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Co-authored by Jenny Silva is the Executive Director at Call Marin Home and Member of the Executive Committee of the Marin Group of the Sierra Club SF Bay Chapter.
Jessie Rountree is the Marin Resilience Manager at Greenbelt Alliance.

The housing and climate crises are often regarded as separate problems, when in fact they are intertwined. In an increasingly urbanized world, there is one powerful solution that addresses both: building more homes where people already live. 

This type of development is called infill. It places new and modified homes within existing neighborhoods and developed areas. The contrast to this is sprawl, a familiar practice in much of California that includes low-density residential housing, often on rural, natural, and agricultural lands. Sprawl fragments habitat, severs wildlife corridors, and disrupts the carbon sequestration and flood-prevention benefits of healthy ecosystems.

Because we share these beliefs, Greenbelt Alliance is proud to join Call Marin Home, a coalition of leading organizations expanding housing through production, preservation, and protection for an inclusive Marin County. We know that increasing housing supply is essential to advancing our mission and sustaining a thriving, equitable community. 

By choosing infill housing instead of sprawl, we can address both our housing shortage and climate challenge to create healthier communities.

Protecting the land we can't afford to lose

Marin’s environmental ethos is evident in our abundant open spaces. Over 85% of Marin County is restricted from development, consisting of federal parks, agricultural land, water district lands, and open space preserves. However, we seem to limit our value of open space to only our County boundaries. 

Because we have simultaneously limited affordable and moderate-density homes in Marin, our community members have been forced to move elsewhere in the region and commute in for work. The direct result is that we are disrupting more lands by creating sprawl further out in Sonoma, the East Bay, and beyond. Since 1950, outer-metro locations like Santa Rosa have increased in physical size by over 300%, mostly through low-density development.

When we build inward instead of outward, we reduce disruption to the soils, trees, and plant communities. These healthier landscapes sequester carbon, improve water quality and quantity, and offer connected habitat to wildlife. The good news is that we have substantial options within already developed footprints to build the housing we need without disrupting our beloved open space.

The more housing density we build now, the more land we can preserve for our future.

Reducing our emissions

Transportation accounts for the largest share of greenhouse gas emissions in Marin County. 64% of Marin’s workforce commutes from outside the county due to its high cost of living and age distribution.

When homes are built closer to jobs, transit, and services, people drive less. That means fewer and shorter car trips—one of the most effective strategies California can use to address climate change. In fact, building affordable housing is one of the most effective strategies for reducing carbon emissions, far more effective than transitioning to EVs. 

Less driving also improves our notorious Bay Area traffic and reduces wear on roads and bridges, so that local government budgets can be allocated to needed adaptation investments. Further, density creates the demand that makes buses, trains, and public transit economically viable. Centralized and denser housing is what makes public transit actually work.The emissions benefits are not limited to transportation. Newer units also tend to be more compact than suburban single-family homes, which require less energy and use less water.  

Connecting our community

Building new homes in existing communities puts families closer to jobs, schools, parks, and shopping, giving more Californians access to vibrant, connected communities. When a new building is nestled amongst a storefront or café, it generates foot traffic that supports local businesses, activates streets, and makes walking and biking safer and more enjoyable options.

Walkability also rebuilds the kind of social connections that keep communities healthy and resilient in the face of climate change. Neighbors who walk the same streets, share the same corner store, and know each other by name are more likely to support one another when climate impacts occur.

All Californians should have the opportunity to live in healthy communities and enjoy the natural lands and open spaces that make this area unique.

Creating a greater variety of homes in connected communities can help increase affordability, address climate change, and improve quality of life for Californians. That is the future we want to build in Marin.

Local decisions about housing are being made now, and elected leaders need to hear clearly from residents who support building more homes. Stay connected with Greenbelt Alliance via email and social media and sign up for Call Marin Home’s email updates to stay informed about key upcoming meetings and get the tools you need to make your voice heard.

Header Photo: Scott Hess

The post Housing Builds a Healthier Climate Future for Marin appeared first on Greenbelt Alliance.

FirstEnergy’s proposal adopts a cost allocation practice from the gas pipeline sector. It comes ahead of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s expected large load interconnection decision on June 18.

Energy price increases such as those triggered by the war in Ukraine make faster decarbonization more cost effective, according to a new analysis of the EU energy system. The net benefits could amount to roughly 3% of the bloc’s projected GDP in 2050, the study suggests.

In the past, the EU has been highly dependent on imported oil and gas. Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in early 2022 caused fossil fuel prices to spike and prompted EU leadership to reduce or eliminate imports of Russian natural gas.

In turn, this sudden drop in energy supply has left the EU with an “energy gap.” In the new study, researchers use a pair of computer models to conduct a comprehensive cost-benefit analysis of short- and long-term solutions to filling in the gap.

Short-term strategies to increase the energy supply such as burning more coal or biomass involve high costs, a heavy public health burden, or both, the analysis shows. Meanwhile, demand-side solutions like reducing private transportation by 20% or turning down thermostats by 3 °C to reduce heating demand have limited impact.

With short-term solutions inadequate and geopolitical developments in the Middle East and elsewhere suggesting the energy crisis is likely to persist and can’t simply be white-knuckled through, the researchers turned their attention to solutions that would fundamentally reorganize the EU’s energy system in the coming decades.

Three scenarios that involve increasing electrification, increasing renewable sources of energy like solar and wind power, and reducing private transportation while filling in the remaining energy gap with renewables would all reduce net costs to society by 2050, the researchers found.

New infrastructure and equipment required for electrification and building out renewables costs money. A lot of money. But the savings from lower fuel prices, reduced public health burden from air pollution, and lower costs to society from climate change are greater than those costs.

“Eastern EU countries such as Poland, Latvia, Slovakia, and Hungary are more reliant on Russian imports and exhibit the largest benefits,” the researchers write.

In fact, why wait for 2050 to complete the greening of the energy system? The analysis shows that if high energy prices persist, an even faster rollout of renewables and decarbonization is cost effective.

With energy prices as high as they were in August 2022, the benefits of moving the EU’s current 2050 renewables target ahead by 5, 10, or even 20 years outweigh the costs. The savings on fuel, public health, and climate change costs are greater than the expense of quickly building new power plants and other renewable energy infrastructure.

However, in some of the scenarios analyzed the outcomes differ by country: Even if the EU as a whole shows a net benefit, individual countries might not, highlighting the need to develop strategies tailored to each country’s situation to keep things equitable across the bloc.

The researchers also modeled an even more ambitious energy transition goal, a net-zero-emissions push that would require increasing the EU’s share of renewables to 80%. In this scenario, an accelerated green transition looks good at moderate fuel prices, not just high ones.

“This suggests that once energy prices surpass a certain threshold, initiating the transition earlier becomes increasingly beneficial,” the researchers write.

Source: Meng W. et al. “Rethinking energy transition strategies for the European Union amid rising energy prices.” 2026.

Image: ©Anthropocene Magazine.

The Trump administration acted unreasonably in eliminating the 5% total cost threshold as a route for wind and solar projects to prove tax credit eligibility, a federal judge ruled.

Nurses at Saint Mary of Nazareth Hospital in Chicago are prepared for their one-day strike on June 11 to protest the administration’s illegal firings of six nurses in retaliation for union activity.

Headline News:

• “The Geysers Adds 25 MW Of Geothermal Capacity” • California’s largest geothermal resource added 25 MW of new generating capacity, strengthening the state’s geothermal energy. Calpine, a Constellation business unit, announced completion of the expansion project at The Geysers geothermal complex in Sonoma County, California. [ThinkGeoEnergy]

Geothermal plant at The Geysers, California (Calpine image)

• “The Cost Of Balancing The Grid If The EU Cuts EV Targets: 150 New Power Plants” • Europe’s electricity system could be a big victim of plans to scale back EV targets. EVs can be ‘batteries on wheels,’ providing a different math of the electricity sector. Fewer EVs would mean less storage capacity for the grid and a need for more power plants. [CleanTechnica]
• “Off-Grid Mine Runs Solely On Renewables For Nearly A Week” • Bellevue Gold is celebrating a milestone at its namesake gold mine in Western Australia. The site was able to run entirely on renewables for 155 consecutive hours. The site’s 90-MW hybrid power station has 27 MW of solar, 24 MW of wind, and 15 MW, 33 MWh of battery storage. [Energy Magazine]
• “Use Of Bomb-Grade Plutonium For Energy” • The President of the US signed an executive order directing the DOE to stop an operation getting rid of nuclear bomb materials. Instead, it is to give the weapons-grade plutonium to private companies to use in nuclear reactors. They are to get enough plutonium to build 2,000 nuclear bombs. [Green Energy Times]
• “Judge tosses Trump bid to restrict renewable energy tax credits” • A federal judge struck down a Trump administration effort to restrict tax credits for wind and solar energy. The ruling is a win for renewable energy supporters, but it comes less than a month before a deadline to phase out the credits entirely under so-called “Big Beautiful Bill.” [The Hill]

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

Africa stands at a pivotal crossroads. As the climate crisis intensifies in the region, it is disproportionately crushing marginalized communities, particularly women and youth. Yet, our continent is home to the world’s most abundant renewable energy resources and a vibrant, youth-driven climate movement ready to claim the future.

Every year leading up to Africa Day on May 25, Afrika Vuka Week serves as our annual moment to channel Pan-African solidarity into bold, collective action for climate justice. This year, under the banner of REPower Afrika, our message was loud, clear, and uncompromising: Access to affordable energy is a human right –  End the Political Crisis.

We are building a pan-African movement advocating for clean energy that is rooted in people’s power and the lived realities of everyday Africans.

The problem: we pay, they profit

Africa is currently trapped in a severe, manufactured energy crisis. Decades of fossil fuel extraction have left 600 million Africans without electricity access. The continent contributes only a small fraction of global greenhouse gas emissions, yet it continues to suffer disproportionately from fuel price spikes, debt distress, inflation, and food insecurity tied to global oil and gas markets. 

Ongoing global conflicts and supply chain disruptions have caused the prices of fossil fuels like gas and oil to spike yet again. While multinational corporations rake in record-breaking profits from these crises, African governments, ordinary households and businesses are being pushed into deep debt. In 2026 alone, six major oil corporations — Chevron, Shell, BP, ConocoPhillips, Exxon, and TotalEnergies — are projected to pocket $94 billion in fossil fuel profits: enough to provide solar power for the energy needs of almost 50 million people in Africa.

When fossil energy prices skyrocket, the cost of everything else follows: transportation costs spike, groceries and basic food items become unaffordable and monthly utility bills grow unmanageable. This situation is the direct result of a global system built on fossil fuels that prioritizes the profits of a few companies over the lives of millions.

A deeply unjust, gendered burden

This crisis is not gender-neutral, it hits women the hardest. Across Africa, the structural failure to provide affordable energy fuels the feminization of poverty. Women spend up to 4 hours a day on unpaid care work — triple the time of men — searching for firewood or cooking over dangerous kerosene and charcoal stoves, with 70% of rural Sub-Saharan Africa still dependent on traditional biomass.  The consequences are devastating:  severe, long-term health problems and forcing women to scramble to afford basic necessities. We cannot solve our continent’s poverty and health crises as long as we remain tied to expensive, volatile fossil fuels. It is time to put people over profits.

How Afrika Vuka Week 2026 took this fight to the streets, schools and town halls

Last month,  the 23 to 30May, we mobilized during Afrika Vuka Week 2026 under the banner of  Pan-African solidarity to redefine the energy crisis not just as a technical challenge, but as a fundamental human right and a pressing political crisis.

Over the seven days of  coordinated actions across the continent, we shifted the narrative. We made sure  affordable renewable energy was at the center of political debate and  community voices were leading  the fight for an equitable energy transition. Our  cost of living stories from locals put a human face to what rising fossil fuel prices actually mean:  unaffordability of daily life.

Throughout the Week of Action, local groups tailored interventions to their unique realities. From grassroots organizing to creative expression, communities mobilized in many ways:

Through marches and awareness walks, we demanded political accountability, including a bike march in Democratic Republic of Congo by Shujaa Initiative. 

Artivism, concerts, and pop-culture captured the spirit of resistance with Green Society holding a Art4Climate workshop in Egypt led by Professional Visual Artist Hossna Hanafy

Educational talks in schools and universities to equip the next generation like the one in Nigeria led by Quest For Growth and Development Foundation at the Community Secondary School, Rumuodumaya, Port Harcourt.

Community Dialogues & Town Halls shared lived experiences such as the Renewable Energy Assembly in Uganda led by the Centre for Environmental Research and Agriculture Innovation (CERAI) and Youth for Nature Conservancy (YNC). 

The results speak for themselves. The REPower Afrika campaign is now recognized across the continent as the definitive roadmap for a just transition away from expensive fossil fuels. Local groups owned the campaign, driving solutions built around their communities’ real needs. Because true energy justice isn’t just about switching to solar, geothermal, and wind. It’s about doing it fairly, democratically, affordably and without saddling African nations with yet more debt.

Here is what we are fighting for: a renewable energy future that dismantles the exploitative, debt-heavy funding models that burden our people. Instead, we champion community-owned, decentralized solutions. Africa rises with the sun and wind – our energy transition must empower our people, not foreign creditors.

Join the Movement: 

The Afrika Vuka Network is calling for an immediate shift toward community-led renewable energy. People deserve clean, affordable energy that puts our needs first – and it is time for our governments to deliver it. 

#AffordableEnergy – Let’s claim it together! Join our whatsapp channel for the latest updates!

The post Afrika Vuka Week 2026 appeared first on 350.

Radical alternatives to capitalism are being practiced across the world as everyday realities, writes Grace Wright-Arora

The post Real existing degrowth appeared first on Red Pepper.

No money, mo’ problems.

Amtrak honchos officially showed off renderings for President Trump and Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy’s renovation of Penn Station on Monday, but left unsaid amid the unveiling of pretty pictures was the only aspect of the Penn Station redevelopment that matters: How much will it cost, and who’s paying?

One possible answer: Tenant railroads Amtrak, the MTA and New Jersey Transit. According to the development company vice president Peter Cipriano (who was a senior adviser to the U.S. DOT during President Trump’s first term), those tenants might have to pony up “availability payments” to cover a share of the project costs.

“Presumably there will be some level of availability payment at the end of the road on this project, like Amtrak has on 30th Street Station in Philadelphia,” the Halmar executive told reporters.

This type of payment scheme — which the railroads will almost certainly pass on to their riders — was the linchpin of the Halmar/ASTM plan that Cipriano’s team pitched the MTA in 2023. That plan would have involved Halmar and its parent company ASTM funding the renovation upfront, then collecting $250 million per year over 50 years from each over the three tenant railroads.

But neither Cipriano nor Andy Byford, Amtrak’s special adviser for Penn Station, would put a pricetag or timeline on the “availability payments.”

Byford, who has openly bragged about using President Trump to strong-arm New York into accept the project, insisted he would not allow an “unaffordable” funding scheme.

“I made it very clear in the RFP to the bidders: do not come with a proposal that saddles the railroads, of which Amtrak is obviously one, with unaffordable availability payments, because you won’t get through, you will not win,” said Byford. “My strategy is to minimize the gap between the overall cost and what we can raise through capital, like loans and grants, and what remains to be paid for via availability payments.”

One type of “availability payment” that Byford insisted is not in play is a surcharge on train tickets for trips originating from Penn Station. But riders will wind up paying in one way or the other if Amtrak plans to charge the railroads they ride, and the MTA is already raising objections to the proposal.

“Gov. Hochul has been clear from the day President Trump took over this project: if he wants it, then he’ll have to pay for it,” said MTA spokesperson Mitch Schwartz. “Secretary Duffy didn’t have any problem with that arrangement when he told Congress that his administration was ready to ‘give’ Penn Station $8 billion — the full cost of the project. Now, they’re admitting their real plan is to charge New York taxpayers billions. Their position may have changed. Ours hasn’t: we’re not interested in that deal.”

Amtrak held Monday’s press briefing in order to reveal renderings of the project, some of which were previously published in Gothamist. Cipriano, Byford and architect Vishaan Chakrabarti did not seem eager to discuss the project’s funding despite a barrage of criticism and concerns from Manhattan pols including Rep. Jerry Nadler.

Recommended



Penn Station Belongs to New Yorkers
Jerry Nadler

June 8, 2026

Byford eventually copped to a vague total cost of between $7 billion and $8 billion — the reported price for the previous Halmar plan in 2023. Part of that cost included paying Madison Square Garden owner James Dolan $500 million to buy the Hulu Theater (formerly the Felt Forum) and knock it down to make way for a station entrance on the Eighth Avenue side of the station.

Other wild cards remain in the offing: A recently passed amendment to the proposed federal Build America 250 Act would give Amtrak the power to seize local property tax funding to pay for station rehab projects.

The redesign promises a grand interior.

The amendment is not yet law, but if it passes critics warn it will enable a federal land grab that could allow real estate titan Vornado to redevelop the area and send its billions in property taxes that otherwise would have gone to New York City to pay for what is essentially a facelift for Penn Station.

For his part, Cipriano suggested that proposed scheme was no different than what New York state had previously proposed for the project (somethong local critics also opposed).

“If Amtrak got that authority, Andy would probably go through a process that looks somewhat similar to the one that [New York State] undertakes now. He would go to the city and say, ‘This is what we want to do. Can we work together?’ Should this thing get built, I think it’s fair to speculate that the surrounding property values will go up,” he said. “People call that ‘value uplift.’ What we’re talking about is Amtrak, by virtue of having delivered this, especially if the state’s not participating in costs, Amtrak should get a piece of that value which it created. That’s all. It’s fair. It’s done throughout the world,:

Cipriano alluded to, but did not directly mention, the previous Penn Station redevelopment plan floated by former Gov. Andrew Cuomo and briefly pursued by Gov. Hochul to do a similar value capture scheme in which New York seized zoning power around Penn Station through the creation of a land-use action called a General Project Plan.

Through the GPP, the state planned to give Vornado the power to develop multiple office buildings around Penn, and pay payments in lieu of taxes to cover the costs of the Penn Station renovation.

But the Cuomo-Hochul plan had built-in guardrail — including a chance for the state’s Public Authorities Control Board to review plans for each parcel of land. Critics of the GPP and the House amendment passed last week threw cold water on Cipriano’s spin.

“The so-called ‘Transit Oriented Development’ amendment … is an unprecedented power grab from the Trump administration and Vornado to steal New York City tax revenues for what appears to be an unnecessarily expensive facelift for Penn Station,” said Reinvent Albany Senior Policy Advisor Rachael Fauss. “It overrides all local authority over taxation and zoning in the area around Penn Station. Even if Amtrak did agree to consult with local officials, there is no requirement they do so and they could stop at any time if they don’t like what they hear.”

• World Cup host cities like Seattle, Atlanta, Boston and Kansas City are using the event to beef up their transit systems in ways that will hopefully outlast the global soccer tournament. (Next City)
• Both the location of housing near transit and the frequency of transit service are important for getting people to ride transit. Surprisingly, Los Angeles is at the top of the Urban Institute’s metric, followed by San Francisco and New York City. Less surprisingly, Sun Belt cities Dallas, Houston and Atlanta are at the bottom.
• A private company hires and trains bus drivers for Boston public schools. TransDev drivers were responsible for at least 60 deaths nationwide in the past decade, but most were not reported by the federal database that tracks such crashes, which means communities contracting with TransDev don’t know about its record. (ProPublica)
• The new Penn Station renderings are in, but the cost accounting isn’t. (Streetsblog NYC)
• Delays in Sound Transit projects have led to calls to reform the Seattle transit agency. (The Urbanist)
• California is cracking down on polluted runoff from parking lots. (Los Angeles Times)
• What’s the point of even having city governments if the Texas legislature can override anything they do? (Tribune)
• Passenger trains were delayed Saturday when a barge hit a rail bridge in Maryland. (New York Times)
• The Utah Transit Authority is addressing gaps in service. (Utah Public Radio)
• The D.C. Metro is closing three Red Line stations for construction this summer. (WTOP)
• Las Vegas is lowering the speed limit on Centennial Parkway as part of a Vision Zero effort to reduce deadly crashes. (Fox 5)
• Are Honolulu residents treating bikeshare like a mere novelty? (Civil Beat)
• Arkansas cities should do a better job of maintaining sidewalks. (Democrat-Gazette)
• Ann Arbor is experimenting with asphalt made from recycled tires. (Equipment World)
• Carmel, the small Indiana town of 100,000, has more than 150 roundabouts that have cut car crashes by 80 percent. (CNU Public Square)
• Feel like taking a scenic train trip this summer? Travel + Leisure suggests a few Amtrak routes.

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Field Notes: Paraguay’s Ayoreo People and the Disappearing Chaco (Season 2 Episode 2) https://youtu.be/bbLXmhOzlXg?si=EAy-Nt-DvUk7phWf In Paraguay’s Gran Chaco forest, one of the fastest-disappearing forests on Earth, the Ayoreo people—some still uncontacted—face existential threats from expanding cattle ranching, land grabs, road building, illegal logging, and human-set fires. Narrated by photojournalist Orin langelle. Field Notes — Dispatches […]

Bad Men Behaving Badly Chap. 746: 'Cause it's not awful enough we have to endure the racist crap spewing from our home-grown jackasses, the rest of the world bore grim witness to it as dunk-tank Christofascist Pete Hegseth chose a D-Day remembrance to flip the script on World War 2, trash European allies for not being fascist enough, and liken (good-guy) Allies landing at Normandy to an "invasion" of brown people "with "dangerous ideologies." Fact: "This is repulsive and confused, unless you're a Nazi."

Speaking of: Last week, under cover of darkness, "shameful" Senate Republicans pushed through a "Secure America Act" (sic) gifting yet more billions to keep out more of the swarthy hordes Pete's so scared of. Without making any of the reforms Dems had demanded, they added to last year's obscene $191 billion gift to DHS another $75 billion for ICE and $65 billion for CBP, 4 to 7 times their previous budgets, with most allocated to expand detentions, deportations, facilities, goons - not, as it could, to fund free childcare for over a million kids, groceries for over 10 million households, a year of SNAP benefits to 31 million people, health care tax credits for a year etc etc ad nauseum. Their wise leader, meanwhile, was throwing tantrums on TV - "Dude is losing his shit" - because a reporter dared ask for evidence of his flood of unhinged claims.

And greasy, self-proclaimed Secretary of War (Crimes) Pete lurches along on his unholy quest to turn America into a white nationalist theocracy. A blood-lusting warmonger though (because?) he never saw combat, he acts the macho, racist buffoon at every turn. He posts klutzy videos of himself working out; in one, he prances in a t-shirt that reads, "This Is War." (No, this is reality TV). Sporting Crusader tattoos - Deus Vult, but whose God wills it? - he stripped 180 faiths from those the military recognizes - all the Christian ones remain - "a religious purge dressed up as paperwork (telling) thousands of service members their beliefs don't matter to the government they're risking their lives to protect." He cut dozens of female and Black Navy officers from leadership-approved promotions, dissing "historic so-called firsts” that make the military "less lethal."

And to mark this weekend's 82nd anniversary of the June 6, 1944 D-Day landing of Allied forces on the beaches of Normandy - perhaps the most pivotal moment in a long bloody fight to defend democracy against fascism - he gave a pro-fascism speech, embracing a Great Replacement theory that calls for a return to the racial ideology on which fascism is based. Speaking at the American Cemetery in north-west France where about 9,400 are buried, he'd barely recalled the courage of Allied Forces from multiple countries wading ashore in history's largest amphibious operation to liberate Europe before pivoting to warn "their legacy requires our active vigilance." European leaders may have grown too "comfortable," he said with the chutzpah of the deeply ignorant, and they may have somehow "forgotten that freedom is not free."

"Sadly, today, different European beaches are stormed by different, dangerous ideologies," he intoned. "On beaches in Spain, Italy, Greece and Bulgaria, boats and men arrive....When will European capitals do something about that invasion? Is it too late? I pray not, and I believe not." What a pompous asshole. So: On D-Day, Ugly Americans hawking xenophobia. Equating brown-skinned migrants who want to feed and keep safe their families with "dangerous ideologies." Also: Equating anti-fascism with "dangerous ideologies"? Wait, weren't the Allies the good guys? And wait, so the Nazis were...? Americans were horrified by so much repulsive and confused: "Sewage," "straight-up white nationalism," "a cheap suit full of hate and racism - what an evil shit," "Crystal Meth Rumsfeld strikes again," "We get it, dude. Just come out and say you hate black and brown people."

Especially in Europe, critics did not hold back, and we are here for it. English historian Simon Schama decried Hegseth's "special kind of loathsomeness, a blend of historical deafness, grotesque stupidity and comically ludicrous self-importance...As if the little people’s rage against immigration somehow is superior to the war against the 3rd Reich, and entitles this comic-book nobody to lecture the actual heroes." Others blasted "something profoundly ugly happening" in our right wing..."and on D-Day, D-Day!" and "an obscene desecration" of the memories of those who fell. Like many, French P.M. Sébastien Lecornu rightly paid tribute instead to the "3,000 men, barely 20 years old," who died, offering "the breath of their youth and the sacrifice of their lives."

Europeans also called bullshit on the faux drama and utter hypocrisy of Hegseth's angry claim that, after a united D-Day era when "each nation bled," Europe is not "standing with" a U.S. now run by a lying, racist, narcissistic, war-mongering toddler who does nothing but abuse them. "America will lead and we must, but capable allies must be Right. There. With Us...In the Breach. When It Matters," he bloviated. "The men who fought and died here restored freedom to Europe,. Now freedom must be maintained by this generation of leaders and war-fighters...We stand by our allies, and we expect our allies to stand beside us." "So much nonsense," retorted Swedish economist Anders Åslund. "'We stand by our allies!’ No you don’t. You just attacked them. Immigration policies are internal matters...Doesn’t Hegseth know the most unreliable ‘ally’ by far is the US?”

And now, in the name of their mythical, bigoted, white, male, Christian Republic, the US - Hegseth, Trump, Vance et al - have the audacity to be hectoring their European “allies” to “up their white supremacy game” to stop an “invasion” of what Trump has called the brown and black “vermin” who once flocked to our “shining city on a hill,” now a beacon of hate. Hamlet's ghost: “O, what a falling-off was there.” Last weekend, in France, Hegseth didn’t even stay for the international ceremony at the cemetery where so many are buried - per Trump, all those suckers and losers. Pete likely didn’t know the denizens of a nearby village had weeks earlier asked that his visit be cancelled. "It seems to us," they said in their request, "that this man does not share our democratic values." We feel your pain.

Kate and Aaron are joined by Dr. Steve Feldgus, an independent consultant who served as Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Land and Minerals Management at the Interior Department under President Biden. Dr. Feldgus talks about how to improve mine permitting in the US, a topic he worked on while at Interior.

News

• Falling behind: Forest Service fuel treatment gap puts communities at risk – Center for Western Priorities
• Americans’ national parks passes will pay for Trump’s July 4 plans, documents show – Washington Post
• Wyoming’s ‘Path of the Pronghorn’ is a signature away from protections fought over for a quarter century – WyoFile

Resources

• Red Tape is a Red Herring: Deregulation Will Not Speed Critical Mineral Development
• Watch this episode on YouTube

Produced by Aaron Weiss, Lauren Bogard, Kate Groetzinger, and Lilly Bock-Brownstein
Feedback: podcast@westernpriorities.org
Music: Purple Planet
Featured image: Construction equipment at a bentonite mine on BLM land near Greybull, Wyoming; Source: Photo by Gretchen Hurley, Geologist, BLM Cody Field Office

The post A former Interior department official explains what’s wrong with mining on public land appeared first on Center for Western Priorities.

Update: Santa Clara voters made their support for open spaces clear by saying YES to Measure D! With over 54% of the vote, the measure to enhance the Santa Clara Valley Open Space Authority’s capacity to care for open spaces in its jurisdiction passed!

Also known as the Santa Clara Valley Wildfire Protection, Clean Water, and Open Space Act, Measure D will implement an equitable parcel tax to generate approximately $17 million annually to steward these lands.

Greenbelt Alliance proudly endorsed and advocated for this measure and is thrilled to see that voters embraced this cause!

Why It Matters

The Santa Clara Valley Open Space Authority is an essential steward and protector of vital landscapes in Santa Clara County, and it currently needs more resources to manage these lands sustainably.

Just in the past decade, the lands under the agency’s management more than doubled, from 12,000 to 30,000 acres, while revenue has remained flat, limiting its ability to carry out its stewardship and resilience mission.

Since 1993, the Santa Clara Valley Open Space Authority has been a steward of the irreplaceable natural landscapes of central and southern Santa Clara County. The Authority conserves the natural environment, supports agriculture, and connects people to nature by protecting open spaces, natural areas, and working farms and ranches for today and for future generations. Visitors enjoy free, year-round access to hike, walk, bike, horseback ride, or simply relax in a beautiful landscape. With preserves such as Sierra Vista, Rancho Cañada del Oro, and the iconic Coyote Valley—a campaign that Greenbelt Alliance fought for for many years—, thousands of residents have access to nature near their homes. 

Protected open space is not a luxury. Healthy watersheds, managed grasslands, and restored wildlife corridors reduce wildfire risk, protect drinking water, filter runoff, and give communities a better chance to withstand extreme weather events, which are becoming more frequent and intense.

Supporting this measure is the smart thing to do because it advances key priorities, including:

• Reducing catastrophic wildfire risk by removing hazardous brush
• Protecting our drinking water sources, including rivers, creeks, and streams, from pollution
• Helping clean up pollution and litter in natural areas
• Protecting our area’s farms and healthy, local food sources
• Maintaining and restoring wildlife habitats and corridors

Investing in Resilient Landscapes

At a time when the cost of living and economic challenges are top of mind for American voters, asking voters to support a new tax is never a small request. However, unlike a traditional flat-rate parcel tax, this new measure applies a rate of two cents per square foot of building area. For the average homeowner in the Authority’s jurisdiction, that represents approximately $32 per year, while large commercial and industrial property owners, including the corporations and campuses that benefit enormously from the Bay Area’s livability and natural amenities, will pay proportionally more, but still have a cap of $7,500 per parcel annually. 

The Santa Clara Valley Open Space Authority has already proven it knows how to deploy this kind of investment effectively. For every dollar of local funding collected, the Authority has leveraged significant matching funds from state, federal, and private sources, bringing in more than $180 million in outside resources to date. This measure will expand that leverage, unlocking additional state and federal dollars that require local matching commitments. 

Endorsement originally published on March 19, 2026.

The post WIN: Measure D Reaffirms Santa Clara’s Protection of Open Spaces appeared first on Greenbelt Alliance.

California’s leaders have spent years telling the public that fighting climate change requires giving people alternatives to driving.

They were right.

The transportation sector remains California’s largest source of greenhouse gas emissions. If California hopes to meet its climate goals, it must give people realistic alternatives to getting behind the wheel. That means better transit, more homes near jobs and transit stations, safer streets for walking and bicycling, and communities designed around choices instead of traffic.

Unfortunately, Sacramento just made that job much harder.

Last month, the California Air Resources Board approved sweeping changes to the state’s cap-and-trade program, which the state insists on calling cap-and-invest. State officials argued the changes would reduce costs for consumers and provide relief to industries facing increasingly stringent climate regulations.

The changes will significantly reduce the amount of money generated through emissions allowance auctions that will go into the state’s Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, the same fund the state uses to support public transit, affordable housing near transit, active transportation projects, and other programs designed to reduce driving and greenhouse gas emissions. Some estimates say they will reduce available transit funding by hundreds of millions of dollars. Others put the estimates even higher.

As we noted last week, for transit agencies, the decision could not have come at a worse time.

And for California’s climate goals, it raises an uncomfortable question: How does the state expect to meet its emissions targets while cutting funding for the programs that are supposed to help achieve them?

After slashing funding for the state’s Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, regulators with the Air Resources Board who oversee the cap-and-trade program gave us the answer: lobby your legislator.

“Nothing that we’re doing here is setting the priority for how the legislature may decide to appropriate funds,” Rajinder Sahota, deputy executive officer for climate change and research at the Air Resources Board, told KQED.

Climate Goals and Policy Changes

California’s self-created climate mandate is to reduce statewide greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to 40% below 1990 levels by 2030, in accordance with Senate Bill 32. Furthermore, the 2022 Scoping Plan maps an aggressive trajectory aiming for an even deeper 48% reduction by 2030 to eventually reach carbon neutrality by 2045.

These are great goals, and California is making some progress. Emissions are dropping, but at an average annual pace of roughly 2.8%, whereas a 4.4% year-over-year reduction is required to meet the 2030 deadline. The state would need to double the decrease in emissions every year between now and 2030 to make its own goals. 

The Legislature and Governor Gavin Newsom reauthorized the cap-and-trade program last year but changed how revenues are distributed. High-speed rail now receives guaranteed funding. A substantial portion is also directed toward broader state budget priorities. Transit and many other climate programs were left to compete for whatever money remains.

That may have seemed manageable when policymakers assumed auction revenues would remain robust. As we’re seeing, that is no longer a safe assumption.

But as noted above, it’s the legislature and governor that ultimately decides how funds are spent. If there’s less money to spend, then the elected leaders have choices to make.

California’s budget year goes from July 1 until the following June 30. The state has a habit of passing budgets at the last possible moment, and this year is no exception. Last month, Newsom unveiled his final proposed budget and it did not include increased funding for transit to offset the changes to the cap-and-trade system. However, in recent years the legislature has acted to fix the governor’s shortcomings on transit funding.

In 2024, lawmakers rejected Newsom’s proposal to slash funding for the Active Transportation Program and intercity rail projects, arguing that California could not afford to abandon climate and mobility investments simply because they were politically easier targets than highway spending. While the final budget did not fully restore every dollar, legislators significantly softened the proposed cuts and preserved funding for programs that had been slated for the chopping block.

The same thing happened last year. Newsom’s May Revision proposed deep reductions to transit funding and declined requests for additional emergency operating support. After weeks of negotiations, legislative leaders restored much of the threatened funding and approved a package designed to prevent devastating service cuts at transit agencies across the state. The lesson from the past two budget cycles is clear: the governor’s May budget proposal is often the opening bid, not the final word.

So in 2026, as lawmakers negotiate the final state budget, they should be asking a simple question: if cap-and-trade revenues decline as expected, where will the replacement funding come from?

The answer cannot be nowhere.

Otherwise, the state is effectively admitting that its climate goals are aspirational rather than operational.

DENVER—A new report from the Center for Western Priorities found that less than one percent of 35,700 comments submitted to the National Park Service in response to signage asking the public to report negative depictions of American history in parks actually used the comment form as intended.

The analysis looked at 35,700 comments submitted across 475 national park units between June 2025 and January 2026, organizing the comments into seven distinct categories based on content and sentiment. The largest category was “General opposition to the order,” which accounted for nearly 10,000 responses. This was followed by “Defend historical accuracy” (over 5,000 responses) and “General pro-parks support” (over 4,000 responses).

Other notable categories of public feedback included comments on the “Park visit experience,” “Trump / Burgum criticism,” and a number of “Off-topic / jokes / spam” submissions. In contrast, only 47 comments, or 0.1 percent of the total comments submitted, “Flagged signage or supported removal.” 

Background: In March of 2025, President Trump issued Executive Order 14253, “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History.” In response, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum ordered national park staff to put up signs asking park visitors to report “any signs or other information that are negative about either past or living Americans or that fail to emphasize the beauty, grandeur, and abundance of landscapes and other natural features.”

Methodology: In May 2026, the Department of the Interior released 35,700 comments submitted through a QR code system in response to a FOIA request by KOAA News 5 and others. The Center for Western Priorities sorted the full dataset into categories based on content and sentiment through a combination of pattern-based classification and a manual verification/refinement process. More information on methodology is available in the full report.

The Center for Western Priorities released the following quote from Creative Content and Policy Manager Lilly Bock-Brownstein, who conducted the analysis and authored the report:

“These comments pass the vibe check with flying colors. Americans support our parks and the stories they tell, and they aren’t happy about the Trump administration’s efforts to rewrite history. Instead of helping Trump censor our national parks, visitors used the comment form to tell the Trump administration to respect our parks or get lost.”

Learn more:

• ‘Censorship:’ See the National Park visitor responses after Trump requested help deleting ‘negative’ signage – Government Executive

• The National Park Service race to rewrite history becomes a slog – Politico

• America’s 250th anniversary and why history matters in our parks – The Landscape (Center for Western Priorities’ podcast)

• Confidential database reveals which items NPS thinks may ‘disparage’ America – Washington Post

The post New analysis finds Trump effort to solicit negative feedback on national park signage completely fails  appeared first on Center for Western Priorities.

OVER TWO DECADES AGO SHELL UNSUCCESSFULLY TRIED TO SEIZE THIS WEBSITE DOMAIN NAME: ROYALDUTCHSHELLPLC.COM. THERE HAVE BEEN SPECTACULARLY EMBARRASSING CONSEQUENCES FOR SHELL, INCLUDING WRITTEN PERMISSION FOR JOHN DONOVAN TO DEAL ON SHELL’S BEHALF WITH EMAILS MEANT FOR SHELL.
‘Alfred Donovan was right about the culture of deception. He was right about the reserves. He was right about the spies. He was right about Nigeria. He was right about Hakluyt. He beat Shell in the High Court, in the WIPO proceedings, and in the court of public opinion.’  *By our Special Correspondent in the Department of Ironic Outcomes*

There is a particular kind of hubris that afflicts very large organisations — the unshakeable belief that, because you employ 119,000 people across 145 countries and own more than 3,300 trademarks in nearly 190 nations, you are entitled to win everything. Every lawsuit. Every arbitration. Every domain name dispute. Every confrontation with a retired British marketing consultant and his octogenarian father.

Royal Dutch Shell — now rebranded to the snappier “Shell plc,” presumably in an effort to distance itself from its own history — learned this lesson the hard way in the summer of 2005, when it filed a 44-page complaint with the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) demanding that one Alfred Donovan, an 87-year-old war pensioner operating from 847a Second Avenue, New York, hand over three domain names: royaldutchshellplc.com, royaldutchshellgroup.com, and tellshell.org.

Shell lost. Comprehensively. Embarrassingly. At the hands of a pensioner who represented himself.

But the story of *how* Shell ended up in this predicament — suing an elderly shareholder critic over a website domain rather than simply, you know, registering its own company name before announcing it to the world — is a masterpiece of institutional incompetence, decades in the making. To understand the fiasco properly, you have to go back much further than 2005. You have to go back to the reserves fraud, and to the extraordinary family that watched it all unfold from the ringside.

—

## PART ONE: THE ANATOMY OF AN OWN GOAL

On 28 October 2004, Royal Dutch/Shell made a public announcement that it was restructuring its notoriously baroque corporate structure — two parent companies, one Dutch, one British, lashed together since 1907 in an arrangement that had served mainly to make accountability extremely difficult — into a single parent company to be called “Royal Dutch Shell plc.”

The very next day, Alfred Donovan registered royaldutchshellplc.com.

This is, when you stop to think about it, an astonishing fact. One of the largest corporations on earth had just announced the name of its new parent company, and it had failed to register the corresponding .com domain *before making the announcement*. Not a month before. Not a week before. Not even an hour before. The morning of 29 October 2004, Shell’s legal and communications teams awoke to discover that the name of their new company was already occupied — by a pensioner with a grievance, a working internet connection, and, one imagines, an excellent sense of timing.

To be fair, Shell did eventually register royaldutchshell.com. But royaldutchshellplc.com — the exact name of the actual company — was gone.

The natural response to this situation, one might think, would be a quiet word in the legal department along the lines of: “Right, we’ve rather made a hash of this, let’s see if we can find a polite solution.” Or, alternatively: “Actually, does it matter? The man is using it to host critical commentary, not to impersonate us. We have admitted he’s entitled to criticise us. Let’s not embarrass ourselves further.”

Shell’s response, instead, was to file a 44-page legal complaint.

—

## PART TWO: THE WIPO DEBACLE IN DETAIL

The WIPO proceedings — formally styled *Shell International Petroleum Company Limited v. Alfred Donovan*, Case No. D2005-0538 — unfolded with the stately inevitability of a corporate tragedy. Shell deployed a legal representative. Alfred Donovan represented himself. A three-person WIPO panel was assembled, consisting of Daniel J. Gervais, Michael D. Cover, and Diane Cabell.

Shell’s argument, stripped of its 44-page lawyerly scaffolding, ran roughly as follows: the domain names royaldutchshellplc.com and royaldutchshellgroup.com were “essentially identical” to the company name; an innocent internet user searching for Shell might accidentally land on Donovan’s criticism site; and anyway, Donovan had registered royaldutchshellplc.com the day after the restructuring announcement specifically to pre-empt Shell from owning it — which, the company argued, constituted bad faith.

There was also a certain amount of creative huffing about how Donovan had been known to refer to himself as “Alfred Donovan of royaldutchshellplc.com,” which Shell suggested might mislead people into thinking he had “some connection with the Complainant or at least some authority to speak on behalf of the Group.”

The WIPO panel was not persuaded.

On the question of trademarks, the panel found a fundamental problem with Shell’s case: Shell had never actually registered “ROYALDUTCHSHELL” as a trademark. The reason for this, Shell’s own legal filing helpfully explained, was that the name had “always been used as a collective name for a related group of companies” and that registering it as a trademark “would therefore be of questionable validity.” In other words, Shell was attempting to claim intellectual property rights over a name that Shell itself admitted was not really a trademark.

The panel, noting this with what one imagines was barely concealed judicial amusement, found that the Complainant had failed to establish trademark rights in “ROYALDUTCHSHELL.” Same problem with “TELLSHELL.” The whole edifice of Shell’s complaint rested on foundations that Shell had, in its own filing, described as shaky.

On the question of bad faith — did Donovan register the domains to harm Shell? — the panel was equally unimpressed. The evidence showed that Donovan ran non-commercial criticism websites, had never attempted to sell the domains, had never traded under Shell’s name, and had been doing this sort of thing for years before the disputed domains were registered. His purpose, the panel found, was plainly to draw attention to his criticism of Shell’s conduct, not to prevent Shell from using its marks.

The Complaint was denied.

Shell — operator of more than 3,300 trademarks worldwide, employer of 119,000 people, a company with a legal department larger than most nations’ judiciaries — had just been beaten by an octogenarian with no legal representation, writing from a flat in New York.

—

## PART THREE: THE LONGER BACKSTORY (OR: HOW SHELL EARNED THIS)

To appreciate the full richness of this outcome, you need to understand the history between the Donovan family and Shell, which makes the domain name dispute look like a minor parking disagreement.

Alfred Donovan — described in his own letter to Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands as being 87 years old at the time of writing and a “war pensioner” — founded the Shell Shareholders Organisation after what he described, with magisterial understatement, as a “series of legal actions against Shell.” The Donovan family had previously enjoyed a “mutually successful business relationship” with Shell that had, by Alfred’s account, deteriorated rather dramatically when Shell allegedly stole business ideas from them.

Shell settled the first three claims for a total of £260,000 plus costs. When the Donovans sued again, Shell’s response was, according to Alfred, to hire undercover agents. His sworn affidavit, filed in the High Court, alleged that his family, key witnesses, and their lawyer were “besieged and intimidated by undercover operatives,” that burglaries were carried out at their residences, and that threats were made.

Shell and its solicitors, DJ Freeman, admitted in writing the activities of one undercover agent who was caught “in the act of illegally checking our mail.” They also advised Alfred’s son in writing that other agents were investigating the family, though they denied the burglaries.

Shell’s spying activities extended beyond the Donovan family. The company, it emerged, had used Hakluyt & Company — a private intelligence firm staffed by former MI6 officers — to run undercover operations against campaigning organisations including Greenpeace and the Body Shop. This was exposed in a front-page Sunday Times story. Some of the Shell directors to whom Alfred had written complaints about the surveillance turned out, he later discovered, to be shareholders and, in some sense, “spymasters” of Hakluyt itself.

Meanwhile, Shell was simultaneously funding a private army of 1,400 police spies supporting what Alfred described as “the then murderous regime in Nigeria,” and — as would emerge in full legal horror much later — engaging in what prosecutors would describe as a $1.3 billion corruption scheme involving Nigerian oil licences.

Alfred Donovan had been warning Shell’s board, Shell’s shareholders, pension funds, and the Dutch royal family (who had, he noted, personally lost nearly £250 million when the share price collapsed) about the company’s ethical culture since at least 1999. His letters to Queen Beatrix warned of “a culture of deception and cover-up deeply ingrained at the highest levels of Shell.”

In April 2004, following the eruption of the reserves scandal — in which Shell was forced to admit it had been systematically overstating its oil and gas reserves — newspaper headlines confirmed his warnings with remarkable fidelity:

*The Independent: “Lies, cover-ups, fat cats and an oil giant in crisis”*
*The Guardian: “Trail of emails reveals depths of deceit at the heart of Shell”*
*The Scotsman: “Shell admits reserve ‘lies'”*
*Daily Telegraph: “Memos expose Shell’s years of lying”*
*London Evening Standard: “Shell bosses lied to the City”*
*Minneapolis Star Tribune: “Dutch/Shell Group exec was ‘sick and tired’ of lying”*

“Many people must have thought I was a crazy old man,” Alfred wrote to Queen Beatrix on 1 April 2004, with impeccable timing. “I therefore feel vindicated.”

—

## PART FOUR: THE RESERVES FRAUD CONNECTION

It is at this point that the domain name fiasco reveals itself as something more than mere corporate embarrassment. It is, as the headline of John Donovan’s original article correctly identifies, a *direct consequence* of the reserves fraud.

The reserves scandal — in which Shell’s senior management repeatedly misled investors about the scale of the company’s proven oil and gas reserves, ultimately restating them downwards by a catastrophic 20% — produced the class action lawsuits, the regulatory investigations, and the corporate restructuring that begat the announcement of “Royal Dutch Shell plc” in October 2004.

And that announcement, fatefully, was made without anyone in Shell’s vast legal empire thinking to check whether the domain name was available.

Why not? One theory: the company was rather distracted by, say, US Securities and Exchange Commission investigations, multiple class action lawsuits alleging fraud, and the small matter of having to explain to shareholders why its reserves were substantially less than previously claimed. Shell paid $120 million to settle SEC charges. It paid $90 million to settle US shareholder class action suits. It faced investigations in multiple jurisdictions.

Another theory: institutional arrogance. The possibility that a pensioner critic might race them to their own company name simply had not, in the fever dream of corporate hubris, occurred to anyone.

Either way, the result was the same. The company announced its new identity to the world, and Alfred Donovan registered the domain the following morning. This was, one must acknowledge, a feat of either extraordinary prescience or extremely good reflexes.

—

## PART FIVE: THE DEFAMATION CASE THEY ALSO LOST

The WIPO fiasco might have been dismissed as an isolated embarrassment, had it not been accompanied by another legal adventure of comparable outcome. Eight companies within the Royal Dutch Shell Group jointly sued Dr John Huong — the Shell production geologist who had blown the whistle on the reserves scandal — for defamation over allegations published on the Donovan website.

Eight companies. Against one geologist. Represented by the Donovans.

“We managed to torpedo Shell’s case,” John Donovan notes, with admirable restraint, “and Shell was forced to settle the litigation.”

One begins to detect a pattern. Shell, it seems, had a remarkable capacity to pick legal fights it then lost. This is expensive. It is also, in retrospect, quite funny — in the way that watching a very large man repeatedly walk into the same glass door is funny, provided you are not the one paying his medical bills.

—

## PART SIX: THE MOST IRONIC DETAIL

Perhaps the richest detail in this entire saga is one that rewards close reading of the WIPO proceedings. Shell’s 44-page complaint argued, among other things, that Donovan had registered royaldutchshellplc.com on 29 October 2004 — “the day immediately following the re-structuring announcement” — as evidence of bad faith.

The WIPO panel, reviewing this argument, essentially responded: yes, that’s true; but it doesn’t prove bad faith if the person’s intent was legitimate criticism rather than commercial exploitation. And anyway, if Shell was so concerned about someone else registering this domain, perhaps Shell might have considered registering it first.

This is not a direct quote from the panel’s decision. The panel was considerably more decorous. But it is an accurate summary of the logic.

Shell had, in the very act of filing a complaint about someone else registering its company name, drawn an international arbitration panel’s attention to the fact that Shell had failed to register its own company name before announcing it to the world. The complaint itself was an exhibit in the case against Shell’s competence.

This is, in the annals of corporate legal strategy, difficult to surpass.

—

## EPILOGUE: THE WEBSITE THAT WOULD NOT DIE

Today, more than two decades after Alfred Donovan first registered his Shell-focused domains, royaldutchshellplc.com continues to operate — now run by his son John Donovan — accumulating more than 21,000 archived pages on the Wayback Machine, cited by the Financial Times, the Wall Street Journal, Reuters, Bloomberg, Forbes, CNBC, the US Securities and Exchange Commission, and the UK House of Commons Select Committee, among others.

Shell, having failed to acquire the domain through legal proceedings, having rebranded to “Shell plc,” having paid hundreds of millions in regulatory settlements, and having navigated the OPL 245 Nigerian corruption scandal (in which a secretly recorded phone call of its CEO discussing how to handle the matter was published on the Donovan website), has apparently concluded that the better part of wisdom is to let this particular battle go.

It now even has its own chatbot on the site — “Sir Henri Deterding, resurrected” — the controversial and outspoken founder of Royal Dutch Shell, haunting the very website Shell once tried to seize, dispensing “informative and satirical insight” to all comers.

There is a poetry to this that no corporate communications department could have planned.

The lesson, if any is needed, is straightforward: if you are going to announce the name of your new company to the entire world, you might want to check whether the domain is available first. Especially if you have spent the previous decade accumulating enemies with internet connections and long memories.

Alfred Donovan was right about the culture of deception. He was right about the reserves. He was right about the spies. He was right about Nigeria. He was right about Hakluyt. He beat Shell in the High Court, in the WIPO proceedings, and in the court of public opinion.

And he got there by a day.

—

*This article is satirical commentary based on publicly documented legal proceedings, published correspondence, and the WIPO arbitration decision in Case No. D2005-0538 (Shell International Petroleum Company Limited v. Alfred Donovan, decided 8 August 2005). The WIPO decision is in the public record. The letters quoted were published by the Donovan family. All characterisations of legal outcomes are drawn from the official published decisions.*

A Deep Dive Into the Most Spectacular Own Goal in Corporate Legal History was first posted on June 8, 2026 at 8:41 pm.
©2018 "Royal Dutch Shell Plc .com". Use of this feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this article in your feed reader, then the site is guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact me at john@shellnews.net

Kalamazoo registered nurses, who are members of Michigan Nurses Association and its parent union National Nurses United, will hold a rally and community event on Saturday, June 13 to demand long-term solutions to maintain services at Beacon Kalamazoo Hospital and advance nurses’ Vision for a Healthy Society.

To come.