News Feeds

LNS and our partners were happy to have had a successful Transit Equity Week 2026. We are excited to continue growing our transit equity work and organizing riders and workers everywhere towards a just and sustainable future.

For a brief video report on Transit Equity Week 2026: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DWpBnPQiOA4/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA%3D%3D.

The post Transit Equity Rolls On first appeared on Labor Network for Sustainability.

The Labor Network for Sustainability has joined many other organizations around the country to support the campaign to close the county-owned HERC (Hennepin Energy Recovery Center) incinerator in Minneapolis. Shutting down the incinerator, which burns toxic trash in the center of a Black and working-class community, has been the goal of a long-running local campaign. Shutting the incinerator was one of the demands of the first union-authorized strike on climate issues in the US by janitor members of Service Employees International Union Local 26.

In 2023, Hennepin County Commissioners unanimously approved a resolution to create a closure plan — but it does not actually require HERC to close. The Zero Burn Coalition, an alliance of environmental and labor groups, wants the board to hold a public vote this year to close the HERC by 2028. Local environmental justice advocates held a hunger strike calling on Hennepin County Commissioners to close their incinerator; at press time they had fasted for nearly two weeks.

Local labor organizations that are part of the campaign include:

• MAPE – Minnesota Association of Professional Employees
• MNA – Minnesota Nurses Association
• MFE – Minneapolis Federation of teachers
• SPFE – Saint Paul Federation of Teachers
• AFSCME – Local 2822
• AFSCME – Hennepin Healthcare Local 2474
• CTUL – Centro de Trabajadores Unidos en la Lucha

The post Hungering for Environmental Justice first appeared on Labor Network for Sustainability.

More than 8 million people joined more than 3,300 organized events across the country on March 28 for No Kings Day to protest the Trump administration’s growing authoritarianism, attacks on immigrants, and war in the Middle East. It was the largest single-day protest in American history.

Major unions with millions of members including SEIU, AFT, and NEA supported the day of action, and local unions around the country played a major role in organizing local events. Endorsing the mobilization, Liz Shuler, President of the AFL-CIO, said:

Since Inauguration Day, the radical pages of Project 2025 and the fever dreams of America’s corporate billionaires have come to life with a relentless assault on America’s workers. The Trump administration has committed the single biggest act of union-busting in history, attacked good jobs across the country, launched a brutal assault on immigrants, ripped health care from millions, jeopardized the essential services that working families rely on and threatened our fundamental freedoms. But America’s labor unions have been leading in our courts, on Capitol Hill, and in our streets to fight back– and our movement will be there on No Kings Day to peacefully and powerfully say that our government doesn’t answer to a king. It answers to working people.

The post 8 Million People—And Labor—Say “NO KINGS” first appeared on Labor Network for Sustainability.

By Yasmin Gabriel, LNS Development Manager

As a 6th generation Louisianian, I am always in awe when I see different members of my community serving as change agents. In mid-April, I was able to witness the combined organizing power of Earthworks, St. James Rising, Healthy Gulf, Concerned Citizens of St. John, Green Army, Louisiana Against False Solutions, Sierra Club-Delta Chapter, and Lake Maurepas Preservation Society as they challenged a proposed carbon capture project.

As storms, heat waves, fires, floods, and other devastating effects of global warming have grown, more and more people in Louisiana have become convinced of the need to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions into the atmosphere. “Carbon capture” is proposed as a solution, but it is unproven, costly, problematic for health and the environment, not a job producer, and ineffective for climate protection. The Air Products company has proposed a 38-mile carbon dioxide pipeline — running from Ascension Parish to Lake Maurepas — as part of a carbon capture project. It is dangerous for so many reasons. Here are two major reasons: Sorrento Primary School and the Orange Grove subdivision situated within ½ mile of the proposed pipeline.

There is something special that happens in a community when people pull together across fault lines and work for a common goal. There is often a level of social connection that can provide a sense of support for families, even during the toughest of times. The changemakers in parishes of south Louisiana are working to stop the project from being built because of pollution, noise, traffic, and other unjust impacts.

Follow this link for more information about the Blue Hydrogen Project and how you can support the fight.

The post “Carbon Capture Does Not Belong in the Boot” first appeared on Labor Network for Sustainability.

For years, advertising executives have largely escaped criticism for glossing the images of major polluters.

But as climate protestors turn up at ad agency offices and dozens of U.S. states file lawsuits accusing oil companies of deliberately spreading disinformation, the industry is coming under increasing scrutiny. U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres has called ad execs working with the fossil fuel industry “Mad Men fuelling the madness.”

Now, a new DeSmog report reveals which advertising companies have helped oil giants ExxonMobil, Chevron, BP, and Shell spend a collective $1.5 billion on buying U.S. ad space since the Paris Agreement to tackle climate change in 2015.

Below we’ve ranked their CEOs — the real life “Mad Men” — according to the estimated amount of oil company ad spend serviced by their company on their watch. (Click on the portraits to read a profile of their firm).

Note: Two of these companies — IPG and Omnicom — merged in November but have been considered separately as they were individual entities throughout the analysis period.

Mark Read, who stepped down last year amid nosediving profits, was one of the more outspoken ad industry leaders on climate change, despite WPP consistently having the most fossil fuel clients of any advertising company in the world under his leadership. In 2022, Read argued against a burgeoning industry movement to divest from fossil fuel clients, telling an audience of financial analysts: “We are there to support them on [their energy] transition.” Since then, an ad made by WPP agency VML has been banned by the UK advertising regulator for misrepresenting Shell’s business as greener than it actually is; a U.S. Congressional committee report cited a series of ExxonMobil ads made by WPP agency Group SJR as examples of greenwashing; and campaigners lodged a complaint (yet to be ruled upon) with the OECD alleging WPP had broken guidelines on climate and human rights. At the time, a WPP spokesperson said, “Contrary to the claims being made, we adhere to the highest regulatory standards in our work for clients.”

The longest serving CEO in this list, John Wren has overseen Omnicom’s lucrative longstanding relationship with ExxonMobil — which has a long history of funding climate science denial. Most notably, a group of Omnicom ad agencies developed ExxonMobil’s long-running algae-fuel ads. Hundreds of millions of dollars were spent on advertising a “climate solution” that few experts believed would ever leave the lab. Omnicom’s acquisition of IPG in November means Wren’s combined oil and gas client list is now the longest of any advertising CEO in the world. Although Omnicom has made some promises to reduce its operational emissions, the firm has never made any public move under Wren to restrict the nature of its work for the fossil fuel industry.

An accountant by trade, Michael I. Roth’s 15 years at IPG saw the company sign with ExxonMobil in 2011. Since then, a group of IPG media-buying agencies have managed hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of ad space for the oil giant to help it reach its desired target audiences. Roth’s reign also saw IPG become the go-to advertising partner for Saudi Aramco, the world’s biggest oil company — although those ad dollars are not included in this analysis. Roth left IPG in 2020, having earned nearly $200 million across 15 years, according to executive intelligence firm Equilar. When inducting him into the American Advertising Federation Hall of Fame, the federation described him as “a champion-level voice for what is good and right.”

Arguably the most famous (and richest) man in the ad industry. WPP’s founder Sir Martin Sorrell turned wire basket maker Wire & Plastic Products into the biggest advertising company in the world — and until recently the biggest provider of communications services to the fossil fuel industry. Sorrell was knighted in 2000 for his contributions to the business world. By 2015, his annual salary was over $90 million. He eventually left WPP in a cloud of controversy over allegations of personal and financial misconduct. A Financial Times investigation at the time said anonymous interviews with WPP staff painted “a picture of routine verbal abuse of underlings and a blending of Sir Martin’s corporate and private life”. Sorrell denied all the allegations against him.  

“I strongly believe that a brand that [does] not invest into this [clean energy] transition will be out of business in 10 years,” declared Yannick Bolloré in August 2023. The following month, Havas won a multimillion-dollar contract to handle Shell’s global ad placement strategy. Shell had U-turned on its renewable energy targets in favour of maintaining oil and gas production just months earlier. Insiders told DeSmog at the time that employees were taken aback, having watched Bolloré cultivate a personal brand of caring about the climate (though the deal was less surprising if you knew the Bolloré family’s business empire is partly built on transporting oil). Facing Extinction Rebellion die-ins at the Havas offices and the loss of a climate-focused client, the youngest “Mad Man” on this list has dug in, repeating in various interviews that “the most effective change comes from within.” In the end, four Havas agencies ended up losing their B-Corp certifications for ethical businesses over the Shell deal, and Havas had to warn investors the reputational damage could impact its financial performance.

Dentsu’s CEOs have tended not to make personal statements in the media on advertising’s relationship with the fossil fuel industry. Nevertheless, under Hiroshi Igarashi’s leadership, Dentsu took a significant step when it decided to quietly publish its “advertised emissions” in an investor risk report — representing the amount of carbon pollution associated with the uplift in sales resulting from its advertising campaigns, such as an airline ad leading to greater demand for flights. Dentsu found these were 32 times higher than the emissions from its core operations, such as powering its offices. Igarashi has shown no sign of moving Dentsu on from its lucrative contracts with Chevron and Shell — two of 18 fossil fuel clients Dentsu currently serves, according to research by industry campaign group Clean Creatives.

Toshihiro Yamamoto started his career with Dentsu back in 1981. A full 26 years later, the Dentsu veteran replaced the outgoing Tadashi Ishii as CEO, tasked with steadying the ship after Ishii left in a cloud of controversy. Yamamoto’s five years in charge saw the Japanese ad giant add Shell to its client roster, when its business-to-business ad agency Merkle gained control of a share of the hundreds of millions the oil giant spends on advertising each year. By the time Yamamoto departed in 2021, Dentsu had upped its fossil fuel contracts from five when he started his tenure to at least 11, according to DeSmog research.

In September 2022, Philippe Krakowsky announced an “industry first” climate policy that would restrict its work with fossil fuel companies. The new policy didn’t apply to existing clients. In an internal memo at the time, Krakowsky — like Read and Bolloré — told staff, “it is important to be in the room” with clients such as ExxonMobil to “positively impact their business transformation journeys.” Since Krakowsky sent this email, ExxonMobil has said it plans to increase production by more than a million barrels a day by 2030 and build four new gas projects. In August, a DeSmog investigation published with the Financial Times revealed allegations from staff that IPG was in breach of Krakowsky’s climate policy, after leaked documents showed it was helping Saudi Aramco — the world’s biggest oil company — target government policymakers. IPG and Krakowsky did not respond to the allegations. Krakowsky became the Chief Operating Officer at Omnicom in November after IPG was bought by its New York rival, a deal which earned Krakowsky a $48.6 million payout.

Under Tadashi Ishii, Dentsu led Chevron’s advertising strategy in the U.S., making ads that painted the oil giant as a steward of the environment and promoted speculative climate solutions like carbon capture. One ad from 2012 said “protecting people and the environment is a core value” at Chevron. In 2013, Ishii oversaw the $3.2 billion purchase of UK ad agency Aegis.  The Aegis acquisition saw Dentsu inherit major fossil fuel contracts not included in the analysis, such as French oil giant TotalEnergies.

Note: Big Oil ad spend figures for each CEO only cover the years they were in charge from the 2015 Paris Agreement onwards, even if they were in the job prior to this.

Art by Sabrina Bedford. Design by Sari Williams.

The post ‘Mad Men Fuelling the Madness’: Meet the Advertising CEOs Boosting Big Oil appeared first on DeSmog.

British advertising conglomerate WPP has helped oil companies ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell, and BP spend an estimated $1 billion on ads in the United States since the 2015 Paris Agreement to tackle climate change, a new report shows. 

The figure is nearly twice the respective amounts linked to U.S. rivals Omnicom and Interpublic Group (IPG), which merged in November. London-based WPP was the leading advertising group serving America’s oil industry over the past decade, according to the analysis by DeSmog. 

During this period, ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell, and BP had employed “deceptive and misleading” communications strategies designed to thwart policies to tackle the climate crisis by curbing the use of fossil fuels, a congressional investigation concluded in April 2024.

WPP’s services — from developing ideas for ads and designing logos, to securing ad space and analysing target audiences — were “crucial” to maintaining the oil industry’s public image, current and former WPP employees said. WPP is estimated to have earned millions of dollars a year from this work.

“The UK prides itself on climate leadership, and yet WPP, the supposed jewel of the British advertising industry, is facilitating dangerously misleading advertising in the U.S.,” said Victoria Harvey, holder of a PhD in the ad industry’s response to the climate crisis from the University of East Anglia, who reviewed DeSmog’s methodology.

“By creatively articulating the deception from big oil and gas, WPP has set the climate agenda back and continues to do so,” Harvey said.

ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell, and BP spent an estimated combined total of $1.5 billion on buying U.S. ad space such as TV slots and social media feeds since the Paris Agreement, according to the analysis. That’s roughly equivalent to running ads on every billboard in New York’s advertising hotspot Times Square every day for the last decade.

WPP’s global network of subsidiary advertising agencies made an estimated two-thirds’ worth of those ads, the analysis found. WPP, which is one of Britain’s biggest companies by revenue and also works with clients such as Coca-Cola and Unilever, was the only major ad company to partner with all four oil giants on advertising projects during this time.

This work may have breached a policy WPP adopted in 2022 not to accept projects that may “frustrate” the goals of the Paris Agreement, the current and former employees said, since the oil majors were committed to increasing oil and gas production and promoting speculative climate solutions.

A version of this article has been published by the Guardian.

WPP agencies Ogilvy and Wavemaker have both worked on U.S. campaigns for BP and Chevron respectively which received misleading advertising complaints, for taglines such as “We see possibilities in planes that fly on garbage.” Neither complaint was taken forward, although BP voluntarily withdrew its ads.

A 2022 U.S. Congressional committee report cited several ExxonMobil ads made by WPP’s Group SJR as examples of greenwashing, including one that compared fossil gas paired with renewable energy to “a peanut butter and jelly sandwich”.

An ExxonMobil ad featuring peanut butter and jelly made by WPP agency Group SJR, shown on Twitter (now X). (Credit: University of Oxford Climate Litigation Lab)

Staff who raised concerns about this work have been told by seniors that they are helping clients communicate about their shift to cleaner business models, the WPP employees said. But many who have worked on these projects fear they serve primarily to deflect criticism from polluters.

WPP clients BP and Shell have both weakened their own climate targets in the past three years. At the same time, their advertising output has pivoted to promoting the necessity of fossil fuels, a report published in March by industry campaign group Clean Creatives found.

BP’s 2023 campaign “And, not or” suggested that renewables should exist alongside oil and gas rather than replace them. The campaign included ads saying BP was reducing the climate impact of oil by running wells on electricity in Texas’ Permian Basin.

In a Shell YouTube ad run in October, a drone inspector identified as Tori describes how she is “helping provide American energy security” by carrying out safety checks on a drilling platform.

“We heard that a lot internally, that we were influencing them in the right direction,” said a former employee who worked on projects for BP at WPP branding agency Landor. “In reality, whatever BP decides to do, we would just deliver it.”

WPP and the other ad agencies mentioned did not respond to requests for comment.

Shell declined to comment. BP, ExxonMobil and Chevron did not respond to a request for comment.

Piece of the Pie

Advertising companies do not publish details about how much their clients spend on ad space, and increasingly avoid publicising their fossil fuel contracts.

To generate its estimates, DeSmog mapped the dozens of ad agencies that have worked for the four oil companies, using public sources such as staff social media profiles and industry award listings, confidential information shared by employees, and previous research by DeSmog and Clean Creatives. These contracts were then cross-referenced with ad spend estimates obtained from market research platform MediaRadar by the University of Oxford’s Climate Litigation Lab.

Most of the oil majors’ U.S. ad spend was channelled via subsidiaries of the handful of advertising holding companies that dominate the industry globally. After WPP, Omnicom and IPG, Tokyo-based holding company Dentsu ranked fourth in terms of its exposure to this ad spend ($255 million) and Paris-based rival Havas ranked fifth ($230 million).

(Credit: Sari Williams/DeSmog)

The analysis did not seek to capture the millions of dollars the fossil fuel industry spends every year advertising in countries outside the U.S., as well as on lobbying, branding, public relations, and other marketing activities.

Advertising industry insiders say momentum around climate initiatives has slowed over the past few years as competition from big technology companies and artificial intelligence (AI) has squeezed margins.

New WPP CEO Cindy Rose is due to present her strategy to reverse declining profits at the company’s annual general meeting on May 8. A preview in February did not mention sustainability.

Under previous CEO Mark Read, WPP committed to reduce carbon emissions and prevent greenwashing, including via the policy adopted in 2022 “not to take on any client work…designed to frustrate the objectives of the Paris Agreement.”

But employees claim these moves have changed little. 

There are concerns that WPP’s ongoing work with Shell, BP, and Chevron may breach the policy because many of these clients’ ads have distracted from or justified fossil fuel expansion, according to six current and former employees, who spoke to DeSmog anonymously for fear of professional repercussions.

New fossil fuel projects planned by the companies are incompatible with the Paris goal to limit the global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees and prevent catastrophic climate change, scientific assessments have found.

“I don’t think there’s anything that WPP could possibly be saying for BP or Shell that would adhere to the policy,” said a former director at two WPP agencies in New York.

In total, WPP has held at least 82 contracts with the fossil fuel industry around the world since the start of 2025, according to industry campaign group Clean Creatives. More than a quarter of those contracts relate to work wholly or partially targeted at U.S. audiences.

Experts say that the impact of WPP’s moves to lower carbon emissions by reducing employee travel and powering buildings with green energy is outweighed by its work for polluters.

“By shaping public narratives, increasing consumption, and normalising fossil fuel use, agencies like WPP can significantly influence emissions far beyond their operational footprint,” said Alexis McGivern, a researcher on corporate climate policy at Oxford Net Zero, a research group at the University of Oxford.

WPP ad agencies Ogilvy and VML have led BP and Shell’s respective advertising strategies since at least 2000, DeSmog found.

Ogilvy devised BP’s “Beyond Petroleum” campaign in 2000. It also popularised the concept of the “carbon footprint” through a series of BP ads in 2004 which sought to emphasise individual responsibility for reducing emissions. 

Screenshot from a Shell YouTube ad featuring a drone inspector identified as Tori, 19 October, 2025. (Credit: University of Oxford Climate Litigation Lab)

Today, WPP agencies such as Ogilvy are still “deeply embedded” in BP’s advertising process and have some staff dedicated solely to working on BP projects, according to the former Landor employee.

In 2020, BP briefed seven WPP agencies — including Ogilvy, Landor, and VML — to create a new brand strategy to tackle the company’s image as “the bad guys,” according to a WPP document obtained by investigative outlet Drilled.

Subsequent U.S. ad campaigns launched by BP repeatedly promoted the company’s “#netzero” goals and said it supported regulation to limit methane emissions, despite BP having successfully lobbied the U.S. government to roll back such rules, an investigation by Unearthed found.

“WPP has had oil clients for decades, whether they were promising to go green or not,” said one former partner at a WPP agency, who has worked on Shell campaigns. “That tells you everything you need to know about whether we are actually trying to change things.”

Risks Rising for Protecting Polluters

Pressure is building on advertising companies to acknowledge their role in delaying climate action by protecting the reputations of polluters.

U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres has urged ad agencies to drop fossil fuel clients, calling ad executives “Mad Men fuelling the madness.”

The OECD, an intergovernmental economic organisation, is considering a complaint against WPP filed by climate and human rights campaigners in February last year. At the time, a WPP spokesperson said, “Contrary to the claims being made, we adhere to the highest regulatory standards in our work for clients.” Protesters have since targeted WPP’s Thames-front offices in London with banners reading “climate criminals”.

The “increased reputational risk associated with working on client briefs perceived to be environmentally detrimental” could affect revenue, WPP said in its 2025 sustainability report.

Climate activists from Extinction Rebellion protest outside WPP’s offices in London, June 25, 2025. (Credit: Extinction Rebellion)

Legal risks are rising, too.

In a first-of-its-kind ruling in October, a Paris court found French oil giant TotalEnergies misled consumers by saying it had put “climate at the heart of its strategy” during a 2021 rebrand, despite continuing to heavily invest in new oil and gas projects.

WPP agency Wavemaker advised TotalEnergies on where to buy ad space for the rebrand campaign but was not named in the case.

In January, Michigan state filed the latest of dozens of U.S. lawsuits being brought by local and federal governments against ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell, BP, and other oil companies accusing the companies of climate deception and disinformation.

So far, a U.S. court is yet to find against an oil company in such a case. The companies deny any wrongdoing, arguing that the courts are the wrong venue to determine climate policy.

“In the context of increasing litigation to recover substantial damages for the escalating costs of climate change on the basis of oil majors’ deceptive activities, doing large amounts of the same companies’ advertising work does not seem legally advisable,” said Johnny White, a lawyer at environmental law firm Client Earth, which advised on the TotalEnergies case.

Additional reporting by Kathryn Clare and Ellen Ormesher

The post Revealed: British Ad Giant’s Billion-Dollar Greenwash of U.S. Oil Industry appeared first on DeSmog.

Registered nurses, community members, labor advocates, and local supporters will hold a press conference on Friday, May 1 outside Bakersfield Memorial Hospital to demand hospital leadership reverse plans to close the hospital’s burn unit.

In Show of Momentum, Nations Agree to Another Conference in Tuvalu, Co-hosted with Ireland

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: April 29, 2026

Santa Marta, Colombia– Today, the First Conference on Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels came to a close in Santa Marta, Colombia with cause for optimism: for the first time, 57 national governments came together to begin phasing out fossil fuels.  In a win for impacted communities worldwide, several constituencies of the conference, such as academia, Indigenous Peoples, Afrodescedents, and national and subnational governments, included calls to reduce petrochemicals, a key driver of climate change. Parliamentarians and the private sector also called for specific measures to address the plastic crisis.

Ana Rocha, Global Plastics Policy Director at GAIA, states: “Santa Marta brought together a group of countries that recognize the urgency of phasing down fossil fuels. While there is always an appetite for more tangible outcomes, progress matters, and Colombia, the Netherlands, and all involved deserve credit for moving the conversation beyond paralysis. Now countries must build on this momentum to translate intention into decisive action.”

At the  Science and policy dialogue held on April 24-25th, GAIA and the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL) co-convened a group of experts to offer guidance on how to address petrochemicals as a critical part of a fossil fuel phase-down. Recommendations included freezing petrochemical expansion, establishing declining caps on petrochemical production, ensuring transparency and traceability across the petrochemical supply chain, eliminating subsidies, preventing false solutions, and developing financial mechanisms to support just transitions.

Petrochemicals are produced from fossil fuels, and the International Energy Agency projects that, without intervention, petrochemicals will account for one third of oil demand growth by 2030, and nearly half by 2050. 

Fifty seven nations participated in the conference.  Many nations voiced the need for a Just Transition where countries with similar realities and conditions develop solutions together, addressing the complexity of the crisis with actionable solutions. 

In a sign of positive momentum towards a fossil fuel phase-down, countries have decided to convene again next year, in a second conference hosted in Tuvalu through a collaboration between Tuvalu and Ireland. The choice of location, one of the most climate vulnerable countries in the world, highlights both the climate crisis as well as the spirit of South-North solidarity. The exact date for the next conference is to be confirmed. 

Between now and the next conference, countries will work in three workstreams to develop their decarbonization strategies, including: tackling structural economic and financial barriers, promoting green trade over fossil fuel trade, and addressing fossil fuel dependency and supply. 

This historic advancement in international cooperation to combat the climate crisis bolsters the viability of a process that excludes the bad actors who have sabotaged the climate talks for the past thirty years, providing an alternative to the dysfunctional one-country-veto system of the United Nations. 

Quotes from GAIA Members: 

“This first conference marks the beginning of a transition away from fossil fuel dependency.  It is essential to invite more countries to join these efforts. Countries must prioritize reducing petrochemical production while addressing the entire plastics value chain —from extraction to disposal— including waste pickers, and communities affected by pollution. This transition must be people-centered and will only be effective if it is just, inclusive, and grounded in a human rights-based approach.” -Laura Suárez, National Director at Fundación PlastiCo. Project and Science Policy & Scientific Coordinator of the MarLi Project at Universidad San Francisco de Quito

“A comprehensive transition away from fossil fuels requires rethinking and transforming the entire system that relies on them, including ending our dependence on single-use plastics and agrochemicals. Countries must choose the continuation of life on earth over corporate greed.” -Ana Belén Ortega, Member of Alianza Basura Cero Ecuador 

“Every story has a beginning. This is it. For the first time people from across the globe are saying this is how we start the plan to end the use of fossil fuels. We will continue to fight for remediation and reclamation of fossil fuel and petrochemical sites because that is where this story must end for Frontline communities. It will not be just if we don’t clean it up.” -Ean Tafoya, Vice President, GreenLatinos

“This gathering was a necessary step toward moving beyond a fossil fuel economy that has caused deep harm to the climate, biodiversity, human health, and the rights of Indigenous Peoples and frontline communities. We leave this conference with appreciation, but also with a clear call: transitioning away from fossil fuels must not repeat the harms of extraction. It must deliver justice, reparations, and real participation for Indigenous Peoples and frontline communities.” -Frankie Orona, Co-Founder and Executive Director of Society of Native Nations

Press contact:

Claire Arkin, Global Communications Lead 

claire@no-burn.org | +1 973 444 4869

###

GAIA is a worldwide alliance of more than 1,000 grassroots groups, non-governmental organizations, and individuals in over 90 countries. With our work, we aim to catalyze a global shift towards environmental justice by strengthening grassroots social movements that advance solutions to waste and pollution. We envision a just, zero waste world built on respect for ecological limits and community rights, where people are free from the burden of toxic pollution, and resources are sustainably conserved, not burned or dumped. 

The post Over 50 Countries Call for Fossil Fuel Phaseout, Including  Petrochemicals, at Santa Marta Conference first appeared on GAIA.

Two months ago, everyone was still wondering whether the First Conference for Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels would carry the relevance it promised in Brazil. Would governments around the world care enough to show up after the excitement of COP30 had faded? In a world that seemed to be sinking into new wars with global consequences?

Paradoxically, the escalating aggressions by the United States and Israel in Southwest Asia (Middle East) have shown the world exactly why we need to leave behind our dependence on fossil fuels. Entire communities have been destroyed, families buried under rubble, children killed, livelihoods erased, all in a region whose political fate has been shaped for over a century by the control of oil and gas. People in Palestine, Lebanon, and across the region are paying with their own lives for the world’s thirst for fossil fuels.

These are not abstract arguments. They are the bombs that fall, the blockades that starve, the occupations that endure, all because fossil fuel wealth concentrates power in the hands of those willing to use violence to protect it. Not only do fossil fuels poison our planet, they fuel instability, deepen inequality, and tie our futures to volatile and unjust energy systems. Moving beyond fossil fuels is no longer a distant goal. It is a shared necessity.

The response? Fifty-seven countries representing roughly a third of the global economy came together, signaling that the transition is not only possible but already underway.

But what truly defined this conference was not just who showed up at the governmental level. It was who was finally let in.

Indigenous peoples from around the world, trade unions, youth groups, academics, Afro-descendant communities, peasant associations, women and diverse identities, activists and NGOs, among others, engaged for the first time in a participation mechanism that actually listens to their voices and puts their demands on the table.

And beyond the high-level spaces, communities were building, not just speaking. During both days of the Peoples Summit, 350.org with 32 organizations across Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico and the Caribbean Islands a Fair of Alternatives, showing that futures beyond fossil fuels are already here. Community leaders hosted a panel within the Peoples Summit space, and their voices fed into the final declaration.

Frontline communities from all around the world had a voice on the Santa Marta conference

 

It was no small thing to see Indigenous women leaders from Putumayo and Bolivia connecting over their shared concern about an energy transition being carried out without consultation in their territories, one that threatens to bring extractive models for copper and lithium that would gravely affect their environments and communities. But ready, too, to share models of community energy generation through biodigesters they have built themselves. Because communities around the world have not sat around waiting for their governments to act. They have thought of solutions and carried them out.

That same spirit drove the Popular Assemblies we co-organized in three territories in Colombia and Ecuador, where affected communities named the crisis in their own terms. Two of the communities that led these Assemblies — Cesar sin Fracking and Alianza Libre de Fracking — attended the high-level Conference, including Yuvelis Morales Blanco, now a winner of the Goldman Environmental Prize. 350.org also held an organizing space toward a common Latin American campaign against fracking and LNG with leaders from Colombia, Argentina and Mexico.

These connections between communities were perhaps the most powerful thread running through the conference. Activists from across the world linked militarization and the climate crisis in a country with more than 60 years of armed conflict, where multinationals like Glencore and Drummond have used armed groups to displace and kill local communities, seize their lands and waters, and leave surrounding populations in misery and fear. The Climate Justice Flotilla traveled across Caribbean islands still under Dutch colonial rule to bring their voices to this space — possibly the first time Aruba and Curacao had representation at a conference like this, even as the Netherlands, their colonial power, co-hosted while opposing a fossil fuel transition treaty.

During the Santa Marta conference, activists and local communities blocked the entrance of one of the main coal ports in Latin America.

 

It was also no small thing to see these same activists blockade one of the largest coal ports in Latin America with solar panels — Drummond’s port in Ciénaga. The action put the demands of affected communities front and centre: making polluters pay for the loss of land, biodiversity and life, and the need for a just transition. For local communities, doing something like this would mean enormous security risks — just weeks earlier, armed groups had kidnapped 25 fishermen from the community most affected by Drummond. But these young people from around the world used their foreign origins as a kind of shield, standing in solidarity with the communities of Ciénaga, Santa Marta, and all of Colombia affected by this multinational. Those same solar panels used in this action will now go to the communities most harmed by that coal port.

So what did governments actually deliver?

Let’s be clear: they could have been far more ambitious. The world is on fire, sometimes literally, and the political outcomes of this conference reflect cautious, small steps that do not match the urgency communities are living every day.

Governments from 57 countries meet at the First Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels Conference, in Colombia

 

That said, the fact that this conference happened at all, that it finally named fossil fuels as the root cause of climate chaos and created a dedicated space to address them outside of the pressures of formal COP negotiations, is itself a significant victory. Five concrete outcomes came out of the high-level segment:

1. Continuity. A second conference has been announced for 2027, co-hosted by Tuvalu and Ireland, with the main event taking place in Tuvalu. And who better than our brothers and sisters from the Pacific nations, on the frontlines of climate chaos, to carry forward what started in Santa Marta and remind the world of the urgency?
2. A coordination group has been established to ensure continuity between conferences, bringing together countries leading different alliances and initiatives on the fossil fuel transition, including the co-hosts of the first and second conferences.
3. The outcomes will be handed over to the COP30 Presidency, shared ahead of the intersessional meetings in Bonn this June and formally presented at London Climate Action Week, with plans to bring them to the UN Secretary-General during New York Climate Week. The intention is to feed these results into the second Global Stocktake, making sure this process does not live in isolation from the UNFCCC.
4. Three workstreams have been launched to identify concrete opportunities for cooperation: one focused on national roadmaps guided by the Science Panel, another on economic dependencies and financial architecture, and a third on aligning fossil fuel producers and consumers toward trade systems free of fossil fuels. These workstreams will remain open for countries to join or lead.
5. A Science Panel for the Global Energy Transition will anchor the entire process in evidence rather than politics. Academics and scientists from around the world joined forces to ensure that science guides the process of leaving fossil fuels behind, and to help countries develop roadmaps aligned with the 1.5°C trajectory and to dismantle the legal, financial, and political barriers standing in the way.

Are these outcomes enough? No. Are they the kind of bold, binding commitments that the scale of the crisis demands? Not even close. But in a world where the largest historical emitter has abandoned climate action entirely, where wars rage over the very resources we need to leave behind, the fact that 57 countries sat down, opened the doors to movements and communities, and committed to a sustained process is not nothing. It is the floor, not the ceiling, and it is up to all of us to push it higher.

Communities everywhere will keep building the solutions their governments have been too slow to deliver. And the rest of us? We stay loud, stay connected, and keep showing up, because the transition has already begun, and it was never going to be led from the top.

Because if this conference showed anything, it is that the transition is not only about energy systems. It is about power. The power of who gets to decide. Who benefits. Who is heard. And for perhaps the first time at this scale, the answer is beginning to shift.

The Great Power Shift has started. Join us!

The post Santa Marta was just the beginning appeared first on 350.

Anne Jellema is Executive Director of 350.org.

The war on Iran and Lebanon is a deeply unjust and devastating conflict, killing civilians at home, destroying lives, and at the same time sending shockwaves through the global economy. We, at 350.org, have calculated, drawing on price forecasts from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and Goldman Sachs, just how much that volatility is costing us. 

Even under the IMF’s baseline scenario – a de facto “best case” scenario with a near-term end to the war and related supply chain disruptions – oil and gas price spikes are projected to cost households and businesses globally more than $600 billion by the end of the year. Under the IMF’s “adverse scenario”, with prolonged conflict and sustained price pressures, we estimate those additional costs could exceed $1 trillion, even after accounting for reduced demand.

Which is why we urgently need a power shift. Governments are under growing pressure to respond to rising fuel and food costs and deepening energy poverty. And it’s becoming clearer to both voters and elected officials that fossil dependence is not only expensive and risky, but unnecessary. 

People who can are voting with their wallets: sales of solar panels and electric vehicles are increasing sharply in many countries. But the working people who have nothing to spare, ironically, are the ones stuck with using oil and gas that is either exorbitantly expensive or simply impossible to get. 

Drain on households and economies

In India, street food vendors can’t get cooking gas and in the Philippines, fishermen can’t afford to take their boats to sea. A quarter of British people say that rising energy tariffs will leave them completely unable to pay their bills. This is the moment for a global push to bring abundant and affordable clean energy to all.

In April, we released Out of Pocket, our new research report on how fossil fuels are draining households and economies. We were surprised by the scale of what we found. For decades, governments have reassured people that energy price spikes are unfortunate but unavoidable – the result of distant conflicts, market forces or geopolitical shocks beyond anyone’s control. But the numbers tell a different story. 

• Apr 28, 2026 News Santa Marta: Ministers grapple with practicalities of fossil fuel phase-out Around 60 governments that want to make progress on transitioning away from coal, oil and gas are meeting in Colombia to work out how they can do it an equitable way Read more
• Apr 24, 2026 Comment Why the transition beyond fossil fuels depends on cities and collective action Cities will help identify concrete pathways for an equitable shift to clean energy at the Santa Marta conference, with C40 members aiming to halve their fossil fuel use by 2030 Read more

What we are living through today is not an energy crisis. It is a fossil fuel crisis. In just the first 50 days of the Middle East conflict, soaring oil and gas prices have siphoned an estimated $158 billion–$166 billion from households and businesses worldwide. That is money extracted directly from people’s pockets and transferred, almost instantly, into fossil fuel company balance sheets. And this figure only captures the immediate impact of price spikes, not the permanent economic drain of fossil dependence. Fossil fuels don’t just cost us once, they cost us over and over again. 

First, through our bills. Every time there is a war, an embargo or a supply disruption, fossil fuel prices surge. For ordinary people, this means higher costs for energy, transport and food. Many Global South countries have little or no fiscal space to buffer the shock; instead, workers and families pay the price.

Second, through our taxes. Governments around the world continue to pour vast sums of public money into fossil fuel subsidies. These are often justified as a way to protect the most vulnerable at the petrol pump or in their homes. But in reality, the benefits are overwhelmingly captured by wealthier households and corporations. The poorest 20% receive just a fraction of this support, while public finances are drained.

Third, through climate impacts. New research across more than 24,000 global locations gives a granular account of the true costs of extreme heat, sea level rise and falling agricultural yields. Using this data to update IMF modelling of the social cost of carbon, we found that fossil fuel impacts on health and livelihoods amount to over $9 trillion a year. This is the biggest subsidy of all, because these massive and mounting costs are not charged to Big Oil – they are paid for by governments and households, with the poorest shouldering the lion’s share. 

Massive transfer of wealth to fossil fuel industry

Adding up direct subsidies, tax breaks and the unpaid bill for climate damages, the total transfer of wealth from the public to the fossil fuel industry amounts to $12 trillion even in a “normal” year without a global oil shock. That’s more than 50% higher than the IMF has previously estimated, and equivalent to a staggering $23 million a minute.

The fossil fuel industry has become extraordinarily adept at profiting from instability. When conflict drives up prices, companies do not lose, they gain. In the current crisis, oil producers and commodity traders are on track to secure tens of billions of dollars in additional windfall profits, even as households face rising bills and governments struggle to manage the fallout. 

Fossil fuel crisis offers chance to speed up energy transition, ministers say

This growing disconnect is impossible to ignore. Investors are advised to buy into fossil fuel firms precisely because of their ability to generate profits in times of crisis. Meanwhile, ordinary people are told to tighten their belts.

In 2026, unlike during the oil shocks of the 1970s, clean energy is no longer a distant alternative. Now, even more than when gas prices spiked due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, renewables are often the cheapest option available. Solar and wind can be deployed quickly, at scale, and without the volatility that defines fossil fuel markets.

How to transition from dirty to clean energy

The solutions are clear. Governments must implement permanent windfall taxes on fossil fuel companies to ensure that extraordinary profits generated during crises are redirected to support households. These revenues can be used to reduce energy bills, invest in public services, and accelerate the rollout of clean energy.

Second, we must shift subsidies away from fossil fuels and towards renewable solutions, particularly those that can be deployed quickly and equitably, such as rooftop and community solar. This is not just about cutting emissions. It is about building a more stable, fair and resilient energy system.

Finally, we need binding plans to phase out fossil fuels altogether, replacing them with homegrown renewable energy that can shield economies from future shocks. Because what the current crisis has made clear is this: as long as we remain dependent on fossil fuels, we remain vulnerable – to conflict, to price volatility and to the escalating impacts of climate change.

The true price of fossil fuels is no longer hidden. It is visible in rising bills, strained public finances and communities pushed to the brink. And it is being paid, every day, by ordinary people around the world.

It’s time for the great power shift. 

Full details on the methodology used for this report are available here.

The Great Power Shift is a new campaign by 350.org to pressure governments to bring down energy bills for good by ending fossil fuel dependence and investing in clean, affordable energy for all.

Logo of 350.org campaign on “The Great Power Shift” Logo of 350.org campaign on “The Great Power Shift”

The post What fossil fuels really cost us in a world at war appeared first on Climate Home News.

The next great hunger Channel News brendan 30th April 2026 Teaser Media

OWENSVILLE, Missouri (April 29, 2026) Horstmann Cattle Company, owned and operated by August Horstmann in Gasconade County, is the newest ranch to earn the National Audubon Society’s Bird-Friendly...

We live in a rapidly changing and increasingly complex world and staying centered can feel more challenging by the day. It is easy to become weighed down by uncertainty, anxiety, or even despair –...

HARLEYVILLE, S.C. — The Francis Beidler Forest Audubon Center & Sanctuary (“Beidler Forest”) is being nationally recognized for its beauty and biodiversity by being formally inducted into the...

DENVER—Interior Secretary Doug Burgum claimed in a Senate Energy and Natural Resources hearing this morning that President Donald Trump’s $10 billion “slush fund” request in his 2027 proposed Interior department budget is solely for deferred maintenance at National Park Service sites in and around Washington, D.C., and will not go toward any new construction. See their exchange HERE.

Trump’s proposed NPS budget requests the establishment of a “new $10.0 billion Presidential Capital Stewardship Program in order to carry out priority construction and rehabilitation projects in the Washington, D.C. area.”

But the Interior department estimates the NPS deferred maintenance backlog in D.C. to be just over $2 billion. Adding in the maintenance backlog for all of Virginia and Maryland brings the total to only $4 billion, leaving $6 billion or more unaccounted for in Burgum’s request for Trump’s slush fund.

Trump’s NPS budget also calls for a 55 percent reduction in the annual National Park Service construction and major maintenance budget, leaving NPS less than $50 million to address repairs at historic sites and national parks across the country, and a 53 percent, or $213 million, reduction in resource stewardship funds.

The Center for Western Priorities released the following statement from Communications Manager Kate Groetzinger:

“Doug Burgum finally gave Congress insight into the shady $10 billion request for ‘beautification’ projects in Washington D.C. But his answer doesn’t square with his own department’s deferred maintenance numbers. He’s already spent $17 million in taxpayer money on a fountain across from the White House. President Trump has made it clear he wants more vanity projects, from giant arches to sculpture gardens, in his own backyard.

“It’s time for Secretary Burgum to tell President Trump that all of America’s parks need attention, not just the ones outside the president’s window.”

Learn more:

• Burgum blunders through budget hearings, taking heat for NPS cuts and Trump ‘slush fund’ – Westwise

• DOI Deferred Maintenance backlog – Interior Department

• President’s Budget Proposal Slashes National Park Service Funding Amid Ongoing Attacks on National Parks – NPCA

• Firm Building Trump’s Ballroom Got a Secret No-Bid Contract for a Nearby Job – New York Times

The post Fact Check: Burgum claims $10 billion Trump slush fund request is for NPS deferred maintenance only appeared first on Center for Western Priorities.

Federal court orders DTE Energy to pay $100M for Clean Air Act violations at EES Coke on Zug Island, marking a major win for Southwest Detroit residents; appeal ongoing.

The post An update on Southwest Detroit Industrial Impacts: The Zug Island Ruling appeared first on FracTracker Alliance.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Burning time for North American wildfires is going into overtime. Flames are lasting later into the night and starting earlier in the morning because human-caused climate change is extending the hotter and drier conditions that feed fires, a new study found.

Fires used to die down or even die out at night as temperatures dropped and humidity increased, but that’s happening less often. The number of hours in North America when the weather is favorable for wildfires is 36% higher than 50 years ago, according to a study published earlier this month in Science Advances.

Places such as California have 550 more potential burning hours than in the mid-1970s. Parts of southwestern New Mexico and central Arizona are seeing as many as 2,000 more hours a year when the weather is prone to burning fires, the highest increase seen in the study, which looked at Canada and the United States. The research looked at times when conditions were ripe for fire, but that didn’t mean fires occurred during all that time.

Recent big fires in LA and Hawaii burned at night

Fires that surge at night are tougher to fight and included the Lahaina, Hawaii fire in 2023, the Jasper fire in Alberta in 2024, and the Los Angeles fires in 2025, the study said. Maui’s fire ignited at 12:22 a.m.

It’s not just the clock that is getting extended. The calendar is too. The number of days with fire-prone weather increased by 44%, which effectively added 26 days over the past half-century.

It’s mostly from warmer, drier nighttime weather, with a bit of extra wind, the study authors said.

“Fires normally slow down during the night, or they just stop,” said study co-author Xianli Wang, a fire scientist with the Canadian Forest Service. “But under extreme fire hazard conditions, fire actually burns through the night or later into the night.”

And Wang said Earth’s warming atmosphere means it’s like to get worse.

Tougher to fight fires at night

Fires that don’t “go to sleep” get a running start the next day, making it harder to knock them down, University of California, Merced fire scientist John Abatzoglou, who wasn’t part of the study, said in an email.

“Nights aren’t what they used to be — that is, more reliable breaks for wildfire,” he added. “Widespread warming and lack of humidity is keeping fires up at night.”

Wildland firefighter Nicholai Allen, who also founded a firm that makes home fire prevention tools, said it’s very difficult to fight fires at night.

“You have to understand that you have snakes and bears and mountain lions and all the stuff you have in daytime,” Allen said, noting a colleague was bitten by a bear. “But at night, they’re really scared, and they’re running away from the fire.”

The Canadian researchers analyzed nearly 9,000 larger fires from 2017 to 2023 using a weather satellite and other tools to get hour-by-hour data on atmospheric conditions during the fires, such as humidity, temperature, wind, rain, and fuel moisture levels. They created a computer model that correlated weather conditions and fire status and applied to historical data in Canada and the United States from 1975 to 2106.

Nights are warming faster than days

Scientists have long said heat-trapping gases from the burning of coal, oil, and natural gas make nights warm faster than days because of increased cloud cover that absorbs and re-emits heat down to Earth at night like a blanket. Since 1975, summers in the contiguous U.S. have seen nighttime lowest temperatures warm by 2.6 degrees Fahrenheit (1.4 degrees Celsius), while daytime highest temperatures have gone up 2.2 degrees Fahrenheit (1.2 degrees Celsius), according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Humidity at night “doesn’t rebound” from its daytime dryness like it used to, said study lead author Kaiwei Luo, a fire science researcher at the University of Alberta.

Wildfires often coincide with drought, especially extreme drought, which means not only drier air, but hotter, drier air that sucks up more moisture from the ground and plants, making fuels for fire more flammable, Wang said. In a drought, there’s often a vicious circle of drying and when it is quite dry, a warmer atmosphere has more power to suck moisture out of fuels.

Just as warmer nights, especially in heat waves, don’t let the body recover, the warmer nights are not allowing forests to recover, Wang said. It can take weeks for dead fuel to recover its lost moisture and be less fire-prone, he said.

“It’s just a stress to the plants,” Wang said. “That also increases fuel load.”

From 2016 to 2025, wildfires in the United States on average burned an area the size of Massachusetts each year, slightly more than 11,000 square miles (28,500 square kilometers). That’s 2.6 times the average burn area of the 1980s, according to the National Interagency Fire Center. Canada’s land burned on average for the last 10 years is 2.8 times more than during the 1980s, according to the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre.

Syracuse University fire scientist Jacob Bendix, who wasn’t part of the research, called the study a sobering reminder of climate change’s role in driving “increased fire potential across almost all of the fire-prone environments of North America.”

The founder and director of a company behind new plans to use UK onshore gas for bitcoin mining, has resigned.

Rathlin Energy’s West Newton-B site in East Yorkshire. Photo: We Said No

John Hodgins, a Canadian geologist, left the Rathlin Energy board on 1 April 2026, according to the official Companies House register.

He had been a director since January 2008.

Rathlin operates two sites in Holderness, East Yorkshire, at West Newton-A and B.

The company’s majority investor, Reabold Resources, has proposed using gas from the sites to generate electricity for crypto currency transactions. See DrillOrDrop report from August 2025

Mr Hodgins is the chief executive of Connaught Oil & Gas Ltd, Rathlin’s former parent company, based in Calgary, Canada.

He has worked in western Canada, the North Sea, China, the US and Australia, as well onshore in the UK.

Before joining Connaught, he held positions in eight different oil and gas companies.

Rathlin’s most recent accounts, for the year ending 31 December 2024, reported that Mr Hodgins held 427,272 ordinary shares and 272,000 share purchase options.

In the past two years, two other directors have resigned, Howard Mayson (April 2024) and Paul McGarvey (May 2025), as well as Rathlin’s auditor. Paul Harris joined the board in March 2025.

Earlier this month, an environmental campaigner took the first steps in a legal challenge to the approval by the Environment Agency of lower-volume fracking at West Newton-A.

Spring has arrived in North Texas, and with it comes one of the most exciting seasons at Dogwood Canyon. As trees leaf out, wildflowers bloom, and insects begin to buzz, migratory birds return to the...