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This article is part of Food Tank’s primer series, “Food Tank Explains.” Each installment unpacks the ideas, innovations, and challenges shaping today’s food and agriculture systems, offering clear insights into complex topics. To explore more articles in the series, click here.

Precision agriculture is a data-driven farm management approach that uses technology like GPS, sensors, drones, and Artificial Intelligence to collect and analyze detailed information on crops, soil, and environmental conditions in real time.

These tools can help farmers account for variability within fields, track and analyze soil quality, crop health, pest infestations, and temperature levels, and apply inputs like water, fertilizers, and pesticides with greater precision. The aim is to improve resource efficiency, productivity, and profitability while reducing waste and optimizing decision-making.

Precision agriculture tools can be used separately or combined into integrated data-driven platforms. GPS-guided tractor systems seek to improve field accuracy by minimizing overlaps or gaps in herbicide or fertilizer application. And yield monitoring technologies collect and map GPS and farm equipment data to guide decisions about when to sow, fertilize, or harvest.

Drones and remote sensors capture high-resolution imagery to assess crop health and detect variability. Variable rate technology uses this data to adjust the application of inputs like fertilizers and pesticides in real time.

As investment accelerates, the digital farming sector has grown into a multi-billion-dollar industry, valued between US$10 billion and US$30 billion  in 2025 with projections of doubling in the next decade.

Precision agriculture shows potential by enabling farmers to make timely, data-driven decisions tailored to conditions on their land. Precision tools can improve resource efficiency, support more precise decision-making, and facilitate adaptability, which researchers associate with lower fuel, labor, and maintenance costs. These capabilities may contribute to improved outcomes for soils, crops, livestock, and overall farm performance.

But many farmers cannot access precision agriculture technologies because high costs, infrastructure demands, and technical requirements create significant barriers. Farmers must navigate substantial upfront investments, limited training opportunities, and a reliance on consistent internet and electricity, which makes adoption especially difficult for small-scale producers and those in lower-income regions.

Most smallholder farms, which account for about 85 percent of farms globally, continue to operate without these tools, while adoption remains concentrated among larger, capital-intensive operations. Authors of a recent HEAL report warn that these disparities may further exacerbate deeply rooted racial and economic inequities in agriculture.

A report from the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems (IPES) links this dynamic to a broader shift toward farm consolidation, as alliances between major agribusiness and technology firms expand control over data, inputs, and decision-making across the food system. “They are shaping what technologies are developed, how food production decisions are made, and what the future of farming looks like,” IPES says.

In parallel, research evaluating environmental outcomes has found limited and inconsistent evidence that precision agriculture reduces inputs or emissions in practice. And there questions about whether the approach could deliver meaningful sustainability gains if it were more equitably accessible.

The wide-spread adoption of precision agriculture is a conflation between efficiency and sustainability, Celize Christy, Member Organizing Lead at HEAL Food Alliance, tells Food Tank. According to HEAL, the production and use of precision agriculture technologies relies heavily on internet-connected devices and energy-intensive operations which generate substantial global emissions.

While innovation is central to improving agricultural efficiency and sustainability, its benefits depend on how it is developed, governed, and deployed, experts caution.

IPES calls for “reclaiming innovation for people and planet,” emphasizing the need to strengthen public oversight, limit the concentration of power among major technology and agribusiness firms, and reshape dominant narratives about what constitutes innovation. HEAL Food Alliance suggests focusing on regenerative practices that regenerate soil, strengthen rural economies, and prioritize equity.

“Climate solutions should serve communities,” Christy tells Food Tank. “Not corporations.”

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Photo courtesy of Job Vermeulen, Unsplash

The post Food Tank Explains: Precision Agriculture appeared first on Food Tank.

EWG on FDA’s request for information on SPF and UV protection values rcoleman May 13, 2026

Attached are EWG’s comments asking the Food and Drug Administration consider moving away from SPF testing in people in favor of in vitro UV protection testing, and for the agency should consider replacing the SPF value with a UV protection value that equally weights the entire UV spectra.

File Download Document fda-1978-n-0018-15844_attachment_1.pdf Areas of Focus Personal Care Products Sunscreen Toxic Chemicals Authors David Andrews, Ph.D. Carla Burns Emily Spilman November 1, 2021

EWG on FDA’s request for information on butylated hydroxyanisole in food rcoleman May 13, 2026

Attached are EWG’s comments asking the Food and Drug Administration to remove BHA from food. submitted in response to the agency’s request for information.

File Download Document ewg-s-final-comments-on-bha-to-fda-4_13_2026-1-1.pdf Areas of Focus Food & Water Food Ultra-Processed Foods Toxic Chemicals Food Chemicals Authors David Andrews, Ph.D. Tasha Stoiber, Ph.D. May 13, 2026

Southern California has seen a spike in great white shark sightings amid a spate of unseasonably warm spring weather. Experts expect to see more unusual heat, and more sharks, in the months ahead.

Read more on E360 →

Scientists, including ecologists, are data hogs. More data can give analyses more statistical power, increasing confidence that a researcher is seeing something real in the numbers, whether it’s fluctuations in an animal’s numbers, location, or some other metric. There is generally no such thing as “too much data.”

Except when there is. As technological advances enable people to collect more information, such as images from satellites or audio from tiny weather-resistant recorders, some scientists are drowning in data.

Just one example: The proliferation of small, cheap wildlife cameras has enabled researchers to amass tens of thousands of images that can take months of tedious work to catalog. Recently, AI tools have been some help, enabling scientists to, for example, sift out images containing no wildlife at all. But people are often still spending months scrolling through grainy snapshots before doing any of the “real” analysis. In computer parlance, there’s still a “human in the loop.”

That might not be true soon, however. AI-powered programs have grown sophisticated enough that in some cases they can screen and analyze wildlife camera data with enough accuracy that the final result isn’t meaningfully different from the more common labor-intensive approach, according to a new paper in the Journal of Applied Technology. In other words, no more human in the loop.

“We’re not trying to replace people,” said Washington State University wildlife ecologist Daniel Thornton, the study’s lead author. “The goal is to help researchers get to answers faster so they can make better decisions about managing and conserving wildlife.”

The new research didn’t involve some fancy technical breakthrough in AI programming. Rather, ecologists like Thornton collaborated with people at tech giant Google to see how they could harness existing AI tools. To do that, they set up what amounted to a competition: computers versus humans.

They started with nearly 3.8 million digital photos taken by 1,200 wildlife cameras in three different locations – eastern and central Washington state, Glacier National Park in Montana, and a jungle reserve in Guatemala. The photos had been scrutinized by experts to identify the species of any mammal that turned up. Then the researchers handed them over to AI.

 

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First, they used MegaDetector, a program that detects whether animals, humans or vehicles are in an image. After that initial screening, the animal-positive images were turned over to SpeciesNet, a Google-developed program built to identify what animals are in a photo. It covers approximately 2,500 different groups of species from around the world. The results were then fed into a computer model built to convert these animal sightings into an estimation of where each species occurred on a landscape, what’s known as “occupancy.”

With the exception of a few outliers, the results from the automated AI approach weren’t very different from the analysis with a more human touch. The results aligned between 85% and 90% of the time.

It doesn’t mean the computers were perfect. Rare or hard-to-identify species sometimes tripped up the programs. SpeciesNet mistakenly classified mountain goats in Montana as domestic goats. Grizzly bears were reported in Washington, when they haven’t been there in decades.

But for many species in each of the three regions, the lightning-fast computers were as accurate as the plodding humans.

“The key question wasn’t whether the AI got every image right,” said Dan Morris, a scientist at Google who helped create SpeciesNet and is a co-author on the study. “It was whether the ecological conclusions you care about would end up being basically the same.”

If this approach finds its way out of academia, it could enable wildlife managers to get up-to-date information much more quickly about what’s happening to wild populations. Among other things, that could mean quicker alerts when an endangered species shows up somewhere, or if it’s starting to vanish.

“The big takeaway is that this doesn’t have to be a bottleneck anymore,” Thornton said of the image backlog. “If we can process data faster, we can respond faster, and that’s really what matters for conservation.”

Thornton, et. al. “Identification of camera trap images by artificial intelligence and human experts produces similar multi-species occupancy models.” Journal of Applied Ecology. May 6, 2026.

Image (based on) ©Smithsonian via Flickr

Headline News:

• “The Navy Plans To Build Fifteen Trump-Class Battleships Through 2055 At $17 Billion Per Ship” • According to the Navy’s May 2026 shipbuilding blueprint, the service intends to procure fifteen Trump-class battleships through 2055. The Navy has confirmed that the proposed Trump-class battleship will be nuclear-powered. [National Security Journal]

Proposed USS Defiant (US Navy, public domain)

• “Heat Pump Sales Proliferate In Germany As Gas Boiler Sales Drop” • In Germany, heat pumps have become the best-selling heat technology, making up 48% of all new heating systems sold in the country last year. But eight countries are transitioning faster, and in the three countries farthest north, over 50% of all homes have them already. [Euronews]
• “Renewable Energy Central To Industrial Competitiveness For India: Pralhad Joshi” • In India, Union Minister for New and Renewable Energy Pralhad Joshi highlighted that renewable energy is becoming a critical determinant of competitiveness in key industrial sectors such as steel, aluminium, chemicals, automotive and textiles. [pv magazine India]
• “Qualitas Aims To Invest €10 Billion In Energy” • Qualitas Energy plans to invest over €10 billion by 2029 in renewable energy and sustainable infrastructure. The goal is centered on the Qualitas Energy Fund VI, which launched at the end of 2025 with a €3.25 billion target volume. Investment will go primarily to Spain, Germany, the UK, Poland, and Chile. [reNews]
• “Inflation Jumps To Highest Level In Three Years” • Inflation rose for a second consecutive month as the US-Israeli war with Iran kept making gasoline prices grow in April, government data showed. The inflation report matched economists’ expectations. Prices rose 3.8% in April compared to a year earlier, an increase from 3.3% in the prior month. [ABC News]

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

Polls closed across the UK on Thursday 7 May 2026 for local elections across the UK. In England, around 5,000 local councillors across 136 councils...

The post From bad to worse: Labour’s latest defeat signals an uncertain future for British politics first appeared on Spring.

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Alberta taxpayers, municipalities, and rural landowners are facing increasing costs and harms from inactive and orphaned oil and gas wells, Calgarians heard at a town hall Tuesday evening.Co-hosted by the Pembina Institute, Alberta Environmental...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Irish state has encouraged a heavily capitalised, resource and energy intensive farming model, pushing farmers into a system tied to the weakest and most unstable links in the fossil fuel economy.

The post Talamh Beo: Ireland has a governance crisis, not a fuel crisis appeared first on La Via Campesina - EN.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

BRUSSELS — A leaked letter signed by more than 100 food and beverage company CEOs, including Coca-Cola, Heineken, McDonald’s, Kraft Heinz and Mondelez, is calling on European Union institutions to delay and reopen key provisions of the Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation (PPWR), just months before implementation is set to begin in August 2026.

On 29 April, CEOs requested EU institutions to delay key implementation timelines and revise provisions. If acted upon, requests could weaken restrictions on harmful PFAS chemicals in food packaging, and expand exemptions to keep large volumes of single-use packaging on the market, undermining the EU’s objective to reduce packaging waste at a time when waste levels remain high. Notably, a number of signatories and active sponsors of this initiative are headquartered outside the EU, raising questions about the extent to which corporate interests beyond Europe are seeking to undermine democratically agreed EU law.

A broad alliance of over 160 Break Free From Plastic members and allies, communities impacted by plastic and PFAS pollution, universities, consumer rights organisations and businesses committed to reuse, have sent a letter in response urging EU leaders to reject this lobbying push and uphold the Regulation as agreed by the European Parliament, Council and Commission.

They have warned that reopening agreed legislation at this stage risks weakening environmental protections, undermines regulatory certainty for companies already investing in compliance, and sets a precedent for corporate influence over environmental law after adoption. 

Companies have shaped the Regulation and have had years to prepare

The PPWR, one of the most heavily lobbied EU files, was adopted through the full legislative procedure, following extensive public and industry consultation. Companies have had both regulatory clarity and guidance to adapt their business models and supply chains.

Environmental and health groups argue that reopening agreed provisions would erode trust in the legislative process and deflect responsibility for democratically agreed environmental commitments back onto EU institutions. 

Public commitments contradicted by private lobbying

There is a contradiction between the voluntary sustainability commitments made by major brands and their behind-the-scenes policy positions. Several signatory companies have presented themselves as climate and circular economy leaders, yet are now seeking to weaken packaging reduction rules, delay chemical safety measures, and limit implementation of reuse systems. However, the PPWR mandatory reuse targets exist precisely because recycling alone cannot deliver the structural shift Europe needs to reduce packaging waste.

The lobbying push is creating collateral damage for businesses,  including major market players, that are genuinely committed to the success of the regulation and are already investing in the transition. Companies that have already started to adapt their supply chains around PPWR compliance are now facing unnecessary regulatory uncertainty, putting planned investments and innovation at risk. 

The power of precedent

The outcome of this lobbying effort will be closely watched across Europe and beyond as governments around the world consider similar packaging and plastics policies. If corporate lobbying succeeds in reopening a regulation weeks before it applies, it risks signalling that even landmark environmental law remains vulnerable to last-minute, covert lobbying pressure, regardless of democratic process. 

Marco Musso, Deputy Policy Manager for Circular Economy at the European Environmental Bureau, said: 

''It is disappointing to witness yet another attempt to delay and dilute a legislation designed to protect citizens and to stop the uncontrolled growth of packaging waste. Fortunately, the usual suspects behind the CEO letter do not speak for the majority of the packaging value chain. Across Europe a multitude of businesses, including major players, remain genuinely supportive of the regulation and are already investing to prepare for it. We stand with the EU institutions to preserve the integrity of the regulation and ensure effective implementation.”

Emma Priestland, Corporate Campaigns Coordinator for the Break Free From Plastic movement, said: 

“The letter sent by some of the world’s biggest users and polluters of plastic is a shocking example of corporations trying to override the democratic will of 27 countries. Their last minute attempt to derail this vital piece of legislation shows a frankly appalling disregard for the wishes, safety and wellbeing of their own customers. Companies should be focusing on ending their reliance on single-use packaging rather than influencing the law of an entire region.”

Sam Pearse, Campaigns Director from Story of Stuff, said: 

“The PPWR is a direct response to decades of fast-moving consumer goods companies shifting to disposable packaging—shedding microplastics and harmful chemicals while pushing their costs onto society. Now, some of those same companies, including U.S.-based corporations like McDonald’s, claim to support the law’s intent after pouring resources into weakening it and carving out exemptions. Their complaints ring hollow. The PPWR sets a critical global benchmark for moving away from throwaway packaging. EU leaders must hold the line — the world is watching.”

Catia De Cao, from Italian civil society network Rete Zero PFAS Italia, said: 

"I am deeply concerned about PFAS, having grown up in a region of Italy’s Veneto that has been severely affected by ‘forever chemical’ contamination. Years of exposure have left many people in my community with dangerously high levels of PFAS in their blood, increasing the risk of a multitude of serious health issues. But regardless of whether people live in pollution hotspots or not, we are all exposed to PFAS on a daily basis, as it is commonly used in food and beverage packaging. To protect people’s health - and especially the health of the youngest generations - the European Commission must go ahead with the ban of PFAS in food packaging.”

 

Notes to the editor

• Read the Break Free From Plastic and allies’ response letter here
• Read the leaked CEO letter here
• The EU Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation text and implementation timeline: 2025/40 

Press Contacts: 

• Bethany Spendlove Keeley, European Communications Manager Break Free From Plastic | Bethany@breakfreefromplastic.org | +49 (0)176 595 87 941
• Caroline Will, Communications Coordinator Rethink Plastic alliance | caroline@rethinkplasticalliance.org | +32 456 56 07 05

Migration and democratic decline in Central America cannot be understood separately from the intertwined impacts of US intervention, gang violence, economic instability and climate disruption. As droughts, displacement and insecurity deepen, the region faces growing pressure toward both migration and authoritarian rule.

A gathering in Paradise, California, will bring together fire-affected communities, local leaders and resilience practitioners to explore what rebuilding after catastrophe can look like beyond simply restoring the old normal.

War is a major driver of greenhouse gas emissions, yet most conflict-related emissions remain excluded from official climate accounting. Governments and international climate bodies must begin treating military emissions and the climate costs of war as central issues of accountability and justice.

The 7 May elections in the UK have added further proof to the pile of evidence that suggests Westminster’s two-party system is a thing of the past. Where Labour and the Conservatives languished, the Greens and Reform saw their vote shares soar. But the elections also point to another, less discussed shift: the growing support for independence among the Union’s smaller members.

Edinburgh is a city of tenements. Where urban England is generally built from winding rows of terraced houses, each with their own front door, we Scots are more often stacked in blocks of low-rise flats. The streets of our metropolitan centres are lined by four-to-five-storey façades with symmetrical rows of living-room and kitchen windows.

Wandering through those streets in recent weeks – in central Edinburgh or Glasgow – a particular flash of colour would repeatedly catch the eye: a lurid green, standing out against the soft sandstone shades which characterise these buildings. And looking closely, you would have seen words written across them in bold black ink: “Vote Green”.

At the previous Scottish Parliament election, in 2021, the Scottish Green Party (which is independent from but friendly with the one Zack Polanski leads in England and Wales) got 8.1 per cent of the vote and eight seats – a record result. On 7 May this year, the Greens got 14 per cent, and 15 of the 129 members of the Scottish Parliament (MSPs). They won only two fewer MSPs than Labour and the far-right Reform, which came second equal, and finished ahead of both the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats.

As well as winning a record number of seats, mostly through the proportional “list” system, the Scottish Greens won their first ever constituencies. They got the most votes in Edinburgh Central, where they unseated a prominent minister of the Scottish National Party (SNP), and in Glasgow Southside, which was previously represented by former first minister Nicola Sturgeon (she decided not to run this time).

A block of flats in Glasgow’s Waverley Street, with Vote Green posters in multiple windows. May 2026. Credit: ©John Smith

Scotland wants out

This exceptional result for the Greens was matched by another extraordinary success. The SNP – a centre-left party which supports independence and a return to the EU, and, before Brexit, sat alongside the Green group in the European Parliament as part of the European Free Alliance – won 58 seats, and so a fifth consecutive term in government.

The SNP’s critics point out that turnout was down, enthusiasm has waned, and the party looks tired and out of ideas as it limps towards its third decade in power. These things are all true: the SNP’s constituency vote fell from nearly 1.3 million in 2021 to less than 900,000 this time. But it’s also true that it has achieved an astonishing run of victories since 2007, despite broad opposition from the press and the British establishment. These results are all the more impressive since, in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis, this isn’t exactly an era when incumbency has been an electoral advantage. The SNP is, surely, the most successful centre-left party in Europe this century.

The relationship between the Greens and the SNP is generally as convivial as two groups of competing politicians can be. For much of the SNP’s time in power, it has been a minority government, often relying on Green votes to pass budgets. The Green complaint about the SNP isn’t usually that it is taking the country in the wrong direction, but that it is ambling in the right direction far too slowly, and is too often nudged off course by powerful vested interests. Scottish voters get two ballot papers – one for their local constituency MSP, and one for a proportional regional list. Greens don’t run in many constituencies, and their voters usually lend support to the SNP on that ballot.

Perhaps most significantly, both parties support Scottish independence and a return to the EU. Together, at this election, they won the biggest pro-independence majority in Scotland’s history, and so a clear mandate for a referendum. Should such a vote take place, most recent polls suggest a narrow victory for Yes, with the overwhelming majority of younger voters supporting independence. As it has been for a decade now, this generational divide is remarkable. One recent poll by the agency Survation (which predicted the recent election most accurately) showed that around two-thirds of Scots under 35 support independence, with only 20 per cent saying they would vote No, and the rest undecided. The majority persisted through the 45-55 age bracket, where Yes support was at 55 per cent, compared to 33 per cent opposing independence. However, only 40 per cent of those aged between 55 and 65 supported independence, and two-thirds of Scots over 65 wanted to stay in the Union.

Most worryingly for supporters of the Union, there is now strong evidence that this split is about generation rather than age. In other words, as younger voters have got older, they have continued to support independence. Millennial support for independence hasn’t dropped off as we’ve become parents and got mortgages – it’s embedded.

Securing such a referendum legally, however, requires the consent of the UK government, which it has so far refused to give since Scotland’s last independence vote in 2014. In Britain’s ancient and uncodified constitution, Westminster ultimately has absolute authority to legislate as it pleases, and no prime minister wants to be the one to have lost Scotland.

The whispers of separation

Still, as John Swinney – the re-elected first minister – argues for a new referendum, he will have some new, powerful allies. Wales held an election to its parliament – the Senedd – on the same day as Scotland. The result there was even more extraordinary: Labour had won every major election in the country for more than a century. But it was thrashed by the SNP’s sister party, Plaid Cymru, which came first with 43 of 96 seats. The far-right Reform, which had hopes of coming first, got second place with 34 seats, while Labour was reduced to nine. The Greens, who had never had a member of the Senedd before, managed to break through and win two – a remarkable achievement given that many progressive voters scrambled to back Plaid Cymru at the last minute, for fear of Reform coming first.

As in Scotland, both Plaid Cymru and the Welsh Greens support Welsh independence. Likewise, in Northern Ireland, Sinn Féin, which supports Northern Ireland leaving the UK to unite with the rest of Ireland, is now the largest party. First minister Michelle O’Neill has been quick to align with the Scottish and Welsh independence movements. While the Good Friday Agreement peace deal – which ended the civil war known euphemistically as “The Troubles” in 1998 – requires that parties from each side of Northern Ireland’s old constitutional and cultural divide share political power, O’Neill’s election in 2024 marked the first time ever that the resultant government has been led by a first minister who supports leaving the UK and joining Ireland.

Though there isn’t yet majority support for either Welsh independence or Irish unity, polls show rapid growth in favour of separating from the UK over the decade since the Brexit referendum. Majorities of young people in both places are consistently in favour, and a desire to leave the UK is now the standard position on the Left in both Northern Ireland and Wales.

Notably, support for independence is not limited to the three smaller countries in the Union. The Green Party of England and Wales has long supported the constitutional aspirations of its northern sister party, and been in favour of Welsh independence since 2020 (I am told that the Welsh Greens becoming their own party is now a matter of “when, not if”). When I interviewed English Green leader Zack Polanski about independence last year, he was an enthusiastic supporter.

The astonishing rise of the English Greens under Polanski has been well documented, and the 7 May English local elections were another profound milestone for the party. The Greens came second to Reform in the national vote share, winning hundreds of new local councillors and securing their first two elected mayors.

What  has  been less discussed is that this result means England now has a large and powerful party which supports the break-up of the UK. The very fact that this isn’t headline news is, in itself, remarkable. Over the last few months, Labour, Reform, and the UK’s famously right-wing press have attacked Greens on almost every plausible subject. The party’s positions on drugs, sex work, Palestine, and peace have been twisted into moral panics smeared across endless front pages of oligarch-owned newspapers. Yet there’s barely been a word about the fact that the Greens back the Break-up of Britain – presumably because these opponents know that most voters in England are, at most, ambivalent about the subject.

Resisting Reform

Just as significant for the UK’s future is the rise of Reform. While the far-right party finished in second place in Scotland (with Labour) and Wales, it came first in England. Like many of its counterparts across Europe, Reform doesn’t exactly have a coherent programme. But one thing which is clear is that it is a loud proponent of what I would call Anglo-British nationalism: the party has openly flirted with the idea of shutting the Welsh parliament, and has proposed reducing the size and power of the Scottish parliament, imposing more direct rule from Westminster. In England, Reform is aligned with the racist movements which have been tying English flags to lampposts across the country as part of a wider anti-immigration backlash. A fandom for Britain’s colonialist past, the party is obsessed with the old imperial institutions of the British state.

For many in Scotland, the desire for independence is bound up with the fear of being governed by that sort of right-wing, Anglo-British nationalism. Shortly after his re-election as first minister, John Swinney sought to tap into that concern, saying that Scotland must achieve independence before Reform leader Nigel Farage likely becomes British prime minister at the next UK general election.

In Scotland, many people feel that the country is trapped. Supporters of independence feel stuck in a Union they want to leave, and which they can see is careering towards a far-right government Scotland is very unlikely to have voted for (every single local authority area in the country opposed Brexit in 2016, and Reform didn’t win a single constituency in this Scottish parliament election, implying they may fail to win any MSPs at the next UK general election). For these people, there is a lingering, as-yet unanswered question: what is the mechanism for Scotland to leave the UK, should most Scots want to do so? Under the Good Friday Agreement, UK government ministers are required to hold a referendum on Irish unity if they have reason to believe it would pass. Scotland, however, has no such exit route.

On the other hand, for opponents of independence, there is a parallel frustration at being trapped in what they see as an endless, pointless conversation about our constitutional future.

A broken system

It’s not clear what the escape route from this trap might be. But one thing is obvious: this is only one part of a much larger constitutional crisis in the UK. The rise of both the Greens and Reform renders the first-past-the-post electoral system used at Westminster obsolete. The system, whereby the candidate with the most votes in each constituency wins the election regardless of whether this produces nationally proportional results, can’t possibly express voters’ views sensibly. Worse still for the Scots and Welsh, over the last two hundred years,  first-past-the-post has disproportionately delivered Conservative governments for which we haven’t voted.

 At the same time, the monarchy – long the ideological guardrail for the Westminster system – has been bruised both by the death of Elizabeth II and by the revelations about her son Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor’s relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. The default pro-Americanism of British foreign policy has been profoundly damaged by Trump; and millions have turned against it because of British complicity in Israel’s genocide of Gaza. 

While faith in representative structures has corroded across the Western world, polls consistently put Britain towards the very bottom of international rankings for trust in our politics. This isn’t surprising: Britain doesn’t have a “normal” political set-up. Where almost every other European country had a revolution or independence moment at some point, after which people gathered and wrote a constitution, Britain has a medieval system with multiple democratic features retrofitted. We have one of the most centralised systems of state power in the Western world, with almost all major decisions made at the core (particularly in England). Despite its theoretical sovereignty, our parliament has remarkably little capacity to hold that core to account. And, with the House of Lords’ entrenching cronyism, the inadequacy of the first-past-the-post system, the power of millionaire- and corporate-funded cliques, and tight control of our traditional parties through the whipping system, voters have surprisingly little influence over who sits in our parliament and what our government does, leaving a flood of corporate cash to shape the policies of our state.

In the past, British voters were willing to accept a relatively less democratic state than our European neighbours, because its imperialism delivered us all (to differing degrees) the wealth which came from the plunder of empire. Now, with the empire gone, the British state staggers from crisis to crisis, and voters feel little sense that we even have control over the direction of the staggering. Inequality is rampant, the economy is – for all but the hyper-rich – stagnant. The centres of towns across the UK are rotting.

Ultimately, it is this dysfunctionality of the Westminster system which drives the desire to leave the UK, and that problem isn’t about to be resolved. There may not be any obvious mechanism for Scotland to get its referendum, but the pressure to allow one isn’t going anywhere. And with the real risk of a Faragist government on the horizon, the demands will become increasingly desperate.

Walk through those streets in Edinburgh and Glasgow, and look up at those flats. The majority of people who live in them don’t want to live under Westminster rule, and are eager to return to the EU. How will that desire express itself over the next five years? The answer to that question could have profound implications for British – and European – politics.

Alberta’s surplus wind and solar power is curtailed by transmission limits, raising costs, increasing emissions, and highlighting the need for grid investment....

The Trump administration’s proposal to eliminate federal transit funding would clearly devastate riders, but it would also be a bloodbath for transit workers and the families who rely on them, particularly in the type of communities that make up much of the GOP base, according to a recent analysis.

Researchers at the Urban Institute recently found that the White House’s recommendation that Congress eliminate the Mass Transit Account of the Highway Trust Fund would force agencies in small metros and rural areas to cut half or more of their staff. That move which would force them to halve transit service, too, impacting countless U.S. workers’ ability to reach their jobs, too.

That’s because unlike bigger cities, which have been mostly restricted to using their federal dollars for capital projects since the 1990s, small agencies can rely on grants sent from Washington to help pay for the basics, like salaries for bus drivers and people to clean train stations.

Even larger cities have come to depend more heavily on federal money for operations since the pandemic, when lawmakers relaxed the operations funding rule to help keep agencies afloat when riders fled buses and trains. The report authors say that makes it “difficult” for them “to estimate how much cuts in federal funding could affect workforce outcomes” even into the future, especially if local sources don’t fill the gap — which they often don’t.

As a result, by 2024 even urban areas over 200,000 residents were getting 17 percent of their operating costs paid for by U.S. taxpayers. Tribal areas, meanwhile, were getting an astounding 92 percent — which means the elimination of federal dollars could essentially wipe out transit for most indigenous communities in the country.

Recommended More Than One Million Households Without a Car in Rural America Need Better Transit Kea Wilson May 18, 2020

The human costs of that move can be even higher, the researchers behind the study say. People in non-urban areas are often even more reliant on transit than their urban counterparts — and even more devastated when it vanishes, too.

An astonishing 4.3 million rural residents in the U.S. don’t have personal cars, even as they face longer commute distances that often put even the most basic needs well out of walking or biking distance, along roads with little protection for people outside vehicles.

“When you talk about the federal government cutting funds for transit, we’re talking about essentially firing half or more of the staff who work for transit agencies in those rural and tribal areas,” said Yonah Freemark, who co-authored the report. “And if folks are not there to actually drive the bus, transit agencies do not have the ability to hire a scab to make up the gap. … There has to be somebody that provides the service when the bus is ready to run, or the bus will literally not run.”

Recommended Four Factors Driving the Bus Operator Shortage (And What to Do About Them) Kea Wilson July 20, 2022

Of course, the need for more federal operations funding alone isn’t the only reason why so many transit agencies are facing a worker shortage — even if it certainly doesn’t make matters easier.

The researchers say that longstanding internal challenges like steep “job entry requirements, health and safety conditions, scheduling rules, and a lack of career advancement pathways” are all making it harder for communities to attract and retain workers, with direct impacts on the level of service they can provide. A companion study conducted by the Institute found that worker shortages in New York City caused as many as 17,843 delayed subway trips in a single month.

Low wages, on the other hand, might not actually be one of the main reasons why America is struggling to hire bus drivers and other staff — though that varies from community to community. Freemark says that while, by and large, “transit jobs are pretty competitive to other transportation industry jobs from a wage perspective,” places like Boston pay significantly less than the median wage for workers overall.

And while some GOP pundits paint transit as a lawless hellscape where workers and riders alike are under constant attack, but fear of violence is less of a concern today than it was during the pandemic — at least compared to stickier problems like inconvenient peak-hour schedules.

“Transit plays its most important role during peak hours, when other people are moving around the city or trying to get home to their families,” Freemark added. “And so from that perspective, I think transit agencies can play an important role by doing things like offering childcare benefits — which many of them do not do right now. But it could be beneficial in getting people to say, ‘It’s okay for me to take this job, even though it’s at this time that’s not ideal.”

Regardless of the reasons behind their hiring challenges, Freemark stresses that freeing up federal money for operations could help agencies solve them — and that, in turn, could help increase transit ridership across the country.

In addition to modeling Trump’s doomsday cuts (which have the support of some members of Congress), the Urban Institute also modeled what would happen if agencies got an infusion of federal operating money, by mapping how much staff agencies would need to double the number of revenue miles they operate by 2033.

That feat would require a lot of funding, but it would also result in a massive increase in jobs and access, which Freemark argues would pay for itself.

“If we were to make that investment of improved transit, it would also be a job generator, and that is not to be dismissed,” added Freemark. “Frankly, job creation is something that a lot of folks care about. We’re hopeful that this paper can help make the case for improved transit investment — not only as something that benefits riders, but also as something that benefits labor.”

Freemark acknowledges that with the GOP at the helm of the negotiations, there might not be much of an appetite in Washington for an influx of transit operating cash right now— even if advocates are still pushing hard for legislation like the Stronger Communities Through Better Transit Act to do just that.

Still, he says that we should never assume that getting shared modes more is a lost cause, especially if we can market that move as a job creator in addition to increasing access to basic mobility.

“At the beginning of Covid, transit agencies were on their knees, and Congress stepped up,” Freemark added. “I mean, they provided $69 billion — kind of out of nowhere — for transit agencies. That suggests that if the message is right and if the time is right, change can be made.”

• The highway lobby fossil fuel companies, asphalt manufacturers, automakers, engineers, road builders and truckers spends $100 million a year lobbying Congress, funding political campaigns, producing slanted policy research and trying to influence public opinion, according to a Union of Concerned Scientists report. That helps explain why 80 percent of transportation funding goes to highways, 90 percent of Americans lack access to frequent transit, and the average household spends $12,000 a year on vehicle ownership. (The Equation)
• The Supreme Court gutting the Voting Rights Act will hurt not only Black voters, but anyone who lives in a blue city in a red state could be stripped of their representation. (The American Prospect)
• Some have been calling for TSA-style checkpoints on Amtrak after a would-be Trump assassin snuck guns onto a train, but stations just aren’t set up for it, according to the Rail Passengers Association.
• FIFA gets all the money from the World Cup, while the host cities have to foot the bill for things like transportation (The Atlantic; paywall). It’s been especially challenging for places like Kansas City that don’t have a robust transit system to begin with and are tying to impress visitors (New York Times).
• Light rail advocates say a proposal to build a separate paved trail for bikes and scooters on the Atlanta Beltline would kill longstanding plans for transit. (Rough Draft)
• Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott pledged to build 17 miles of bike lanes over the next three years. (WBAL)
• Nashville residents are pushing for more Vision Zero funding as pedestrian deaths surge. (Scene)
• A Charlotte city council member was involved in a serious car crash, and says it’s deepened his commitment to Vision Zero. (WCNC)
• None of the three options approved by Sound Transit to close a budget deficit includes extending Seattle light rail to Ballard, outraging electing officials and citizens who voted for it 10 years ago. (KOMO)
• It could take more than 100 years for Ann Arbor to fill its 138 miles of sidewalk gaps unless voters approve two tax referendums. (MLive)
• China is building a new type of transit-oriented development: housing on top of train maintenance depots. (Planetizen)
• Southeast Asian nations are using transit to improve on Le Corbusier’s flawed concept of the satellite city. (Arch Daily)
• Sydney is a sprawling city like most in the U.S., but still makes public transportation work in the suburbs. (The Guardian)
• Vienna is having problems procuring parts for its hydrogen buses, which is a good reason for transit agencies to buy much more common battery-electric models instead. (CleanTechnica)