nonprofit Pipeline Safety Trust. “It’s not acceptable to have one incident, and when we have this quantity, it’s definitely troubling.”

If the expanded Bridger pipeline ultimately carries tar sands oil from Canada, as appears likely, the environmental consequences of a spill could be dire. Given the thick, viscous nature of tar sands, operators mix a type of thinner — called a “diluent” in technical parlance — to help it flow through pipelines. In the event of a rupture, the diluent can easily evaporate, leaving behind a heavy, tar-like substance that sinks to the bottom of rivers and other waterways. That particular property of tar sands made cleanup of the Kalamazoo River particularly complicated after a different company’s pipeline burst in southwestern Michigan in 2010.  

“We regret any spill from our pipelines,” said Salvin, the Bridger spokesperson. “Anytime oil gets out of the line, that’s unacceptable to us, so we do everything possible to keep the oil in the line.” He said that Bridger will employ “horizontal drilling” to tunnel under rivers and streams, which he said would reduce the risk of ruptures. Salvin did not say what type of oil the pipeline would carry, but confirmed it would be engineered for “mostly heavy crude” from Alberta; the Canadian portion of the pipeline will begin in the town of Hardisty, in the heart of Alberta’s oil sands.

He also said the company would use advanced technology to monitor for leaks. In the aftermath of the 2015 spill, when North Dakota’s then-governor Doug Burgum challenged Tad True to prevent leaks, True created an artificial-intelligence software called Flowstate that analyzes pipelines for potential ruptures. Salvin said the company now uses the software on all its pipelines and markets it to other operators as well.

Even though the new proposed pipeline is similar to Keystone XL in length and size, it will only cost $2 billion, far less than Keystone’s $8 billion price tag. That’s because its route will largely follow existing infrastructure and rights-of-way established by True Companies pipelines. Salvin said that the company has held a dozen landowner meetings and has secured surveying easements, or allowances to scout the land for construction, from 374 of the 376 private landowners along the pipeline route. Unlike Keystone XL, the route does not cross any federally recognized tribal lands.

“We’re very familiar with what happened with the previous project,” said Salvin. “Given that we have existing pipeline corridors that we have access to, that’s one of the reasons why this makes such commercial sense to us.” Salvin declined to offer details about the financing of the project, and such details are not publicly available because Bridger is a privately held company.

The project must still secure a number of state and local permits, but so far it isn’t having any trouble with the Trump administration, which has been aggressive in supporting new oil and gas development. The line cuts through Montana and Wyoming, including public land overseen by the Bureau of Land Management, which is leading the federal government’s review of the project under the National Environmental Policy Act. Although the law typically requires the preparation of a detailed assessment of the project’s impact on wildlife and waterways, the bureau has suggested it might fast-track the pipeline’s review. 

Past studies have found that it typically takes federal agencies more than two years to complete an environmental impact statement, but the Bureau has indicated in public filings that it intends to publish a final impact statement by next May and make a decision on the project, allowing the company to begin construction by July.

Though True family members do not appear to be particularly close allies of Trump himself, they have given more than $4 million to Republican candidates and political action committees since 1977, according to federal records. A combined $12,000 went to Trump’s unsuccessful reelection campaign in 2020, the only apparent record of True financial support for the president. Furthermore, six members of the True family appeared on a 2022 endorsement list for Liz Cheney, the Wyoming politician who lost her reelection bid after she voted to impeach Trump.

The business case for the new pipeline rests on a number of big assumptions. The existing pipelines from the tar sands are running near capacity, but the Bridger proposal assumes that production in Canada’s oil hub will continue to increase. Many forecasters aren’t so sure; even with prices high, current projections show that production growth is slowing and may peak in 2030 at around 3.5 million barrels a day, well under what the proponents of Keystone XL anticipated. 

Second, the pipeline would only carry oil to central Wyoming, not all the way to the Nebraska refinery hub targeted by the original Keystone XL pipeline. Another company would need to build another pipeline across Nebraska in order for the crude to reach the major oil refineries on the Gulf Coast. (Salvin said Bridger is “exploring options” for that segment.) Third, it’s unclear if those refiners will even want as much of the heavy Canadian crude oil that the pipeline would offer, since imports of similar oil from Venezuela have started to tick up following Trump’s kidnapping of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro and subsequent negotiations with the country’s new leadership. 

“To call this plan half-baked would be an insult to baking,” wrote energy lawyer and anti-pipeline advocate Paul Blackburn in a blog post last month. Blackburn is an advisor to Bold Alliance, the activist network that opposed the last Keystone XL proposal. 

Many of the same activist groups that opposed the prior pipeline are getting ready to oppose this one as well. The Bold Alliance, which organized tribes and rural landowners against Keystone, has said it will litigate any attempt to extend a pipeline into Nebraska. Jenny Harbine, a managing attorney with the nonprofit Earthjustice, said her group is “keeping a close eye” to ensure federal and state agencies adequately consider environmental and safety concerns. The Bureau of Land Management and the Montana Department of Environmental Quality, which is coordinating its review with that of the federal government, closed an initial public comment period last week.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline ‘Keystone Light’: These Wyoming oil tycoons are reviving the controversial pipeline on May 6, 2026.

There’s a strange trend afoot on the East Coast, where residents have seen some of the highest increases in electricity costs in the country. As part of efforts to relieve the pressure, some Democrats are planning to slash energy-efficiency programs. Because utilities fund energy-efficiency measures through charges to their customers, the thinking is that scaling the programs down will reduce people’s bills quickly. The irony is that energy efficiency is meant to do exactly that: lower people’s energy use, and thus reduce their bills. 

“The cheapest, fastest thing you can do to help meet energy demand in this moment of increasing need for energy is energy efficiency,” said Mark Kresowik, senior policy director at the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy, or ACEEE.

This emerging trend among Democrats, alongside a more established shift among Republicans, is the opposite of how politicians have reacted to similar situations in the past. In 1973, when Arab countries stopped exporting oil to the U.S. because it supported Israel during the Yom Kippur War, oil prices soared, drivers waited in long lines at gas stations, and electricity bills increased. In response, President Richard Nixon proposed measures to trim energy use, including reducing speed limits to 50 mph, and urged Americans to lower their thermostats in the colder months. It was the beginning of a decades-long, bipartisan effort to improve energy efficiency and reduce the country’s reliance on “foreign oil.” 

The effort ended up saving Americans trillions of dollars. As regulations prompted manufacturers to make cars with better gas mileage, they trimmed fuel costs for Americans by an estimated $5 trillion over the course of decades (as well as preventing 14 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions). In addition, the efficiency standards that the government set on home appliances and plumbing still save the average household about $576 a year on their utility bills, while cutting national energy use by 6.5 percent. That’s according to data from the Department of Energy in January last year, before President Donald Trump took office.

Read Next How your showerhead and fridge got roped into the culture wars Kate Yoder

But confronted with another oil crisis today, again sparked by a conflict in the Middle East, many politicians are taking the opposite approach. The Trump administration, along with Republicans in Congress, has attacked the Biden-era fuel economy standards for cars, along with rules requiring appliances to be more efficient. And some Democrats, previously reliable supporters of energy efficiency, are wavering in their support. The result is that as data centers gobble up electricity, and extreme weather and an aging grid further drive up prices, some politicians are weakening one of the best tools for lowering bills and protecting people from price swings.

In Maryland, for example, Democratic Governor Wes Moore is expected to sign legislation scaling back the state’s target to reduce emissions, which would cut the amount utilities have to spend on energy-efficiency programs and eliminate a surcharge ratepayers see on their bills. Politicians in the region are looking for anything to immediately decrease their constituents’ bills, and they don’t have a lot of options to address the drivers of rising costs. “Energy affordability politics are dominating the political agenda, and it’s very difficult to address energy affordability,” said Kelly Trombley, senior director of state policy at Ceres, a sustainability nonprofit. But politicians can remove energy-efficiency surcharges with the stroke of a pen.

That helps explain why Rhode Island Governor Dan McKee, another Democrat, floated the idea of capping spending for energy efficiency rebates at $75 million a year, down from $95 million approved for this year. Fees, state mandates, and other charges tied to state policies reportedly account for a quarter of energy bills. Affordability concerns also prompted Democrats in the Massachusetts House to pass a bill that would cut $1 billion, out of $4.5 billion, from the state’s energy-efficiency budget. That bill appears to have a tough path forward, since the chair of the state Senate’s energy committee has signaled his support for Mass Save, a program that rewards ratepayers for buying heat pumps and making other energy-saving moves.

In Maryland, supporters of the legislation to cut energy efficiency spending say it could save residents $150 a year or more on their bills. “The thing about surcharges like this is, it is one of our most direct tools,” state Delegate Marc Korman, a Democrat, told Canary Media. ​“We don’t want to forsake all efforts at energy efficiency, but we want to try to provide a little bit of relief for some time if we can.” 

To opponents, focusing on immediate savings misses the bigger picture, since it would hurt affordability in the long-term. An analysis from ACEEE found that the proposed legislation in Maryland would increase costs for the state’s electricity customers by a net $592 million.

“Unfortunately, cutting energy efficiency programs — it’s like trading in your car for one that gets worse gas mileage at a time when gas prices are going up, and it won’t do anything to address those real cost drivers that will only get worse,” Trombley said. “Energy efficiency is one of the only options customers have to insulate themselves from the volatility coming from things like natural gas or an aging grid susceptible to extreme weather.”

While the trend appears mostly limited to the Northeast and mid-Atlantic, there’s one recent example of Democrats opposing an energy-efficiency measure on the federal level. In January, 57 Democrats in the House voted with Republicans on a bill that would eliminate the Biden administration’s efficiency standards for manufactured homes, which haven’t been updated since 1994 and allow for poor insulation. It’s still awaiting a vote in the Senate.

Republicans have increasingly targeted energy-efficiency laws, a reversal from the days of presidents Nixon and Ronald Reagan, who signed the National Appliance Energy Conservation Act in 1987. These days, everything from dishwashers to laundry machines has been sucked into the culture wars. The Trump administration and Republicans in Congress have targeted efficiency standards enacted under the Biden administration, viewing them as symbols of Democrats interfering with “consumer choice.” Last week, the Trump administration urged the Supreme Court to strike down Biden-era rules that would have restricted gas-powered commercial water heaters and consumer furnaces, siding with the natural gas industry and utilities.

Still, some energy efficiency programs have survived the Republican-dominated federal government. After the Trump administration threatened to eliminate Energy Star, a government program that puts its certification label on products that meet its efficiency standards, Congress passed a bipartisan spending bill in January that ensures continued funding. Congress also allocated $3 million more in funding for the Weatherization Assistance Program, which provides free energy-efficiency upgrades for low-income households, than it did last year, for a total of $329 million. Some Republican members of Congress have proposed a bill to extend tax credits from the Inflation Reduction Act that were set to expire at the end of June — including incentives for constructing energy-efficient homes and supporting retrofits for commercial buildings.

And in the bigger picture, state spending on energy efficiency, especially in terms of assisting low-income households, has been on the rise. Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger, a Democrat, signed a handful of pro-efficiency laws in April aiming to trim household bills by providing energy-saving upgrades to low-income families, some with bipartisan support. Also last month, Ned Lamont, Connecticut’s Democratic governor, announced a measure that’s supposed to save families about $30 a month by decreasing charges for public benefits on utility bills, with much of the reduction offset by contracts he negotiated with nuclear power plants that provide energy at fixed prices.

“We’re hopeful that there’s a pathway to strengthen and really recognize that you actually can’t have an energy affordability strategy without energy efficiency,” Trombley said.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Democrats used to back energy-saving plans. Now they’re wavering. on May 6, 2026.

Last week, the U.N. Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues released urgent calls to action, including a pause on fast-tracked critical mineral projects and increased funding for Indigenous climate projects. But those recommendations come as the Forum itself is facing an existential crisis. 

For 25 years, the Forum has been the leading United Nations body representing Indigenous peoples, but that status has not always translated to policy change by member states or the U.N. itself. Growing questions about the Forum’s effectiveness also come amid budget cuts at the U.N., Trump’s rejection of multilateralism, and ongoing efforts to streamline U.N. processes. These intersecting challenges are all threatening to push the Forum, and the causes Indigenous representatives bring to it, even further toward the margins.

“For us, climate change is not a distant threat. It is a present and lived human rights crisis,” Aluki Kotierk, who is Inuk from Canada and current chairperson of the Permanent Forum, said Friday at the conclusion of the Forum’s two-week annual meeting in New York City. The Forum’s recommendations reflect discussions and research conducted by hundreds of Indigenous delegates and experts over the past year. They join more than 1,000 recommendations issued by the Forum since it first began to meet, many of which Indigenous advocates deem critical to their survival. But state governments often blatantly ignore them. 

A new “Systemic Assessment” report by a group of current and former members of the Permanent Forum underscores this problem. “While UNPFII has succeeded in establishing itself as a visible and legitimate global platform, questions remain regarding its ability to translate dialogue, recommendations, and knowledge production into tangible outcomes for Indigenous Peoples on the ground,” the report said. “The proliferation of recommendations has not been matched by corresponding mechanisms for implementation, follow-up, and accountability.” 

The report underscores the limitations of Forum, which makes recommendations on behalf of Indigenous peoples to U.N. agencies and member states, but has been hamstrung by funding cuts and the willingness of other U.N. agencies and global leaders to listen. Annual funding for the U.N. Trust Fund on Indigenous Issues, which helps the Permanent Forum carry out its mission, is at a historic low, falling from more than $300,000 in 2021 to less than $50,000 in 2026. Currently, only three U.N. member states contribute to the fund, down from nine member states in 2006. 

The drop in funding reflects a broader liquidity crisis at the U.N. driven in part by late payments from key members like the U.S. and China. Kotierk said the lack of funding has led to staff reductions at the Forum, shorter meeting times, and fewer interpretation services. 

That didn’t stop the Forum from issuing bold calls to action on Friday, including urging U.N. member states to seriously consider international court rulings to mitigate climate change by 2027, and to legally protect Indigenous lands, especially land belonging to uncontacted tribes. The Forum published multiple reports Friday with recommendations ranging from asking member states to develop legal protections for nomadic Indigenous communities, to urging the Green Climate Fund and Global Environment Facility, multi-billion dollar government-funded global funds, to provide direct funding to Indigenous peoples to mitigate climate change. 

Eirik Larsen, who attended this year’s Forum on behalf of the Saami Council, urged Forum members to consider capping the number of recommendations to maximize their effectiveness, and to ask member states and U.N. entities to report back on whether they’ve implemented recommendations from previous years. 

Larsen said that despite the need for improvement, he keeps returning to the Forum because it’s an important arena for discussing critical issues at the international level. “It’s a unique venue for Indigenous peoples to interact directly with member states,” he said. 

The systemic assessment of the Forum found that many Indigenous survey respondents agreed with Larsen’s appreciation of the Forum, seeing it as “a place of visibility, exchange, and recognition,” the report found. “Yet a large number also characterize it as overly performative, a ‘talk shop,’ or a space in which testimony is heard but not translated into meaningful change.” 

To Ghazali Ohorella, international relations and Indigenous rights advisor of the Alifuru Council, the assessment could not have been issued at a worse time. Just a year ago, the U.N. embarked on a process of restructuring, which could lead to U.N. bodies like the Forum being consolidated or eliminated. Today’s Permanent Forum is the result of decades of advocacy by Indigenous peoples for a dedicated space within the U.N., which by design, privileges the voices of recognized state governments and doesn’t allow Indigenous peoples who remain under colonial rule to vote in the General Assembly. Ohorella is worried that the report — which is based on a survey of 200 respondents, rather than the thousands of attendees over the past 25 years — could give ammunition to the Forum’s detractors. “It allows them to say: See, even Indigenous Peoples themselves identified problems with the Forum. Retire it,” Ohorella said. 

Read Next Indigenous peoples bear the brunt of climate change — and get almost none of the money to fight it Anita Hofschneider

One of the most valuable aspects of the Forum is its ability to elevate issues that otherwise might be ignored, like Indigenous health, which was the main topic of this year’s gathering. “There is no health without land. The well-being of Indigenous Peoples is inseparable from our lands, waters, and territories,” Kotierk said in her closing speech on Friday. “To restore health, we must advance decolonization.” This year, the Forum’s official recommendations urged U.N. member states to disaggregate health data on Indigenous peoples by 2027, and “to treat prolonged climate-induced displacement of Indigenous Peoples as a health emergency.” 

Kotierk said that the Forum has been instrumental in influencing global policies. “This Forum has consistently elevated what the world too often ignored. It has brought visibility to the crisis of Indigenous Peoples’ languages, affirmed the rights and leadership of Indigenous women and girls, and ensured that Indigenous Peoples’ voices are not only present—but heard—in international decision-making,” Kotierk said. 

Yet despite its importance, it’s not easy for Indigenous advocates to participate in the Permanent Forum. Structural barriers that limit participation include challenges obtaining visas — which have worsened under the Trump administration — lack of awareness about the Forum and how to register, and the high cost of travel. In the systemic assessment report, survey respondents suggested the Forum consider holding regional, national and local gatherings “that do not force all meaningful participation through a single annual gathering in New York.” 

Mariah Hernandez-Fitch, a first-year law student at Emory University and a member of the United Houma Nation, attended the Forum for the first time as a youth fellow for the Ban Ki-Moon Foundation. Hernandez-Fitch has never been abroad and this was her first time participating in a global Indigenous space. “It was beautiful to see people not all in suits,” she said. “Seeing people in their cultural attire, their formal wear, that was very exciting to me.” She listened to someone from Vietnam speak about how climate change was affecting their community and was moved by how similar their experience was to her family’s experience with rising seas in southeastern Louisiana. 

But she also felt overwhelmed by the process, confused by when the side events were happening, and ended up not delivering a planned statement, in part because she was intimidated by the process. “There’s rules, but if you don’t know about them, you do feel out of place even in a space that is for Indigenous peoples,” she said. 

Still, now that she’s back in New Orleans, Hernandez-Fitch can see herself returning to the Forum. “I can see myself applying the law and my experience into those spaces,” she said. “I could see myself not being scared of making an intervention.” It helped to meet other Indigenous youth who care just as much as she does about making a difference. “There’s a communal kind of excitement and I feel excited for the future.”

Conversations about how to make the Forum more effective will continue at next year’s gathering, which will be held from May 10 to 21 and focus on global progress on the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. 

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline The uncertain future of the UN’s leading voice on Indigenous rights on May 6, 2026.

On a sunny Friday afternoon in October 2023, some 70 children filed into a cool, dark tunnel in the south of Paris to help the city rehearse for its increasingly hot future.

The tunnel, part of the abandoned Petite Ceinture railway encircling the city, is always 64 degrees Fahrenheit (18 degrees Celcius), making it the perfect safe haven from the potentially lethal heat imagined outside. Once underground, each youngster was asked to simulate the effects of extreme temperatures that might become reality in their lifetimes. Some pretended to have been poisoned by food that spoiled during a power outage. Others faked the effects of carbon monoxide leaking from a faulty generator. Meanwhile, Red Cross workers scrambled to decide who to send to overwhelmed hospitals. Around them, dozens of others — fire fighters, city officials, teachers — did their best to simulate the chaos and cascading impacts a heat wave of unprecedented duration and intensity might force them to confront.

The officials who created the Paris at 50C exercise wanted children to participate because they will face the consequences of a warming world and because they ask so many questions. Crisotech

The exercise, called Paris at 50 degrees Celsius, was designed to imagine what might happen if the mercury hits 122 degrees F, something scientists warn is increasingly likely by 2100. It combined live drills and a tabletop exercise to help shape a plan to protect the city’s 2 million people from that kind of heat. Once limited to a handful of cities, these exercises are spreading as local governments stress test health services, emergency response, and essential infrastructure before temperatures reach dangerous extremes.

What Paris is rehearsing could soon confront cities across the continent. European governments are being urged to prepare for 5 to 6 degrees F (2.8 to 3.3 degrees C) of warming, a change that could push Paris toward dangerous summertime temperatures by the end of the century. 

Such heat is a global threat. Modeling suggests more than 1.6 billion people in nearly 1,000 cities could regularly face perilous conditions within three decades. Heat waves are already straining hospitals, causing outages, and paralyzing transit. In the complex systems that make up a city, even small failures can lead to larger breakdowns.

But as cities invest time and money into these exercises, one question remains: Do they actually improve preparedness?

It took Pénélope Komitès more than 18 months to prepare a drill that would last just two days. As Paris’ deputy mayor in charge of resilience, she considers such planning essential. “It was very important for us to show people that heat waves are not just something we see on the TV, but something that can happen soon, and that we need to improve what we’re going to do,” she said.

To help inform the scenario, scientists at the Île-de-France Regional Climate Change Expertise Group, which advises city leaders on climate risk, modeled what the future might look like. Other studies based on data from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have largely confirmed their projection that temperatures could hit 122 degree F (50 degrees C) by the end of the century. For now, the city’s record stands at 108.68 F (42.6 C), registered on July 25, 2019.

A temperature sign over a pharmacy in Paris, France, reads 47 degrees C (116 degrees F) during a heat wave in 2015.
Pierre Suu / Getty Images

The World Health Organization estimates that heat contributes to roughly half a million deaths worldwide each year. Symptoms can quickly escalate from fatigue to dehydration to heat stroke as the body loses its ability to cool itself. For older adults and people with heart or kidney disease, that strain can be fatal. 

In Paris, much of the work of designing the simulation fell to Crisotech, a consultancy specializing in crisis exercises. It spent nine months working with the city to develop a dozen scenarios designed to anticipate where services would buckle, how agencies would work together, and which residents might be missed. The role-playing the children, from two different schools, participated in at two locations occurred on the first day; the second was dedicated to tabletop exercises among city officials and first responders. 

The simulations are designed to test a city’s response to all the things that might happen during a prolonged heat wave, such as people experiencing heat stroke and other health impacts. Crisotech

“The objective was to anticipate all possible impacts of a heat dome across Paris, to consolidate the [preparedness] measures planned by the city in the event of an extreme heat wave, test new solutions, … and identify new actions to be implemented,” said Komitès.

More than 100 organizations took part, from city agencies and emergency services to utilities and nonprofits. While other cities, including Melbourne, London, and Phoenix, have hosted similar workshops, Paris made the unprecedented decision to include citizens in the role-playing portion of the €200,000 ($236,000) event. The city held informal meetings to recruit volunteers and help residents visualize the scenario. Children were especially valuable participants, both because they will face the consequences of a warming world and because they ask so many questions, said Ziad Touat, the crisis management consultant who led the simulation for Crisotech.

Komitès also wanted to prepare Parisians for the day when all of this would unfold for real. That’s important, she said, because the pandemic showed that well-informed communities respond to a crisis more effectively. If people recognize the symptoms of heat stroke, for example, or know when to find a cooling shelter, first responders can focus on the most vulnerable, Komitès said.

Five years ago, these simulations were confined to a handful of cities in the U.S. and Europe. Now, cities around the world are getting interested, said Cassie Sunderland, managing director of climate solutions at C40, a global network of mayors focused on climate action. 

Some of the sims are sprawling operations like the one in Paris; others are more modest tabletop exercises, or hybrids that combine interagency workshops with limited role-playing. All are meant to identify points of failure before a crisis does.

A huge generator provides power during an exercise designed to simulate the surge in electricity demand Paris might experience during a prolonged heatwave. Crisotech

Success is not measured by whether a drill runs smoothly, but rather, the opposite. The most valuable ones are realistic enough to force decisions, yet unpredictable enough to expose coordination problems and infrastructure failures. For example, engineers might be brought in to determine the temperature at which train tracks expand. “Imagine if you suddenly have a huge amount of people who need additional health care, but doctors and nurses can’t get to the hospital because of transport failures,” said Sunderland.

The growth of these exercises reflects a broader concern that many cities are unprepared. “Simulating extreme heat is really important,” said Dr. Satchit Balsari, a professor of emergency medicine at Harvard Medical School. “A lot of cities stop and make heat action plans, but they actually don’t drill into how they are going to implement them, whether the funding for it exists, and if they actually have the know-how.”

Some scenarios can only be explored in a simulation, such as the question of cooling patients experiencing heatstroke. “How do you take a large human body and put it in ice? Is there a bucket that big?” Balsari said. “The answer is no, so is it a body bag? Where do you get all this ice?” What might appear simple on paper becomes a challenge unless tested.

Simulations should also consider what measures are needed after the heat breaks, Balsari said. For instance, healthcare systems will need plans for addressing the long-term impacts like increased risk of chronic kidney disease. “Have a final session that thinks about what the subsequent months look like,” he said. 

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Such challenges are compounded because most cities do not have someone responsible for crafting a unified response. A few, including Athens, Greece; Melbourne, Australia; and Freetown, Sierra Leone, have appointed “heat officers,” but most rely upon coordination among multiple departments. Rigorous testing can identify where that might break down and how coordination can be improved. Phoenix created a heat department after an exercise revealed that very problem.

Some of the cities most vulnerable to extreme heat may not have the resources to stage an expensive drill. But Touat said preparedness is not an all-or-nothing affair. Smaller, less costly efforts can still build readiness — whether by testing communications plans, mapping vulnerable citizens, or practicing how agencies would collaborate during an outage. “Don’t try to have everything at once and to spend too much money to do an exercise of this type,” he said. “It’s better to do five small ones than one big one.”

However, simulating extreme heat to improve preparedness isn’t enough, and work to decrease temperatures in cities must happen in parallel, Sunderland said. True resilience requires long-term changes that cool cities and slow climate change itself.

Even though these simulations have their limits and can come with a hefty price tag, many cities still see their appeal. 

In Taiwan, they are expanding beyond cities. The country staged a tabletop exercise last year and plans a live simulation in July to test coordination within cities and between national officials. The goal is to test whether national and local agencies can effectively work together, said Ken-Mu Chang, the deputy director general of the country’s Climate Change Administration. 

The tabletop exercise and role-playing scenario will focus on managing the health impacts of a days-long 104-degree F (40-degree C) heat wave — the kind of prolonged heat that can overwhelm hospitals and power systems. One challenge, Chang said, is designing an exercise that feels realistic enough to be useful without creating unnecessary public anxiety.

After last year’s trial run, officials realized that much of the exercise focused on agencies explaining existing plans, rather than showing how they’d respond to a crisis. “We want to make those gaps more visible and more concrete,” Chang said. “We want agencies not only to explain what they have, but also to identify what is still missing under a more extreme situation.”

Meanwhile, Barcelona, Spain is adapting the model Komitès helped develop.

Barcelona has created more shaded areas throughout the city to protect people from increasingly dangerous heat. Courtesy of Ajuntament de Barcelona

The Catalan city faces growing urgency to prepare for a hotter future. The Mediterranean basin is warming 20 percent faster than the global average, making it one of the continent’s climate hot spots. Barcelona is among the European cities expected to see the greatest number of heat-related deaths by the end of the century. 

Given that future, city officials want to develop plans to protect infrastructure, build a registry of vulnerable residents, and improve coordination. “It’s not easy when there’s so many actors and it’s not easy when the impacts are on so many different levels,” said Irma Ventayol, who leads Barcelona’s climate change department and is overseeing the simulation.

Barcelona’s Heat Plan 2025-2035 calls for the continued expansion of green infrastructure and shaded areas in public schools and playgrounds. Courtesy of Ajuntament de Barcelona

“Can we cope with waste management at 40 degrees C or 50 degrees C? Are the trucks prepared? Maybe they are, but no one has checked, so we need to ask those questions sooner rather than later,” Ventayol said. She also sees media coverage of the event as an opportunity to raise awareness among Barcelona’s nearly 2 million residents.

Beyond protecting the city, she hopes the exercise can help others. “I’d like to have a protocol that can serve other cities too, a scalable methodology that other cities can take and replicate, even for other impacts such as floods,” Ventayol said.

In Paris, the simulation — which inspired a flooding exercise that took place in October — produced 50 recommendations later folded into the city’s 2024–2030 Climate Action Plan. Some are now underway, including insulating thousands of homes and replacing asphalt parking spaces with trees; it planted 15,000 last winter alone. Even the three bathing spots along the Seine River that opened with a splash during last year’s Olympics are part of a broader effort to help residents stay cool.

Komitès is being peppered with questions from others eager to launch similar exercises. All of the lessons for the simulation were compiled into two public documents: a guide to running a heat simulation of this scale and a report detailing what organizers learned. “Everything we did is already on the internet so you’re already one step ahead,” said Touat at Crisotech.

The biggest surprise to come out of the exercise had nothing to do with infrastructure resilience or cooperation among departments. What shocked Komitès the most was how unprepared Parisians are for extreme heat.

The realization prompted what may be the city’s most important adaptation effort yet: preparing citizens, not just officials. In March, Paris opened its first Campus of Resilience with the civil protection agency and fire department. The center will host training sessions, smaller simulations, and public workshops open to all residents. “We need to talk with Parisians,” Komitès said. “To inform them, to prepare them.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Cities are rehearsing for deadly heat. Will it help when disaster comes? on May 5, 2026.

If you want to ditch your gas furnace and heat your home more cleanly and efficiently, you need to scale up one of your kitchen appliances. The first option is “electric resistance heating,” better known as a space heater, which acts like a giant toaster to warm a room instead of bread. The second is a heat pump, which extracts warmth from even freezing outdoor air and pumps it indoors, like a refrigerator moves heat from inside the box to the kitchen. (That’s why the back of your fridge feels warm, by the way.)

Energy experts say that to bring down greenhouse gas emissions and improve human health, we need to replace toxic gas furnaces and boilers with heat pumps ASAP. Less talked about, though, is that we also need to replace those giant toasters with giant reverse refrigerators, which would make homes more comfortable and more efficient, and therefore cheaper to heat.

According to a new report from the nonprofit energy group RMI, one in five homes in the United States is heated primarily with electric resistance heating. Replacing those devices with heat pumps would save households an average of $1,530 a year, or $20 billion annually across the country. (The calculations included only single-family homes, not multifamily units like apartment buildings.) At the same time, demand on the electrical grid would fall significantly, while total carbon emissions from homes making the switch to heat pumps for climate control and water heating would plummet by about 40 percent. “There’s a lot of benefits to the grid, which translate to lower rates as well,” said Ryan Shea, a manager in RMI’s carbon-free buildings program. “Then, of course, there’s using less energy.”

Electric heat pumps work their magic with a trick of physics: By changing the pressure of refrigerants, they draw warmth from outdoor air or liquids coursing underground, then bring it indoors. (In the summer, the process reverses, cooling an indoor space like a traditional air conditioning unit.) They’re ultraefficient because unlike a furnace or space heater — which generate warmth by burning fossil fuels or using electricity — these appliances simply transfer heat from one place to another. Accordingly, heat pumps have a “coefficient of performance,” or COP, of around three, meaning they produce three units of heat for every unit of electricity used. In other words, they’re 300 percent efficient. That’s three times as efficient as electric resistance heating, which has a COP of one, while even the most efficient gas furnaces operate well below that.

In all kinds of homes, heat pumps are replacing electric resistance heating or gas furnaces. If you don’t have ducting, heat pumps come in units that embed in walls to exchange between outdoor and indoor air. If you have ducting, an indoor unit replaces the furnace and connects to an outdoor one, which exchanges the heat. If you also have an AC unit that has reached the end of its life, subbing in a heat pump will give you both cooling and ultraefficient heating. “That’s kind of the right trigger point for a lot of people to start thinking about heat pumps,” Shea said, “is when their air conditioner needs replacing.”

The next generation of heat pump is targeting apartment-dwellers, too. A company called Gradient, for instance, has been working with building owners and public housing authorities to deploy its units, which slip over window sills like saddles and plug into a standard wall outlet. The appliance can swap in for old window AC units, giving tenants clean heating, not just cooling.

The idea is to quickly and cheaply deploy these appliances in large buildings, without landlords having to retrofit each unit if they, say, get rid of the structure’s central fossil-fuel boiler. Gradient says that in less than two weeks, it installed 277 of them in a Providence, Rhode Island public housing development that previously used electric resistance heating. “It is very straightforward and a huge energy win for them,” said Vince Romanin, the company’s founder and chief technology officer. “You’re not just saving money. You are providing a dramatically better service, because you’re adding cooling.”

Still, the RMI report notes, the U.S. builds nearly 1.5 million homes each year, 200,000 of them with electric resistance heating. It also installs a million AC units annually in homes with electric resistance heating, when those could instead be heat pumps that’d save occupants money. The trick, then, is for policymakers and utilities to incentivize these efficient appliances with rebates and the like. That’s what helped Maine reach its goal of installing 100,000 heat pumps two years ahead of schedule — by next year, it hopes to install 175,000 more. 

The U.S., though, can’t simply replace all of its furnaces and space heaters with heat pumps and call it a day, energy experts said. It must happen alongside a push to make homes more efficient, like by installing proper insulation and double-pane windows. That is, a home needs to retain more heat in the winter and cool air in the summer, so a heat pump would need to run less. “Step one, don’t burn fossil fuels in your home, basically,” said Gernot Wagner, a climate economist at Columbia Business School, who wasn’t involved in the new report. “Step two: insulate, insulate, insulate. And both of those go hand-in-hand.”

The grid, too, needs upgrades if heat pumps are to reach their full potential. For one, ideally you’re powering them with electricity coming entirely from renewables like wind and solar, otherwise you’re still burning fossil fuels to warm homes. (Though to be clear, because heat pumps are so efficient, this is still better than sticking with gas furnaces.) And two, heat pumps join electric vehicles and induction stoves in increasing demand on the grid. Utilities are already making upgrades to handle all this electrification, like installing huge battery banks to store renewable energy to use when the sun doesn’t shine and wind doesn’t blow. They’re also experimenting with vehicle-to-grid technology, or V2G, which allows EVs to send power to the grid when demand is highest.

If the U.S. is really going to wean itself off fossil fuels, it needs all these systems to work in concert: More renewables, more batteries, fewer giant toasters.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline American homes need heat pumps, not space heaters on May 5, 2026.