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A Queensland company is proposing a small solar-battery, with sheep grazing under the panels, saying the landowner wants to use land too barren to farm.

The post Farmer seeks solar: Queensland developer says PV plans will help rejuvenate barren land appeared first on Renew Economy.

Australia is betting on millions of household energy devices to help run the grid, but what happens if they can’t properly talk to each other?

The post SwitchedOn podcast: Consumer energy devices aren’t talking to each other – and it’s a problem appeared first on Renew Economy.

The Lock the Gate Alliance has today requested an internal review of the Queensland government’s decision to approve a gas development, saying it failed to consider or mitigate human rights and environmental impacts when approving the first stage of a major gas expansion in the Western Downs region. 

The mining industry is burning even more diesel for the same amount of production as they have to dig digger for hard to cut coal, and lack of action on electric options.

The post Miners are burning a lot more diesel than four years ago, just for same amounts of now hard-to-get coal appeared first on Renew Economy.

• This consultation is open until 15 June 2026
• Comments can be submitted in English, French and Spanish

The High-Level Panel of Experts on Food Security and Nutrition (HLPE-FSN) of the Committee on World Food Security (CFS) has launched an open consultation on the V0 draft of its report, Preserving, Strengthening and Promoting Indigenous Peoples’ Food and Knowledge Systems and Traditional Practices for Sustainable Food Systems. The consultation is open from 15 May to 15 June 2026.

This draft was prepared following the 2024 consultation on the scope of the report, which received 78 contributions, including a submission from the CSIPM. The final report will be presented during the 54th plenary session of the CFS in October 2026, and it will contribute to the CFS policy workstream on the same topic. 

About the HLPE-FSN consultation

The outcomes of this consultation will support the HLPE-FSN to further develop the draft, which will undergo peer review before a final approval by the drafting team  and the  Steering Committee . More information on the different stages of the process is available here.

Questions guiding the e-consultation

1. The report proposes a working definition of Indigenous Peoples’ food systems. Do you have any observations on this definition? 
2. The report introduces a conceptual framework informed by key principles established in previous HLPE-FSN reports (HLPE, 2020) and grounded on the six dimensions of food security. The conceptual framework highlights the importance of relationality, values and territories to understand Indigenous Peoples’ food systems. Do you think the framework captures the key elements to guide policy-making aimed at improving the contribution of Indigenous Peoples’ food systems to food security and nutrition? Do you have any other comments? 
3. Data on Indigenous Peoples’ food systems are limited. What are additional trends and data, especially capturing impacts on food security and nutrition and inequalities/distribution issues affecting Indigenous Peoples, that could be included in the report? Please provide full references.
4. Are there any other issues concerning Indigenous Peoples’ food systems and food security and nutrition that have not been sufficiently covered in the draft report? Are topics under- or over-represented in relation to their importance?
5. Are there other references, publications, or different kind of knowledges, especially Indigenous Peoples’ knowledge, which should be considered?
6. Could you suggest case studies and success stories from countries that were able to preserve, strengthen and promote Indigenous Peoples’ food and knowledge systems? The HLPE-FSN is especially interested in examples that contribute to balance geographical representation in the report and that address issues related to all forms of malnutrition.
7. From your perspective what are the areas on which the HLPE-FSN could make recommendations in its report?
8. Do you have any additional comments you would like to share with the HLPE-FSN? 

How to participate

Written contributions can be submitted before 15 June, 2026 using the template provided by the HLPE-FSN.

Contribute to the CSIPM collective submission

The CSIPM Working Group on Indigenous Peoples’ Food and Knowledge Systems will facilitate the development of a collective submission to this consultation.

We warmly invite CSIPM Participants to contribute. If you are not yet part of the Working Group and would like to participate, please fill in this form and contact the CSIPM Secretariat  at cso4cfs@gmail.com.

HLPE- FSN DRAFT V0 REPORT ON INDIGENOUS PEOPLES’ FOOD AND KNOWLEDGE SYSTEMS

• Further information on the consultation is available on the HLPE-FSN website
• Learn more about the HLPE-FSN publication cycle
• Read the CSIPM submission on the scope of the report.

The post HLPE-FSN opens consultation on draft report on Indigenous Peoples’ food and knowledge systems appeared first on CSIPM.

Last summer, I  traveled to Berlin for a study abroad program. I intended to learn about the city’s communication efforts to continue cultural memory. Little did I know I was about to get a crash course in public transit, a lesson that didn’t fully set in until I got back home. Upon my return to California, I was initially overjoyed to be out and about, but that was until I realized that to go anywhere in my city, I would need to take my car. By contrast, the tram in Germany, not even a minute away from my hostel, could take me to a nearby coffee shop, a park, and a nearby grocery store.

My car now seemed more like an obstacle than an asset. The studies are clear: public transit benefits a city’s economy, creates community space, and cuts down on millions of metric tons of carbon dioxide. In addition, it offers a mode of transit that is broadly accessible, regardless of socioeconomic status and able-bodiedness, creating an equitable solution to a manufactured issue. We need an attitude shift in America, one that goes against the individualism perpetuated in our society, and understands that protecting the environment is an investment in people and not a financial strain. United States residents need to realize that a car is as much a burden as a convenience. 

A common argument against public transit is that it is expensive to install and maintain. This apprehension towards rail in California is compounded by the fact that our high-speed rail project is nowhere close to completion and has cost way more than previously promised. However, though high-speed rail may not have fulfilled its initial promise, this does not mean public transit is a lost cause in California. In the Bay, especially, the benefit of railroads has been a good case study for the rest of the state and country. And we do not necessarily need to build new rails, but can often just restore and improve old ones. 

Certainly, we don’t need driverless vehicles pushed onto us by billionaires and their corporations; we can’t just “tech” our way out of global warming. In building a renewable future, we need to look towards the past. UC Berkeley News found that the now-electrified Caltrain has already cut 89 percent of carcinogenic black carbon, as well as producing less noise than its diesel counterparts. Next time the Super Bowl brings a great halftime show to San Jose, even fewer people will choose to drive.  

Another real concern that drives people away from public transit is safety and cleanliness. Why expose yourself to the perceived risks of public transit when your sedan has a steel safety bubble? However, investing in public transit decreases this perception. Taking the S-Bahn in Berlin, I felt entirely safe; it was regularly cleaned and always full. Shared commitment and responsibility have the ability to transform our attitude of public transit as a less luxurious option, to a shared community place. If driving in a car severely increases the chances of getting hurt or killed in a crash, and pollution increases our chances of getting killed too, how is the car a more convenient or safe option?

As fuel prices rise, the clear inconveniences of cars may become more apparent. The day when people can once again take a train from Saratoga or Santa Cruz to San Francisco would be the day that I would sell my car. As global temperatures rise, we should look to Germany and draw on past solutions to address modern issues.

***

Kyle Kayhan is a sociology and communication studies student at San Jose State University

The number of new coal-fired power plants built around the world hit a “10-year high” in 2025, even as the global coal fleet generated less electricity, amid a “widening disconnect” in the sector. 

That is according to the latest annual report from Global Energy Monitor (GEM), which finds that the world added nearly 100 gigawatts (GW) of new coal-power capacity in 2025, the equivalent of roughly 100 large coal plants.

It adds that 95% of the new coal plants were built in India and China. 

Yet GEM says that the amount of electricity generated with coal fell by 0.6% in 2025 – with sharp drops in both China and India – as the fuel was displaced by record wind and solar output, among other factors. 

The report notes that there have been previous dips in output from coal power and there could still be ups – as well as downs – in the near term.

For example, nearly 70% of the coal-fired units scheduled to retire globally in 2025 did not do so, due to postponements triggered by the 2022 energy crisis and policy shifts in the US.

However, GEM says that the underlying dynamics for coal power have now fundamentally shifted, as the cost of renewables has fallen and low usage hits coal profitability.

China and India dominate growth

In 2025, coal-capacity growth hit a 10-year high, with 97 gigawatts (GW) of new power plants being added, according to GEM.

(Capacity refers to the potential maximum power output, as measured in GW, whereas generation refers to power actually generated by the assets over a period of time, measured in gigawatt hours, GWh.)

This is the highest level since 2015 when 107GW began operating, as shown in the chart below. This makes 2025 the second-highest level of additions on record. 

Coal-fired power capacity that began operation each year from 2000 to 2025, GW. Source: Global Energy Monitor.

The majority of this growth came from China and India, which added 78GW and 10GW, respectively, against 9GW from all other countries. 

Yet GEM points out that, even as coal capacity in China grew by 6%, the output from coal-fired power plants actually fell 1.2%. This means that each power plant would have been running less often, eroding its profitability. Similarly, capacity in India grew by 3.8%, while generation fell by 2.9%.

China and India had accounted for 87% of new coal-power capacity that came into operation in the first half of 2025. The shift up to 95% in the year as a whole highlights how increasingly just those two countries dominate the sector, GEM says.

Christine Shearer, project manager of GEM’s global coal plant tracker, said in a statement: 

“In 2025, the world built more coal and used it less. Development has grown more concentrated, too – 95% of coal plant construction is now in China and India, and even they are building solar and wind fast enough to displace it.”

Both China and India saw solar and wind meet most or all of the growth in electricity demand last year. 

Analysis for Carbon Brief last year showed that, in the first six months of 2025 alone, a record 212GW of solar was added in China, helping to make it the nation’s single-largest source of clean-power generation, for example. 

However, the country continues to propose new coal plants. In 2025, a record 162GW of capacity was newly proposed for development or reactivated, according to GEM. This brought the overall capacity under development in the country to more than 500GW. 

China’s 15th “five-year plan”, covering 2026-2030, had pledged to “promote the peaking” of coal use, while a more recent pair of policies introduced stricter controls on local governments’ coal use. 

For its part, in India some 28GW of new coal capacity was newly proposed or reactivated last year, bringing the total under development to 107.3GW and under-construction capacity to 23.5GW.

The Indian government is planning to complete 85GW of new coal capacity in the next seven years, even as clean-energy expansion reaches levels that could cover all of the growth in electricity demand. 

Outside of China and India, GEM says that just 32 countries have new coal plants under construction or under development, down from 38 in 2024. 

Countries that have dropped plans for new coal in 2025 include South Korea, Brazil and Honduras, it says. GEM notes that the latter two mean that Latin America is now free from any new coal-power proposals. 

This means that both electricity generation from coal and the construction of new coal-fired power plants are increasingly concentrated in just a few countries, as the chart below shows.

Top 10 countries for total operating coal power-plant capacity (left) and for newly added capacity (right), GW. Source: Global Energy Monitor.

Indonesia’s coal fleet grew by 7% in 2025 to 61GW, with a quarter of the new capacity tied to nickel and aluminium processing, according to GEM. 

Turkey – which is gearing up to host the COP31 international climate summit in November – has just one coal-plant proposal remaining, down from 70 in 2015. 

The amount of new coal capacity that started to operate in south-east Asia fell for the third year in a row in 2025, according to GEM. 

Countries in south Asia that rely on imported energy are increasingly looking to other technologies to protect themselves from fossil-fuel shocks, such as Pakistan, which is rapidly deploying solar, states the GEM report.

In Africa, plans for new coal capacity are concentrated in Zimbabwe and Zambia, the report shows, with the two countries accounting for two-thirds of planned development in the region.

‘Persistence of policies’

While new coal plants are still being built and even more are under development, GEM notes that the global electricity system is undergoing rapid changes.

Crucially, the growth of cheap renewable energy means that new coal plants do not automatically translate into higher electricity generation from coal.

Without rising output from coal power, building new plants simply results in the coal fleet running less often, further eroding its economics relative to wind and solar power.

Indeed, GEM notes that electricity generation from coal fell globally in 2025. Moreover, a recent report by thinktank Ember found that renewable energy overtook coal in 2025 to become the world’s largest source of electricity.

GEM notes that coal generation may fluctuate in the near term, in particular due to potential increases in demand driven by higher gas prices. 

It adds that gas price shocks, such as the one triggered by the Iran war, can cause temporary reversals in the longer-term shift away from coal.

According to Carbon Brief analysis, at least eight countries announced plans to either increase their coal use or review plans to transition away from coal in the first month of the Iran war. However, a much-discussed “return to coal” is expected to be limited.

GEM’s report highlights that global fossil-fuel shocks can have an impact on the phase out of coal capacity over several years.

In the EU, for example, 69% of planned retirements did not take place in 2025, due to postponements that began in the 2022-23 energy crisis triggered by the Russian invasion of Ukraine, according to the report. Countries across the bloc chose to retain their coal capacity amid gas supply disruptions and concerns about energy security.

Yet coal-fired power generation in the bloc is now more than 40% below 2022 levels. Again, this highlights that coal capacity does not necessarily translate into electricity generation from coal, with its associated CO2 emissions.

Overall, GEM notes that “repeated exposure to fossil-fuel price volatility is as likely to accelerate the shift toward clean energy as it is to delay it”.

GEM’s Shearer says in a statement: 

“The central challenge heading into 2026 is not the availability of alternatives, but the persistence of policies that treat coal as necessary even as power systems move increasingly beyond it.”

In the US, 59% of planned retirements in 2025 did not happen, according to GEM. This was due to government intervention to keep ageing coal plants online. 

Five coal-power plants have been told to remain online through federal “emergency” orders, for example, even as the coal fleet continues to face declining competitiveness. 

Keeping these plants online has cost hundreds of millions of dollars and helped drive an annual increase in the average US household electricity prices of 7%, according to GEM. 

Despite such measures, Trump has overseen a larger fall in coal-fired power capacity than any other US president, according to Carbon Brief analysis. 

Meanwhile, according to new figures from the US Energy Information Administration, solar and wind both set new records for energy production in 2025.

Despite challenges with policy and wider fossil-fuel impacts, the underlying dynamic has shifted, says GEM, as “clean energy becomes more competitive and widely deployed” around the world. 

It adds that this raises the prospect of “a more sustained decoupling between coal-capacity growth and generation, particularly if clean-energy deployment continues at current rates”.

Analysis: Trump has overseen larger coal decline than any other US president

Coal

|

12.02.26

Analysis: Coal power drops in China and India for first time in 52 years after clean-energy records

China energy

|

13.01.26

IEA: Declining coal demand in China set to outweigh Trump’s pro-coal policies

Coal

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17.12.25

Guest post: China and India account for 87% of new coal-power capacity so far in 2025

China energy

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27.08.25

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The post New coal plants hit ‘10-year’ global high in 2025 – but power output still fell appeared first on Carbon Brief.

The Congressional Research Service (CRS) recently released a comprehensive report highlighting actions taken to date to restore the Great Salt Lake ecosystem, along with several policy...

Nebraska State Senators Terrell McKinney & Ashlei Spivey Invite You To Attend: 

A NORTH OMAHA TOWN HALL MEETING

The town hall will feature the Senators’ work this past session and serve as an opportunity for the community to ask questions.

The town hall will also feature a discussion on LB 1111, a data center bill sponsored by Senators McKinney, Spivey and Machaela Cavanaugh, which was also supported by Bold Nebraska, that was incorporated in LB1010 and passed into law. The law holds data centers accountable and provides for transparency that no other state has been able to pass. Bold Founder Jane Kleeb will join the Senators for the data center discussion. 

• WHEN: Thursday, June 11, 2026, 6:00 – 7:30 p.m.
• WHERE: Nelson Mandela Elementary School, 6316 N. 30th Street, Omaha, NE
• RSVP: Let us know you are coming!

*The event is free and open to the public. Refreshments will be provided.*

Bold’s Energy Builders Project provides education, training, legal, communications, and organizing support to rural communities that want to see more clean energy built in their towns. BoldEnergyBuilders.us 

This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Bob Henson

The odds are in El Niño’s favor right now.

This natural weather phenomenon, part of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation, or ENSO, occurs when warmer-than-average water extends throughout most of the equatorial Pacific Ocean just below the surface. That’s happening now. And powerful bursts of westerly wind have pushed immense amounts of warm water eastward, toward the Niño3.4 region where sea surface temperature, along with other atmospheric conditions, is used to assess the state of ENSO.

On May 14, in its monthly ENSO outlook, the NOAA/National Weather Service Climate Prediction Center gave an 82% chance that El Niño will be in place for the period May through July, which implies that it’ll be here within weeks.

How do experts know when El Niño has arrived?

El Niño conditions are declared when the atmosphere and ocean are in sync and the Niño3.4 sea surface temperature is at least 0.5 degrees Celsius (0.9°F) warmer than the seasonal average.

But just as hurricanes can and do stray from the “cone of uncertainty” at times, it’s vital to remember that El Niño can do much the same. Preparing for the prototypical outcomes is a smart move, as long as you keep in mind that forecasting the El Niño-Southern Oscillation is more a matter of probabilities than certainties.

NOAA now uses a Relative Oceanic Niño Index, or RONI, in which the Niño3.4 value is adjusted relative to the world’s tropical oceans as a whole; the goal is to keep global warming from smudging the signal of El Niño and La Niña events themselves.

Read: A new and better way to keep tabs on El Niño and La Niña

Nearly all seasonal forecast ensembles used to predict ENSO at agencies around the world now concur that the imminent event is likely to bring Niño3.4 warming of at least 1.5°C, which would push it into the “strong” category. And some of the ensemble averages are now going well above 2°C, even for the adjusted RONI index. That would put it in the ballpark of the biggest El Niño events in the NOAA database going back to 1950.

Individual ensemble members still cover a fairly broad range, with outcomes varying from a weak event to a record-stomping one, but as shown below, they’re about as close to being unanimous on a significant El Niño as you’re likely to see. (This output is mainly using the traditional pre-RONI index, which tends to run slightly hotter on recent El Niño events.)

What’s a ‘super El Niño’ – and will we get one?

Back in 2003, a group of researchers from Australia’s national science agency, CSIRO, invoked the term “super El Niño” in a Monthly Weather Review paper. They used it to describe events where the Niño3.4 departure from average was at least 3°C. The phrase has since been used more loosely around the world, especially in news articles and social media, but it’s not part of the toolbox of most professional ENSO forecasters.

“While ‘Super El Niño’ is sometimes used informally, it is not a scientific term,” said senior climatologist Felicity Gamble in a statement from Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology, which avoids the “super” moniker in its products.

The same is true of NOAA, which is going with “weak,” “moderate,” “strong,” and “very strong.” NOAA’s monthly ENSO outlooks now include month-by-month odds that a predicted El Niño event will fall into each of these four brackets. The odds of a “very strong” event peak at 37% in the November-to-January period.

Summing these categories, the odds that we will have El Niño at any strength are now greater than 90% from this summer through winter 2026-27, according to NOAA.

Figure 1. Probabilities from NOAA’s May 14 outlook that the expected El Niño event of 2026-27 will fall into various strength categories during each overlapping three-month period through December-February. El Niño events typically build in northern summer and fall, peak in the winter, and fade by spring. Unlike La Niña, El Niño rarely persists or recurs for two or more years in a row, though that occasionally happens. (Image credit: NOAA/NWS/CPC)

Jan Null of Golden Gate Weather Services, a California-based forensic meteorologist and former National Weather Service forecaster, began using “very strong” when the 2015-16 event arrived, so he’s happy to see NOAA doing the same. As Null puts it, “Everyone sees a forecast plume that looks like the liftoff of Artemis and goes crazy, and somehow early on attached the ‘super’ superlative to it.”

Does a stronger El Niño event lead to more extreme impacts?

Whether it’s super, very strong, mega, whiz-bang, or something else, the approaching El Niño could certainly land in the uppermost tier of what we’ve seen in recent decades. So does that mean the impacts would be correspondingly intense?

Alas, it’s not that simple.

“A strong El Niño event doesn’t always mean stronger impacts on our weather,” the Australian climatologist Felicia Gamble said in a statement released by that nation’s Bureau of Meteorology. “Sometimes a weak El Niño can lead to significant impacts on Australia’s rainfall and temperature, while a stronger event may have less noticeable impacts.”

ENSO expert Nathaniel Johnson, a meteorologist at NOAA Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, noted in an email that a stronger El Niño event does raise the odds of the most prototypical outcomes. However, it’s not the only thing involved.

“In any given season and region, there are many large-scale patterns that help to shape our local weather,” said Johnson. “El Niño is just one of those factors, but it happens to be the most predictable on timescales of months to seasons. If the El Niño event is very strong, then it is more likely that the El Niño influence will dominate over those other, less seasonally predictable factors.”

That said, there are places where a strong El Niño event can lead to distinctly different outcomes than a weak or moderate one. In the eastern tropical Pacific, for example, surface waters – normally chilled by upwelling – are often too cool to support showers and thunderstorms even in moderately strong El Niño conditions. Beyond a certain threshold of strength, though, the normally dry eastern tropical Pacific will warm up enough to support heavy rainfall, Johnson said: “This would essentially indicate a shift of the entire tropical Pacific warm pool to the eastern Pacific, which would immediately impact regions like coastal Ecuador and Peru.”

The very name El Niño, which means the Christ child in Spanish, came from Peruvian fishers who noticed that their anchovy catches – typically some of the world’s largest – took severe hits from unusually warm water during certain years around Christmas. (Earlier this year, Peru’s anchovy fisheries called for a proactive early start to get ahead of the possible El Niño.)

The Galápagos archipelago and its distinctive food chain are also highly vulnerable to the heavy rains and warm waters of a strong El Niño event.

What might we expect with this El Niño event, and where?

El Niño’s impacts occur as the global atmospheric circulation is rearranged by the massive zone of rising, warm air (often as large as the United States) that develops over the eastern tropical Pacific. These impacts can be remarkably far-flung, but they’re typically strongest across the tropics – from the Indian and Pacific Oceans to the Atlantic and into Africa – and over the midlatitudes of North and South America, the land masses closest to the Niño3.4 region.

Read: Five things you need to know about El Niño’s likely comeback

In a nutshell, El Niño tends to bring dry (and often hot) conditions in and around Southeast Asia, parts of Africa, and the Amazon and Central America, while relatively cool and wet conditions often prevail over East Africa and the southern tier of the United States. The timing of these common repercussions (called teleconnections) varies a bit. For example, North American impacts are triggered largely by interactions with the midlatitude jet stream, so they’re normally strongest toward winter, when the jet stream is more active. On a global scale, the heat transferred from ocean to atmosphere during El Niño tends to cause record-warm years in our human-warmed climate.

Figure 2. Typical El Niño influences, or teleconnections, on precipitation. (Image credit: NOAA)

In some parts of the world, the El Niño playbook is higher-confidence than elsewhere. One of those is the northern tier of the United States and much of adjacent Canada, where El Niño reliably delivers warmer-than-average winter weather. Emily Becker and Michael Tippett analyzed this connection as part of their deep dive into North American temperature responses to ENSO in a 2024 paper published in the Journal of Climate. This region sits hundreds of miles poleward from the broader-scale warming and drying that afflicts much of the tropics, but it’s part of the same web of El Niño teleconnections.

El Niño’s blunting of the usual big swings in winter temperatures across this region is noteworthy. “Not only does this warm zone experience many mild days during El Niño, but it also gets fewer cold snaps,” said Tippett (Columbia University). And while La Niña winters in the northern U.S. and Canada can be either warmer or colder than average, El Niño is more consistently on the warm side, Becker and Tippett found.

Sometimes, even a fairly dependable seasonal-scale tendency driven by El Niño can hide important smaller-scale details. The Indian monsoon tends to be drier than average during El Niño, but a 2025 analysis in Science found that amid these drier-than-usual monsoons, the occasional rainfalls that do occur seem to be turbocharged, dropping more extreme short-term rains than usual.

Likewise, hurricane activity tends to decrease in the Atlantic and ramp up in the Pacific during El Niño events. This may well pan out in 2026, based on sea surface temperatures and other ocean and atmosphere signals already showing up in seasonal models. But even in an otherwise quiet year, there could be periods of atmospheric alignment when dangerous Atlantic hurricanes still emerge.

One bright spot with El Niño is that it tends to suppress U.S. tornado activity during the winter and subsequent spring (see Figure 3 below). La Niña events sometimes but not always lead to major spring tornado outbreaks, whereas the suppressive effect of El Niño appears to be a bit more reliable. The big exception is in and around Florida: Some of the state’s worst tornado outbreaks on record outside of tropical cyclones occurred near the tail end of the powerful El Niño events of 1982-83 (on March 16-17), 1997-98 (on February 22-23), and 2015-16 (on February 23-24).

Figure 3. Seasonal tornado activity (height on the vertical axis) for each February-April from 1979 through 2023 versus the state of ENSO (La Niña on the left, El Niño on the right) based on the Relative Oceanic Niño Index. (Image credit: NOAA Climate.gov graphic, adapted from original by Kelsey Malloy, now at the University of Delaware.)

And what about climate change?

Very strong El Niño events are rare enough birds on their own, so it’s tough to assess how these events, and their impacts, will evolve as human-caused warming continues to grow.

Not that long ago, the 2023-24 El Niño event was expected to cause major global repercussions. And indeed, on the “traditional” Oceanic Niño Index, or ONI, it ended up in the “very strong” range, peaking at 2.1. However, the impacts didn’t play out as expected, especially in midlatitudes, where the connections to El Niño were unusually weak. As it happens, record heat was swaddling much of the world at the time, including tropical oceans, and that appears to have blunted the effects of El Niño.

In a 2025 Journal of Climate paper, a team led by Clara Deser, a senior scientist at the National Science Foundation National Center for Atmospheric Research, carried out a set of model experiments showing that long-term warming in the Indian and Atlantic tropical oceans, together with long-term cooling in the eastern tropical Pacific, can lead to a counteracting large-scale circulation that almost completely negates the effects of an El Niño event.

As Deser and colleagues wrote, “historical precedent may no longer be a reliable guide to ENSO teleconnections as anthropogenic warming patterns intensify.”

In a recent New York Times roundup of potential El Niño impacts, Deser said: “We are now in a different baseline climate.”

In a similar vein, Australia’s Felicity Gamble said: “The increasing warmth in our oceans, both globally and in the Australian region, mean that history is now a poorer guide for seasonal prediction.”

The 2023-24 event helped turn attention toward using the Relative Oceanic Niño Index, with the idea that RONI might work better than ONI in factoring out periods of intense tropics-wide heat (such as 2023-24) from the assessment of El Niño. Sure enough, the 2023-24 event reached the strong range in RONI, topping out at 1.5 (borderline strong) rather than landing in the more rarefied very-strong range on the traditional scale.

“The weakened impacts of the 2023-24 El Niño compared to expectations can be reconciled, at least in large part, by its substantially weaker amplitude based on RONI instead of the traditional ONI,” said NOAA’s Johnson.

If there’s a poster child for counterintuitive El Niño behavior, it’s the bizarre dryness that plagued Southern California during the winter of 2015-16, one of the strongest El Niño events on record. El Niño is often wet across much of California, but there’s ample variability, as documented by Jan Null. In a website post, Null described the 2015-16 case as the “poster child for ‘All El Niños are not the same!’ ”

Michelle L’Heureux, a physical scientist who leads the ENSO team at the NOAA/NWS Climate Prediction Center, encourages thinking of El Niño as shifting the odds of various seasonal outcomes (e.g., wetter, drier, hotter, cooler). If those odds are expressed as a bell curve, then the stronger the event, the further El Niño pushes that curve to one side.

L’Heureux points to the 2015-16 California case as a cautionary tale on how El Niño forecasts should be treated as guidance rather than a guarantee.

“This doesn’t mean a major El Niño didn’t happen or it did not have a considerable influence on the global circulation (it did). It means that, in southern California, even a very strong El Niño was not able to nudge the distribution over enough to the point where drier outcomes were impossible.”

Looking ahead, L’Heureux added: “In 2026-27, I am confident we will see at least some locations in the U.S. that will not align with the expected El Niño impact.” 

Jeff Masters contributed to this post.

 

Lizzie Suarez grew up in Miami and watched the city morph into what it is today: a billionaire’s playground. She works with Miami Workers Center, “as a place where people are finding community and finding answers to the questions of their lives.” She’s also a cultural organizer grappling to answer the question, what exactly is a cultural organizer?

 

The following is from our conversation on March 6th, 2026. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

~

Mark Chavez

What was life like growing up in Miami? 

Lizzie Suarez

I had a great experience growing up in Miami. I was fortunate enough to be involved in extracurricular activities, like sports, got into the arts outside of school and I had an experience of both being in public school and private school in Miami. As I got older, a lot of my experience I can see through a more political lens: the experiences I had with, you know, peers growing up. I was a teenager when Trayvon Martin was murdered and experiencing that as a kid and trying to make sense of the story. And then as I got older, witnessing uprisings and resistance across the United States, just following the news and being online. And so I would say it’s been a really eye-opening experience and a very unique experience. Miami is such a unique place compared to many parts of the United States, but I would also say I was like most kids when you get lost in childhood classmate drama and all that. 

MC

What has changed about Miami over your lifetime? 

LS

A lot has changed. Miami is a place that has always, since its founding, as the city of Miami proper and the region, a place that was created by Indigenous and Black people of the Caribbean for outsiders and for wealthy northerners. And so in that sense, not much has changed about Miami, but because the people who govern Miami have such a commitment to novelty, to newness, to the new next best shiny thing our city really changes, I would say, every five years almost. Every five years there’s a new influx of people, whether it be from New York or California, especially post pandemic. 

Now, most recently in the past few months, there’s been like six billionaires who have announced that they’re moving to Miami, one of them being Peter Thiel, moving Palantir here. And so, in the past six or seven years, a lot of my friends, people that I’ve known, have had to leave Miami due to rising cost of living. A lot of people in my circle that I’ve organized with or been in community with, many of them are not from here, but nonetheless, they have chosen to call this place home and chosen to help make it better. 

All that to say, although there’s new people, migration is just part of life. And so there’s all sorts of different people here, different nationalities, different states, but I think more and more, there’s just more concentration of wealth into fewer and fewer hands and working class people are feeling it the most. 

MC

Can you share how that ties into your work? How is Miami Workers Center borne out of, related to, responding to that increased disparity of wealth in the city. 

LS

I was actually just reading some notes and reflections from members from a convening that we had this past weekend. And the prompt was, who are we? When you think about us as an organization, who are we? 

One of our members put, “we are those who have been forgotten about, the disabled, working class people, people who can work, people who can’t work, people who are single parents with young kids, people who are navigating our complex immigration legal system.” 

And so I think about the organization, Miami Workers Center, as a place where people are finding community and finding answers to the questions of their lives. Can I afford to live here? Is this a safe place to live? Can I build roots here? How can I afford to live here? How can I find the resources I need to live a life of dignity?

And yeah… I think the organization is like a quest to answer the question, who was Miami for? We know, like I just shared, it has been a place for the rich, but it doesn’t have to be that way. Just as it was made, it can be unmade and made again. 

MC

That’s so beautiful. You all were involved in launching the first worker-owned cleaning business in Miami. Can you share, what is that? And in responding to that, also share a little bit about what is a cooperative and why are they so important? 

LS

The Miami Cleaning Cooperative is a new business, a new worker cooperative founded by members of the Miami Workers Center in collaboration with, and supported by, Neighborhood Housing Services of South Florida and Catalyst Miami. 

For the past about two to three years now, members of that cooperative have been part of an incubation process. So they first started with learning what a cooperative is. It’s a different kind of way of doing business, as opposed to standard business practices where there’s a CEO at the top and everyone under them doesn’t get to make the decisions that impact their lives, whether it be economically or just the way that the business is governed. They are making the same amount of money, and they have learned about cooperatives being a more collaborative, generative kind of economics where the work is shared, there’s equal say, or the workers who make the business run get to set up the structures that they feel are fair and also supportive of their business. 

The worker-owners are involved in making decisions about where the profit of the business is going towards, how much of it is put back into the business versus how much of it turns into salary or pay that workers get to take home. 

We’re so proud that they’re now in business and working and taking on clients. And this is especially important for this group of women. One being a multiracial group of women, Miami is a place that is very segregated still by class and therefore by race, especially along national lines. So you often don’t see images or representations of people who are Spanish speaking from Peru or Nicaragua working in collaboration with Haitian women. And that is what we’re seeing in this cooperative. 

It’s not only an example of how people from different places can work together when there’s a shared vision and shared respect for one another, but also as domestic workers in an industry that is very precarious, where workers are often working in private homes: there’s little to no regulations for these workers. They’re often mistreated and taken advantage of, both economically, but also personally, it’s horrible the levels of disrespect and violence that women often experience on the job. 

Being part of a worker cooperative, an organization that has their back in these situations, that they don’t have to deal with these challenges alone, is really important. And then another part of it also is the environmental impact. So part of their commitment as a cooperative is educating other workers, other domestic workers on what are the kind of products that workers should be using on the job that doesn’t harm their health. 

MC

This is an aside but I remember when I was younger talking to my dad and being like, “Dad, I saw this thing that said ‘vinegar is really good for cleaning stuff. It that true?’” And his response was, “Yeah, if you like the smell of vinegar.” 

LS

(laughs) 

MC

It was the most dad response you could get. 

I saw something else about an eviction diversion program at Miami Workers Center. Can you share what that is and how that works? 

LS

In 2022, about four years ago, we advocated at the county that a budget for this program be created. We wanted to see a codified right to counsel for tenants who are facing eviction to have the right to free legal representation so that they have a better chance of staying housed, as a strategy to slow the rate of evictions in Miami-Dade County and have that impact the rate in which prices were going up. It’s kind of like a slow the bleed strategy. 

And we realized there would be many challenges to enforcing having a codified right to counsel without  funding for pro bono lawyers who are willing to represent these tenants, even if tenants had those rights on paper. So we successfully got this program started, which wouldn’t have been possible without our legal partners in this work. It’s in the second or third year now where MWC has a canvassing team dedicated to canvassing tenants who are facing eviction.  Many times, our team is how families are finding out that they have five days to file a response to the court or they default on their eviction. 

That’s part of the work that we’re doing. We are also putting on monthly know your rights and legal clinics in each district in the county. 

Part of the challenge is continuing funding for this every single year. We have to go to the county and fight at this point. It’s not even, what we want to see is increased funding, but what we’re seeing is a fight just to keep it as it is, where it can’t even, the program can’t even expand. That’s part of the challenge where we’re at now. 

Last year, the Eviction Diversion Project reached over 11,000 families with information about their rights, and connected over 1,700 to the representation that they needed. Many people were able to file responses and stay in their homes. 

Some of our most committed members are those who have that lived experience of facing an eviction and fighting it. Some win and some don’t, but throughout the process they are seeing how MWC stands in solidarity with them and has their back, and they want to ensure that that doesn’t happen to anybody else, that evictions don’t happen to any of their other neighbors. 

MC

What you’ve shared about Miami Workers Center makes me think about this idea of the third space. I think it’s so interesting because we’re in this moment where companies and corporations and brands are working so hard to figure out how they can get people offline and to real life experiences, and moments and events and things to build their excitement and engagement and buy into their brand. 

I keep thinking about how that is what our communities do inherently, like what organizing is, is about creating that offline interaction and engagement for community. I think we are just in this moment, especially in this post-pandemic era where people are just craving a place to be and to be engaged in something bigger than themselves. It’s really beautiful to see groups all around the country and the world that are doing that kind of stuff. 

LS

Yeah, it’s our biggest strength: being human beings in a world that desperately wants to be everything but a human being.

MC

So you work at Miami Workers Center, and you’re also an artist, and this other thing that people call themselves, a cultural organizer. What is a cultural organizer? 

LS

I actually was just thinking about this the other day, ’cause I’m like, what is that? What is it that I do exactly?’ 

I would say it’s being part of efforts that are bigger, that are like, what is that phrase, greater than the sum of its parts. Where you understand that it’s not about the work that you do alone, but it’s about making connections. And so for me, what that looks like is being open to connecting with new people, people who I see are doing similar kinds of work or trying to, or doing work in an effort of making [it] progressive. 

I have cultural worker friends who are in cumbia bands and doing local shows. I have friends who are sculpture artists who do poetry, and who are more in the academic field who are archivists and researchers. So it’s about getting to know all these different kinds of people and what they care about, and then being part of the organizing and using that as a vehicle in which these can come together in some way or another, even if it’s not part of a formal project. 

Cultural organizing can look like an assembly that was produced in collaboration with a grassroots organization, with a campaign, a clear call to action, and had theater and song and dance and art. It can also look like the long-term work of building relationships with people locally and trying to align on some shared vision. 

MC

It feels like there’s some similarity to when I was on the fundraising team at CJA for a while, and during that time we were grappling with the idea of calling ourselves resource mobilizers. It was a way to say that this is different from the mainstream approach to fundraising. It was kind of this reclamation, or just creating something of our own. 

LS

Yeah. And, where I would fear that the term cultural organizing doesn’t go is just seeing culture alone as a vehicle for change. When the reality is that you need culture and organizational structure and shifting of labor conditions, you know, to make systemic change. I think the smartest cultural organizing happens before we can get to the place where tenants are willing to form an organizing team and organize their neighbors. 

Food is the best way to get people to know each other. You gotta start with the barbecues, the cookouts, the movie nights, like that is cultural organizing at its best when it’s infused with the organizing strategy and not seen as an afterthought. 

MC

Speaking of food, you created a really beautiful food sovereignty poster a while ago. What was your process to actually make that poster? 

LS

My process began before the Creative Wildfire fellowship came about. I had been part of working with an organization, another local worker center called WeCount!, who organizes with day laborers, agricultural workers, domestic workers, construction workers. For many years I had been making campaign posters with them, doing graphics with them. And so through that experience, I got to know more about the struggle of agricultural workers who are trying to organize to change the industry. When I got the opportunity to collaborate with CJA and the Farm Workers Association of Florida on this and got to hear the stories that they shared, I wanted to paint the picture of both visualizing a transition with snapshots of what we are seeing in the world. 

You’ll see, I think it was in the bottom left, kind of like a toxic environment where the soil is very toxic and not only toxic to the land, but also to the workers who are tending to the crops, the food, and then in the bottom right, it’s almost like a comic, starting from the bottom left to the right, and then kind of moving its way up through transformation. The intention was that you could read it as a comic in that way or just as a process, but then looking at it wholly there’s always something bad and something good happening at the same time. It doesn’t show that everything is all great and we’re gonna arrive at liberation and things are just gonna be amazing. There’s always going to be struggle ’cause that’s just part of life. And so the intention was centered around food which is why you have the fish and the animals that are from the Everglades, which is most near to where I’m based out of. But you see people in it as well. I really wanted to just kind of pay respects to the workers who tend to the lands to make our food possible. Also recognizing that there’s a lot of work to be done to make it better. 

MC

What is some art that has really moved you recently? 

LS

There’s an organization in North Carolina called Down Home. They just started a video storytelling series and I’m really excited to see it. It’s called the Front Porch. They have a substack and they just put out a teaser video. It seems like they’re going to show stories and profiles of different people in rural North Carolina. Storytelling projects like that are exciting to me right now. It reminds you that the people in the stories are human, real people, showing their lives.

MC

Thank you, Lizzie, for taking some time. It was really nice to chat and hear a little more about what you’re doing. 

The post Lizzie Suarez on how Miami is changing, the city’s first cleaning cooperative, and being a culture worker appeared first on Climate Justice Alliance.

For Immediate Release

May 20, 2026

 

Contact

Nina Erlich-Williams, nina@publicgoodpr.com

O: 510-336-9566, C: 415-577-1153

 

Plan identifies specific strategies for developing drought-proof water supplies in SoCal by 2045 that will generate significantly higher yields than projections for the Delta Conveyance Project

Bay-Delta Region and Los Angeles, Calif. – In an online press conference today, leaders from conservation groups and Tribes announced the release of a Water Renaissance Plan for California. The plan lays out a vision, including specific goals and metrics, for prioritizing local water resilience in California’s urban areas – especially in Southern California – to support a pivot away from the state’s overreliance on unreliable imported water. 

 

Among other findings, the plan identifies the opportunity to secure 1.8-2 million acre-feet of drought-proof water supplies in Southern California by 2045 through sustainable technologies like stormwater capture, wastewater recycling, conservation, and groundwater cleanup. The total cost for such investments would be approximately $44 billion. In comparison, the proposed Delta Conveyance Project is only projected to yield 0.4 million acre-feet of water annually at a likely cost upwards of $60 billion.

 

“Southern California water agencies are already turning toward projects that can provide reliable local water,” said Bruce Reznik, executive director of LA Waterkeeper. “These types of investments make our region more resilient. We should direct ratepayer and taxpayer dollars to securing water supplies that are available year in and year out, rain or shine.”

 

As shown in this fact sheet, the amount of water available for export from two of Southern California’s main sources of fresh water – the Bay-Delta and the Colorado River – is projected to drop by 23% and 29% respectively in the coming years, compared to available water in recent decades. The report argues that continuing to over-invest in infrastructure designed to pipe water over hundreds of miles is a risky strategy, especially as snowpack and rainfall patterns become less predictable due to climate change.

 

Water exporting regions are also feeling the strain of changing weather patterns. As has been widely reported, the Colorado River is at an all-time low since water exports began in the early 1900s. The Bay-Delta is on the verge of ecosystem collapse due to extensive water exports that support both Central Valley agriculture and urban uses in Southern California and Silicon Valley. In the Eastern Sierras, Mono Lake and Owens Lake are similarly struggling due to excessive exports to Los Angeles.

 

“Proposed projects like the Delta Tunnel would decimate ecosystems and communities throughout California,” added Restore the Delta executive director Barbara Barrigan-Parilla. “It’s past time to focus our limited dollars on water infrastructure investments that are sustainable for both urban and rural farming communities, respect Tribal water and land uses, and will allow keystone species like salmon to recover. We can create improved water supplies and restore the largest estuary on the West Coast.”

 

The Water Renaissance Plan includes eight priority recommendations:

 

·         Direct state agencies to end planning and advocacy for the Delta Tunnel and instead adopt and enforce science-based instream flow protections for the Bay-Delta and its Tributaries.

·         Consider pursuing an ambitious general obligation water bond that focuses on modern local water supplies and does not include wasteful or environmentally damaging spending.

·         Develop best management practices and regulatory standards to address harmful algal blooms.

·         Require the adoption of tribal beneficial uses so that tribal uses are recognized and protected in permitting decisions.

·         Direct state officials to ensure Colorado River diversions are appropriately reduced as part of a basin-wide plan to ensure long-term sustainability and protect the environment, tribes, and urban water users.

·         Create a framework for local businesses to fund green infrastructure for stormwater capture.

·         Remove the cap on large water recycling projects for receiving loans from the State Revolving Fund and allocate sufficient funds to the SRF to meaningfully support large-scale projects.

·         Reform Proposition 218 to allow for local water rate assistance programs and ensure aggressive conservation rates can be implemented.

 

The Plan also includes analysis and sources to support its vision. It was drafted jointly by the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance, Defenders of Wildlife, Friends of the River,Golden State Salmon Association, LA Waterkeeper, Resource Renewal Institute, Restore the Delta, San Francisco Baykeeper, Sierra Club California, Winnemem Wintu Tribe, andYosemite Rivers Alliance. As of May 19, 2026, 18 additional groups have endorsed the plan. For a full list of endorsers and additional information about the Water Renaissance Plan, see www.cawaterrenaissance.org.

 

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This article The “Hitler question” should never justify war was originally published by Waging Nonviolence.

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Proponents of war and militarization often invoke common memories of Hitler and World War II to argue that we are now in a similar moment. Whether it is with Saddam Hussein in 2003, al Qaeda during the “war on terrorism,” Iran’s Supreme Leader in 2017, or Putin since 2022, a classic trope is to compare enemy leaders to the Nazis. In the lead-up to the Iran War this February, Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham likened Iran’s religious leaders to Hitler and argued for regime change by any means. 

It is only a matter of time before Hitler is invoked again to justify yet another war or yet more militarization. How can those who are uneasy with war and militarism prepare to counter such arguments?

The “Hitler question” — what would you do if faced with Nazi aggression? — has certainly long functioned as a rhetorical trump card against pacifism and nonviolence. It is usually posed as a trap. If pacifists concede violence might be necessary, their principles are revealed as hollow. If they reject violence even then, they are exposed as naive or morally indifferent. 

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Look closer, however, and it turns out that this framing rests on shaky assumptions and questionable simplifications. Even on as serious a challenge as the “Hitler question,” pacifism and nonviolence offer far more serious and practical insights than usually given credit for. 

As I examine in greater depth in a recent academic journal article, there are 10 ways in which the conventional assumptions behind the “Hitler question” can be challenged. 

Resisting the Nazis 

On the specific historical context of the Nazi question, first, framing the question in 1939, with war underway or imminent, bypasses or ignores the decades of political choices, structural violence, and missed opportunities that made that crisis so acute. 

From the punitive settlement after World War I, to the nationalist backlash and wider repercussions of the 1929 economic collapse, to imperial rivalries and militarized politics across Europe, decisions were made and particular paths were chosen. Different choices might have prevented the rise of Nazism in the first place. The crisis by 1939 was not caused by pacifism, but by decades of violence and militarism that helped create the conditions in which Hitler thrived.

Second, even if one accepts that war ultimately contributed to defeating Nazi Germany, an honest account would include a more critical look at what violence did — and did not — achieve. Military force did not prevent Hitler’s rise, nor did it stop the early expansion of Nazi power. 

War also did not protect Europe’s Jews from genocide; in fact, the Holocaust escalated under the cover and brutality of wartime conditions. Nor was the Allied war effort primarily motivated by a desire to stop genocide. Strategic priorities focused on territorial and political competition, and opportunities to disrupt the machinery of mass murder were often not taken.

This complicates the popular narrative of World War II as a clear-cut moral triumph. The same states that defeated Hitler tolerated or ignored other atrocities before and after the war (Gaza providing a recent example). Moreover, the conflict itself involved massive civilian casualties, indiscriminate bombing and forms of collective punishment that blur the line between justice and destruction. War may have brought down the Nazi regime, but it did so at enormous human cost and without eradicating the underlying ideologies of fascism and militarism, which persist in various forms and have become particularly revitalized and threatening in recent years.

Third, violent resistance was not the only form of resistance that ultimately defeated the Nazis. Nonviolent resistance contributed, too. Across occupied Europe, ordinary people and institutions engaged in acts of civil defiance, including strikes, bureaucratic obstruction, clandestine publishing, education boycotts, and networks that hid and protected Jews. In countries like Denmark and Bulgaria, public solidarity helped save large numbers of Jewish lives. Even within Germany, protests such as the Rosenstrasse demonstration, where non-Jewish wives secured the release of their Jewish husbands, forced concessions from the regime. (Incidentally, examples of nonviolent resistance and defense can be found in the current Ukraine war, too.)

Previous Coverage

The dangerous assumption that violence keeps us safe

These efforts were rarely coordinated on a large scale, and they did not defeat Nazism on their own. But their contribution challenges the idea that nonviolence was absent or irrelevant. Such examples, however, were also largely spontaneous (as they have been in Ukraine since 2022). The populations that resisted nonviolently have not benefited from systematic training and investment in such methods. Yet, just as military success depends on training, resources and coordination, so too does effective nonviolent resistance.

Fourth, as we know from plenty of recent scholarship and hundreds of examples, nonviolence operates differently from violence. Rather than seeking to overpower an opponent physically, it aims to undermine the social and political foundations of their power. Authoritarian regimes — even brutal ones — depend on compliance, legitimacy and the participation of ordinary people. When those forms of support are withdrawn, the regime’s capacity to function erodes. Nonviolent resistance can also create what is often called a “backfire effect,” exposing the injustice of repression and turning it against the oppressor by mobilizing public opinion.

Even the Nazi regime was not immune to these dynamics. It paid attention to public sentiment and adjusted policies when backlash threatened stability. The visibility of violence mattered: After the widely condemned brutality of Kristallnacht, antisemitic policies were implemented more discreetly. Nazi authorities went out of their way to hide practical elements of the “final solution” from public view. Where Jewish communities were less isolated and enjoyed broader solidarity, such as in Denmark and Bulgaria, survival rates were higher. These examples suggest that public opinion and social ties were not irrelevant, even under totalitarian rule.

Fifth, World War II is often remembered as being against “the Germans,” as a total war pitting entire populations against each other, as if all Germans were equally guilty. This obscures the fact that many non-Nazi Germans were victims of Nazism, too — such as civilians, conscripts and dissidents. Military conflict tends to turn entire nations into enemies. War dehumanizes, reinforcing binary identities and legitimizing large-scale destruction (as the genocide in Gaza illustrates all too clearly). Pacifism and nonviolence, by contrast, insist on recognizing the humanity of all involved, even while resisting injustice.

Resisting war 

Beyond the specifics of the Nazi context, it is worth also interrogating some of the assumptions with which the “Hitler question” tends to be asked. Five challenges to conventional wisdom emerge here, too.

First, pacifism is often over-caricatured and misunderstood. For one, it is often assumed that pacifism is a single, absolutist doctrine that rejects all forms of violence under any circumstances. Yet pacifist thought is diverse. Some strands are principled, others pragmatic; some oppose all war, while others argue that specifically modern warfare — especially in the nuclear age — is too destructive to justify. Many pacifists engage deeply with questions of strategy, effectiveness and political responsibility.

Another misconception is that pacifism equates to passivity. To the contrary, nonviolent action often involves risk, disruption and courage. It can include strikes, civil disobedience, boycotts and other forms of active resistance that challenge power structures directly. Far from being passive, such actions often require significant organization and personal sacrifice.

Second, nonviolence is more effective than its detractors often seem to assume. Studies have found that nonviolent campaigns have historically been more successful than violent ones, even against authoritarian regimes, and that they tend to produce more democratic and stable outcomes. While these findings have attracted some debate and certainly do not guarantee success in every case, they undermine the assumption that violence is inherently more effective.

There is, admittedly, no clear historical example of a society successfully defending itself against a full-scale invasion using only nonviolent methods. However, cases can be found of civilian resistance to occupation and authoritarian rule, suggesting that nonviolent defense could function as an extension of these practices. The idea of “civilian-based defense” involves preparing entire populations to resist through non-cooperation, making occupation difficult or unsustainable. This approach has never been systematically implemented, making it difficult to evaluate — but its potential cannot be dismissed out of hand.

Third, the “constitutive” impact of war is also not to be neglected. Violence, even when effective, does not simply achieve objectives; it reshapes societies (as evident with those countries affected by the Ukraine war, and in Israel and Palestine). War strengthens militarized institutions, normalizes hierarchy and cultivates cultures that are more accepting of violence. It leaves deep psychological and social scars, and it often fuels future conflicts. The economic and political systems built to support war — arms industries, military alliances, security infrastructures — take on a life of their own.

This raises a different kind of question: not just whether violence can defeat a particular enemy, but what kind of world it creates in the process. If war fosters the very conditions — militarism, dehumanization, authoritarianism — that enable regimes like Nazi Germany, then relying on it as a solution may be self-defeating.

Fourth, any assumption that violence can be controlled is also questionable. War is often imagined as a precise instrument, but in practice it is chaotic and unpredictable. It escalates, generates unintended consequences and often exceeds the intentions of those who initiate it, as we’re seeing with the ongoing U.S. and Israeli war on Iran. Civilian casualties, environmental destruction and long-term instability are not anomalies but recurring features. Once unleashed, violence is difficult to contain.

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Fifth, it is worth reflecting on the cultural and political uses of the “Hitler question.” It is often invoked not only in historical debates but in contemporary conflicts, where enemy leaders are recurrently cast as yet “another Hitler” to justify yet another military intervention. This framing simplifies complex situations and encourages a moral narrative in which violence appears as the only responsible choice. It also reflects a particular perspective, rooted in Western experiences and dominant memories of World War II, that obscures other histories and viewpoints, such as those of conscientious objectors, dissidents, women, racial minorities or colonized people.

As a result, a romanticized vision of war as a moment of heroic and hypermasculine struggle against evil, where violence is regrettable but necessary, gets reproduced. This narrative overlooks the broader consequences of war and the voices of those who experience its costs most directly — civilians, marginalized communities and those outside the centers of power.

All this is not to say that nonviolence would certainly have stopped Hitler or that all wars are avoidable. What I do mean to say, however, is that the “Hitler question” is not as decisive an argument against pacifism and in favor of the next war as those who ask it often seem to think. By examining its assumptions and revisiting the historical record, the choice between violence and nonviolence emerges as more complex than the question tends to allow. Pacifism and nonviolence offer not a simplistic rejection of force, but a set of critical tools for thinking about power, resistance and the long-term consequences of political action.

In a world where calls for war continue to be justified by invoking existential threats and moral urgency, advocates of pacifism and nonviolence should not feel disarmed by the “Hitler question.” The challenge is not to provide easy answers, but to broaden the conversation — to consider alternatives, question assumptions and invite to take seriously the possibility that resisting violence does not always require more of it.

This article The “Hitler question” should never justify war was originally published by Waging Nonviolence.

Gov. Gavin Newsom proposed funding the Demand Side Grid Support program through this year before moving participants to a separate, utility-run framework. Clean energy groups call the proposal costly and counterproductive.

With a new Ebola outbreak announced in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) on May 15 and declared an international public health emergency just two days later, on top of the recent Andes hantavirus cruise ship outbreak, NNU is sounding the alarm on the Trump administration’s bungled response to emerging infectious diseases.

 

Shell’s premium V-Power fuel is back in the spotlight, promising cleaner engines, better protection, and “more” of almost everything. But for drivers with long memories, the phrase “Shell wonder fuel” comes with a faint smell of burnt valves, marketing hype, and very expensive déjà vu. DISCLAIMER

This article is opinion and satirical commentary based on cited public sources. It is not financial advice, consumer advice, engineering advice, or a recommendation to buy, avoid, invest in, or rely on any Shell product or security. Drivers should follow their vehicle manufacturer’s fuel recommendations and seek qualified mechanical advice where appropriate. Site wide disclaimer also applies.

PART ONE: FACT-BASED TABLOID DEEP DIVE THE RETURN OF THE WONDER FUEL WAGON

There are few things Big Oil enjoys more than selling fossil fuel as if it were a wellness product.

Shell V-Power is not merely petrol, we are invited to understand. It is a premium experience. A scientific elixir. A motorised spa treatment. Something your engine apparently deserves after a long week of commuting, congestion, and quietly funding quarterly distributions.

A recent ad-hoc-news article describes Shell V-Power as Shell’s premium gasoline brand, marketed to help clean and protect modern engines, and aimed at explaining what US drivers should expect from it. The article says V-Power is Shell’s “flagship premium gasoline brand” and notes that it is positioned around detergents, friction modifiers, premium octane, and engine-cleanliness claims.

Shell’s own US marketing is even more enthusiastic. The company says Shell V-Power® NiTRO+ Premium Gasoline “removes up to 100% of performance robbing deposits,” promises “more power” and “more performance,” and says the product contains six times the cleaning agents required by federal standards.

Naturally, the word “more” does a lot of heavy lifting here.

More performance.

More protection.

More cleaning.

More premium.

More money at the pump.

Less obvious certainty that every ordinary driver will actually notice a miraculous transformation between home, work, school run, supermarket, and the pothole collection formerly known as the public road.

WHAT SHELL SAYS V-POWER DOES

Shell says the new formulation of V-Power NiTRO+ has “a new molecule” designed to remove up to 100% of carbon deposits from fuel injectors in gasoline direct injection engines. It says the fuel provides protection against deposits, corrosion, wear, and friction, and that V-Power contains the highest concentration of its proprietary additive package.

Shell also says V-Power NiTRO+ is Top Tier certified and has been tested in laboratory procedures, bench engines, and vehicles, with “more than half a million equivalent miles of testing.”

So let us be fair: Shell is not simply printing “magic petrol” on a pump and hoping nobody asks what an injector is.

There is a technical basis for detergent additives. Deposits can affect engine performance. Premium fuel can matter where a manufacturer requires or recommends higher octane. Modern direct-injection engines can be sensitive to deposit build-up.

But the real-world question is not whether fuel additives exist.

The real-world question is whether Shell’s premium potion is worth the premium price for the average driver — especially if their car only requires regular fuel.

And that is where the glossy ad copy begins to sound less like engineering and more like a scented candle for the combustion chamber.

THE ORDINARY DRIVER’S QUESTION: DO I NEED THIS STUFF?

For some drivers, the answer may be yes.

If your car requires premium fuel, use premium fuel. The owner’s manual is not decorative literature. It is there because the engine was designed around certain requirements.

If your car is turbocharged, high-compression, performance-tuned, or explicitly recommends premium gasoline, Shell V-Power may fit the use case Shell is targeting.

But if your car only requires regular fuel, the argument becomes murkier.

The ad-hoc-news article notes that premium fuel use depends heavily on vehicle manufacturer guidance, and that fuel economy changes are often small and vehicle-dependent.

AAA research found that premium gasoline was typically 23% more expensive than regular gasoline in the period studied, and examined whether using premium in cars requiring regular fuel represented a good return on investment.

A widely reported summary of that AAA study said US drivers wasted more than $2.1 billion in a year by using premium-grade gasoline in vehicles designed to run on regular, with no tangible benefit in the tested categories.

So the practical rule remains brutally simple:

If your vehicle requires premium, buy premium.

If your vehicle recommends premium, it may help under some conditions.

If your vehicle only requires regular, premium fuel may mainly improve the mood of the company selling it.

SHELL’S LITTLE PROBLEM: HISTORY HAS A LONG MEMORY AND A BURNT SMELL

This is where the Royal Dutch Shell Group archive piece from 2015 becomes especially useful.

John Donovan’s article, “Shell V-Power NiTRO+ ignites memories of past Shell wonder fuel debacles,” recalled Shell’s 1986 launch of Formula Shell — another heavily promoted fuel dressed up in scientific glamour. The article quoted Shell’s own paid historian, Keetie Sluyterman, describing how Formula Shell was launched in Europe with “heavy advertising” and “scientific connotations.”

Then came the small snag.

According to the cited historical account, the launch initially boosted sales, but later it emerged that in a small number of cars the new gasoline caused inlet valves to burn. The account says damage occurred in Denmark, Norway, Malaysia, and the UK; Shell withdrew Formula Shell from several markets, including the UK, before reformulating and relaunching the product.

That is quite a plot twist.

Act One: “From today not all petrol is the same.”

Act Two: Correct. Some of it may burn your valves.

To be precise, the historic Formula Shell episode should not be treated as proof that modern V-Power is unsafe. That would be an unfair leap. Modern fuels, regulations, engines, testing regimes, and additive chemistry are different.

But it absolutely does justify scepticism toward Shell’s recurring talent for dressing fuel products in a white laboratory coat and sending them out under a shower of marketing confetti.

The lesson is not “V-Power equals Formula Shell.”

The lesson is: when Shell says it has a wonder fuel, check the small print before joining the hymn service.

THE MARKETING FORMULA: SCIENCE, SPEED, SPARKLE, SPEND

The fuel business has always loved mystique.

Octane numbers become personality traits.

Additives become secret sauces.

Laboratory terms become pump-side seduction.

The driver is nudged to imagine that using regular fuel is practically an act of cruelty toward the engine.

Shell’s current V-Power US page leans hard into this theatre, with repeated “more” language: more power, more performance, more protection. It also states that actual effects and benefits may vary by vehicle type, driving conditions, and driving style.

There, hidden beneath the bonnet of the sales pitch, sits the disclaimer goblin.

“May vary” is doing the sensible work that “more” forgot to do.

This does not mean Shell’s claims are automatically false. It means consumers should understand what is being claimed, under what conditions, and whether those conditions resemble their own driving life.

A carefully tested engine-cleanliness benefit is one thing.

A driver expecting their family hatchback to emerge from the Shell forecourt with the soul of a Le Mans prototype is quite another.

PREMIUM FUEL: USEFUL PRODUCT OR STATUS SYMBOL WITH A NOZZLE?

Premium fuel is not inherently a scam.

Higher octane fuel resists knocking. Some engines require it. Some engines can adjust timing and performance when higher octane is available. Some drivers may value detergent packages and additive claims.

But premium fuel is also a brilliant retail product because it sells aspiration at the precise moment the consumer is already holding a payment card.

The pump effectively whispers:

“You could buy the ordinary fuel. Or you could be the sort of person who cares.”

That is premiumisation in its purest form.

Shell is not just selling petrol. It is selling the idea that you are a more responsible, performance-minded, engine-loving motorist because you picked the expensive handle.

And for Shell, that is an attractive business.

Fuel retail is fiercely competitive. Differentiated premium products help defend margins, build brand loyalty, and keep customers inside the Shell ecosystem — especially when linked to apps, rewards schemes, and brand claims about superior protection.

In short: V-Power is not merely fuel technology. It is also a margin strategy with a racing helmet.

THE ENVIRONMENTAL ABSURDITY: CLEANER ENGINE, DIRTIER PLANET?

Here is the uncomfortable part.

Shell V-Power is marketed around cleanliness — cleaner injectors, fewer deposits, better protection.

But it remains a fossil-fuel product sold by one of the world’s largest oil and gas companies.

So we are invited to applaud a fuel for cleaning the inside of an engine while the broader business model remains tied to extracting, refining, transporting, and selling hydrocarbons.

It is the classic Shell paradox:

Look how clean this combustion chamber is. Please ignore the climate chamber.

To be clear, cleaner engine operation can matter. Fuel quality can affect emissions, efficiency, and engine performance.

But premium petrol should not be mistaken for climate virtue. It is still petrol. It is still burned. It still produces tailpipe CO₂. It still belongs to the carbon economy Shell is working very hard to keep profitable for as long as possible.

The product may be cleaner in a mechanical sense.

That does not make it clean in a planetary sense.

THE OLD SHELL TRICK: TURNING CONTROVERSY INTO CONFIDENCE

Shell’s genius has always been its ability to speak in two registers at once.

To consumers, it says: trust the science, protect your engine, choose better fuel.

To investors, it says: trust the cash flow, protect the dividend, choose disciplined capital.

To critics, it says: we are part of the transition.

To regulators, it says: everything is tested, certified, and very carefully footnoted.

The result is a corporate voice so smooth it could probably reduce friction in an engine itself.

But the V-Power story shows the same pattern visible across Shell’s wider public image: a highly engineered message wrapped around a product that deserves scrutiny.

A premium fuel may be legitimate.

A marketing miracle should be treated with caution.

And a company with Shell’s history should not be offended when people remember previous episodes in which technical confidence and advertising swagger aged badly.

THE FORMULA SHELL GHOST AT THE PUMP

The 1980s Formula Shell controversy remains relevant not because history repeats exactly, but because corporate habits often rhyme.

Then: a fuel launched with scientific glamour.

Now: a fuel sold with technical superiority language.

Then: a brand message suggesting not all petrol is the same.

Now: a brand message suggesting your engine deserves “more.”

Then: Shell discovered that fuel chemistry, engines, and real-world use can create unpleasant surprises.

Now: consumers are expected to trust that the laboratory, the legal department, and the marketing department are all aligned in perfect harmony.

Perhaps they are.

But the ghost of Formula Shell still hovers near the pump, whispering:

“Have we checked this properly, or are we just applauding the brochure?”

BOTTOM LINE FOR DRIVERS

The sensible position is neither panic nor blind loyalty.

Shell V-Power NiTRO+ may offer real benefits for some vehicles, particularly those designed for premium fuel or sensitive to deposits. Shell’s claims about detergent concentration, Top Tier certification, and testing should be taken seriously as product information.

But drivers should also take Shell’s marketing language seriously as marketing.

For many everyday vehicles that only require regular gasoline, premium fuel may not deliver enough real-world benefit to justify the extra cost. AAA’s research has long warned against assuming premium fuel automatically benefits cars designed for regular.

The best advice remains boring, which is why no advertising agency likes it:

Read the owner’s manual.

Follow the manufacturer’s fuel requirement.

Do not confuse premium branding with universal necessity.

And remember that “up to” is one of the most elastic phrases in modern commerce.

CONCLUSION: SAME SHELL, DIFFERENT NOZZLE

Shell V-Power may be a technically sophisticated premium fuel.

It may help some engines.

It may be a sensible choice for some drivers.

But it is also another chapter in Shell’s long-running romance with the “wonder fuel” narrative — a place where chemistry meets commerce, disclaimers meet desire, and the humble petrol pump is transformed into a miniature cathedral of corporate persuasion.

The old Formula Shell episode is not a conviction against modern V-Power.

But it is a warning against corporate amnesia.

Shell has been here before: big claims, big branding, big confidence.

Drivers should remember what Shell marketing prefers to forget:

Not every miracle at the pump is a miracle for the motorist.

Sometimes it is just premium petrol with a premium script.

And sometimes the cleanest thing in the whole transaction is the way the extra money disappears from your wallet.

PART TWO: SPOOF SHELL PR/SPIN SECTION Shell Miracle Fuel Statement, Possibly Written by a Chemist, a Marketer, and a Dividend Forecast

Shell is proud to offer drivers a premium fuel experience carefully engineered to deliver more of the things motorists like, including more performance language, more protection terminology, more molecules, and more reasons to download an app.

Our Shell V-Power® NiTRO+ Premium Gasoline is designed for today’s modern engines and tomorrow’s exciting consumer expectations, particularly the expectation that a petrol pump should sound like a Formula One laboratory with a loyalty programme.

We recognise that some drivers may wonder whether they need premium fuel. We encourage them to consult their owner’s manual, while also admiring the emotional maturity of any engine that knows it deserves more.

Shell rejects the suggestion that “wonder fuel” is an overused phrase. We prefer “advanced proprietary performance-enhancing mobility molecule platform,” which regrettably did not fit on the pump handle.

As for historical references to Formula Shell, we believe the past is important, but only in carefully curated corporate heritage videos featuring clean overalls, sunsets, and no burnt valves.

Forward-looking statement: actual miracles may vary by vehicle type, driving conditions, engine age, legal jurisdiction, marketing interpretation, and the willingness of the customer to pay extra.

PART THREE: SPOOF BOT-REACTION / COMMENT SECTION

@PumpSidePhilosopher: “Shell says my engine deserves more. My bank account says my engine can learn humility.”

@ValveBurner1986: “Formula Shell called. It says maybe don’t let the brochure drive the car.”

@PremiumNozzleEnjoyer: “I bought V-Power and my hatchback still refuses to become a Ferrari. Considering litigation against my imagination.”

@DepositGoblin: “Up to 100% is my favourite corporate phrase. I am up to 100% likely to be impressed.”

@ClimateChamber: “Great news: the engine is cleaner. The atmosphere has declined to comment.”

@OctaneOracle: “Use premium if your car needs premium. Revolutionary stuff. Expect a 90-page Shell white paper shortly.”

@MarketingMolecule: “I am proprietary, advanced, and available wherever margins need assistance.”

SUGGESTED IMAGE CONCEPT

A satirical editorial illustration set at a glowing Shell petrol station at night.

In the foreground, a giant golden Shell V-Power pump is labelled “MIRACLE MOLECULE PREMIUM” and is sucking money from a driver’s wallet while spraying glittering fuel into a normal family car.

Behind the car, a ghostly 1980s-style petrol pump labelled “FORMULA SHELL 1986” rises from the fumes, surrounded by small burnt engine valves and warning signs.

On one side, a smiling Shell marketing executive holds a clipboard reading “MORE POWER! MORE PERFORMANCE! MORE DISCLAIMERS!”

On the other side, a mechanic holds up an owner’s manual saying “READ THIS FIRST.”

In the background, the Shell logo glows over a smoky horizon, while a small caption reads:

“Not all petrol is the same. Neither are the consequences.”

Style: sharp tabloid cartoon, high contrast, dramatic lighting, satirical, non-photorealistic, no real people depicted.

SHELL V-POWER: THE PETROL PUMP MIRACLE JUICE THAT WANTS YOUR ENGINE — AND YOUR WALLET — TO FEEL SPECIAL was first posted on May 20, 2026 at 5:22 pm.
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California’s surface water and sediment are often contaminated with PFAS pesticides rcoleman May 20, 2026

Pesticides that are part of the family of toxic “forever chemicals” known as PFAS contaminate surface water and sediment in agricultural areas across California, an EWG analysis finds.

PFAS pesticides were found in up to 50% of California surface water samples, and in about 45% to 55% of sediment samples. These chemicals – fungicides, herbicides and insecticides – do not just end up on produce that feeds the nation. These findings suggest pesticides could also be exposing millions of Californians to PFAS through water and soil. 

What’s worse, exposure may persist for generations, since PFAS never fully break down in the environment. 

To reduce water and soil contamination from PFAS pesticides, California should phase out their use, sale and manufacture for agricultural uses.

Potential health concerns

PFAS pesticides are those whose active ingredients meet the internationally recognized definition of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances. These active ingredients have the carbon-fluorine bond characteristic of PFAS chemicals, which makes them highly persistent in the environment and resistant to complete breakdown.

EWG recently revealed over 2.5 million pounds of PFAS pesticides are applied on California farmland annually, and also found frequent detections of these chemicals on produce grown in the state.

Exposure to PFAS pesticides could harm the immune system. Yet EWG’s published research highlighted an important oversight gap: Review of studies of immune system toxicity – a key outcome observed in several studies of PFAS exposure – is routinely waived as part of PFAS pesticide approvals.

Many PFAS pesticides also transform in the environment into a highly persistent, short-chain form called trifluoroacetic acid, or TFA. Early research has linked TFA exposure with reproductive and developmental risks. There are also concerns about TFA’s ability to persist in the environment for an extremely long time.

We don’t know how long it takes for PFAS pesticides to degrade into TFA. It varies according to pesticide types and environmental conditions. 

In the absence of comprehensive monitoring for TFA and PFAS pesticide breakdown products, current exposure estimates don’t fully account for the range of how these chemicals can harm our environment and health.

EWG’s new analysis is a significant step forward in trying to capture the many ways we are exposed to PFAS.

Studying surface water

Our analysis of sampling results found multiple PFAS pesticides were detected in California surface water. 

To quantify the extent of PFAS pesticide contamination of California surface waters near agricultural areas, EWG compared four subsets of data. The number of PFAS pesticide samples for each dataset is denoted by n in the list below.

1. 2025 Surface Water Database, or SURF (n = 4,158): Surface Water Monitoring Studies 304, 301 and 321 with results spanning 2020-2023, from the California DPR, obtained from the 2025 DPR SURF Release:

Counties sampled: Butte, Colusa, Imperial, Merced, Monterey, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, Stanislaus, Sutter, Yolo.

Waterbody/watershed sampled: Alamo River, Butte Creek, Clarks Ditch-Colusa Basin Drain, Ingram Creek, Lower Logan Creek, New River, Salinas River, Santa Maria River, South Slough-Deadman Creek, Tembladero Slough, Town of Hilmar-San Joaquin River, Willow Creek.

2. 2026 Study 310 (n = 298): Summary data from DPR Study 310, published in a January 7, 2026, report, with pesticide monitoring data on near-agricultural areas for Northern California in 2024:

Counties sampled: Butte, Colusa, Merced, Stanislaus, Sutter, Yolo 

Waterbody/watershed sampled: Butte Creek, Clarks Ditch-Colusa Basin Drain, Ingram Creek, Lower Logan Creek, South Slough-Deadman Creek, Town of Hilmar-San Joaquin River, Willow Creek

3. 2026 Study 321 (n = 548): Summary data from DPR Study 321, published in a January 1, 2026, report, with pesticide monitoring data on near-agricultural areas for the Central Coast and Southern California in 2024:

Counties sampled: Imperial, Monterey, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara 

Waterbody/watershed sampled: Alamo River, New River, Oso Flaco Creek, Salinas River, Santa Maria River, Tembladero Slough

4. USGS (n = 580): Data from Table S4 of Woodward et al. (2026), with 2024 pesticide sampling data collected from agricultural streams in California, conducted by the USGS:

Counties sampled: Butte, Merced, San Joaquin, Solano, Stanislaus, Sutter, Yolo

Waterbody/watershed sampled: Butte Creek, Colusa Basin Drainage Canal, Del Puerto Creek, French Camp Slough, Ingram Creek, Mustang Creek, Orestimba Creek, Reclamation Drain, Snake River, Sweeney Creek

Because the data underlying Study 310 and Study 321 for samples collected in 2024 were not available within the SURF database as of the publication of this article, EWG’s analysis utilized summary statistics from DPR within the preliminary reports published in early 2026.

Information on PFAS pesticide detection frequencies from these data sources is summarized in Table 1, below. Data for the 10 most frequently detected PFAS pesticides between 2020 and 2023 in California SURF data are shown.

Table 1. Multiple PFAS pesticides detected in California surface water. 

PFAS Pesticide Detection Frequency Detection frequency (%) in surface water

PFAS pesticide

Top 10 from SURF

SURF

(n=4,158)
2020-2023

Study 310

(n=298)
2024

Study 321

(n=548)
2024

USGS

(n=580)
2024

Bifenthrin45.830.431.615.0Oxyfluorfen41.0ND26.320.0Lambda-cyhalothrin26.536.8  Sulfoxaflor19.9ND2.1 Fludioxonil12.1ND20.4 Trifloxystrobin6.3ND12.2 Indoxacarb5.9ND13.65.0Trifluralin3.5ND30.0 Fipronil1.2NDND Benefin1.1   

Gray cells indicate no testing for corresponding PFAS pesticide. ND = not detected.

Detection frequencies differed by region and study design. For example, oxyfluorfen detections varied by 21% across the data. But all four studies in Table 1 found evidence of PFAS pesticide contamination of surface water near agricultural areas.

Similar detection frequencies for bifenthrin – about one in three samples – were observed in both study regions, showing widespread bifenthrin contamination of state surface waters.

Data for the PFAS pesticides oxyfluorfen and lambda-cyhalothrin also showed frequent detections in state agricultural waterways both in SURF data (range: 12.1% to 41%) and within the 2024 results in Study 321 (range: 20.4% to 36.8%). 

Some county-level patterns in PFAS pesticide detections were observed from SURF data. Between 2020 and 2023, pesticide monitoring of near-agricultural surface water showed higher overall detection frequencies in San Luis Obispo (mean detection frequency = 23%) and Monterey (22%) counties than the other eight counties covered. 

Bifenthrin was detected in all 15 samples from San Luis Obispo, and in 88% of samples from Stanislaus County. In Butte and Colusa counties, all 10 PFAS pesticides shown in Table 1 were detected in under 10% of samples. 

The number of PFAS pesticides detected in surface water by county varied, with 10 detected in Monterey County, compared to just one in each of Sutter and Merced counties.

Notably, data for Fresno and Kern counties, where PFAS pesticide applications are the highest in the state, were not reported in the agricultural surface water or sediment monitoring studies within SURF. This suggests a concerning gap in the state of California’s testing of PFAS in surface water. 

Assessing sediment

EWG’s analysis found that both PFAS pesticides that were tested for in California sediment were frequently detected.

SURF data were subsetted to the same three datasets on pesticide monitoring in agricultural areas, and summary data were extracted from the 2026 Study 310 and Study 321 reports. The USGS dataset did not report concentrations for sediment and was not included.

Altogether, sediment data were far sparser than surface water data, with a much smaller set of pesticides sampled. 

In the 2020-2023 subset of SURF data and in the 2026 Study 310 data, only seven pesticides were sampled in total, while eight were sampled in the 2026 Study 321 data. 

Across all three datasets, just two of the sampled chemicals – bifenthrin and lambda-cyhalothrin – were PFAS pesticides. 

Table 2. Bifenthrin and lambda-cyhalothrin were frequently detected in California sediment.* 

PFAS Pesticide Detection Frequency in Sediment Detection frequency in sediment (%)PFAS pesticide

SURF

(n=152)

2020-2023

Study 310 

(n=10)

2024

Study 321

(n=26)

2024

Bifenthrin56.620.025.0*Lambda-cyhalothrin47.420.030.0*

Number of PFAS pesticide samples denoted by n.

*Due to a testing error in the 2026 Study 321 results, no sediment data were available from the Imperial Valley, a major agricultural region in southeastern California. The report notes this lack of data "significantly impacted 2024 results" and resulted in a drop in the detection frequency for lambda-cyhalothrin in sediment, from 80% in 2023 to 30% in 2024.

Between 2020 and 2023, SURF data indicated both bifenthrin and lambda-cyhalothrin were more frequently detected than the other five non-PFAS pesticides.

The sediment analysis is far more limited due to smaller sample sizes, limited pesticide coverage and testing errors (see Table 2 footnote). 

Only two PFAS pesticides were tested for, despite several more being applied to crops, detected on produce and frequently found in nearby surface waters. 

These data gaps almost certainly lead to underestimated PFAS contamination in sediment. With more frequent and geographically diverse sampling, as well as consideration of a wider variety of chemicals, detections would likely rise. These limitations also hinder geographic comparisons of sediment.

Nevertheless, the findings in Table 2 indicate that, at minimum, bifenthrin and lambda-cyhalothrin have both contaminated sediment in areas near agricultural land in California. 

Need for more comprehensive monitoring

Our analysis looked at surface water and sediment test results from the California Department of Pesticide Regulation, or DPR, and the U.S. Geological Survey.

Bifenthrin, a PFAS pesticide that may be linked to cancer, was detected in almost half of all surface water samples and in over half of the sediment samples between 2020 and 2023.

Overall sampling data are limited in size and scope, so PFAS contamination from pesticide use is likely more widespread than the data currently suggest. This report emphasizes the need for much more extensive environmental monitoring. 

Current test panels don’t sample for all PFAS pesticides or the chemical breakdown products that can form in the environment, so the full picture of contamination remains unclear. But EWG’s findings, based on current data only, highlight ample reason for concern.

Addressing PFAS pesticides

To eliminate the concerns over PFAS pesticides and their presence on produce, sediment and surface water, California should move to phase out the use of these chemicals on crops. Ending the use of PFAS pesticides would safeguard our food and water systems and prevent PFAS pesticide buildup in the environment.

Furthermore, current monitoring of both surface water and sediment looks at individual pesticides only, not the highly concerning PFAS byproducts that can form from their partial breakdown.

Areas of Focus Food & Water Water Farming & Agriculture Toxic Chemicals Pesticides PFAS Chemicals Regional Issues California Authors Varun Subramaniam, M.S. David Andrews, Ph.D. May 27, 2026

It’s been over half a year since Hurricane Melissa, the most powerful hurricane to ever hit Jamaica, tore a path of destruction through the island. Many migrant farmworker families remain homeless and a number of communities still don’t have electricity restored, relying on expensive generators and battery-operated devices for power. The agricultural areas of the island got hit the hardest, impacting access to fresh food and driving up grocery prices.

What Your Donation Will Support

100% of all contributions go directly to farmworker families’ immediate needs:

• Emergency food and clean water supplies
• Critical medications and medical supplies
• Temporary shelter and urgent roof repairs
• Flood recovery and debris removal
• Other immediate costs as needed

About This Effort

Migrant Workers Alliance for Change is providing direct support to Jamaican farm worker members impacted by the devastating storm. Many of these workers split their time between Canada and Jamaica as part of seasonal agricultural programs, and they’re facing this crisis both in Canada and now in Jamaica.

Your contribution goes directly to migrant workers and their families who need it most. No administrative fees, just direct relief.

How to Help

Donate Now

Suggested amounts:

• $100 – Provides emergency food supplies for one family
• $300 – Funds urgent roof repairs to prevent further damage
• $500 – Comprehensive support including food, clothing, medicine, and shelter repairs
• Other amount – Every dollar makes a difference

Why This Matters

These are the same workers who help feed Canada. When disaster strikes their communities, they deserve our support. The combination of destroyed infrastructure and disrupted income means families are struggling to meet basic needs.

Share this campaign: Help us reach more supporters by sharing on social media

The post Help Jamaican Farm Workers Recover from Devastating Hurricane first appeared on Migrant Workers Alliance for Change.

The post Help Jamaican Farm Workers Recover from Devastating Hurricane appeared first on Migrant Workers Alliance for Change.

Current and former Shell employees have publicly challenged the company’s climate strategy — raising the awkward question Shell would rather bury beneath a tanker-load of LNG: what happens if the fossil-fuel future it is betting on does not arrive? DISCLAIMER

This article is opinion and satirical commentary based on cited public sources. It is not financial advice, investment advice, or a recommendation to buy, sell, or hold any security. Readers should conduct their own research and seek professional advice where appropriate. Site wide disclaimer also applies.

PART ONE: FACT-BASED TABLOID DEEP DIVE THE CALL IS COMING FROM INSIDE THE REFINERY

There are bad days in corporate public relations, and then there is the very special sort of day when your own current and former employees publicly challenge your climate strategy at your AGM.

That, according to the NL Times, is what Shell faced on Tuesday, 19 May 2026, when a group of current and former Shell employees challenged the company’s climate strategy at its shareholder meeting in London.

Their warning was blunt enough to cut through the usual corporate fog: Shell’s continued focus on oil and liquefied natural gas may expose both the business and investors to serious long-term risks.

In other words: the call may now be coming from inside the refinery.

The challenge was linked to a shareholder resolution coordinated by Follow This, which asked Shell to disclose how it would create shareholder value if oil and gas demand declines.

Follow This said the 2026 resolutions at Shell and BP were co-filed by 23 institutional investors with €1.5 trillion in assets under management and that — for the first time — current and former Shell employees co-filed the Shell resolution.

That is not exactly a fringe protest by someone wearing a polar bear costume outside the sandwich shop.

It is a governance question wrapped in a climate question wrapped in a large flashing neon sign reading:

What happens if the fossil-fuel gravy train meets a demand cliff?

THE AGM: DEMOCRACY, BUT WITH A VERY LARGE OIL SLICK

Shell’s 2026 AGM took place in London on 19 May 2026.

The company’s own voting results show that Resolutions 1 to 22 passed, while Resolution 23 — the shareholder climate-risk resolution — failed.

Resolution 23 received:

470,824,659 votes in favour — 13.01%

against

3,148,423,871 votes against — 86.99%

Shell immediately treated this as shareholder endorsement.

Chief Executive Wael Sawan said:

“Shell’s shareholders continue to strongly back our strategy as we transform Shell into a better performing and more resilient business. We are making progress towards our financial and climate targets, providing the oil and gas the world needs today while helping to build the energy system of the future. We will apply discipline and focus as we continue to deliver more value with less emissions.”

Translated from Corporate Cathedral English: shareholders voted down the awkward question, so management declared the choir in perfect harmony.

But 13.01% support for a climate-risk resolution at a fossil-fuel giant is not nothing.

It is hundreds of millions of votes saying, in effect:

“Could we at least see the spreadsheet for the scenario where the world does not burn hydrocarbons forever?”

SHELL’S NEW FAVOURITE CLIMATE SOLUTION APPEARS TO BE… MORE LNG

Shell’s answer to climate pressure is increasingly LNG — liquefied natural gas — the fossil fuel that arrives wearing a slightly cleaner tie than coal and expects applause for not being the dirtiest guest in the room.

In its LNG response document, Shell says it has a “positive outlook for LNG over the long term” and describes LNG as central to its strategy.

The company says it wants to be “the leading integrated gas and LNG business in the world” and argues that LNG can play a role in energy security and the transition.

Shell also states:

“For all these reasons, Shell believes that supplying LNG will be the biggest contribution we will make to the energy transition over the next decade.”

There it is: the energy transition, Shell-style.

Not so much “less fossil fuel” as:

Different fossil fuel, but with PowerPoint gradients.

To be fair, Shell’s argument is not invented out of thin air. Gas can displace coal in some power systems. LNG can provide flexible supply. Energy security is a real issue.

But the controversy is about scale, lock-in, methane leakage, capital allocation, and whether Shell is positioning itself for a genuine transition or merely putting a lower-carbon label on a very large fossil-fuel expansion strategy.

THE OFFICIAL STRATEGY: NET ZERO IN THE WINDOW, HYDROCARBONS IN THE WAREHOUSE

Shell says its Energy Transition Strategy supports its target to become a net-zero emissions energy business by 2050.

It says meeting growing energy demand while tackling climate change is “an urgent challenge” and “a transformative opportunity.”

The difficulty, as ever, is the gap between slogan and steel.

Shell’s critics argue that the company’s capital discipline has increasingly meant discipline for low-carbon ventures and enthusiasm for oil and gas cash generation.

In 2024, Shell paused construction of its large Rotterdam biofuels plant, a project previously presented as part of its lower-carbon push.

By 2025, Shell was openly sharpening its focus on shareholder distributions, cost cutting, and higher-return businesses. Reporting at the time said Shell planned to cut spending, reduce low-carbon investment as a share of capital expenditure, raise shareholder payouts, and that CEO Wael Sawan’s pay package had increased after Shell’s renewed emphasis on oil and gas.

So the public message is “energy transition.”

The investor message appears rather more like:

Relax, the dividend cannon is still loaded.

FOLLOW THE MONEY: THE GIANT SHAREHOLDERS BEHIND THE CURTAIN

Shell is not some corner-shop oil concern run from a filing cabinet and a petrol-stained ledger.

Its shareholder base includes some of the largest institutional investors on Earth.

Recent ownership data compiled by TIKR listed Vanguard Group, BlackRock Institutional Trust, and Norges Bank Investment Management among Shell’s largest shareholders, with Vanguard shown at 186.8 million shares, BlackRock Institutional Trust at 179.5 million shares, and Norges Bank at 150.2 million shares.

That matters.

Because when Shell says shareholders back its strategy, the room is not just populated by individual investors clutching tea and biscuits.

It includes gigantic asset managers whose voting behaviour can help determine whether climate-risk resolutions become governance pressure or politely filed wallpaper.

Meanwhile, Net Zero Investor reported that a group of institutional investors — including West Yorkshire Pension Fund, Lothian Pension Fund, Ethos, PUBLICA, and Mercy Investment Services — urged other investors to support Resolution 23 at Shell’s 2026 AGM.

So there are really two investor stories here.

One is the big-vote story: Shell management won comfortably.

The other is the risk-story: a serious minority of investors, plus current and former employees, are increasingly unwilling to swallow the idea that fossil-fuel expansion and climate resilience are automatically the same thing.

THE COURT BACKDROP: SHELL WINS ONE ROUND, BUT THE COURTROOM SMOKE HAS NOT CLEARED

Shell’s climate strategy is not just being challenged at AGMs.

It has also been fought in court.

The Dutch climate case brought by Milieudefensie concerned whether Shell had a legal obligation to reduce the worldwide aggregate carbon emissions it reports across Scopes 1, 2 and 3 by at least net 45% by 2030, compared with 2019.

Shell notes that the District Court of The Hague imposed a “significant duty of effort” in 2021, but that the Court of Appeal dismissed Milieudefensie’s claim on 12 November 2024.

That appeal victory was significant for Shell.

But it did not magically turn climate risk into fairy dust.

In April 2026, Milieudefensie announced new climate litigation against Shell, keeping the legal pressure alive.

Shell may have won a courtroom battle.

It has not won the climate debate.

And it certainly has not won the physics.

THE AWKWARD TRUTH: EMPLOYEES RARELY GO PUBLIC UNLESS THE BOILER IS HISSING

The most striking feature of the 2026 challenge is not simply that Follow This filed another resolution.

That has happened before.

The striking feature is the involvement of current and former Shell employees.

Employees know the internal culture.

They know the slide decks, the buzzwords, the capital allocation debates, the executive mood music.

When insiders and alumni publicly attach themselves to a resolution questioning the resilience of Shell’s business model under declining oil and gas demand, that is not a minor HR issue.

It is a flare fired from inside the corporate perimeter.

And Shell’s answer — “the shareholders have spoken” — may be technically true but strategically complacent.

Shareholder majorities can be wrong.

Markets can misprice transition risk.

Boards can mistake today’s cash flow for tomorrow’s permission slip.

Ask any former empire.

The palace always looks strongest just before someone notices the foundations are damp.

THE SHELL PARADOX: CLIMATE LANGUAGE, FOSSIL-FUEL MUSCLE

Shell’s modern communications machine speaks fluent transition.

It talks of resilience, lower emissions, energy security, customer demand, and disciplined capital.

But the operational centre of gravity remains oil and gas, especially LNG.

That is the paradox at the heart of Shell in 2026: a company trying to look like a climate-aware energy transition leader while reassuring investors that the hydrocarbon banquet is not over.

The employees and former employees challenging Shell are not asking a mystical question.

They are asking a business question:

What if oil and gas demand falls faster than Shell wants?

What if regulators tighten?

What if clean technologies keep undercutting fossil demand?

What if LNG infrastructure built for decades becomes yesterday’s answer to tomorrow’s grid?

Shell’s board says its strategy is resilient.

Critics want the receipts.

And frankly, if a company is confident that its strategy survives declining fossil-fuel demand, disclosure should not be treated like a hostage negotiation.

CONCLUSION: THE SOUND OF POLITE REBELLION

The 2026 AGM did not overthrow Shell’s strategy.

Resolution 23 was defeated.

The board prevailed.

The machine kept humming.

But the optics are brutal.

Current and former Shell employees publicly challenging the climate strategy of one of the world’s most powerful oil and gas companies is not business as usual.

It is a warning label written by people who have seen the machinery from the inside.

Shell can point to the vote.

It can point to energy security.

It can point to LNG.

It can point to shareholder returns.

It can point to every glossy phrase in the corporate dictionary.

But the central question remains stubbornly alive:

Is Shell preparing for the energy transition, or merely trying to monetise the delay?

Because when even insiders start waving red flags, perhaps the problem is not the flags.

Perhaps it is the smoke.

PART TWO: SPOOF SHELL PR/SPIN SECTION Shell Internal Mood Statement, Possibly Drafted by a Committee of Polished Gas Pipelines

Shell welcomes robust dialogue from shareholders, employees, former employees, future employees, hypothetical employees, and any sentient beings willing to recognise the vital importance of hydrocarbons in delivering a lower-carbon future by continuing to sell hydrocarbons.

We are proud that our strategy remains focused on delivering more value with less emissions, more LNG with less awkwardness, and more confidence with less disclosure than some campaigners appear to desire.

At Shell, we believe the energy transition is best achieved through disciplined investment in profitable molecules, especially molecules capable of being liquefied, shipped, regasified, monetised, and described as “part of the solution” in investor presentations.

While a minority of shareholders supported Resolution 23, an overwhelming majority voted against it, demonstrating strong support for our existing approach of telling investors that everything is resilient because we have used the word “resilient” repeatedly.

We thank our current and former employees for their passion.

We also remind everyone that Shell has a proud tradition of listening carefully, engaging constructively, and then continuing with the strategy approved by the people holding the biggest voting cards.

Forward-looking statement: any resemblance between this satire and actual corporate language is purely coincidental, although admittedly not very surprising.

PART THREE: SPOOF BOT-REACTION / COMMENT SECTION

@DividendGoblin3000: “Climate risk? Sorry, I can’t hear you over the buybacks.”

@LNG_is_Love: “Shell says LNG is its biggest contribution to the energy transition. My biggest contribution to dieting is buying a slightly smaller cake.”

@FormerInsider47: “When the staff start challenging the climate strategy, maybe stop calling it stakeholder engagement and start calling it a smoke alarm.”

@BoardroomBarometer: “Resolution defeated. Physics abstained.”

@GreenwashDetector: “More value with less emissions sounds great until you notice the ‘more value’ is doing most of the work.”

@InstitutionalInvestorBot: “We support climate action, provided it does not interfere with quarterly distributions, executive confidence, or lunch.”

@PlanetaryAccountsDept: “Your transition invoice is overdue.”

IMAGE CONCEPT

A dramatic satirical editorial illustration of a Shell corporate AGM in London.

A giant golden LNG tanker sits in the centre of a luxury boardroom table, leaking black oil onto climate-risk reports.

On one side, polished executives applaud beneath a glowing Shell logo.

On the other side, current and former employees hold warning signs reading:

“Transition Risk”

“Show The Scenario”

“Smoke Alarm”

Outside the window, planet Earth is half-melting, half-covered in gas pipelines.

Style: sharp tabloid editorial illustration, cinematic lighting, high contrast, provocative, non-photorealistic, no real people depicted.

SHELL STAFF REVOLT: WHEN EVEN THE PEOPLE INSIDE THE OIL MACHINE START COUGHING AT THE FUMES was first posted on May 20, 2026 at 4:54 pm.
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Pairing geothermal with accelerated transmission development and stronger regional coordination can help the West access its gigawatt-scale geothermal potential, write Clean Air Task Force colleagues.