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In the fishing town of Astoria, Oregon, the 29th annual FisherPoets Gathering will bring together commercial fishers to share poetry, essays, and songs about life in a changing seafood industry.

Every year, on the last weekend of February, fishers, tourists, and artists gather in the breweries, bars, and playhouses to hear stories about making a living on the water.

Jon Broderick, commercial salmon fisherman and schoolteacher, founded the FisherPoets Gathering nearly 30 years ago. “We never met with the goal of maintaining or continuing culture, but just to continue to enjoy our own,” Broderick tells Food Tank.

The first gathering grew out of Broderick’s desire to reconnect with his fishing friends and celebrate their shared love of the work through poetry. In 1998, 39 poets and their guests squeezed into an Astoria bar called the Wet Dog. Today, the festival fills venues across town and features poetry, workshops, and presentations from environmental advocates, artists, and heritage craftspeople.

Over the years, the workshops have featured speakers from Global Ocean Health, along with habitat restoration leaders and advocates working on issues such as Pebble Mine—a proposed large-scale copper and gold mine in Alaska’s Bristol Bay watershed that has raised concerns about risks to one of the world’s most productive salmon fisheries.

The 2026 lineup continues that tradition, bringing policy, science, and community voices into the heart of the gathering. Participants represent organizations including the North American Marine Alliance, Wild Salmon Center, Oregon Sea Grant, FishHer Columbia Pacific CommUNITY Alliance, and the Columbia River Maritime Museum.

Amanda J. Gladics, Associate Professor of Practice with Oregon Sea Grant’s Fisheries Extension, works closely with the FisherPoets Gathering to help organize its events and create accessible pathways to sustainable fishing programs. For her, poetry and community-driven narratives serve as a gateway to broader conversations, with many poets weaving these issues directly into their work.

“These topics, along with family legacy and transitions, risk and uncertainty, and the impacts of environmental change on fisheries management, become relatable in a different way,” Gladics tells Food Tank. “They’re filtered through individual artistic expression rather than the analytical arguments we might hear in the news or in policy forums.”

That relatability is one of the gathering’s defining strengths, Broderick emphasizes. He makes it clear that participants do not need to be professional poets or writers. “You just have to have lived a life and tell your truth about it,” he says. “It’s got to be authentic.”

The Gathering also aims to challenge common stereotypes about fishing, including the idea that it is a dying industry.

The Alaska Department of Labor reports that seafood harvesting jobs fell for the fifth consecutive year in 2024, bringing the workforce to its lowest level since data collection began in 2001 in one of the West Coast’s major fishing grounds. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration finds US$1.8 billion in wholesale revenue losses from 2022 to 2023 and more than 38,000 fishing and related jobs lost nationwide, with effects reaching Washington, Oregon, California, and beyond.

But Gladics sees a demographic shift emerging in the seafood sector. “We have a younger generation in their 20s, 30s, and 40s who are redefining what it means to be part of this self-selected community,” she says.

The gathering tries to challenge the misconception that modern fishing on North America’s West Coast is dominated by industrial fleets. Many of the poets who share their work at the festival are commercial fishers, but most are owner-operators or work for them. “They’re not answering to a corporate structure,” says Broderick.

Both Broderick and Gladics believe the gathering is a testament to the people and communities navigating this changing landscape, with shifting regulations, environmental pressures, and evolving misconceptions.

“If we can each be open to really hearing another person’s experiences—sometimes vastly different from our own,” Gladics says, “it allows for empathy and connection, and hopefully a window into valuing the bounty of the ocean and the people who bring it to us in a new way.”

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Photo courtesy of Jeff Taylor

The post Astoria’s FisherPoets Give Testimony to Transition appeared first on Food Tank.

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

This week Absolute State of the Union

‘DRILL, BABY’: US president Donald Trump “doubled down on his ‘drill, baby, drill’ agenda” in his State of the Union (SOTU) address, said the Los Angeles Times. He “tout[ed] his support of the fossil-fuel industry and renew[ed] his focus on electricity affordability”, reported the Financial Times. Trump also attacked the “green new scam”, noted Carbon Brief’s SOTU tracker.

COAL REPRIEVE: Earlier in the week, the Trump administration had watered down limits on mercury pollution from coal-fired power plants, reported the Financial Times. It remains “unclear” if this will be enough to prevent the decline of coal power, said Bloomberg, in the face of lower-cost gas and renewables. Reuters noted that US coal plants are “ageing”.

OIL STAY: The US Supreme Court agreed to hear arguments brought by the oil industry in a “major lawsuit”, reported the New York Times. The newspaper said the firms are attempting to head off dozens of other lawsuits at state level, relating to their role in global warming.

SHIP-SHILLING: The Trump administration is working to “kill” a global carbon levy on shipping “permanently”, reported Politico, after succeeding in delaying the measure late last year. The Guardian said US “bullying” could be “paying off”, after Panama signalled it was reversing its support for the levy in a proposal submitted to the UN shipping body.

Around the world

• RARE EARTHS: The governments of Brazil and India signed a deal on rare earths, said the Times of India, as well as agreeing to collaborate on renewable energy.
• HEAT ROLLBACK: German homes will be allowed to continue installing gas and oil heating, under watered-down government plans covered by Clean Energy Wire.
• BRAZIL FLOODS: At least 53 people died in floods in the state of Minas Gerais, after some areas saw 170mm of rain in a few hours, reported CNN Brasil.
• ITALY’S ATTACK: Italy is calling for the EU to “suspend” its emissions trading system (ETS) ahead of a review later this year, said Politico.
• COOKSTOVE CREDITS: The first-ever carbon credits under the Paris Agreement have been issued to a cookstove project in Myanmar, said Climate Home News.
• SAUDI SOLAR: Turkey has signed a “major” solar deal that will see Saudi firm ACWA building 2 gigawatts in the country, according to Agence France-Presse.

$467 billion

The profits made by five major oil firms since prices spiked following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine four years ago, according to a report by Global Witness covered by BusinessGreen.

Latest climate research

• Claims about the “fingerprint” of human-caused climate change, made in a recent US Department of Energy report, are “factually incorrect” | AGU Advances
• Large lakes in the Congo Basin are releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere from “immense ancient stores” | Nature Geoscience
• Shared Socioeconomic Pathways – scenarios used regularly in climate modelling – underrepresent “narratives explicitly centring on democratic principles such as participation, accountability and justice” | npj Climate Action

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

Captured

The constituency of Richard Tice MP, the climate-sceptic deputy leader of Reform UK, is the second-largest recipient of flood defence spending in England, according to new Carbon Brief analysis. Overall, the funding is disproportionately targeted at coastal and urban areas, many of which have Conservative or Liberal Democrat MPs.

Spotlight Is there really a UK ‘greenlash’?

This week, after a historic Green Party byelection win, Carbon Brief looks at whether there really is a “greenlash” against climate policy in the UK.

Over the past year, the UK’s political consensus on climate change has been shattered.

Yet despite a sharp turn against climate action among right-wing politicians and right-leaning media outlets, UK public support for climate action remains strong.

Prof Federica Genovese, who studies climate politics at the University of Oxford, told Carbon Brief: 

“The current ‘war’ on green policy is mostly driven by media and political elites, not by the public.”

Indeed, there is still a greater than two-to-one majority among the UK public in favour of the country’s legally binding target to reach net-zero emissions by 2050, as shown below.

Steve Akehurst, director of public-opinion research initiative Persuasion UK, also noted the growing divide between the public and “elites”. He told Carbon Brief:

“The biggest movement is, without doubt, in media and elite opinion. There is a bit more polarisation and opposition [to climate action] among voters, but it’s typically no more than 20-25% and mostly confined within core Reform voters.”

Conservative gear shift

For decades, the UK had enjoyed strong, cross-party political support for climate action.

Lord Deben, the Conservative peer and former chair of the Climate Change Committee, told Carbon Brief that the UK’s landmark 2008 Climate Change Act had been born of this cross-party consensus, saying “all parties supported it”.

Since their landslide loss at the 2024 election, however, the Conservatives have turned against the UK’s target of net-zero emissions by 2050, which they legislated for in 2019.

Curiously, while opposition to net-zero has surged among Conservative MPs, there is majority support for the target among those that plan to vote for the party, as shown below.

Dr Adam Corner, advisor to the Climate Barometer initiative that tracks public opinion on climate change, told Carbon Brief that those who currently plan to vote Reform are the only segment who “tend to be more opposed to net-zero goals”. He said:

“Despite the rise in hostile media coverage and the collapse of the political consensus, we find that public support for the net-zero by 2050 target is plateauing – not plummeting.”

Reform, which rejects the scientific evidence on global warming and campaigns against net-zero, has been leading the polls for a year. (However, it was comfortably beaten by the Greens in yesterday’s Gorton and Denton byelection.)

Corner acknowledged that “some of the anti-net zero noise…[is] showing up in our data”, adding: 

“We see rising concerns about the near-term costs of policies and an uptick in people [falsely] attributing high energy bills to climate initiatives.”

But Akehurst said that, rather than a big fall in public support, there had been a drop in the “salience” of climate action:

“So many other issues [are] competing for their attention.”

UK newspapers published more editorials opposing climate action than supporting it for the first time on record in 2025, according to Carbon Brief analysis.

Global ‘greenlash’?

All of this sits against a challenging global backdrop, in which US president Donald Trump has been repeating climate-sceptic talking points and rolling back related policy.

At the same time, prominent figures have been calling for a change in climate strategy, sold variously as a “reset”, a “pivot”, as “realism”, or as “pragmatism”.

Genovese said that “far-right leaders have succeeded in the past 10 years in capturing net-zero as a poster child of things they are ‘fighting against’”.

She added that “much of this is fodder for conservative media and this whole ecosystem is essentially driving what we call the ‘greenlash’”.

Corner said the “disconnect” between elite views and the wider public “can create problems” – for example, “MPs consistently underestimate support for renewables”. He added:

“There is clearly a risk that the public starts to disengage too, if not enough positive voices are countering the negative ones.”

Watch, read, listen

TRUMP’S ‘PETROSTATE’: The US is becoming a “petrostate” that will be “sicker and poorer”, wrote Financial Times associate editor Rana Forohaar.

RHETORIC VS REALITY: Despite a “political mood [that] has darkened”, there is “more green stuff being installed than ever”, said New York Times columnist David Wallace-Wells.
CHINA’S ‘REVOLUTION’: The BBC’s Climate Question podcast reported from China on the “green energy revolution” taking place in the country.

Coming up

• 2-6 March: UN Food and Agriculture Organization regional conference for Latin America and Caribbean, Brasília
• 3 March: UK spring statement
• 4-11 March: China’s “two sessions”
• 5 March: Nepal elections

Pick of the jobs

• The Guardian, senior reporter, climate justice | Salary: $123,000-$135,000. Location: New York or Washington DC
• China-Global South Project, non-resident fellow, climate change | Salary: Up to $1,000 a month. Location: Remote
• University of East Anglia, PhD in mobilising community-based climate action through co-designed sports and wellbeing interventions | Salary: Stipend (unknown amount). Location: Norwich, UK
• TABLE and the University of São Paulo, Brazil, postdoctoral researcher in food system narratives | Salary: Unknown. Location: Pirassununga, Brazil

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

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

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The post DeBriefed 27 February 2026: Trump’s fossil-fuel talk | Modi-Lula rare-earth pact | Is there a UK ‘greenlash’?  appeared first on Carbon Brief.

Plenty of research has amassed on the benefits of applying biochar to soil to lock in carbon. Now, an unusual new study looks at a novel way to get it there: feed biochar to cows, it says, and they’ll do the work for you.

The new research finds that when cows consume and excrete biochar, it remains almost completely intact and stable, suggesting that cows could spread biochar across the land and become architects of better soil health while tackling their own climate impacts.

Led by a team of Swiss researchers, the study took a group of eight dairy cows and fed them a diet containing trace amounts of biochar, about 1%. The feeding trial had two periods of 35 days each. In one, half the cows received the biochar additive, and the other half did not. In the second, the researchers switched the two groups of cows, so that each cow ultimately acted as its own control. 

The researchers then gathered cow dung for several days over the course of the experiment.  These samples were dried and three different methods used to analyze the biochar fragments within the dung. The goal was to determine how much of that biochar had remained intact, both structurally and chemically.

The answer was: a surprising amount. From the analysis, the researchers calculated that between 70 and 90% of the biochar that cows consumed in the study survived their famously robust digestion, resisting decomposition. What’s more, an estimated 98% of that biochar which made it out the other side was intact—both in terms of its physical structure and its chemical makeup. 

 

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The three analytical methods revealed that most of the surviving biochar was also chemically stable, meaning it contained characteristics such as a condensed carbon structure, enabling it to persist for long periods in the soil without breaking down and releasing the carbon it contains. 

There was some variation: biochar that was more oxygen-rich was more easily decomposed during digestion. Importantly, the researchers note that the quality and composition of the biochar does affect how robust it will ultimately be in the cow’s gut. 

The benefits of biochar may go beyond carbon storage and boosting nutrients in the soil: the study mentions previous research showing that biochar could even reduce methane emissions from cattle dung, adding to biochar’s many talents.

There’s something satisfying about the idea of cows dispersing this wonder ingredient into the soil, and helping to offset their own environmental damage. Whether this idea can be taken mainstream remains to be seen, but for now it adds to the burgeoning evidence that biochar could be a real agricultural solution — in many different forms.

Leifeld et. al. “Recovery and composition of biochar after feeding to cattle.” Biochar. 2026.

Image: ©Anthropocene Magazine

Doubts over whether governments will maintain ambitious targets on boosting the use of sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) are a threat to the industry’s growth and play into the hands of fossil fuel companies, investors warned this week.

Several executives from airlines and oil firms have forecast recently that SAF requirements in the European Union, United Kingdom and elsewhere will be eased or scrapped altogether, potentially upending the aviation industry’s main policy to shrink air travel’s growing carbon footprint.

Such speculation poses a “fundamental threat” to the SAF industry, which mainly produces an alternative to traditional kerosene jet fuel using organic feedstocks such as used cooking oil (UCO), Thomas Engelmann, head of energy transition at German investment manager KGAL, told the Sustainable Aviation Fuel Investor conference in London.

He said fossil fuel firms would be the only winners from questions about compulsory SAF blending requirements. 

What is Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF)?

The EU and the UK introduced the world’s first SAF mandates in January 2025, requiring fuel suppliers to blend at least 2% SAF with fossil fuel kerosene. The blending requirement will gradually increase to reach 32% in the EU and 22% in the UK by 2040.

Another case of diluted green rules?

Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos in January, CEO of French oil and gas company TotalEnergies Patrick Pouyanné said he would bet “that what happened to the car regulation will happen to the SAF regulation in Europe”. 

The EU watered down green rules for car-makers in March 2025 after lobbying from car companies, Germany and Italy.

“You will see. Today all the airline companies are fighting [against the EU’s 2030 SAF target of 6%],” Pouyanne said, even though it’s “easy to reach to be honest”.

While most European airline lobbies publicly support the mandates, Ryanair Group CEO Michael O’Leary said last year that the SAF is “nonsense” and is “gradually dying a death, which is what it deserves to do”.

EU and UK stand by SAF targets

But the EU and the British government have disputed that. EU transport commissioner Apostolos Tzitzikostas said in November that the EU’s targets are “stable”, warning that “investment decisions and construction must start by 2027, or we will miss the 2030 targets”.

UK aviation minister Keir Mather told this week’s investor event that meeting the country’s SAF blending requirement of 10% by 2030 was “ambitious but, with the right investment, the right innovation and the right outlook, it is absolutely within our reach”.

“We need to go further and we need to go faster,” Mather said.

UK aviation minister Keir Mather speaks at the SAF Investor conference in London on February 24, 2026. (Photo: SAF Investor)

SAF investors and developers said such certainty on SAF mandates from policymakers was key to drawing the necessary investment to ramp up production of the greener fuel, which needs to scale up in order to bring down high production costs. Currently, SAF is between two and seven times more expensive than traditional jet fuel. 

Urbano Perez, global clean molecules lead at Spanish bank Santander, said banks will not invest if there is a perceived regulatory risk.

David Scott, chair of Australian SAF producer Jet Zero Australia, said developing SAF was already challenging due to the risks of “pretty new” technology requiring high capital expenditure.

“That’s a scary model with a volatile political environment, so mandate questioning creates this problem on steroids”, Scott said.

Others played down the risk. Glenn Morgan, partner at investment and advisory firm SkiesFifty, said “policy is always a risk”, adding that traditional oil-based jet fuel could also lose subsidies.

A fuel truck fills up the Emirates Airlines Boeing 777-300ER with Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF), during a milestone demonstration flight while running one of its engines on 100% (SAF) at Dubai airport, in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, January 30, 2023. REUTERS/Rula Rouhana A fuel truck fills up the Emirates Airlines Boeing 777-300ER with Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF), during a milestone demonstration flight while running one of its engines on 100% (SAF) at Dubai airport, in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, January 30, 2023. REUTERS/Rula Rouhana Asian countries join SAF mandate adopters

In Asia, Singapore, South Korea, Thailand and Japan have recently adopted SAF mandates, and Matti Lievonen, CEO of Asia-based SAF producer EcoCeres, predicted that China, Indonesia and Hong Kong would follow suit.

David Fisken, investment director at the Australian Trade and Investment Commission, said the Australian government, which does not have a mandate, was watching to see how the EU and UK’s requirements played out.

The US does not have a SAF mandate and under President Donald Trump the government has slashed tax credits available for SAF producers from $1.75 a gallon to $1.

Is the world’s big idea for greener air travel a flight of fancy?

SAF and energy security

SAF’s potential role in boosting energy security was a major theme of this week’s discussions as geopolitical tensions push the issue to the fore.

Marcella Franchi, chief commercial officer for SAF at France’s Haffner Energy, said the Canadian government, which has “very unsettling neighbours at the moment”, was looking to produce SAF to protect its energy security, especially as it has ample supplies of biomass to use as potential feedstock.

Similarly, German weapons manufacturer Rheinmetall said last year it was working on plans that would enable European armed forces to produce their own synthetic, carbon-neutral fuel “locally and independently of global fossil fuel supply chain”.

Scott said Australia needs SAF to improve its fuel security, as it imports almost 99% of its liquid fuels.

He added that support for Australian SAF production is bipartisan, in part because it appeals to those more concerned about energy security than tackling climate change.

The post Doubts over European SAF rules threaten cleaner aviation hopes, investors warn appeared first on Climate Home News.

The Lincolnshire constituency held by Richard Tice, the climate-sceptic deputy leader of the hard-right Reform party, has been pledged at least £55m in government funding for flood defences since 2024.

This investment in Boston and Skegness is the second-largest sum for a single constituency from a £1.4bn flood-defence fund for England, Carbon Brief analysis shows.

Flooding is becoming more likely and more extreme in the UK due to climate change.

Yet, for years, governments have failed to spend enough on flood defences to protect people, properties and infrastructure.

The £1.4bn fund is part of the current Labour government’s wider pledge to invest a “record” £7.9bn over a decade on protecting hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses from flooding.

As MP for one of England’s most flood-prone regions, Tice has called for more investment in flood defences, stating that “we cannot afford to ‘surrender the fens’ to the sea”.

He is also one of Reform’s most vocal opponents of climate action and what he calls “net stupid zero”. He denies the scientific consensus on climate change and has claimed, falsely and without evidence, that scientists are “lying”.

Flood defences 

Last year, the government said it would invest £2.65bn on flood and coastal erosion risk management (FCERM) schemes in England between April 2024 and March 2026. 

This money was intended to protect 66,500 properties from flooding. It is part of a decade-long Labour government plan to spend more than £7.9bn on flood defences.

There has been a consistent shortfall in maintaining England’s flood defences, with the Environment Agency expecting to protect fewer properties by 2027 than it had initially planned.

The Climate Change Committee (CCC) has attributed this to rising costs, backlogs from previous governments and a lack of capacity. It also points to the strain from “more frequent and severe” weather events, such as storms in recent years that have been amplified by climate change.

However, the CCC also said last year that, if the 2024-26 spending programme is delivered, it would be “slightly closer to the track” of the Environment Agency targets out to 2027.

The government has released constituency-level data on which schemes in England it plans to fund, covering £1.4bn of the 2024-26 investment. The other half of the FCERM spending covers additional measures, from repairing existing defences to advising local authorities.

The map below shows the distribution of spending on FCERM schemes in England over the past two years, highlighting the constituency of Richard Tice.

Flood-defence spending on new and replacement schemes in England in 2024-25 and 2025-26. The government notes that, as Environment Agency accounts have not been finalised and approved, the investment data is “provisional and subject to change”. Some schemes cover multiple constituencies and are not included on the map. Source: Environment Agency FCERM data.

By far the largest sum of money – £85.6m in total – has been committed to a tidal barrier and various other defences in the Somerset constituency of Bridgwater, the seat of Conservative MP Ashley Fox. 

Over the first months of 2026, the south-west region has faced significant flooding and Fox has called for more support from the government, citing “climate patterns shifting and rainfall intensifying”. 

He has also backed his party’s position that “the 2050 net-zero target is impossible” and called for more fossil-fuel extraction in the North Sea.

Tice’s east-coast constituency of Boston and Skegness, which is highly vulnerable to flooding from both rivers and the sea, is set to receive £55m. Among the supported projects are beach defences from Saltfleet to Gibraltar Point and upgrades to pumping stations.

Overall, Boston and Skegness has the second-largest portion of flood-defence funding, as the chart below shows. Constituencies with Conservative and Liberal Democrat MPs occupied the other top positions. 

Top 10 English constituencies by FCERM funding in 2024-25 and 2025-26. Source: Environment Agency FCERM data.

Overall, despite Labour MPs occupying 347 out of England’s 543 constituencies – nearly two-thirds of the total – more than half of the flood-defence funding was distributed to constituencies with non-Labour MPs. This reflects the flood risk in coastal and rural areas that are not traditional Labour strongholds.

Reform funding

While Reform has just eight MPs, representing 1% of the population, its constituencies have been assigned 4% of the flood-defence funding for England. 

Nearly all of this money was for Tice’s constituency, although party leader Nigel Farage’s coastal Clacton seat in Kent received £2m.

Reform UK is committed to “scrapping net-zero” and its leadership has expressed firmly climate-sceptic views. 

Much has been made of the disconnect between the party’s climate policies and the threat climate change poses to its voters. Various analyses have shown the flood risk in Reform-dominated areas, particularly Lincolnshire.

Tice has rejected climate science, advocated for fossil-fuel production and criticised Environment Agency flood-defence activities. Yet, he has also called for more investment in flood defences, stating that “we cannot afford to ‘surrender the fens’ to the sea”.

This may reflect Tice’s broader approach to climate change. In a 2024 interview with LBC, he said:

“Where you’ve got concerns about sea level defences and sea level rise, guess what? A bit of steel, a bit of cement, some aggregate…and you build some concrete sea level defences. That’s how you deal with rising sea levels.”

While climate adaptation is viewed as vital in a warming world, there are limits on how much societies can adapt and adaptation costs will continue to increase as emissions rise.

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The post Analysis: Constituency of Reform’s climate-sceptic Richard Tice gets £55m flood funding appeared first on Carbon Brief.

Canada has channelled just 11% of its mining capital into critical minerals over the past 25 years, leaving the country behind global peers as demand for strategic resources accelerates, a new RBC report shows.

More than C$700 billion ($512 billion) has been raised in Canadian mining equity and mergers and acquisitions since 2000, with 70% flowing to gold and precious metals, according to S&P Capital IQ and LSEG data cited by RBC. 

Shaz Merwat, the bank’s director of energy policy and author of the report, said that in comparison, Australia channeled more than twice as much capital into critical minerals over the same period.

That gap matters. The International Energy Agency (IEA) projects the global critical minerals industry will grow two to three times by 2040, requiring $500–$600 billion in capital. Demand for cobalt, copper, graphite, lithium, nickel and rare earth elements is rising, driven by electric vehicles, clean energy infrastructure, defence, manufacturing and electronics.

Canada holds significant deposits of those minerals but supplies about 2% of global output. If all identified projects proceed at full capacity, that share could rise to 14% over the next 15 years, according to federal estimates, RBC said.

Source: Mine & Refine: Bridging Canada’s Critical Minerals Capital Gap.

Ottawa is trying to close the gap. About 67 critical minerals projects, roughly half of all active mining proposals in the country, are planned, proposed or under construction. Together, they represent C$72.4 billion ($53 billion) in potential investment by 2034, according to Canada’s Major Projects Inventory.

Yet the country largely operates as a mine-and-ship jurisdiction. It has only one active copper smelter, Glencore’s (LON: GLEN) Horne facility in Rouyn-Noranda, Quebec, along with its associated refinery.

Producers have to export raw concentrates, primarily to China, for refining into higher-value components. China controls about 70% of global refining capacity for 19 of the 20 most critical minerals, supported by state-backed capital, lower costs and deliberate overcapacity that pressures competitors.

Structural barriers

RBC identifies structural barriers that have left the sector undercapitalized. Between 2005 and 2012, more than C$119 billion ($87 billion) in Canadian base metals and steel assets shifted to foreign ownership, reducing the number of domestically anchored mining leaders. Over three decades, Western countries outsourced energy-intensive refining to China, making it difficult to compete with subsidized overcapacity, especially in standalone processing.

Domestic demand remains limited. Canada’s battery cell manufacturing sector is still emerging, defence procurement operates at a fraction of US scale, and magnet and rare earth processing industries are largely absent. As a result, concentrates flow to markets where customers are concentrated.

This shortfall persists even after Ottawa committed up to C$55 billion ($40 billion) over 15 years to attract electric vehicle and battery manufacturers. 

Op-Ed: Canadians must match American urgency in the race for critical minerals

Unlike Germany, France and South Korea, Canada did not impose strict domestic sourcing requirements on subsidy recipients, limiting spillover benefits for upstream miners and processors.

Financing shortfalls also constrain growth. Canada’s flow-through share regime supports early-stage exploration, but funding drops sharply during feasibility, permitting and construction. Companies often face a C$20–C$30 million funding gap before reaching a final investment decision, which encourages asset sales rather than mine development.

Permitting delays add further risk. Federal and provincial reviews can stretch beyond five years without fixed timelines, increasing uncertainty and deterring investment.

Pulling forces

RBC argues market forces alone will not correct the imbalance. It calls for a co-ordinated public-private strategy centred on sovereign co-investment, infrastructure funding and tighter integration with allied supply chains.

Ottawa’s C$2-billion Critical Minerals Sovereign Wealth Fund remains modest relative to global capital flows. The Canada Growth Fund has begun co-investing in projects including Nouveau Monde’s (NYSE: NMG) graphite project in Quebec, Foran Mining’s (TSX:FOM) project in Saskatchewan, soon to be part of Eldorado Gold’s (TSX: ELD) (NYSE: EGO) portfolio, and the Thompson nickel mine complex in Manitoba, signaling federal backing to private investors.

Infrastructure could deliver the fastest gains. Analysis by the Canada Infrastructure Bank suggests co-investment in roads, transmission lines and grid connections to remote regions could reduce a project’s break-even price by 22–24%. Ontario’s Ring of Fire region alone requires up to C$2.4 billion in enabling infrastructure before major deposits become commercially viable.

Source: Mine & Refine: Bridging Canada’s Critical Minerals Capital Gap.

RBC also proposes developing mineral corridors that cluster mining and shared processing facilities in regions such as Quebec’s lithium belt and Ontario’s Sudbury nickel district. Shared refining hubs, supported by government loan guarantees and anchor offtake agreements with battery manufacturers in Europe and Asia, could improve project economics.

The US is also reshaping supply chains. The US Office of Strategic Capital can deploy $100–200 billion to strengthen defence and industrial supply chains, and Washington’s $12-billion Project Vault critical minerals stockpile is operational.

Closer integration could secure offtake for Canadian producers but carries risks if US export licensing or procurement rules subordinate Canadian supply to American industrial priorities. RBC recommends diversifying trade ties with European and Asian allies to preserve resource sovereignty while anchoring demand.

Australia offers a contrast. Pension funds maintain standing allocations to resources, supporting a deeper pool of mid-tier producers. Statutory timelines reduce permitting uncertainty, and commodity diversification helped build global majors such as BHP (ASX: BHP) and Rio Tinto (ASX: RIO) that now invest heavily in energy-transition metals.

Canada backs 25 critical minerals projects in G-7 initiative

In Canada, decades of capital consolidation around gold reshaped public markets into a precious metals financing platform. That strength did not translate into leadership in battery metals, where processing is more complex and capital intensive.

The country could raise its share of global output in six key minerals to 14% by 2040 from 2% today if projects proceed, according to the report. But only 19% of mining firms on the S&P/TSX Composite are diversified miners, compared with about two-thirds in Australia’s ASX 300 mining index.

After two decades of capital allocation focused elsewhere, Canada has world-class geology but limited downstream capacity and patient risk capital. Without a decisive shift, RBC warns, the country risks remaining a supplier of raw materials while others capture the value-added processing and geopolitical leverage.

Ontario Mines and Energy Minister Stephen Lecce is promising to announce more support for the industry at its biggest convention this month after recent permit acceleration and infrastructure spending.

The province upgraded Kinross Gold’s (TSX: K; NYSE: KGC) Great Bear project to its One Project One Process framework this month. It has approved C$140 million ($102.3 million) to prep road construction to the remote Ring of Fire region, earmarked billions for new high-capacity power transmission lines and placed C$500 million in a fund to build mineral processing plants.

“You can expect the province to announce significant investments in infrastructure to support and enable economic development and responsible resource development in the North,” Energy and Mines Minister Stephen Lecce told MINING.COM’s sister publication The Northern Miner ahead of the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada annual gathering in Toronto March 1-4.

Premier Doug Ford’s government has elevated mining to the forefront of Ontario’s economic agenda to thwart US tariffs, supply domestic industry and create jobs. It started the One Project One Process framework last year to cut approval times to two years by coordinating ministries, Indigenous and federal consent after reports showed mine approvals can take more than a decade.

Dual track

“Our government is working diligently to diversify export markets for commodities while attracting more value-added investment, including processing here at home,” Lecce said by phone. “That dual track of incentivizing foreign investment, creating the conditions for capital to flow back to the province after the last decade is critical to restoring confidence.”

Critics arguing that Ontario is trampling the environment and First Nations in its speed should regard how the government wants First Nations to take equity positions in mining projects, he said. It’s part of a strategy to mine ethically while reducing dependence on China which dominates metal processing after its decades of lower environmental standards. 

“The premier is very committed to fulfilling that obligation so the First Nations are not just consulted, but they’re co-owners of the project,” the minister said. “We are demonstrating that we can move with speed, we can unlock our resources, we can upgrade tens of thousands of jobs, and we can stand up to President Trump or to the likes of the Chinese regime.”

Great Bear

The C$1.4-billion capex Great Bear, 500 km northwest of Thunder Bay near Red Lake, a town with a long mining history, is the first gold project in the program for expedited permits. It joins Canada Nickel’s (TSXV: CNC; US-OTC: CNIKF) Crawford project added in January and Frontier Lithium’s (TSXV: FL; US-OTC: LITOF) PAK project confirmed in October.

“This designation facilitates a more integrated and streamlined path forward as we advance the permitting of this world-class mine towards commercial production in consultation with Indigenous communities,” Kinross CEO J. Paul Rollinson said in a release this month. “Great Bear is a generational asset and positioned to become one of Canada’s largest and most profitable gold mines.”

Toronto-based Kinross, which by market capitalization ranks among the top five Canada-domiciled gold producers, is developing Great Bear to produce 518,000 oz. gold a year by 2029 at an all-in sustaining cost of $812 per oz., according to a 2024 preliminary economic assessment. That would be in the leading handful of Canadian producers by output and among those with the lowest cost.

Power lines

The Great Bear designation ties in with provincial work on the Red Lake Transmission Line that would run from Dryden to Red Lake to power new mines and growing communities, the province said. Electricity demand in the region north of Dryden, which includes Red Lake, is forecast to grow by up to 250% by 2050 from its current level, driven largely by the expected growth in the mining sector, according to the province.

In January, the province committed C$70 million for early work on the Greenstone Transmission Line, a 230-km, 230-kilovolt project intended to deliver 350–700 MW of power from Nipigon to Aroland First Nation for Ring of Fire mining. The multi-hundred-million-dollar line includes a 50% equity ownership stake for local First Nations.

The province started taking applications in December for its Critical Minerals Processing Fund to help projects like Rock Tech Lithium’s (TSXV: RCK; FSE: RJIB) proposed C$1.6-billion converter near its Georgia Lake project 110 km northeast of Thunder Bay.

“We’re also unlocking the Ring of Fire, nearly 8,000 sq. km, one of the largest undeveloped critical mineral regions on Earth,” Lecce said. “Our message to the world is that Ontario, and Canada, is emerging as the most reliable, ethical and open-for-business jurisdiction in the Western world.”

This article first appeared in Jamhoor. On February 12, 2026, Bangladesh held its first general election since overthrowing the authoritarian rule of Sheikh Hasina and...

The post After a dictator, Bangladesh turns right first appeared on Spring.

Last November, to much fanfare, Prime Minister Mark Carney and Alberta Premier Danielle Smith signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU). The five-page document signaled their willingness to put years of federal/provincial acrimony behind them and...

Relations between states are becoming so strained over their different approaches to fossil fuels and renewables, some politicians are calling for a “divorce.”

Utah Republicans celebrated last week when PacifiCorp, one of the largest utilities in the West, announced it would stop serving customers in Washington state. PacifiCorp mainly operates in Utah, but also in Wyoming and Idaho — and, to the chagrin of some Utah legislators, blue states like California and Oregon. Utah legislators had previously pressured to break their utility’s ties with states with more aggressive climate policies. Now, PacifiCorp is handing over its 140,000 customers in Washington — along with two wind farms, a natural gas plant, and other energy infrastructure — to Portland General Electric for $1.9 billion. 

“We want a divorce from the three states that don’t look like Utah,” said Mike Schultz, Utah’s Republican House Speaker. “This is the first step forward.”

In announcing the sale, PacifiCorp noted that navigating “diverging policies” among the six states it serves had “created extraordinary pressure,” a challenge that had affected its financial stability. Utah is still heavily reliant on coal, while California, Oregon, and Washington have been moving forward with policies to shift away from fossil fuels. Washington, for example, aims to slash greenhouse gas emissions nearly in half by 2030, using 1990 levels as a baseline. As of January, Washington required PacifiCorp to stop charging Washington customers for coal generation, reducing costs for ratepayers by $68 million compared to the status quo — and potentially shifting coal-related costs back onto states like Utah.

It’s not just money driving the wedge, but also identity. “Absolutely, this seems like a culture war thing,” said Matthew Burgess, an environmental economist at the University of Wyoming who studies political polarization. He sees Republican politicians playing up cultural tensions to appeal to their base, particularly in places where coal’s long-term decline has fueled economic anxiety and resentment. “Some of this rhetoric that blames maybe what’s happening in the industry on coastal progressives and their climate histrionics — you can see how that sort of message might be resonant or cathartic with those communities that are having real problems,” Burgess said.

As the divide grows between blue states demanding clean energy and red states seeking to protect coal, oil, and natural gas, the economic realities of sharing the grid have become a point of contention. This is all unfolding at a time when concerns about rising costs have gripped the country. Electricity prices have climbed, with the average U.S. home’s energy bill 30 percent higher in 2025 than it was 2021 — a steep rise, but still in line with overall inflation. While Republicans often blame environmental regulations for rising electricity prices, Democrats typically blame Trump’s attacks on clean energy or the rise of energy-hungry data centers.

Protesters gather during a Monopoly-themed rally to protest utility-driven rate hikes and obstacles to renewable energy at the corporate headquarters for Rocky Mountain Power in Salt Lake City in April 2025.
Bethany Baker / The Salt Lake Tribune

The tension over sharing energy costs with blue states rose in Utah in 2024, when Rocky Mountain Power, Utah’s largest electricity provider and part of PacifiCorp, proposed a 30 percent rate increase for most of the state’s customers. The utility said the increase was needed to cover the costs of building new infrastructure and complying with regulations in different states. Utah Republicans grilled Rocky Mountain Power and suggested it could break up with PacifiCorp, its parent company, because of the progressive climate policies it had to comply with in California, Oregon, and Washington. Last year, Utah’s Republican governor, Spencer Cox, signed a resolution encouraging an “interstate compact for regional energy collaboration” with Wyoming and Idaho. 

“Sadly, we know Utahns are paying more for power because of decisions being made in coastal states, places like Oregon and Washington,” Cox said at the time. “But this is so much more than that.”

This theme has popped up in other parts of the country. Last September, five Republican-led states — Montana, North Dakota, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Arkansas — asked federal regulators to stop a $22 billion transmission expansion designed to connect cities in the Upper Midwest to the Great Plains. They argued that sharing the cost of the project would effectively force their ratepayers to subsidize wind and solar for the benefit of Democratic states’ clean energy goals. 

Yet as Republicans complain about the costs of building clean energy, Democrats are blaming the costs of keeping fossil fuels alive, noting that the Trump administration is forcing expensive coal plants to stay open past their retirement dates in Washington, Colorado, Indiana, and Michigan. The Michigan coal plant cost ratepayers $80 million in the first four months of running it beyond its planned retirement date, according to the chair of the Michigan Public Service Commission.

“Clean energy is just the way we’re moving,” said Meredith Connolly, director of policy and strategy at Climate Solutions, a clean energy nonprofit in the Pacific Northwest. “It’s really a question of just how fast we get there, and do you create these headwinds that slow down the transition or try to give an unfair leg up to fossil fuels? Those are the silly things we’re seeing that actually drive up electricity costs.”

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There are plenty of pressures affecting utilities — market forces, the scramble to procure more electricity to power data centers, and even climate-driven risks. In many states, particularly in the Southeast and Mid-Atlantic, replacing outdated equipment, protecting power lines, and other measures to withstand more extreme weather conditions is the main driver of rising costs. In California, infrastructure upgrades to reduce wildfire risk (and thus liability costs) are a key factor behind the soaring electricity bills. PacifiCorp, for instance, has faced a slew of lawsuits accusing it of sparking fires in Oregon and California with poorly maintained equipment and has agreed to pay $2.2 billion in settlements.

Some climate advocates worry about what would happen if splitting up the energy market along partisan boundaries became a trend. “Our fates are tied across the energy market,” Connolly said. “And so these would be pretty artificial lines.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline The culture war is coming for your electricity on Feb 27, 2026.

The Colorado River currently supports 40 million people and $1.4 trillion in annual economic activity in seven U.S. states and Mexico — but it was never intended to be stretched so thin.

A century-old legal framework promises those users more water than there is to go around. The river’s flow has shrunk by about 20 percent over the last century as climate change has made the West more arid. As water has vanished, states have clashed over how to divide up what remains. The core dispute is between the sparsely inhabited mountainous states of the “Upper Basin,” where hay farmers and a few major cities like Denver draw water from the river and its tributaries, and the far more populous “Lower Basin,” which diverts water to support most of the nation’s winter vegetable farmers as well as megacities like Los Angeles and Phoenix.

Now, as the region weathers its driest winter in recent history, a reckoning has arrived. By the end of September, the seven states need to agree on a new set of rules that will determine how to divvy up the river’s flow during dry years.

Since the river’s reservoirs almost collapsed in 2022, however, the state’s lead negotiators have been arguing in boardrooms and on Zoom calls with little to show for it. They missed a negotiation deadline in November and another one in February, with each state publishing catty press releases blaming the other side for a breakdown in talks: Colorado’s representative said that the Upper Basin was “being asked to solve a problem we didn’t create with water we don’t have,” while Arizona’s said that the Lower Basin had “offered numerous, good-faith compromises” and that “virtually all of them have been rejected.”

Meanwhile, a nearly snow-free winter is pushing reservoirs toward record lows. The river could grow so dry this year that its massive Lake Powell reservoir will stop producing hydropower.

Without a deal, the Trump administration will need to get involved. So far, Trump’s Interior Secretary Doug Burgum has shown little willingness to impose the river’s first-ever unilateral water delivery cuts, which could bring the river into balance. But time is running out. The administration has said that, in the absence of a seven-state deal, it will distribute water on a strict “priority” basis, meaning those who have earlier historical claims to the river would be spared cuts. That would mean cutting off almost all water to the junior rightsholders in the Phoenix metro area — with staggering consequences for the region’s massive economy. That said, any federal intervention would almost certainly only be the first salvo in a legal war that would likely reach the Supreme Court. 

What happens after that is a mystery to all involved.

The Biden administration confronted an earlier version of this crisis in 2022, when water levels in Lake Powell and Lake Mead, the Lower Basin’s other major reservoir, dropped to historic lows. The feds tried to broker an emergency deal between the Lower Basin states to keep the reservoirs from bottoming out. The combatants were California, the river’s largest user, and Arizona, which had junior rights to the river and stood to bear the brunt of the pain.

Biden’s Interior Department escaped a total collapse of the system in part thanks to a deus ex machina: Snowpack in early 2023 was sufficient to refill Lake Mead and Lake Powell to decent levels, and then-Senator Kyrsten Sinema secured billions of dollars in drought relief money that compensated California farmers for forgoing their water and leaving some fields unplanted.

The terms of debate are very different this time. Now, the seven states need to cut their way through the present drought and agree on rules for sharing the river over the next two decades, when no one knows how much water will be available. Arizona and California are united in arguing that the Upper Basin states of Colorado, Utah, Wyoming, and New Mexico need to commit to permanent reductions in their entitlement. The latter have rejected that argument at every opportunity, leading to a bitter breakdown in the talks.

Brad Udall, a senior water and climate research scientist at Colorado State University’s Colorado Water Center, said the disagreement boils down to what counts as a cut in water delivery.

“The disagreement really centers around whether the Upper Basin is willing to contribute to reductions in use,” he said, “and the Upper Basin says, ‘Hey, we already contribute,’ through what are known as ‘hydrologic shortages.’”

These “hydrologic shortages” have become the third rail of the debate. The argument goes like this: The Upper Basin’s water comes from the natural flow of rain and snowmelt, which travel down the river’s tributaries on the way to Lake Powell. The farmers and cities who use this water siphon it out of the tributaries before it ever makes it to a major reservoir. When less snow arrives, there’s less water in the rivers, so the farmers and cities end up using less by default. 

That’s very different from the Lower Basin, where the three states and Mexico take water from the central “bank” in Lake Mead. These states reduce their withdrawals during dry years according to a strict schedule of cuts — which they’re able to do because they can easily measure their exact usage. The negotiators for these states have strenuously argued that a long-term solution to the river’s problems must involve the Upper Basin agreeing to mandatory usage reductions during dry years, rather than operating on the long-held assumption that they’re already automatically taking cuts just because less snowmelt happens to come their way. 

“We have offered to do more,” said Tom Buschatzke, Arizona’s top water official, in a statement following the collapse of the seven-state talks. “But we simply cannot take on the task of saving this precious river system on our own.”

An irrigation canal carries water from the Colorado River to irrigate a farm growing leaf lettuce and broccoli near Yuma, Arizona. Jon G. Fuller / VWPics / Universal Images Group via Getty Images

The Upper Basin states insist that they already contribute by taking involuntary cuts during dry years. They want the Lower Basin to increase its projected cuts in order to resolve the river’s perennial deficit. Most experts believe this argument is disingenuous, or, as Udall says, “a little deceitful.” Studies show that the Upper Basin is using around 4.5 million acre-feet of water annually, a number that doesn’t change all that much from year to year even during dry spells. (An acre-foot of water is around 326,000 gallons, or enough to supply about three households for a year.)

But Upper Basin representatives don’t see it that way. Steve Pope, the manager of the irrigation district that serves the Uncompahgre Valley in Colorado, says farmers in the valley have already struggled with water scarcity over the past few decades. He says growers take a huge financial hit when they get less water than they expect.

“We don’t know what we’re going to get,” said Pope. “These [farmers], it’s tough for them. They’ve got a lot of money invested in certain types of crops, so they just have to fallow ground.” Given that uncertainty, Pope says the idea of the district taking mandatory cuts is “ridiculous.”

Trump’s Interior Department suggested in January that it can only regulate the operations of the two main reservoirs, and that it has no authority to order Upper Basin farmers like Pope not to farm.

“[The federal government] is very timid about going out on a limb at all for things that might set a precedent,” said Ted Cooke, the former manager of the Central Arizona Project, the canal that brings Colorado River water to the state’s population centers. “This timidity really limits their effectiveness.” (Cooke was nominated by President Donald Trump to lead the Bureau of Reclamation last year, but his nomination was withdrawn over what he believes were politically-motivated concerns that he might be biased against the Upper Basin in adjudicating the river.)

If Secretary Burgum sticks to his position that he can’t resolve the debate between the Upper Basin and the Lower Basin, his only option for avoiding a collapse at Lake Powell will be to roll out unilateral cuts on the Lower Basin. This would likely trigger litigation between Arizona and the federal government. But if Burgum changed course and imposed unilateral cuts on the Upper Basin, a state such as Colorado would likely sue the feds instead. And even if Burgum did nothing at all, it’s likely that the Lower Basin would sue the Upper Basin. Inflows to Lake Powell may fall so low by the end of the year that the Upper Basin will be in default of its obligations under the 1922 river compact, which requires that the river’s flow be split half and half between the basins. This would allow Arizona to demand makeup water from its northern neighbors. 

Though litigation seems inevitable without a seven-state deal, no water user actually wants to go to court. Once water divisions are in the hands of a judge, no state can be sure that its interests will be protected.

“The idea that your state is going to come out a winner — and you’re confident of that — makes no sense,” said John Berggren, regional policy manager at the nonprofit Western Resource Advocates.

“What it does is it puts your water users at extreme risk.”

Even if Burgum plays it safe and only imposes cuts on the Lower Basin, these cuts will force him to choose between California’s priority rights and Arizona’s arguably greater need. The Interior Department has already suggested it would feel bound to direct most of the pain to Arizona. The department said in January that “absent new agreements” it would distribute cuts according to legal priority, which would take away more than 1 million acre-feet of water from Phoenix and its suburbs. That would likely lead developers to abandon potential subdivisions, force farmers to rip up their fields, and could cause a resumption in the depletion of Phoenix’s fragile groundwater aquifer. 

Arizona state leaders have already threatened litigation over this possibility, and a political advocacy group has begun airing local television ads that criticize the Interior Department’s priority plan. Plus, even this draconian cut wouldn’t necessarily prevent a collapse of the river, because it would cap the total amount of cuts at around 1.5 million acre-feet spread across Arizona, California, and Nevada. The federal government’s own modeling found that this plan would only have a 25 percent chance of avoiding a hydropower shutdown at Lake Powell, and around a 58 percent chance of avoiding a similar “minimum power pool” at Lake Mead. 

A bleached “bathtub ring” on the banks of Lake Mead near Echo Bay, Nevada. The Colorado River’s two main reservoirs are emptying out again after a dry winter.
Justin Sullivan / Getty Images

Not everyone thinks the seven-state deal is a dead letter. John Entsminger, the lead negotiator for Nevada, expressed optimism about at least a short-term deal as recently as the end of January. Last summer, the states rallied around the idea of measuring the river based on its “natural flow,” dividing up the three-year average of the river’s recent water volume as opposed to a static estimate of its theoretical contents. This plan has the benefit of being responsive to climate change, which has already contributed to a 20 percent decline in the Colorado River’s annual flow over the past century. 

“We would not be over-promising water, which has led us in past years to draw down our reservoir storage,” explained Elizabeth Koebele, a professor at the University of Nevada, Reno, who studies the river. “People get promises and they hold on to them very strongly, even if the water is not there.” 

Despite Trump’s declarations that climate change is a “hoax,” his Interior Department has given strong consideration to this climate-informed “maximum operational flexibility” plan. It modeled a version of the plan in January, but said it didn’t have the authority to implement it without agreement from all seven states. The plan would see all states reduce water usage even during average years, as opposed to only in dry years under the current system. It would parcel out cuts more evenly between Arizona and California. It would also include some contributions from the Upper Basin — in one potential breakdown, Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming would reduce their usage by around 250,000 acre-feet when the Lower Basin had cut usage by more than 2 million. 

Although the coming year is likely to be chaotic, many of the basin’s biggest water users have been preparing for this era of permanent cuts for some time. Arizona has already announced its intention to start investing in coastal desalination plants in coordination with California and Mexico, which would free up more river water. The state has also stepped up its spending on water reuse projects. Las Vegas has paid residents to rip out their grass lawns. Utah has established a voluntary conservation program that pays farmers not to farm.

But the long-term solution will likely involve a bigger reshuffling of water in order to forestall an economic crisis in the Phoenix metroplex. Arizona may look to California for salvation: The large urban water district that serves Los Angeles, the farming district in the Imperial Valley, and the winter vegetable farming district around Yuma all hold rights to more water than they need, and they might be willing to deal some of their water to central Arizona, albeit at a high price. There are also two tribes in Arizona, the Colorado River Indian Tribes and the Gila River Indian Community, who each hold about half a million acre-feet of water.

Even with all this rejiggering, cities like Phoenix will end up having to pay much more for water, said Cooke. The rush on water supplies will force difficult cuts in water usage for farms, lawns, swimming pools, and unbuilt homes.

“We’re going to have less water and what we do have is going to be a lot more expensive, and that happens right now, in the next twelve months,” he said. “Even with all of these political and contractual disagreements, the surface water is just not there anymore.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline The Colorado River is nearing collapse. It’s Trump’s problem now. on Feb 27, 2026.

Azeem Zakir Kareem, co-founder of the Samad Gardens Initiative in Bloomfield, Connecticut, did not grow up planning to become a farmer. As a hip-hop artist and breakdancer from Hartford, his path into agriculture began unexpectedly through his wife, Sarah Rose Kareem, who worked on a 26-acre organic regenerative farm. Despite having little exposure to farming, Azeem found a job on the same farm. The experience highlighted how disconnected many urban communities are from the sources of their food.

“I had the craziest culture shock,” says Azeem. “The plant looks like the grocery store, but it’s different…Peppers grow on plants. Tomatoes grow on a vine…There’s pigs over there, and where I’m from, our livestock is pitbulls and rottweilers.”

This planted the seed for what would become the Samad Gardens Initiative, an herb farm and education initiative. The Kareems’ vision was to inspire a new generation of farmers of color and bridge cultural divides in agriculture. They became full-time farmers providing locally grown, nutritious food and hands-on experiences to their community.

But then came the COVID-19 pandemic. Azeem started getting calls from his friends in the cities, who couldn’t find enough food in their neighborhoods. For him, this moment was an epiphany.

“I grew up being hungry…there’s a time in my life I had to steal food to eat,” says Azeem. “My brain was like, I can’t do this by myself. And I’m looking at and dealing with other farmers…We have over 100 black and brown farmers in my state on one network…We have to do something to combat this.”

Azeem realized that individual farms could not meet community needs alone. He leaned into collective action, creating and expanding farmer-led efforts such as the Liberated Land Cooperative, which launched Connecticut’s first-ever statewide Community Supported Agriculture program. The initiative now connects Black and Brown farmers from across Connecticut to provide fresh, locally grown produce to their communities.

Azeem also helped establish the Black-led Sovereign Land Trust and the Venture Farming Institute, an emerging educational and training program aiming to increase the number of underrepresented farmers in Connecticut and Rhode Island.

Through this work, Azeem has become a vocal critic of inequities embedded in the food system.

“The food system works as intended. It’s not broken. It works as intended,” says Azeem, emphasizing that systemic failures disproportionately harm marginalized communities. “What are we going to do when someone sneezes too hard, and the whole thing collapses? That’s been my primary concern.”

Today, Azeem helps farmers not only increase yields but also integrate regenerative practices and prepare for future disruptions. His approach blends agriculture, culture, and empowerment. But his role also extends beyond the field: As a longtime hip-hop artist who has shared stages with popular artists like KRS-One and Public Enemy, Azeem uses his platform to connect with audiences who may not see themselves reflected in traditional food and farming spaces.

“I get to bring this message to different people who look at me like, ‘Yes, it’s real. It’s real,’” says Azeem.

Azeem’s philosophy is grounded in respect for the land. Regeneration, for him, is both ecological and cultural: Repairing soil while restoring relationships between people and the sources of their food.

“How do we treat the Earth like how you treat your mama?” says Azeem. “We call it Mama Earth for a reason.”

This article is part of Food Tank’s ongoing Farmer Friday series, produced in partnership with Niman Ranch, a champion for independent U.S. family farmers. The series highlights the stories of farmers working toward a more sustainable, equitable food system. Niman Ranch partners with over 500 small-scale U.S. family farmers and is committed to preserving rural agricultural communities and their way of life. Food Tank was proud to collaborate with Niman Ranch in lifting up family farmer stories, including Azeem’s, at Climate Week NYC: A Night of Storytelling Honoring Our Farmers. Watch his story and others on Food Tank’s YouTube channel.

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

Photo courtesy of Azeem Zakir Kareem

The post Collective Action Confronts Food System Inequities in Connecticut appeared first on Food Tank.

VANCOUVER, B.C. — MEGAN GORDON, manager of the Pembina Institute’s Equitable Transition program, made the following statement in response to the federal government’s release of the 2026-2030 Sustainable Jobs Action Plan: “The release of the 2026-2030...

The Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument protects unique deep-water canyons and corals, and is a critical foraging habitat for seabirds, particularly Atlantic Puffins during the...

Highlights

• Fuel cost-sharing could have saved North Carolina customers nearly $89 million in cumulative savings between 2020 and 2024.
• Even in high volatility years, a fuel cost-sharing mechanism would not materially threaten utility revenues.
• Expanding cost-sharing to include purchased power and integrating complementary tools — such as fuel management plans, hedging strategies, independent audits, and clean energy investments — can further reduce fuel cost volatility and improve accountability.

The post How Fuel Cost-Sharing Can Deliver Savings for Utility Customers appeared first on RMI.

Senate proposal would gut key provisions of chemical safety law Monica Amarelo February 26, 2026

WASHINGTON – In a coordinated assault on public health, the Senate introduced a proposal to dismantle the Toxic Substances Control Act, or TSCA, the nation’s primary defense against hazardous chemicals. 

The draft legislation, along with a House bill released in January, would effectively strip the Environmental Protection Agency of its power to keep cancer-causing substances out of cleaning supplies, toys, furniture and other products.

If signed into law, either proposal would undercut core protections against toxic chemicals in consumer products and drinking water. They would open the marketplace to new substances that have not been reviewed for links to reproductive harms, learning disabilities and chronic disease, with no proof they’re safe for children, pregnant people or workers.

By forcing the EPA to speed up chemical approvals and weaken safety requirements, even when corporations provide zero safety data, the legislation would transform the agency into a rubber-stamp office for the chemical industry.

The proposals would: 

• Fast-track approval of untested chemicals. Forces the EPA to clear new industrial chemicals within rigid, shortened deadlines, even when manufacturers provide incomplete safety data on cancer risk, reproductive harm or developmental toxicity.
• Leave people and workers exposed. Allows the chemical industry to override independent science and health protections for families, workers and communities.

The chemical industry has spent millions lobbying for weaker regulations. These proposals deliver their wish list: faster approvals, lower safety standards and weakening of the EPA’s power to demand health data before dangerous substances reach consumers.

The Environmental Working Group joins the Alliance for Health and Safe Chemicals in calling on Congress to reject these harmful proposals. Instead, lawmakers should fully implement the bipartisan chemical safety reforms enacted in 2016, ensuring public health protections come before corporate profits.

The Alliance for Health and Safe Chemicals brings together leading organizations and networks in a coordinated effort to defend TSCA from rollbacks and fight for strong health protections from toxic chemicals. The passage of the Lautenberg Chemical Safety Act in 2016 with overwhelming bipartisan support modernized TSCA to ensure that new chemicals are reviewed for safety before entering the marketplace and that the EPA can act on dangerous chemicals that harm the health of children, workers and communities. 

Since then, the EPA has used this authority to ban deadly asbestos and methylene chloride, restrict cancer-causing chemicals like trichloroethylene, and block certain “forever chemicals” known as PFAS from entering commerce.

The following is a statement from Melanie Benesh, EWG’s vice president for government affairs: 

This is a gift for the chemical industry and will not make America healthier.

Members of Congress are working to dismantle a decade of bipartisan progress on public health. 

If enacted, this legislation would substantially reduce the EPA’s authority to keep hazardous chemicals out of stores, schools and homes, effectively making American families “lab rats” for industry experiments with substances of unknown toxicity. If Congress moves forward with this legislation, it will abandon the bipartisan commitment to chemical safety grounded in science. 

Rolling back safeguards that protect the developing brain and reproductive health and prevent disease in the long-term is not reform. It is a step backward.

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

Areas of Focus Water Household & Consumer Products Toxic Chemicals Chemical Policy Bill would fast-track untested substances into American homes and workplaces Press Contact Monica Amarelo monica@ewg.org (202) 939-9140 February 26, 2026

Council officials have been accused of giving misleading advice on controversial plans for gas drilling and lower-volume fracking at Burniston, near Scarborough.

Photo: DrillOrDrop

In January 2026, North Yorkshire planners recommended approval of the scheme in a report to councillors, who were due to make the decision a week later.

But a local campaign group, Frack Free Coastal Communities (FFCC), has said the planners’ report contained errors that could mislead councillors.

It also said failures in the handling of the application would make it difficult for the councillors to make a “properly-informed” decision.

FFCC accused officials of failing to:

• Respond to relevant communications
• Engage with technical and scientific analysis in expert representations
• Seek clarification from Europa when errors in the application were pointed out during the consultation
• Upload relevant documents and correspondence to the planning register

FFCC said officials ignored significant requirements of the council’s own minerals policy and gave “inappropriate advice” to Europa not to respond to representations from the public. The group also criticised “problems with the functionality of the online planning register”.

 Yesterday, in a letter to North Yorkshire’s chief executive, FFCC said:

“These shortcomings in the handling of the planning application and consultation have resulted in a report to the Strategic Planning Committee, which is misleading and contains internal contradictions which, in our view, would make it difficult for elected members to make a properly informed determination.”

The letter’s author, Chris Garforth, chair of FFCC’s steering group, said:

“We engaged with the consultation process in good faith. We were assured by the planners that all representations would be considered by the planning committee and that they, the planners, would seek responses from the applicant in respect of material matters drawn to their attention. We now see that has not been the case.”

He called on North Yorkshire Council to seek an external peer review of its handling of the Burniston application, saying this would:  

“go a long way towards restoring public trust in the ability of NYC’s planning department to do a high quality professional job and properly to balance the various stakeholder interests involved in such applications.”

Earlier this month, Burniston Parish Council made a similar request to North Yorkshire Council. We asked North Yorkshire to comment to both requests. We will update this article with any response.

The meeting of the strategic planning committee, due on 30 January 2026, was postponed at the last minute after multiple requests for the government to decide the application.

Today, the local government secretary opposed calling in the decision and said the application by Europa Oil & Gas should be determined by North Yorkshire Council.

Details FFCC letter to North Yorkshire Council chief executive Download

The letter from Frack Free Coastal Communities highlighted what it regarded as eight problems with the application process and the planners’ report:

Planning register: At the start of the consultation, the group said many people reported problems uploading their comments to the council’s online planning register. Professor Garforth said:

“There is no record of how many representations were lost because people gave up after their initial attempts. Problems with submitting documents persisted for several months.”

Application problems: Professor Garforth said planners failed to seek clarification with Europa about what he said were “serious errors and inconsistencies” in the application. These included descriptions of phases of work and the site and a failure of Europa to identify a great crested newt population near the site.

 Minerals policies ignored: FFCC said the planners’ report ignored policy requirements for applications involving hydraulic fracturing for a health impact assessment and “compelling evidence” on acceptable management and mitigation of seismicity.

Professor Garforth also said:

“We note (from documents released following a FOI request by Burniston Parish Council) that planning conditions proposed by statutory consultees to minimise impact on nearby residents have been watered down or removed at the request of the applicant [Europa Oil & Gas].”

Advice not to respond to the public: Professor Garforth said an email from North Yorkshire Council planners on 10 June 2025 to Europa’s agent advised against replying to individual objections as this might set a precedent. Another email said planners’ “default position” was not to send representations to Europa for comment.

Technical and scientific representations: Planners did not send detailed comments from people with relevant scientific and professional expertise to Europa, Professor Garforth said. Nor were these comments addressed in the planners’ report. Professor Garforth added:

“This seems to render the public consultation process little more than a box ticking exercise”.

Errors in report: Professor Garforth said mistakes in the planners’ report had “the potential materially to mislead committee members”. These included describing the application as “exploration”, even though Europa had made it clear it was for “appraisal”, he said.   

Failure to communicate: FFCC received no response from the Principal Planning Officer to its correspondence in November 2025 about what advice had been sought from an industry regulator on seismic risk.

Missing documents and correspondence: The council initially failed to publish key documents, including Europa’s response to questions from the North York Moors National Park Authority and a final revision of the Preliminary Ecological Appraisal. They came to light only following the council’s response to a freedom of information request and were later published, in one case more than six months later.

Council response

DrillOrDrop asked North Yorkshire Council to respond to the FFCC letter.

North Yorkshire Council’s corporate director for community development, Nic Harne, said:

“We received a letter from Frack Free Coastal Communities in which concerns were raised about how we handled the planning application that seeks permission to construct a temporary wellsite to assess the potential for natural gas at Burniston, near Scarborough.

“They have also requested an independent peer review of our work.

“We believe our approach has been correct and robust. However, we take all concerns raised with us seriously and will respond directly to them once we have worked through each of the points.”

New proposal in Congress would gut key provisions of landmark chemical safety law, putting families’ health at risk Monica Amarelo February 26, 2026

WASHINGTON – A new Senate draft bill would dismantle core protections of the nation’s main chemical safety law and make it easier for toxic chemicals to enter homes, schools and workplaces, according to the Alliance for Health and Safe Chemicals, a national coalition of organizations and networks. 

The group issued an urgent warning following the release of draft legislation to amend the Toxic Substances Control Act, or TSCA, the bipartisan law Congress overhauled in 2016. The Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works has announced a March 4 hearing on the discussion draft.

A House proposal that would gut TSCA surfaced in January, signaling a coordinated effort to roll back protections against toxic chemicals and undermine the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to protect public health. 

The new proposals would: 

• Allow more dangerous chemicals onto the market without meaningful EPA review and approval.
• Give the chemical industry more power to override independent science and health protections for families, workers, and communities.
• Allow loopholes for toxic chemicals.
• Undermine the ability of states to protect their residents, drinking water, and food from toxic chemicals.

“Children’s health must come first, yet the chemical industry is now lobbying to weaken the chemical law that protects our families,” said the Alliance for Health and Safe Chemicals in a joint statement. 

“Rolling back chemical safety protections will make it harder to keep out of our lives toxic chemicals linked to cancer, learning disabilities and infertility. Americans should be able to trust that any chemicals in their homes, schools, workplaces and communities won't make them sick,’’ the statement added.

Public support for chemical safety protections remains strong across party lines, with overwhelming bipartisan backing for the EPA’s authority to review and restrict dangerous chemicals. The alliance noted that rolling back TSCA would not only increase health risks but also create uncertainty for businesses that have already adapted to the law’s requirements.

The Alliance for Health and Safe Chemicals brings together leading organizations and networks in a coordinated effort to defend TSCA from rollbacks and fight for strong health protections from toxic chemicals. 

Passage of the Lautenberg Chemical Safety Act, in 2016, with overwhelming bipartisan support modernized TSCA to ensure that new chemicals are reviewed for safety before entering the marketplace and that the EPA can act on dangerous chemicals that harm the health of children, workers and communities. 

Since then, the EPA has used this authority to ban deadly asbestos and methylene chloride, restrict cancer-causing chemicals like trichloroethylene and block certain PFAS from entering commerce.

Additional quotes from alliance members

“Northern and Arctic Indigenous Peoples suffer some of the highest exposures to persistent toxic chemicals and disease burdens of any population on earth. Weakening TSCA will strip the law of its provisions to prevent harmful and cumulative exposures to persistent, bioaccumulative and toxic chemicals,’’ said Pamela Miller, executive director of Alaska Community Action on Toxics.

“With breast cancer rates unacceptably high in the U.S. and rising among younger women, we cannot weaken federal safeguards against cancer-causing and hormone-disrupting chemicals in our products and environment,” said Nancy Buermeyer, director of program and policy at Breast Cancer Prevention Partners. “Preventing toxic exposures is essential to protecting women’s health and reducing breast cancer risk.”

“Reopening TSCA will lead to the increased proliferation of chemical recycling, which has an abysmal track record, does nothing to solve the plastic crisis, and in fact puts even more toxic chemicals into our environment,” said Judith Enck, former EPA regional administrator and president of Beyond Plastics. 

“Every community is harmed by toxic chemicals. But communities living near the facilities where these chemicals are manufactured have some of the highest rates of cancer, asthma and COPD in the nation,” said Dr. Jamala Djinn, science and policy advisor at Break Free From Plastic. “Since the 2016 amendments to TSCA, EPA has taken concrete steps to begin to protect these communities from the thousands of different chemicals they’re simultaneously being exposed to. If this proposal were to become law, it would eliminate any progress made and further endanger these communities.”

“Regardless of political party, the American public has been clear: It does not want to be poisoned by toxic chemicals,” said Raúl García, Earthjustice Action vice president of policy and legislation. “Still, Republican congressional leadership insists on weakening the most significant tool we have to protect our families from toxics. This bill would unravel the EPA’s authority to review new and existing chemicals and assess their risks to human health while undermining science’s role in federal decision-making. It’s a wishlist for the chemical industry that would lead to a more toxic environment and more poisoned children. We urge Congress to reject it.” 

“Americans across party lines oppose weakening our bedrock chemical safety protections,” said Joanna Slaney, Environmental Defense Fund vice president for political and government affairs. “The Toxic Substances Control Act helps keep the worst toxic chemicals out of our homes and communities, and it was passed with bipartisan support. The only voices calling for Congress to roll back these essential public health standards are coming from industry.”

“This proposal is a dangerous giveaway that lets the chemical industry fast-track new chemicals into everyday products without requiring companies to prove they’re safe,” said Melanie Benesh, vice president for government affairs at the Environmental Working Group. “It hands manufacturers a free pass while consumers and families shoulder the risk. Americans shouldn’t be unwitting test subjects for chemicals in their food, water, homes and workplaces.”

"Cancer. Infertility. Developmental delays in children. All three are linked to exposure to toxic chemicals, and this proposal would make it easier to put these harmful chemicals into our food, products, water and air, regardless of the damage to the health of people. Instead of creating a glide path for increased toxic pollution, the Senate should be rejecting the chemical industry’s bid to make America more contaminated so it can further line its pockets,” said Avi Kar, director of Toxics at NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council). 

“For years, states have acted to protect residents from toxic chemicals when federal safeguards fell short,” said Gretchen Salter, policy director for Safer States. “Weakening TSCA ignores the public’s demand for stronger protections. Lawmakers should reinforce and strengthen national health protections, not undermine them. Families deserve consistent, science-based safeguards no matter where they live.”

“The Senate draft turns back the clock on protecting the health of our families and communities from toxic chemicals,” said Liz Hitchcock, director of federal policy at Toxic-Free Future. “Congress should stop dangerous chemicals before they contaminate our food, our homes and our children’s bodies. Instead they are proposing to weaken protections so there are even more toxic chemicals that can increase cancer, infertility, and other serious health harms.”

About the Alliance for Health and Safe Chemicals

The Alliance for Health and Safe Chemicals is a national coalition of organizations and networks united around the principle: put people’s health first. The alliance fights for national protections to prevent harm from toxic chemicals that contribute to cancer, infertility, learning disabilities and other health challenges. We work for justice and health for all, wherever you live, work and play.

The Alliance is a growing coalition of nearly 40 local, state and national organizations including: Alaska Community Action on Toxics, Alliance of Nurses for Healthy Environments, American Sustainable Business Network, Beyond Plastics, Break Free From Plastics, Breast Cancer Prevention Partners, CASE Citizens Alliance for a Sustainable Englewood, Center for Environmental Health, Center for Public Environmental Oversight, Cherokee Concerned Citizens, Clean+Healthy, Clean Air Council, Clean Beauty for Black Girls, Clean Cape Fear, Clean Water Action, Delaware Riverkeeper Network, Earthjustice, Ecology Center, Environmental Defense Fund, Environmental Working Group, Greater Edwards Aquifer Alliance, Green Science Policy Institute, League of Conservation Voters, Merrimack Citizens for Clean Water, Moms Clean Air Force, Move Past Plastic (MPPP), Newburgh Clean Water Project, NRDC, Oregon Environmental Council, PFOAProjectNY, Puget Soundkeeper, Safer States, Save Our Water S.O.H2O, Toxic-Free Future, Vermont Conservation Voters, Vermont Natural Resources Council, Waterspirit, and Zero Waste Ithaca.

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MEDIA CONTACTS

For the Alliance for Health and Safe Chemicals: Stephanie Stohler, sstohler@toxicfreefuture.org

For ACAT: Pamela Miller, pamela@akaction.org 

For BCPP: Erika Wilhelm, erika@bcpp.org 

For Beyond Plastics: Melissa Valliant, melissavalliant@bennington.edu 

For BFFP: Brett Nadrich, brett@breakfreefromplastic.org 

For Earthjustice: Geoffrey Nolan, gnolan@earthjustice.org 

For EDF: Lexi Ambrogi, lambrogi@edf.org 

For EWG: Monica Amarelo, monica@ewg.org          

For NRDC: Margie Kelly, mkelly@nrdc.org

For Toxic-Free Future and Safer States: Stephanie Stohler, sstohler@toxicfreefuture.org

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

 

Areas of Focus Toxic Chemicals Chemical Policy Alliance for Health and Safe Chemicals warns proposals would fast-track approvals of potentially toxic chemicals, weaken protections and hand industry new power over EPA decisions Press Contact Monica Amarelo monica@ewg.org (202) 939-9140 February 26, 2026

A new YouTube channel from author and researcher Jules Pretty makes the case for stories as a powerful tool for climate action and systems change.

Pretty, an Emeritus Professor of Environment and Society at the University of Essex, launched Story for Climate and Nature Recovery to explore how people can build agency in the face of today’s most pressing challenges. The channel’s videos, each five to ten minutes in length, cover topics around storytelling, climate, and nature.  

“Transformations are hard. They’re psychologically difficult, physically difficult to do,” Pretty tells Food Tank. But, he asks, “how do we talk about these things without increasing anxiety and stress?”

Too often narratives of nature loss and the climate crisis are overwhelmingly negative, Pretty says. And while there is a time and place for this messaging, he voices caution about relying too heavily on fear.

“We have to choose our moments when we talk about the bad stuff really carefully because it’s scaring people,” Pretty states. “Maybe scaring them is not the right thing to do. Maybe people are scared enough.”

But Pretty believes that stories, when crafted skillfully, can inspire action and lend strength, helping communities tackle challenges that are both old and new. The best ones, he argues, do three things: They map multiple pathways forward, create agency, and bring people together.

“It’s about the journey that we go on and how we acquire that inspiration, that feeling that we’re not alone, that humanity has been doing this forever,” says Pretty, noting that imagination will be key.

“Imagine things,” Pretty tells Food Tank, “because that’s going to give us a sense of a range of possibilities in front of us.”

Listen to or watch the full conversation with Jules Pretty on “Food Talk with Dani Nierenberg” to hear about the buy-in that’s needed from communities to drive systems change, the power of rituals and celebrations, and the vulnerability we need to move forward.

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

Photo courtesy of Unsplash

The post Beyond Doom and Gloom: Transforming Climate Anxiety into Agency and Action appeared first on Food Tank.

" The struggle for land and water is a struggle for the continuity of life and ancestral knowledge."

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