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This summer has seen Europe suffer through a series of record-breaking heatwaves.

Amid widespread media coverage of the number of deaths and the influence of climate change, the UK’s Daily Telegraph reported on new research with the incorrect headline: “Heatwaves caused by fall in pollution.”

The article was shared on social media by Richard Tice – deputy leader of the hard-right, climate-sceptic Reform UK party – along with a number of prominent rightwing commentators.

Tice claimed that “net stupid zero is contributing to rising temperatures, not helping”, adding that “we have been gaslit and lied to”.

GB News followed up with its own article, incorrectly headlined: “Britain’s scorching heatwaves caused by falling pollution levels, researchers find.”

Scientists tell Carbon Brief that the framing of heatwaves being “caused” by declining air pollution is “wrong”.

While a drop in pollution has reduced the cooling impact it has had in the past, the scientists say, Europe’s summer heatwaves are primarily becoming more extreme “as a result of greenhouse-gas-induced warming”.

Another scientist adds that “any attempt” to link this research to net-zero policies is “simply wrong”.

Fast warming

The extensive reporting around Europe’s heatwaves in recent months has often mentioned that Europe is the world’s fastest-warming continent. 

The new study in question aims to unpack why Europe’s summer temperatures are rising more quickly than other regions of the northern hemisphere’s mid and high latitudes. 

The research – published in Geophysical Research Letters – explores the role of air pollution and, specifically, how it affects circulation patterns in the atmosphere. 

(The study focuses on long-term trends in European summers and does not include the very recent heatwaves.)

Human-caused emissions of aerosols – tiny, light‑scattering particles produced mainly by burning fossil fuels – have long acted to “mask” global warming. This is largely because they absorb or reflect incoming sunlight and influence the formation and brightness of clouds. 

To understand how the climate of Europe – or any region – is changing, scientists need to take into account a whole range of factors, says Prof Bjørn Samset, a research professor at Norway’s Center for International Climate Research (CICERO), who was not involved in the work.

This includes “greenhouse gases, aerosols, land-use change, natural variability and how they all interact”, he says, adding:

“The effects of air pollution on circulation, which is the topic here, has long been difficult to pin down.”

As European countries improved their air quality through the second half of the 20th century, the cooling effect of aerosols has gradually been removed.

This can boost heatwaves in two ways – directly, by letting more sunlight reach the land surface and, indirectly, by influencing the jet stream.

Using hundreds of simulations from nine climate models, the new study finds that a decline in aerosols is resulting in more frequent “quasi-stationary Rossby waves”. 

Rossby waves are huge meanders in the jet stream. Occasionally, they become slow-moving – or “quasi-stationary” – which allows weather systems to get stuck over one region, leading to prolonged heatwaves.

These circulation changes have contributed to Europe’s rapidly warming summers.

However, while Europe’s heatwaves are being influenced by declining aerosols, it is “wrong” to say they are being “caused” by them, says Prof Erich Fischer, a climate scientist at ETH Zurich.

Headline in the Daily Telegraph, 22 July 2026.

Fischer, who was not involved in the study, tells Carbon Brief:

“Heatwaves are caused by high-pressure systems and are now much more frequent and intense because they are happening in a climate that is much warmer than 100 years ago as a result of greenhouse-gas-induced warming. 

“The paper shows that the greenhouse-gas-induced summer warming had been temporarily masked by air-polluting aerosols. The full extent for European summers only becomes visible now as the air-polluting aerosols have declined.”

Samset adds:

“Air pollution never causes or removes global warming, it only temporarily moderates it.”

Study lead author Dr Pedro Roldán‐Gómez, an associate researcher at the Barcelona Supercomputer Centre, is quoted in the Daily Telegraph saying that “most” of the “excess warming” in Europe, beyond that of comparable regions in the northern hemisphere, can be linked to declining aerosols.

But, earlier in the article, the newspaper interprets this as, simply, “most of the extra heat experienced in Britain and Europe” is down to air pollution. 

GB News uses a similar phrasing, reporting that “much of the additional warming across Britain and western Europe since the 1980s is linked to the sharp decline in airborne particles known as aerosols”.

This is “misleading”, says Fischer, while Roldan-Gomez tells Carbon Brief that this is a “tricky point”, which “could lead to wrong interpretations if not properly explained”. He adds:

“The contribution of greenhouse gases is, in any case, the most important factor.”

Headline on GB News, 23 July 2026.
Cleaner air

The Daily Telegraph’s article was seized upon by Reform’s Richard Tice to claim that “cleaner air” was causing higher temperatures, rather than CO2.

This continued his position – refuted by long-established climate science – that CO2 does not drive global warming. 

Tice also claimed in his post that net-zero policies are “contributing to rising temperatures”. Tice appears to be linking declining air pollution to a shift from fossil fuels to renewable energy.

Samset points out that net-zero became a goal “decades later” than the cumulative efforts to reduce air pollution since the 1980s and that it is “simply wrong” to link it to the study. 

“The scientific community will keep working to understand how greenhouse gas warming and air pollution interact,” he says, but “nothing we do will change the fact that the consequences of global warming are due to human-induced CO2 emissions”.

Fischer adds:

“Let us not forget that cleaning up air-polluting aerosols is highly desirable. According to the World Health Organisation, 7 million people still die prematurely every year due to air pollution.”

Clean air legislation

Finally, the Daily Telegraph article and the study itself both attribute Europe’s declining air pollution from the 1980s onwards to the Montreal Protocol.

This is a “glaring error”, Samset says, and it is “surprising that it wasn’t picked up” in the peer-review process for the study. He explains:

“The Montreal Protocol did not deal with air pollution. It dealt with ozone-depleting gases and has been an extremely successful multi-national effort against environmental damage. “

Clean air legislation was already in place in many European countries by the time the Montreal Protocol was signed in 1987, says Samset. 

In response, Roldán‐Gómez says that while the protocol did not target aerosols specifically, it “boosted the clean air policies”.

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The post Factcheck: No, Europe’s heatwaves are not being ‘caused’ by declining air pollution appeared first on Carbon Brief.

A version of this piece was featured in Food Tank’s newsletter, released weekly on Thursdays. To make sure it lands straight in your inbox and to be among the first to receive it, subscribe now by clicking here.

Do you remember what you ate for dinner last night?

Good diets can actually help support our memories! And our moods, and our metabolisms. Every day, scientists are working to better understand the powerful connections between nutrition and nearly every component of human health, both physical and mental.

Many people, including policymakers in Congress, know that high-quality nutrition can help us live longer and more healthful lives. But it’s the specific details—which nutrients are most beneficial; what metabolic and cognitive impacts do our diets have; how we can make sure people can access good food—that are particularly important for us all to understand.

That’s why Food Tank is heading to Capitol Hill next week with our partners at the Tufts University Food is Medicine Institute, for a bipartisan luncheon event titled “The Power and Peril of Food: The Latest Science on Your Mood, Memory, Metabolism, and Longevity.”

The program runs 12:00PM to 1:30PM ET, with lunch provided when doors open at 11:30. If you can join us in person, CLICK HERE to reserve a spot at the event, in Dirksen Senate Office Building, Room 106, in Washington, D.C.

Otherwise, we’ll see you in our livestream audience, which you can bookmark HERE.

We’ll also be joined by an expert lineup of speakers including United States Senators Roger Marshall of Kansas and Bill Cassidy of Louisiana; Calley Means, Senior Advisor at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services; Dariush Mozaffarian, Food is Medicine Institute; Ashley Gearhardt, PhD, University of Michigan; Eric Verdin, MD, Buck Institute for Research on Aging; Jan Ellison Baszucki, Baszucki Group; Uma Naidoo, MD, Massachusetts General Hospital; and more to be announced.

Events like Food Tank’s Capitol Hill luncheons are powerful opportunities for you to get to talk with researchers and legislators on the front lines of food science and food policy! This is about having a voice in the future of nutrition policy—and it’s also about accountability. In my opinion, it’s important to the health of our democracy for these conversations to be happening with science-backed experts and attendees who can fact-check and hold politicians to their word, rather than behind closed doors.

HERE is the link to tune into our livestream, and you can CLICK HERE to reserve a seat in person.

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

Photo courtesy of Sara Cottle, Unsplash

The post Can Better Food Policy Improve Our Memories, Moods, and Metabolisms? appeared first on Food Tank.

This story was originally reported by Jenae Barnes, Climate Reporter of The 19th. Meet Jenae and read more of their reporting on gender, politics and policy.

Anti-abortion advocates, including Republican lawmakers and state officials, want the EPA to review mifepristone as a water contaminant. Scientists say there’s no evidence it harms the environment or people.

While there is no scientific evidence that abortion medication is contaminating Americans’ water supply, it has nonetheless become a central claim by the anti-abortion movement. Activists, Instagram influencers and Republican Party officials — including state and federal lawmakers — are doubling down on what experts describe as a disinformation campaign that mixes environmental policy and reproductive rights, and risks exploiting legitimate concerns about clean water.

“What if I were to tell you that every time you fill up a glass of water at your kitchen sink from the tap, you were actually *drinking* someone else’s abortion,” influencer Isabel Brown wrote in an Instagram post in May. In the accompanying video, the Gen Z conservative content creator, who has more than 1 million followers on her platform, talks to Kristan Hawkins, president of Students for Life of America, a national anti-abortion organization, and contends that anti-abortion medication is “poisoning” the water.

The claim isn’t new. For decades, anti-abortion advocates have argued that abortion medications, primarily mifepristone, pollute the environment and put pregnant people’s health at risk. But the argument has now become part of a widespread and often coordinated effort to create federal and state policy that further suppresses abortion access.

On June 5, 14 Republican state attorneys general and 19 GOP lawmakers in Congress urged the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to classify and regulate mifepristone as a water contaminant. In two concurrent letters, officials argued that the abortion medication, part of a safe and effective two-drug regimen to terminate pregnancies, is “a growing threat to the country’s waterways” and violates the Safe Drinking Water Act.

One letter was signed by attorneys general of Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Missouri, Nebraska, Louisiana, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Texas. The other letter, led by Republican Rep. Chris Smith of New Jersey, made similar claims and was signed by 18 other GOP lawmakers.

Environmental health experts have consistently said there is no scientific evidence that abortion medication causes harm to the environment — or to humans. Both reproductive rights advocates and environmental scientists have said that the argument co-opts environmental policy as a pathway to weaponize and stigmatize health care.

“This is really part of a broader effort to restrict access to medication abortion,” said Anna Bernstein, principal federal policy adviser at the Guttmacher Institute, a research organization that supports reproductive rights. She said anti-abortion activists are increasingly turning to “every lever they can” as medication abortion has become the largest share of abortion care nationwide. Medication abortion accounted for 63 percent of all abortions in the United States in 2023, according to Guttmacher Institute data.

Does Oral Abortion Medication Really End Up in Drinking Water?

Anti-abortion advocates contend that over 50 tons of medical waste “including blood, placental tissue, and human remains” are flushed into water systems each year as a result of these drugs. They argue high concentration of the elements of mifepristone in water, specifically a hormone called progesterone, disrupts and reduces fertility in women. They also say that previous results of federal testing of mifepristone’s environmental impact are outdated.

Environmental health experts dismiss these claims. These experts consistently point out that there is no scientific basis for treating mifepristone or other abortion medication as a water contaminant. Nathan Donley, the environmental health science director at the Center for Biological Diversity, pointed out that mifepristone is used by a small fraction of the population and is typically taken as a one-time dose. By comparison, many pharmaceuticals taken daily by tens of millions of Americans enter wastewater systems in far greater quantities. He also noted that mifepristone was not included among nearly 700 pharmaceutical compounds the EPA previously screened for potential water contamination concerns.

Instead, Donley described the effort as an attempt to use environmental concerns as a pretext for limiting reproductive rights. He noted that while proponents are seeking to add mifepristone to the EPA’s 6th Contaminant Candidate List (CCL6), a preliminary list of substances that could potentially be considered for future drinking water regulation, placement on the list would not itself regulate the drug but could begin a lengthy review process.

Donley added that focusing on mifepristone distracts from well-documented water quality threats, including PFAS — known as forever chemicals — pesticides, lead and nitrate contamination.

“There are legitimate water quality threats that we need to attack and rectify in a regulatory manner. And then there are things that are out in the left field that just distract people,” Donley said.

Where Did This Argument Come From and Why Is It Gaining Traction Again Now?

In 1996, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) tested for the environmental effects of mifepristone and found “no significant impact.” In the June letter, lawmakers cite the FDA study, and urge “reconsideration” of potential harm to the environment.

Since the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization eliminated the federal constitutional right to abortion, opponents have increasingly focused on limiting access to abortion medication and prescribing it through telehealth, which has become a critical pathway for people living in states with abortion bans.

But anti-abortion groups have ramped up efforts during the second Trump administration to advocate for the official classification of mifepristone as a water contaminant.

Last November, Students for Life of America (SFLA), a national anti-abortion group, met with the EPA to advocate for adding mifepristone to the CCL6 as the agency carried out a routine update to a separate list of health benchmarks for pharmaceuticals that must be tracked in drinking water.

The coordinated letters in June were timed toward the EPA’s 60-day comment period, which began in April and allowed members of the public to submit their thoughts on draft proposals to be reviewed by the agency.

“SFLA asks that mifepristone be tracked, given the reasonable cause for concern that regular and ongoing exposure to a progesterone blocker is impacting public health, endangered species, and the environment,” the anti-abortion group said in a statement on their website, adding that the group plans to take on the issue in every state. “You don’t have to be pro-life to want clean drinking water. You don’t have to be pro-life to be concerned that we are being ‘microdosed’ by progesterone blockers, which are a factor in rising infertility.”

The SFLA said it collected over 1,700 public comments to send to the EPA, and helped spearhead the 14-state campaign of letters from attorneys general to the EPA ahead of its public comment period for the CCL6.

The draft for the CCL6 received nearly 22,000 public comments before closing on June 5, public records show.

How Are Lawmakers Trying to Change Environmental Abortion Policies?

In 2025, anti-abortion policymakers introduced nine bills in seven states tying medication abortion to water pollution, according to the Guttmacher Institute. That same year, 25 members of Congress sent a similar letter asking the EPA to monitor for environmental harms of mifepristone. This March, U.S. Rep Mary Miller, a Republican from Illinois, introduced a Clean Water for All Life Act, citing similar claims of environmental degradation from abortion medication.

According to Bernstein and Guttmacher state policy adviser Kimya Forouzan, some proposals would require state agencies to test wastewater for abortion medications. Others would require patients to use so-called “catch kits” and medical waste bags to collect and return pregnancy tissue after taking abortion medication. Some bills would create liability for drug manufacturers if abortion medications were detected in wastewater.

While the bills vary, abortion rights advocates say they share a common goal: creating additional barriers to medication abortion access.

“The CCL is one part of a broad regulatory process. This draft list is then used to inform another list, which determines which contaminants are monitored and regulated, but the surveillance really does happen at a municipality and then state level,” Bernstein said, adding: “So this would be setting federal benchmarks for localities to monitor in their wastewater.”

To date, neither President Donald Trump nor EPA chief Lee Zeldin have explicitly spoken to any health risks of mifepristone in water. But the president and leading administration officials’ decision to stay silent on the issue may increase pressure from anti-abortion advocates, according to Bernstein.

“We anticipate that disinformation campaigns surrounding mifepristone, including these false claims on the environmental impact, will continue to escalate — particularly as abortion opponents are frustrated at a perceived lack of action by the Trump administration,” Bernstein told The 19th. “We know, however, that restricting access to abortion is politically unfavorable, and candidates may be hesitant to focus on these efforts before the midterm elections.

What Are the Stakes for Pregnant People?

As abortion rights and access have shrunk, Forouzan said that medication abortion has become a “lifeline” for many people seeking care after Dobbs, particularly through telehealth providers operating under shield laws, which are state-by-state legal protections to safeguard practitioners from being sued by states with abortion bans. As a result, anti-abortion officials at the state and federal level have increasingly focused on restricting the remaining ways people can access abortion care.

Forouzan said the push to monitor abortion medication in wastewater contributes to a broader “culture of surveillance” surrounding abortion. She said proposals to test wastewater for mifepristone raise concerns about how such monitoring data could eventually be used and whether it could increase scrutiny of people who obtain medication abortions.

Do These Claims Have the Potential to Affect Federal Policy?

The potential of environmental harms continues to shape policy for abortion and anti-abortion advocates. On the anniversary of Dobbs, Rep. Brittany Pettersen, a Democrat from Colorado, submitted a resolution to address the disinformation campaign, saying that water systems should “not be weaponized for the purposes of surveilling, tracking, or detecting use of, stigmatizing, and further restricting access to medication abortion care.”

Advocates also point to what they see as a contradiction in the campaign. Many of the same advocates and elected officials who support mifepristone monitoring have opposed other environmental hazard regulations. For example, in Indiana, where the state’s attorney general co-signed the letter, state lawmakers recently passed legislation to deregulate the Indiana Department of Environmental Management, an agency in charge of limiting pollution in the state’s air, water and soil.

The EPA has already taken action to recommend states begin testing drinking water for abortion medications. In April, the agency released a list of 374 drugs that states should monitor. While it does not include mifepristone, it does include other medications used in abortions such as misoprostol and methotrexate, commonly used in daily birth control and the NuvaRing contraceptive. It’s the first time the agency has designated pharmaceuticals as a contaminant group, according to an April press release.

The EPA did not respond to The 19th’s request for comment.

The EPA’s comment period allowed 60 days for the public to weigh in on the list before agency staff began reviewing the feedback and finalizing. Now that the June comment period has closed, whether the agency will ultimately add the medication to the list remains uncertain. However, when federal regulators previously reviewed environmental concerns related to mifepristone, they found no evidence warranting restrictions, according to Bernstein.

Bernstein and Forouzan said that anti-abortion states and lawmakers often learn from each other in order to pass bills in their respective states. Forouzan added these efforts work “parallel” to federal bill proposals, both with the same goal: to restrict further access.

“Its really just to restrict access to mifepristone and specifically to roll back requirements to force in-person dispensation, which would really limit access to a lot of folks.”

Four years after the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs, reproductive advocates say the evolution of anti-abortion campaigns continue to “severely restrict” access to care across the country. Thirteen states currently enforce total bans, and 6 explicitly prohibit telehealth use to provide abortion pills, according to Guttmacher Institute.

“It’s contributing to this culture of surveillance around medication abortion at a time when that is already increasing, and folks, especially in banned states, are facing increasing fear of criminalization,” Bernstein said. “There are concerns whether it will be eventually used for the criminalization of patients, in addition to creating a broader restriction of mifepristone and perpetuating these myths.”

The post No, Drinking Water Isn’t Contaminated By Abortion Pills appeared first on The Revelator.

Two chemicals with safety concerns are still in your food. EWG is urging the FDA to act. Iris Myers July 24, 2026

Two additives, known as ADA and BHT, are found in cereal, baked goods and other processed food millions of Americans enjoy. They’re also linked to potential health harms such as cancer and hormone disruption, so EWG is reiterating calls for banning their use in food.

Even though research on the two chemicals is ongoing, studies so far in animals or humans have already found their potential to cause health problems. These concerns justify the Food and Drug Administration revoking its approval for use of the two additives, EWG said in a pair of letters submitted to the agency earlier this month.

Safer alternatives to ADA and BHT are available, allowing manufacturers to achieve the same functions without relying on these chemicals. Some retailers – including major chains like Pizza Hut and Whole Foods Market – have already taken steps to get one or both of the additives out of their products. 

It’s time for the regulatory system to catch up with the science and food companies’ voluntary actions.

Ongoing FDA review

The comments follow the FDA’ s request for information, or RFI, about the two chemicals in food earlier this year – ADA, or azodicarbonamide, and BHT, or butylated hydroxytoluene. 

It’s part of the agency’s new program to reevaluate the safety of food chemicals.

The RFI only gathers input – it isn’t any kind of policy action. But the comments it receives on the request could eventually be used to guide decisions about allowing the additives in food.

That’s why EWG weighed in with written comments highlighting our concerns. The deadline to submit comments on BHT has been extended to August 13. The comment period for ADA closed on July 13.

What is ADA?

ADA was greenlighted for use in food in 1962 by the FDA as “generally recognized as safe,” or GRAS. It’s added to baked goods as a dough conditioner. 

ADA breaks down during breadmaking, and two of its breakdown products, semicarbazide and urethane, have been shown to cause cancer. Urethane can also damage the reproductive system.

Because of these concerns, ADA is not permitted as a food additive in Australia or the European Union. International evaluations have also identified kidney effects in laboratory animals exposed to ADA.

Despite these concerns, the FDA has not thoroughly reexamined ADA’s safety in light of newer research on its potential health effects.

Lawmakers in New York and Texas introduced legislation to remove ADA from food sold in their states, but neither bill passed.

Several food retailers, including Whole Foods, Aldi and Walmart, have voluntarily removed or restricted ADA in their products. A 2025 survey by the American Bakers Association found that nearly 95% of its member companies already don’t use ADA.

Given the evidence of health risks – and how few companies still use the chemical – the FDA should take decisive action to end the use of ADA in food.

What is BHT?

The FDA approved BHT for use in food in 1954 and deemed it GRAS in 1959. The chemical is commonly added to breakfast cereal, frozen pizza, chewing gum and other processed foods, acting as a preservative, extending the shelf life of fats and oils. 

While it has not been formally classified as a carcinogen, studies have linked it to tumor promotion in animals. It has also been linked to damage to DNA and hormonal disruption.

A 2019 study found that U.S. residents had some of the highest exposure levels of BHT globally, with some exposure estimates exceeding safety limits. The chemical has been detected in human cord blood, breast milk, blood, urine and body fat.

Some states have already acted on concerns about BHT’s health effects, and several major food retailers and manufacturers, including Whole Foods and General Mills, have voluntarily removed the chemical from many products. 

Given the already available evidence showing the potential health risks of BHT, the FDA should act to immediately revoke approval for its use in food.

The trouble with GRAS

Both BHT and ADA remain on the market, thanks to their GRAS status.

When Congress created the GRAS exemption, in 1958, it was intended to apply to ingredients whose safety was beyond dispute, such as salt, water, yeast and vinegar.

But in the decades since, GRAS has expanded far beyond that intent. Since 2000, nearly 99% of new food chemicals have entered the market through the GRAS loophole, according to a 2025 EWG analysis. This lets scores of food chemicals reach store shelves with little government oversight, leaving food safety in the hands of manufacturers.

To protect the safety of our food supply from harmful chemicals like BHT and ADA, the FDA must close the GRAS loophole.

In March 2025 the Department of Health and Human Services, of which the FDA is part, announced a plan to review GRAS, originally slated for October 2025. That timeline has since been delayed to December 2026. The announcement could eventually lead to changes in the GRAS rule, but without firm proposals, there’s no real progress on food safety.

In the absence of enforceable federal action on GRAS, New York passed a bill that would ban use of three harmful food chemicals statewide – Red Dye No. 3, potassium bromate and propyl paraben – and reform the GRAS loophole at the state level. The bill awaits Gov. Kathy Hochul’s signature.

What you can do

While we wait for the FDA to act on BHT and ADA and amend the GRAS loophole, consumers can minimize exposure to harmful food chemicals with these tips.

• Check ingredient labels and avoid food products that contain BHT and ADA. Food companies must list these on packaged food labels if they’re added as a food ingredient.
• Consult EWG’s Food Scores database to find products without BHT, ADA and other concerning ingredients. When you’re on the go, use EWG’s Healthy Living™ app to find products without toxic chemicals.
• Whenever possible, look for packaged foods that are certified organic. These products must meet strong standards that protect consumers from exposure to potentially harmful additives.
• Reduce consumption of ultra-processed foods when possible. Many contain ingredients of concern that could harm your health.

Areas of Focus Food Ultra-Processed Foods Toxic Chemicals Food Chemicals Authors Iris Myers July 24, 2026

تابلۆی جیهانی جێگرەوەکان، بەیاننامەی گەلانی باندۆنگ [ English ] [ Español ] [ Français ] [ Português] [ Kurdish] دەرچووە دوای دووەمین کۆبوونەوەی ڕووبەڕووی “تۆڕی جیهانیی جێگرەوەکان” کە لە باندونگ، ئیندۆنیزیا، لە ١١-١٧ی نیسانی ٢٠٢٦ بەڕێوەچوو.

The use of small, controlled burns to clear out flammable underbrush has saved thousands of giant sequoias from devastating wildfires, new research finds.

Read more on E360 →

A growing problem of modern industrial agriculture is the accumulation of ‘forever chemicals’ like PFAS in the soil. But now, researchers have developed a three-part plan involving hemp plants to draw it out of the soil—one that they say will cost a fraction of regular toxic clean up, and remove CO2 while they’re at it.

For decades, groups of persistent synthetic chemicals like PFAS have been used to make a range of products including food-contact materials, so accumulating in our bodies, and then our waste—which often becomes fertilizer. This has created a situation where swathes of farmland is now straining under a toxic load. Some farms in US states like Maine have even been forced to shut down because their soils exceeded safe limits for crop production and consumption. 

The new study proposes that the solution to this industrial threat is plants, rock dust and biochar. The research, led out of Yale University, developed a pollution remediation model based on available data from farms in Maine and looked at two types of PFAS: PFOS and PFOAS. They first considered what would happen if they applied basalt rock dust to the soil, a common approach for sequestering carbon dioxide—but which also changes the pH in ways that makes chemicals more mobile in the soil.

While that might sound counterintuitive to the goal, it makes chemicals like PFAS more available for uptake by plants—like the hemp and perennial grasses the researchers tested in the study. They modeled the effects of this plant growth, and then also looked at what would happen if the cuttings were turned into biochar, the heat in this process being a way to neutralize the toxicity of the chemicals. As a final step, they considered scattering this biochar product across other particularly contaminated farmlands as a method to trap forever chemicals and stop them from entering run off and further polluting other ecosystems from farms.

The application of the rock dust was found to increase uptake of PFOS via plants, accelerating the decline of this chemical in the soil by between 20 and 40 percent. The effects weren’t as strong for PFOAS, but PFOS are considered the bigger regulatory priority, the researchers say. 

 

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If the uptake plants were recycled into biochar and spread over contaminated farmland, this would immobilize enough PFAS to reduce the runoff of these chemicals by 95%. Overall, they found that these combined solutions could limit PFAS levels in US soils to below the thresholds of concern within a decade. The double-whammy of rock dust and biochar would also remove 10.5 million metric tons of carbon dioxide annually if these remediation methods were scaled up cross-country. 

Conventional clean-up methods would involve excavating and burning a huge quantity of farmland soil: this huge endeavour would cost an estimated $1.6 million per hectare, ultimately amounting to $8 trillion ultimately. Meanwhile, the researchers calculate that their approach would cut that per-hectare annual cost to a fraction—just $1,460.

The study focused on the US, but its authors are keen to emphasize its rest-of-the-world relevance. In Europe 50% of sewage sludge—about 10 millions tons—produced annually is spread over farmland; China applies the same amount to its soils. In the UK that figure is 70%. PFAS is likely to keep accumulating in soil, but their solution to this problem is “broadly applicable,” the researchers say. 

“We outline a path that allows farmers to continue to work their land while restoring soil health.”

Planavsky et. al. “Integrated thermal and phytoremediation of agriculturalsoils impacted by PFAS.” PNAS. 2026.

Image: ©Anthropocene Magazine

Empowering women through greater access to finance could “strengthen” households’ resilience to “climate shocks”, according to a new study.  

Published in Climate Risk Management, it analyses the impact of financial access on “women-headed households” in sub-Saharan Africa. 

The study finds that where women had formal financial access – such as through owning a bank account – households were more able to withstand short-term shocks.

It adds that “climate shocks”, such as extreme weather events and the impacts of climate change, can cause economic crises, which destabilise communities and households. 

However, the authors say that in order to protect households from long-term climate vulnerabilities – including “droughts, floods and sea-level rise” – financial access would need to be paired with wider efforts to tackle gender inequality. 

They add that the findings could have important implications for policy in sub-Saharan Africa, where many countries and households are vulnerable to climate disasters. 

Financial inclusion 

The study highlights that entrenched gender disparities mean many women still have unequal access to financial services in sub-Saharan Africa

For example, women are still less likely to have their own bank accounts and instead are often dependent on male relatives for access to finance. 

The number of women with access to an account in the region had risen to 52% as of 2024, according to data from World Bank Group.

However, as shown in the chart below, the gap between men and women has also increased, rising from just under 5 percentage points in 2011 to 12 in 2024. 

Share of population with bank accounts by gender over 2011-2024, %. Source: Global Findex Database, World Bank Group

Using survey data from Afrobarometer, the new study analyses 25,511 women-headed households across 37 sub-Saharan countries. 

The authors use the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD) framework to measure “financial inclusion”. This looks at factors such as having a bank account, owning a mobile phone and having internet access. 

Francis Anaisie, a co-author on the study, tells Carbon Brief the researchers were motivated by the UN’s sustainable development goals (SDGs). Anaisie, an economist at the University of Cape Coast, Ghana, says the study specifically looked at SDGs five and 13, on gender equality and addressing climate issues. He adds: 

“Financial inclusion is one of the key policy tools for empowering women or for empowerment. But as to whether this actually translates into better climate outcomes for women is not known or is limited; this study seeks to address that gap.”

The study finds households with higher levels of financial access for women had higher levels of women’s empowerment, when this is defined as the ability to make choices and have control over economic and social outcomes. 

This was checked by cross-comparing financial access against different measures of women’s empowerment, such as financial security, voting rights and connection to communities.

In particular, the study found that “financially included” women had greater political and economic empowerment, such as financial security and voting rights. On some measures of social empowerment, however, the link was weaker – financial access alone was not enough to erase cultural and social barriers to gender equality. 

Women and climate change 

It has been well documented that women are more vulnerable to the impacts of climate change than men. 

Environmental shocks affect women disproportionately due to a range of factors. These include income disparities, higher rates of displacement and unequal access to land.

Financial inequality and barriers to economic resources, such as needing internet access to make digital payments, play a key role in climate vulnerability, says Tracy Kajumba. She is director for the Least Developed Countries initiative for Effective Adaptation and Resilience (LIFE-AR) interim secretariat at the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED). 

Kajumba, who was not involved in the study, explains to Carbon Brief:

“Women are on the front line doing farming, planting, harvesting and these things that are all impacted [by climate change]. If they don’t have the income to invest either in drought-resistant crops or water-saving technologies, it becomes difficult for households to adapt.”

Calculating climate resilience 

The new study measures the impact of financial inclusion on women’s empowerment and, in turn, on climate resilience.  

It evaluates a household’s ability to withstand and recover from “shocks and stressors” by using a UN Food and Agriculture Organization metric for “resilience index measurement and analysis” (RIMA). 

For example, questionnaires are used to gather information about households in certain areas. The data is then used, together with key indicators, to quantify a household’s resilience to food insecurity, climate variability and economic crisis, amongst other risks. 

The 25,511 households surveyed across sub-Saharan Africa were found to be relatively resilient overall and had a high capacity to bounce back from climate shocks. However, they had much lower ability to adapt, in order to build protective capacity in advance of extreme events.

In addition, the study finds that women’s financial empowerment had a positive impact on a household’s ability to “absorb” a climate shock, suggesting that financial access is critical for responding to climate change. 

Community garden and climate adaption project, focusing on women’s empowerment, Niger. Credit: Joerg Boethling / Alamy Stock Photo

Increased empowerment through financial access enables women to make decisions about planting crops, to access credit in emergencies and to buy or sell food at a better price, the study notes. 

For example, it says increased financial access and women’s empowerment help households to deal with the immediate consequences of an extreme weather event, such as a drought. This could be through building community mutual-support networks and by enabling access to savings, to keep the household running. 

Anaisie says the study shows women’s empowerment has a significant impact on climate resilience. He tells Carbon Brief: 

“If we include women in the financial system, in the case of any climate issue they can save, they can be independent, they can rely on investment to absorb these shocks. This empowerment will help them to be more resilient to climate shocks…We can make progress because SDG goals are all about inclusiveness. It’s all about inclusive growth.”

However, the study notes that financial access does not necessarily create long-term change, which would make the household less vulnerable to extreme weather in the first place. 

The authors suggest that lasting structural and cultural change is important for bringing about long-term resilience. They say that policies to address gender inequalities would help bring this about.

They say such policies could include gender-sensitive agricultural credit schemes, subsidised climate insurance for women farmers in drought-prone regions, joint land-titling programmes and quotas for women in local climate-adaptation committees. 

Such policies would have helped women impacted by recent severe floods in Ghana to protect their savings, Anaisie explains. He tells Carbon Brief: 

“Women are engaged in economic activities, especially informal activities. They have resources and money, but when the flood came in, many women lost that. If they had access to insurance, this flood wouldn’t have cost them that much. 

“So, if the government comes out with financial initiatives, training, civic education and gender-focused initiatives, leadership training, women will be empowered and this will translate into their resilience with regards to climate change.”

Addressing climate vulnerability in sub-Saharan Africa 

The study could have policy implications for sub-Saharan Africa, a region particularly vulnerable to the effects of climate change. The region faces increasingly extreme weather, heatwaves, droughts, wildfires and floods, as well as food scarcity and threats to crops. 

The study suggests that policies to address structural and cultural barriers to women’s financial autonomy could be a key way to build climate resilience across the region. 

However, it recognises that even where financial access is expanded, gender norms and cultural constraints continue to shape women’s social empowerment. This, in turn, affects their ability to adapt to climate change in the long term. 

Ultimately, addressing structural inequalities is needed to minimise climate vulnerability, says Kajumba. She adds that supporting adaptation with financial access can allow households to absorb shocks without falling into poverty – and to rebuild after climate impacts. 

Kajumba says that supporting adaptation with women’s financial access can allow households to absorb shocks without falling into poverty – and to rebuild after climate impacts. She adds:

“When they are supported [with] microloans, savings and all that, you will see change in income, change in households, change in health and education for the children as well.”

However, Kajumba notes that structural inequalities still “amplify” women’s vulnerability to climate impacts and make it harder for them to exercise agency and leadership. She adds:

“The tools that are being used are not always favourable for women…When we look at women in leadership and participation, you cannot lead or you cannot participate unless you have some level of income.”

Article information

Essossinam, A. et al. (2026) Effect of financial inclusion and women empowerment on climate resilience: Evidence from sub-Saharan African households, Climate Risk Management, doi:10.1016/j.crm.2026.100848

Related UK withdraws millions in funding from world’s second-largest rainforest in Congo  15.07.2026 Nature Climate change and La Niña made ‘devastating’ southern African floods more intense 29.01.2026 Attribution Climate change could lead to 500,000 ‘additional’ malaria deaths in Africa by 2050 28.01.2026 Health and society Guest post: How climate science is – and is not – shaping adaptation planning in southern Africa 01.05.2025 Adaptation

The post Access to finance ‘strengthens climate resilience’ among sub-Saharan women appeared first on Carbon Brief.

EDMONTON — Tim Weis, Senior Director, Industrial Decarbonization at the Pembina Institute, made the following statement following the First Ministers’ announcement to advance the buildout of electricity infrastructure between provinces. “Recent...

Headline News:

• “How The UK’s ‘Radical’ New Energy Secretary Could Kill North Sea Drilling” • Concerns that the UK will U-turn on its pledge to phase out North Sea drilling are back with a new Prime Minister, Andy Burnham. Energy Secretary Miatta Fahnbulleh is called a “radical economist.” Outspoken about the climate crisis, she could end the North Sea debates. [Euronews]

Miatta Fahnbulleh (Roger Harris, ©House of Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0)

• “Renewables Provide More Than 30% Of US Electricity” • New data from the US Energy Information Administration, which was reviewed by the SUN DAY Campaign, shows growth of over 10% in electrical generation by renewable energy sources in the first five months of 2026 while total fossil fuel and nuclear capacity keep lagging far behind. [CleanTechnica]
• “Global Oil Prices Cross $100 A Barrel As Iran War Sends Fuel Prices Surging” • Global oil prices crossed $100 a barrel for the first time since May, after Houthi militants in Yemen claimed to have struck two Saudi tankers in the Red Sea. The reported attack threatened to worsen an oil shock that had already been one of the largest in history. [ABC News]
• “Driving The Speed Limit Could Save You Money And Cut Emissions” • A study, published in the journal Communications Sustainability, found that if US drivers complied with posted speed limits, it could save an average of $22 million, more than 6.6 million gallons of fuel, and 57,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions every single day. [Euronews]
• “Utilities And Big Tech Pay Lip Service, “Pledge” To Keep Costs Down” • According to reporting by POLITICO, more utility and technology companies will sign onto a nonbinding pledge to keep electricity costs down and protect ratepayers from the skyrocketing bills driven by data centers’ energy demands. “Nonbinding” means what it says. [CleanTechnica]

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

As 2026 passes its halfway point, the world is watching one of the most rapidly intensifying El Niño events in the modern record take shape in the tropical Pacific.

The developing El Niño is boosting expectations for global temperatures, both this year and next.

El Niño is the warm phase of a recurring climate pattern in the tropical Pacific that releases heat from the ocean into the atmosphere, temporarily raising global temperatures and reshaping rainfall and extreme weather around the world.

Carbon Brief’s “state of the climate” report in April gave 2026 a 19% chance of setting a new global temperature record. 

That chance now stands at 35% – a near-doubling in four months – with virtually all of the change driven by ever-stronger El Niño forecasts.

The key findings from the first half of 2026 include:

• The first six months of 2026 were the third-warmest start to a year on record – around 1.4C above pre-industrial levels – behind only 2024 and 2025. 
• While the first few months of the year came in as the fourth or fifth warmest, both May and June were the second-warmest ever recorded as El Niño conditions took hold.
• El Niño conditions arrived in April and reached the threshold for a “strong” event by June, when the Niño3.4 index reached 1.6C. Of the 667 model runs Carbon Brief examined, 91% project a peak later this year that is above the strongest El Niño in history.
• The chance that 2026 beats 2024 as the warmest year on record has risen to 35%. Carbon Brief’s central estimate remains that 2026 will be the second-warmest year, at around 1.51C above pre-industrial levels.
• Whether 2026 sets a record will depend on the dataset: the odds range from around two-in-three in NASA and Berkeley Earth data to around two-in-10 in ERA5 and one-in-10 in the JRA-3Q reanalyses.
• June 2026 was western Europe’s hottest June on record, amid a heatwave that set hundreds of individual records. Nearly 9% of the world’s surface saw record June warmth.
• The developing El Niño will have its largest impact on 2027, which Carbon Brief projects to be around 1.7C above pre-industrial levels – this would comfortably set a new record for the warmest year.
• Arctic sea ice has spent 39 days of 2026 so far at, or below, record daily lows following its joint-lowest winter maximum in the satellite era.

Third-warmest start to a year

Carbon Brief analyses records from six different groups that report global surface temperatures: NASA GISTEMP, NOAA GlobalTemp, Hadley/UEA HadCRUT5, Berkeley Earth, Copernicus/ECMWF ERA5 and the JMA JRA-3Q reanalysis.

The first half of 2026 was the third warmest on record in every one of the six datasets, behind only 2024 and 2025. The figure below shows annual temperatures since 1970, along with the 2026 year-to-date average (January-June) for each group.

Annual global average surface temperatures from the six groups (lines), along with 2026 temperatures so far (January-June, coloured dots). Note that HadCRUT5 and ERA5 dots reflect January-May, as their June values were not yet published. Chart by Carbon Brief.

January 2026 was only the fourth- or fifth-warmest January on record, as lingering weak La Niña conditions suppressed temperatures. Since then, each month has climbed the rankings.

La Niña is the cool phase of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO). It typically brings wetter conditions to Australia, Indonesia and equatorial South America and drier conditions to the southern US.

March was second-to-fourth warmest across datasets, April the third and both May and June were the second warmest ever recorded, behind only the corresponding months of 2024.

The chart below shows how June 2026 (thick red line) came in around 0.08C below the June record set in 2024 in the average of the six datasets.

Meanwhile, Copernicus reported that global sea surface temperatures over the ice-free oceans set a new June record.

Average global surface temperatures for each month from 1940 to June 2028 from six forecasting groups, with lines coloured by decade. Chart by Carbon Brief. A record-breaking El Niño 

ENSO is the largest source of year-to-year variability in global temperatures. 

The most common way to assess the strength of an El Niño or La Niña event is by looking at the sea surface temperature anomaly in the “Niño3.4” region of the tropical Pacific. 

El Niño and its sister La Niña occur when temperatures in the tropical Pacific are more than 0.5C (El Niño) or less than 0.5C (La Niña) below normal, where normal is defined by removing the effects of long-term climate change. 

The thresholds for defining the strength of an El Niño or La Niña are above/below 1C for “moderate” events, 1.5C for “strong” events and 2C for “very strong” (or “super”) events.

After two years dominated by La Niña conditions, the tropical Pacific flipped decisively in April when the Niño3.4 index crossed the 0.5C El Niño threshold. It subsequently reached 1C in May and hit 1.6C in June, marking one of the fastest onsets in the observational record. 

In the first few weeks of July, the index shot above 2C, significantly outpacing the speed at which any prior El Niño events developed.

Forecast models expect even more to come. 

An analysis by Carbon Brief of the median of 667 model runs from 14 different modelling groups suggests that sea surface temperatures in theNiño3.4 region could peak at 3.59C between July and December. 

More than 91% of runs predict the strongest El Niño event in the modern record. The previous record was set during the event of 2015-16, when temperatures peaked around 2.75C.

This is shown in the chart below, which features a histogram of the likelihood of different possible 2026 El Niño peaks across all the models on the top. The forest plot beneath shows the best estimate and range of outcomes predicted by each individual model.

Top panel: Model-weighted distribution of each member’s peak Jul-Dec 2026 Niño3.4 anomaly (red bars), with the dotted yellow line indicating the weighted median (+3.6C) and the dotted blue line the prior record peak (2015-16, 2.75C). Bottom panel: median and 10th-90th percentile peak for each modelling group, with its typical peak month. The figure includes 667 model runs from 14 different modelling groups (from the CFS, NMME, C3S, CanSIPS and SINTEX-F systems). Chart by Carbon Brief.

The median forecast in every one of the 14 models suggests a peak that exceeds the 2C “super” El Niño threshold, with most models peaking in November or December.

Some caution here is warranted, however. Raw model Niño3.4 anomalies are measured against a fixed climatology. Because the entire tropical ocean has warmed due to human-caused greenhouse gas emissions, the models tend to overstate event strength relative to the historical record. 

A cleaner comparison uses the relative Niño3.4 index (RONI), which subtracts the average tropical ocean warming.

This relative measure suggests the median forecast peak for El Niño in the latter half of 2026 is 3.1C. The prior record stands at a lower 2.69C, set in 1982-83. 

Nevertheless, 77% of model runs still show a new record event occurring. This is shown in the chart below.

Top panel: Model-weighted distribution of each member’s peak Jul-Dec 2026 RONI (red bars), with the dotted yellow line indicating the weighted median (+3.1C) and the dotted blue line the prior record peak (1982-83, 2.69C). Bottom panel: median and 10th-90th percentile peak for each modelling group, with its typical peak month. The figure includes 667 model runs from 14 different modelling groups (from the CFS, NMME, C3S, CanSIPS and SINTEX-F systems). Chart by Carbon Brief.

In summary, on both indexes, the central expectation is now for the strongest El Niño in the observational record. 

Model forecasts made in the spring and early summer have historically shown some bias toward overpredicting event strength. However, forecasts made after the spring are considerably more reliable.

Widespread record warmth and a massive European heatwave

The map below shows the temperature anomaly for the first half of 2026 in the ERA5 dataset, relative to a 1981-2010 baseline period.

Global mean surface temperatures for January-June 2026 compared to a 1981-2010 baseline, using data from ERA5.

It shows how the largest warm anomalies were found across the Arctic – particularly north of Scandinavia and Svalbard – as well as western Europe, the western US, northern Mexico, central Asia, western China, eastern Russia and the Antarctic Peninsula region. 

The developing El Niño is clearly visible as a tongue of warm anomalies stretching along the equatorial eastern Pacific. Only a few regions – central Canada, Alaska and parts of the Southern Ocean – saw temperatures below the 1981-2010 average.

Where 2026 ranks against history is even more striking. The map below shows where the period of January-June 2026 ranked among all 87 years in the ERA5 record, which stretches from 1940 to 2026. Grid cells marked in red saw temperatures in the first half of the year that were in the top-five warmest years.

January-June 2026 per-gridcell ranks in ERA5. 30% of the global surface saw a top-five warmest first half of the year; 7.1% saw record warmth. No areas (0.0%) saw top-five cold.

More than 30% of the global surface had a top-five warmest start to the year and 7.1% saw its warmest on record, including much of western Europe, the eastern equatorial Pacific and the seas around Japan. 

Not a single grid cell had a top-five coolest start to the year. In June alone, 8.9% of the world’s surface saw record warmth for the month. This is illustrated in the map below, where grid cells marked in red saw temperatures that were in the top-five warmest years and grid cells in blue in the top-five coolest.

June 2026 per-gridcell ranks in ERA5.

The standout regional temperature event was a heatwave that struck Europe in late June. 

Western Europe had its hottest June on record, recording an average temperature of 3.05C above the 1991-2020 average and beating the record set only a year earlier, according to Copernicus. A heat dome over 22-30 June broke 10 all-time national heat records and around 400 long-record station records. 

France set a new June national record of 44.3C, while the UK broke its June record on three consecutive days, reaching 37.3C. The humid heat drove a death toll estimated in the thousands. 

A separate heat dome also brought record June temperatures to parts of North America in late June.

On track to be second warmest, but a real chance at first

Carbon Brief’s updated projection for 2026 as a whole combines the observed January-June temperatures with the latest El Niño forecast. It uses a statistical model trained on the historical relationship between the first half of the year, ENSO conditions and annual temperatures observed over 1950-2025, excluding major volcanic eruption years.

Carbon Brief estimates that 2026 will be around 1.51C above pre-industrial levels, with a 90% range of 1.45C to 1.57C, shown by the yellow dot in the chart below. 

This is up from 1.47C in the projection set out in April – and is notably more certain now that half the year has passed. 

This central estimate would make 2026 the second-warmest year on record, just below 2024 (1.52C) and ahead of 2023 (1.43C) and 2025 (1.41C).

Annual composite temperatures over 1970-2025, the 2026 year-to-date value (January-June, red dot), and Carbon Brief’s 2026 annual estimate (yellow dot with the 5th to 95th percentile range). Chart by Carbon Brief.

Carbon Brief’s modelling puts the chance that 2026 beats 2024 as the warmest year on record at 35%, using the average of the six different surface temperature records assessed. It puts the chance that 2026 comes in above 1.5C at around 63%.

If it does, 2026 would be the second calendar year – after 2024 – where warming averaged above 1.5C, in a further sign that the world is rapidly approaching the Paris Agreement’s 1.5C limit.

A single year above 1.5C does not by itself constitute a breach of the goal, which refers to the longer term average temperature of the planet. This is defined as the midpoint of a 20-year period by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

These likelihood of a record have been climbing rapidly throughout 2026. 

Global temperatures so far throughout the year have run well below the record-setting levels of 2024 – around 0.13C cooler over the first six months. 

On their own, temperatures observed so far in 2026 would make a new annual record unlikely. 

However, rerunning the projection using only the data available at the end of each month since March – including both the year-to-date observations and the El Niño forecast issued that month – shows a shifting picture.

Using March data, 2026 had just a 7% chance of setting a new record. That rose to 16% in April, 24% in May, 27% in June and 35% using the latest data in mid-July.

This is shown in the chart below.

Columns show the probability that 2026 exceeds 2024 as the warmest year on record, based on data available at the end of each month; the line shows the corresponding forecast of July-December ENSO conditions (relative Niño3.4 index). Chart by Carbon Brief.

Notably, this rise has little to do with observed temperatures. The year-to-date anomaly has actually drifted slightly down, from 1.41C after March to 1.39C after June.

Observed temperatures and fewer remaining months of the year contributed only around four percentage points of the 28-point rise in the likelihood; the remaining ~84% of the change comes from successive upward revisions to the El Niño forecast for late 2026.

However, whether 2026 ends up becoming the warmest year on record may end up depending on which dataset is used.

Running the same projection gives odds of a 2026 record of around two-in-three for Berkeley Earth (66%) and NASA GISTEMP (65%), but only 35% for HadCRUT5, 24% for NOAA and just 13% and 9% for the ERA5 and JRA-3Q reanalyses, respectively. 

This is shown below.

Observed annual temperatures since 1990, with each dataset’s own 2024 record (dashed line) and the 2026 projection (median, 25-75% bar and 5-95% whisker), with the per-dataset chance of a 2026 record in each panel’s title. Chart by Carbon Brief.

The divergence between projections mostly reflects how exceptional each dataset’s 2024 was. 

The reanalysis approaches recorded a particularly warm 2024, leaving 2026 more ground to make up. GISTEMP and Berkeley, on the other hand, project 2026 modestly above their 2024 values. 

A repeat of the situation in 2015 where different groups disagreed on record rankings is a real possibility. Headlines in January 2027 may hinge on choices of dataset.

2027 likely to be the warmest year in human history

The biggest climate story of the developing super El Niño may not be 2026 at all. 

Global temperatures typically lag in the tropical Pacific by around three months. So, an El Niño event peaking in November and December 2026 will have its largest warming influence on 2027. 

We saw this same pattern occur in 1997-98, 2015-16 and 2023-24 – where the year in which the El Niño developed was warm, but the following year was record-smashing.

Carbon Brief has extended its projection into 2027 by using the historical relationship between year-over-year temperature changes and ENSO conditions in the preceding autumn. 

This yields a best estimate for 2027 of around 1.71C above pre-industrial levels, with a 90% range of 1.49C to 1.93C. This is shown by a yellow square on the chart below.

Observed annual composite temperatures 1970-2025 and Carbon Brief’s projections for 2026 and 2027 (medians and 5th to 95th percentile ranges). Chart by Carbon Brief.

That would give 2027 a 92% chance of setting a new global temperature record and a 94% chance of exceeding 1.5C. 

Taking 2026 and 2027 together, there is a 93% chance that at least one of the two years sets a new record. 

The 2027 estimate is more uncertain than the 2026 one. As with 2026, there are uncertainties in the projection due to unknowns around exactly how strong the El Niño peak proves to be and how quickly it decays. 

However, even the low end of the 2027 range would put it among the warmest years on record and the central estimate of 1.71C would exceed 2024 by nearly 0.2C.

If these projections bear out, the 2020s will have delivered new global temperature records in 2023, 2024 and 2027 – and potentially 2026 too – with a number of individual years well above the 1.5C threshold. 

The long-term warming trend, driven by human emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, has increased from around 0.18C per decade in the early 2000s to around 0.27C per decade today. El Niño and La Niña play a big role in determining which years along that rising path stand out as records.

Arctic sea ice at record lows 

Arctic sea ice has spent much of 2026 in record-low territory. 

Following the joint-lowest winter maximum in the satellite record in mid-March, daily extent has set or tied record lows for the date on 39 days so far this year, including extended spells in mid-to-late March and in early-to-mid June. 

The most recent record-low days were in early July.

The chart below shows how Arctic sea ice in 2026 (dark red line) has been below the historical range (shaded red). 

It also shows how Antarctic sea ice (dark blue), meanwhile, has remained below the 1979-2010 range for almost all of 2026 to date.

Daily 2026 sea ice extent (bold lines) compared to the 1979-2010 historical range (shaded) and the record daily low from any prior year (dotted). Chart by Carbon Brief using data from NSIDC

As of mid-July, Arctic extent is a bit below the 1979-2010 historical range for the date, though it remains around 0.6m square kilometres (km2) larger than the record low for the date set during 2020’s exceptional summer melt season. 

The trajectory over the coming two months will determine whether 2026 challenges 2012’s record September minimum. Early-summer conditions are a poor predictor of the September minimum, which depends heavily on summer weather.

Antarctic sea ice, meanwhile, is currently around 300,000km2 below the historical envelope, but has stayed well clear of the record lows set in 2023 and has not set any new daily records yet this year.

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The post State of the climate: Rapidly developing El Niño raises chance of record-warm 2026 appeared first on Carbon Brief.

Ryan Brodersen has always wanted to be a farmer. Unfortunately, his parents made the difficult decision to quit farming in the early 1990s, ending a legacy of at least four generations of farming in Nebraska. Ryan’s future was uncertain, he says, as high land prices and upfront costs have made it difficult for young people to get started independently.

“They chose to quit, and I hated them for it, honestly,” says Ryan, who was 14 years old at the time. “I just wanted to farm. That was never a question.”

The family moved to South Dakota, where he later met his wife, Angie. Ryan went five years without planting a crop until he was “in the right place at the right time,” he says. His grandmother had been renting out some farmland, and it was available for new tenants. With the help of a beginning farmer loan from the U.S. Department of Agriculture Farm Service Agency, the Brodersens were farming again.

But those early years weren’t easy. Ryan worked multiple jobs to keep the farm afloat: Driving a truck, working in a factory, and working on a pig breeding farm at various times, all while earning a college degree. Their long-term dream was taking care of and earning a living on their own land, full-time.

The Brodersens found stability by partnering with a specialty pork company. Niman Ranch, a network of more than 600 independent U.S. farmers, offers a guaranteed market for pigs raised to high standards of sustainable and humane farming practices. Once the Brodersens started raising pigs in partnership with Niman Ranch, “the barns have never been empty ever since,” Ryan says. By 2018, their farm quadrupled in size, and they had purchased land of their own.

“We used to raise a few hogs as a side hustle with growing crops, and now we just grow crops to feed hogs,” says Ryan, explaining that once they found a stable market, they made a conscious decision to shift their farm’s focus to hogs. 

Today, the Brodersens don’t need to purchase artificial fertilizer for any of the farms they own; instead, they cycle their hog manure and composted bedding onto the fields. Spreading manure is labor-intensive, and labor is the most limited resource on a farm, says Ryan, but he sees the long-term benefit for the land: “I would say that the fertility in our soil is extremely high.”

There have been tough times since, including when a grain elevator near their Randolph, Nebraska, farm went out of business, Ryan says. But “the hogs carried us through.”

Ryan also simply enjoys the work, he says. He raises hogs outdoors, as opposed to the highly controlled environment of confinement barns, where the vast majority of U.S. hogs are raised. This requires more decision-making in the day-to-day operations of the farm, but Ryan likes the problem-solving that is required. He is constantly finding new ways to be efficient and sustainable.

 “I see the pigs thrive in this environment. They do well. They’re healthy,” says Ryan. Hogs also have a fast turnaround compared to other livestock like cattle, so he has more opportunities to improve throughout each year: “Can I make this one better than the last one?” 

With companies like Niman Ranch and consumer interest in sustainably and humanely produced food, the Brodersens are hopeful that their farm can not only survive but also be passed on to the next generation. If any of their three children want to return to the farm one day, they won’t have to buy more land. They can build a more diversified, integrated, and sustainable farm on their existing acreage. And they say their diversified farm is a great place to raise their family. 

“It allows our kids to bring their own individuality to the farm,” says Angie. “We don’t want them to fill our shoes. We want them to find where their strengths are and improve our operations. And now they have the platform to do that.”

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Photo courtesy of the Brodersens

The post From Risk to Resilience in Nebraska’s Hog Industry appeared first on Food Tank.

Could the oil industry be held responsible for fueling the extreme heat that led to a woman’s death?

That’s the question at the heart of a novel lawsuit in Washington state. Misti Leon’s mother died from overheating during the hottest day in state history in June 2021, when temperatures climbed to 108 degrees Fahrenheit. Scientists said the unusual heat dome that descended on the Pacific Northwest would have been “virtually impossible” without climate change. So last year, Leon sued Exxon Mobil, BP, Chevron, Shell, and other oil majors for wrongful death, alleging that they had known for decades that fossil fuel emissions would lead to destructive consequences, but deceived the public about it, delaying action that could have prevented her mother’s death. An estimated 1,200 people in the region perished from the heat during that simmering week in June.

Earlier this month, a King County judge ruled against the oil companies’ motions to dismiss Leon’s lawsuit, allowing it to proceed toward trial. The ruling was a signal that this kind of case has merit, said Mike Meno, the communications director at the Center for Climate Integrity, a nonprofit supporting climate accountability cases. “It’s the latest type of legal liability that the oil companies are absolutely terrified of and are going to fight like hell to try to escape,” he said. 

More than a decade after investigations found that Exxon Mobil had known about the dangers of global warming since the 1970s but publicly downplayed the threat, lawsuits against oil companies have proliferated. There are nearly 40 of these cases pending across the country, according to Margaret Barry, who manages a climate litigation database at Columbia Law School’s Sabin Center. After years of delay tactics from the oil industry, at least five of these lawsuits — from Massachusetts, Vermont, Connecticut, the District of Columbia, and Honolulu — have proceeded to the discovery stage, in which both sides try to uncover evidence to bolster their case in court. That’s the last major step before a trial, when oil executives would be forced to defend their actions in front of a jury.

Some cases are on hold as judges wait to hear how the Supreme Court handles a lawsuit from Boulder, Colorado, this fall. The city and county of Boulder allege that Exxon Mobil and Suncor Energy violated state laws by concealing the dangers of their products and they want money to pay for the rising costs of improving infrastructure to deal with heat waves, wildfires, and floods. The outcome could affect existing climate lawsuits, or push plaintiffs to take different approaches.

Portland residents fill a cooling center at the Oregon Convention Center during the June 2021 heat dome. Nathan Howard / Getty Images

In the meantime, the industry has been mobilizing a counterattack against the lawsuits with the help of the Trump administration and Republican politicians. The American Petroleum Institute, the oil industry’s biggest lobbying group, has said that one of its priorities for 2026 was to “stop extreme climate liability policy.” The industry has begun challenging “attribution science,” a rapidly developing field that seeks to quantify how climate change, and even emissions from specific companies, have intensified extreme weather. 

The flurry of activity suggests that the industry feels like it’s under threat, Meno said. “Quite simply, Big Oil is in panic mode.” 

Republicans are trying to pass laws to grant oil majors immunity to these kinds of lawsuits, with success in several states so far. Utah, Iowa, Tennessee, Oklahoma, and Louisiana have recently signed laws shielding fossil fuel companies from lawsuits related to greenhouse gas emissions, while Montana and Utah (again) reformed existing laws to narrowly define what counts as a “public nuisance,” effectively blocking lawsuits against oil companies to recover damages from climate change under that legal theory. The effort has gone national: Republicans in both chambers of Congress introduced bills this spring that would give oil companies broad immunity from lawsuits seeking to hold them accountable for climate damages, with the backing of the American Petroleum Institute. 

In April, an investigation from ProPublica revealed a coordinated effort behind these “liability shield” laws from conservative groups tied to the activist Leonard Leo. Evidence provided to Grist from the watchdog group Fieldnotes shows that Koch Industries and Exxon, in particular, have extensive ties to the organizations pushing for these laws, including the American Legislative Exchange Council and the American Tort Reform Association.

“If these companies have done nothing wrong and they think the law is on their side, why are they lobbying Congress for immunity?” Meno said. 

Oil executives have also gotten help from the federal government, following an executive order from President Donald Trump last year directing the attorney general to prioritize blocking climate lawsuits by states. This May, the Justice Department responded to Minnesota’s climate lawsuit against Big Oil with a lawsuit of its own, just as the state’s case was moving into the discovery phase. It said Minnesota was undermining “American energy dominance” and attempting to regulate greenhouse gases, which should fall under the purview of federal law — echoing the oil industry’s well-known argument. In a related development, Robert Levy, a longtime Exxon lawyer, recently joined the Department of Justice in the newly dubbed “Energy and Natural Resources Division” (instead of the “Environment and Natural Resources Division”).

Read Next Red-state Republicans seek climate ‘liability shield’ for fossil fuel industry Dharna Noor

As oil companies have worked to delay these lawsuits, the scientific backing supporting some of these cases has gotten stronger. A new, major report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine concludes that the existing science linking climate change to extreme weather has become increasingly robust, particularly for extreme heat, extreme cold, and heavy rainfall. Though the report doesn’t make recommendations about how the findings should be used, it has drawn an unusual level of scrutiny. Last month, ahead of the report’s release, the opposition research firm Argus Insight requested to see internal communications between the members of the panel working on the report and any emails they might have exchanged with academics and lawyers involved in researching legal strategies for climate court cases. 

“We saw pushback to not the science itself, but the process,” said Carly Phillips, a senior scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists’ climate litigation hub. “For me, that was really illustrative, because the science is really sound.” She sees the opposition as an attempt to discredit scientific evidence before it has a chance to be heard in court.

Earlier this year, Republican attorneys general pressured the National Academies of Sciences and the Federal Judicial Center, the research agency for federal judges, to remove a chapter on climate science from their updated reference manual for judges, but only the Judicial Center complied. Trump entered the debate on Sunday, ordering officials to review the conduct of the National Academies of Sciences. “Our Taxpayers should not be funding Climate Fraud, and Judges should never have relied upon it,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.

Big Oil ostensibly hopes to avoid the fate of Big Tobacco, which paid hundreds of billions of dollars to settle lawsuits demonstrating that companies lied about the health risks of smoking. As the legal theories for those seeking to hold oil companies accountable for global warming evolve, the fossil fuel industry has to keep up, Justin Anderson, a lawyer for Exxon, explained at a panel on climate litigation held by the Federalist Society in November. 

“Why do they keep adapting and changing their theories?” Anderson asked. “It’s kind of obvious. I have to win every time. I have to win every case that is brought. They just need to find one they can get through.”

toolTips('.classtoolTips3','Carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and other gases that prevent heat from escaping Earth’s atmosphere. Together, they act as a blanket to keep the planet at a liveable temperature in what is known as the “greenhouse effect.” Too many of these gases, however, can cause excessive warming, disrupting fragile climates and ecosystems.');

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline As climate lawsuits advance, the oil industry enters ‘panic mode’ on Jul 24, 2026.

This story is published through the Indigenous News Alliance.

Indigenous communities around the world face mounting, and colliding, impacts from climate change, violence, rising threats from artificial intelligence, and many other crises. Their leaders are demanding that the world take action, and they’ve given the United Nations a 12-point plan for what they say it must do. 

Simply put, their proposal calls on the U.N. and governments around the world to take sweeping and rapid action to protect Indigenous land, rights, and lives. 

“Our communities — our women, our children, our families — they have a right to action and that’s what we’re not seeing globally,” said Cora McGuire-Cyrette, who is a member of the Bingwi Neyaashi Anishinaabek and spoke on behalf of the Ontario Native Women’s Association. “We’re looking for action.” 

Last week, the seven Indigenous members of the United Nations Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, or EMRIP, finalized the proposal it will present to the U.N. Human Rights Council. But even as the recommendations generated hope for change, the financial crisis facing EMRIP cast a shadow over the proceedings. Many delegates expressed concerns about the future of the forum, and other hard-won international platforms for Indigenous voices.

Given the scale of threats Indigenous peoples face, these forums are more important than ever, said Sheryl Lightfoot, who is Anishinaabe and serves as EMRIP’s North America region expert.  “There’s clearly no shortage of work,” she said.

The breadth of the 12 recommendations reflects that urgency, calling for stronger protections for Indigenous cultures and rights and a greater voice in global affairs.

One recommendation sought greater protections for remote Indigenous peoples living in voluntary isolation or initial contact. Others stressed the need to preserve Indigenous languages and data sovereignty.

Delegates also argued that the legal standing of Indigenous peoples must be strengthened by recognizing their rights as distinct from broader human rights and by fully implementing the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. They also called on the U.N. to increase Indigenous participation within the Human Rights Council and encourage member states to engage more fully with EMRIP.

Albert Barume is the U.N. special rapporteur on the rights of Indigenous peoples and EMRIP’s former chairperson. He told the delegates about what he called a widespread trend of “stagnation and regression” for human rights. “In the last years,” he said, “almost no single states have taken a new measure protecting Indigenous peoples’ rights. And states that had legal and policy frameworks are actively dismantling and regressing.”

Macy Duxfield, who is Māori and belongs to the Ngaa Rauru, Te Ātihaunui-a-Papārangi, and Ngāi Tahu nations, described Aotearoa New Zealand’s policies toward Indigenous peoples as regressive. But she reminds herself of the continual work that’s still needed to overcome the challenges her people face. “We exist in this moment,” she said. “We’ve inherited the work from our ancestors, and we pass it on to our descendants.” 

McGuire-Cyrette and others also reminded delegates about the importance of greater autonomy for Indigenous women and girls. “We recommend the inclusion of Indigenous women in all decisions that impact our lives, our families, and our nations,” McGuire-Cyrette said.

But even as Indigenous delegates try to use international forums to fight for change, those mechanisms are in danger. EMRIP is among the three U.N. bodies focused on Indigenous peoples — along with the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues and the special rapporteur on the rights of Indigenous peoples. All three agencies face an uncertain future due to dwindling financial support.

Marjolaine Étienne, who is Innu from the Pekuakamiulnuatsh community of Mashteuiatsh in Quebec, told delegates the U.N. Voluntary Fund for Indigenous Peoples needs greater support. The program helps Indigenous representatives cover the costs of attending international meetings. The number of representatives the fund supports is already perilously low, she said. Without greater state contributions, fewer delegates will be able to attend those forums, sidelining them from the international stage. 

Just eight countries contribute to the fund, and its budget is less than $2 million. Only three countries contributed to the U.N. Trust Fund for Indigenous Peoples. The United States does not contribute to either of them. 

“The liquidity crisis must not be used as an excuse to limit the mandate of EMRIP and to reduce the frequency or depth of country engagements or follow-up,” McGuire-Cyrette said. 

Lightfoot acknowledged there is widespread uncertainty within EMRIP and all U.N. bodies amid the agency-wide reform effort known as UN80. But she said EMRIP is preparing for whatever happens. “There are a lot of unanswered questions right now” about the reforms, she said, “and what the impacts of that might be for Indigenous-specific mechanisms.”

“I don’t know where we’re going,” she said. “I don’t know what kind of efficiencies the U.N. will ask of us. But I know we are thinking it through because we want to be ready to respond.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Indigenous leaders give the UN a roadmap for protecting their peoples on Jul 24, 2026.

The Stay Grounded network has launched a new project called ‘Red Lines for Airports’. It seeks to unite and support groups campaigning against airport expansion projects and build power for a reduction of air traffic. As part of it we’re running a European Tour, visiting members, and supporting with workshops and skill-shares. Here Sara Fromm, German contact campaigner and action coordinator at…

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The Stay Grounded network has launched a new project called ‘Red Lines for Airports’. It seeks to unite and support groups campaigning against airport expansion projects and build power for a reduction of air traffic. As part of it, we’re running a European Tour, visiting members, and supporting with workshops and skill-shares. Here, Inês tells us about her trip to Madrid to support…

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Campaigners have criticised another oil operator for a “flawed assessment” of the climate impact of drilling and production plans.

Methods used in an application for expansion of the Wressle oil field in North Lincolnshire have been condemned in a public consultation as “unscientific wishful thinking” and of failing to comply with the latest guidance.

Objectors have said the Wressle scheme should be refused planning permission.

Existing Wressle well site. Photo: Egdon Resources planning application

Earlier this week, DrillOrDrop reported calls for rejection of an expansion scheme at the Horse Hill oil site in Surrey, partly because of the way carbon emissions had been estimated.

At both Horse Hill and Wressle, developers have claimed the impacts on climate change would be “insignificant”, despite the release at each site of more than a million tonnes of damaging carbon pollution.

Key criticisms have centred on how the companies assessed the significance of greenhouse gases resulting from burning the extracted oil or gas, known as downstream or scope 3 category 11 emissions.

The Wressle operator, Egdon Resources, estimated in a revised application, published in May 2026, that the expanded operation would produce an extra 1 million+ barrels of oil over 15 years and an additional 5.264 billion cubic feet of gas.

Egdon predicted that the site would release more than 1 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (tco2e), most of it through scope 3 category 11 emissions.

Campaigners have argued there is no space in the global carbon budget for any new fossil fuel developments or expansion of existing sites if the world’s temperature increase is to remain within the legally-binding limit of 1.5C.

Egdon had been granted permission in 2024 for two new production wells and lower volume fracking.

But the approval was later quashed following the landmark Finch Ruling at the Supreme Court.

This was a successful challenge brought by Sarah Finch and the Weald Action Group, which required decision-makers to take into account the scope 3 category 11 emissions.

“All eyes on Wressle”

The decision on the Wressle scheme, to be made by North Lincolnshire Council, could be the first fossil fuel production application in England to be made using the Finch Ruling.

Other applications have been withdrawn (Biscathorpe), postponed (Waddock Cross in Dorset) or faced requests for more information (Rosebank and Jackdaw).

The Weald Action Group (WAG) said in its response to the Wressle application:

“All eyes will therefore be on North Lincolnshire and the decision will be closely scrutinised, as its approach could set an influential precedent for future decisions on similar projects.”

Fossil Fuel Free Lincolnshire (FFFL) told DrillOrDrop:

“Once again at Wressle, the oil and gas industry claims that the emissions from a single development are insignificant when set against global carbon budgets.

“That misses the point entirely.

“The remaining carbon budget is disappearing fast, which means every tonne of emissions counts. The claim that one more oil and gas development won’t make a difference is ludicrous – especially as they say it every time!

“Each new development locks us into fossil fuels and adds to global emissions.”

FFFL said:

“We’ve presented robust legal and planning arguments showing why this proposal should be refused, backed by national climate policy and North Lincolnshire’s own Green Future Plan. The planners have both the evidence and the policy framework they need. Now they just need the courage to resist industry pressure and make the right decision.”

Lincolnshire Climate Commission told us:

“Limiting the worst impacts of climate change requires a rapid reduction in fossil fuel use across all sectors, not the expansion of oil and gas production that extends reliance on fossil fuels.

“The UK’s long-term energy security depends on accelerating the transition to renewable energy and improving energy efficiency, rather than continued investment in new fossil fuel extraction and associated infrastructure.

“We urge decision-makers to ensure that the Wressle planning application is assessed in light of the UK’s climate commitments and the wider, long-term public interest.”

Lincolnshire climate campaigner, Amanda Suddaby, said in her formal response that Egdon Resources had failed to “provide a transparent or robust assessment of the project’s full lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions or their significance.”

She said the proposal would extend the original 15-year production life of Wressle:

“this application represents a material extension of fossil fuel extraction that is not consistent with the basis on which the original temporary permission was granted, nor with current national and local policy requirements relating to climate change.”

Key points “Unsound and inadequate environmental statement”

Opponents of the Wressle expansion have outlined in formal responses to a public consultation what they said were numerous flaws in the environmental statement (ES) that accompanied the planning application and included the climate assessment.

FFFL said in its response:

“The ES is logically unsound and legally inadequate. On that basis alone, permission for the proposed development should be refused.”

The group said North Lincolnshire Council should not give Egdon “yet another bite at the cherry” by asking for a further revised environmental statement. It said:

“The most robust and cogent response would be to refuse permission”.

“Contrary to latest guidance”

Several responses argued that Egdon had not complied with the latest guidance on assessing climate impacts.

WAG said:

“We consider that the assessment does not comply with EIA Regulations 2017, the Department of Energy and Net Zero scope 3 supplementary guidance, or the Institute of Sustainability and Environmental Professions 2022 guidance regarding assessing greenhouse gas emissions and evaluating their significance.

“Nor does it refer to the 2025 International Court of Justice Advisory Opinion on the Obligations of States in respect of Climate Change or the 2024 proposed revisions to the National Planning Policy Framework.”

“Ignored latest forecasts”

Several responses also stated that Egdon’s environmental statement did not consider the most up-to-date forecasts of the remaining 1.5C aligned global carbon budget.

WAG said:

“There is zero space in the remaining 1.5C aligned global carbon budget for any new fossil fuel developments or expansions to existing sites; and a massive excess of emissions from existing oil, gas and coal infrastructure which will now need to close before the end of its economic life.

“The 917,999 tco2e of scope 3, category 11 emissions from an expanded Wressle development would be additional, cumulative and hence contribute to the further exceedance of the 1.5C global carbon budget. As such, and based on established guidance, these emissions should be considered as significant for the climate.”

Amanda Suddaby said:

“The development of new fossil fuel extraction is fundamentally incompatible with the UK’s climate obligations and with Paris-aligned 1.5C pathways which are essential for maintaining a habitable planet and avoiding runaway climate breakdown triggers.”

“Insignificant impact” – “scientifically-flawed”

Egdon Resources assessed the significance of the category 11 emissions at Wressle as a percentage of overall global carbon budgets and in relation to emissions reduction pathways published behind paywalls by the fossil fuel consultancy, Global Energy Outlook.

The company said:

“while the unmitigated, worst-case effect is moderate adverse, the overall assessment concludes that the effect is minor adverse when viewed in the context of global mitigation trajectories.”

Lincolnshire Climate Commission described this conclusion as “scientifically flawed”.

FFFL said:

“This startling conclusion is entirely without rational foundation.

It said:

“The reasoning for how an acknowledged significant adverse effect can become ‘not significant’ in the absence of any mitigation is demonstrably flawed.”

FFFL added:

“All the factors … point to a major adverse impact, given the project [is] being assessed as a fossil fuel project which locks in emissions because it adopts a business-as usual or do-minimum approach to compliance with global mitigation trajectories (themselves unscientific).”

FFFL said of the company’s assessment approaches:

“Neither is an adequate approach to contextualising the significance of the project’s emissions since neither allows for the project’s contributions (or lack thereof) towards the achievement of net zero to be clearly understood.”

Professional judgement “unscientific wishful thinking”

Egdon Resources concluded that the scope 3 category 11 emissions would have a moderate adverse effect, reducing to minor adverse when “professional judgement” was applied. The company referred to guidance from the Institute of Sustainability and Environmental Professions (ISEP).

But the ISEP guidance on ‘professional judgement’ states this must be based “on available guidance, policy and scientific evidence”.

FFFL said:

“The so-called ‘professional judgement’ reducing the moderate adverse effect … to a minor adverse effect is unmoored from any available guidance, policy or scientific evidence. It is unscientific wishful thinking.”

FFFL added:

“It is self-evidence that the GHG [greenhouse gas] emissions from the proposed development would have a significant effect on the climate and that the effect would be major adverse, applying the ISEP guidance and the supplementary guidance.”

“Failed to assess cumulative effects”

The supplementary guidance, published by the UK government after the Finch Ruling, states that global emissions reduction pathways should be “inherently cumulative” so that they can function as a cumulative assessment of a project’s climate effects.

FFFL said pathways used by Egdon were “not inherently cumulative”.

They relied on “abstract projections and modelling of reducing demand for fossil fuels over time rather than real world data and implemented policies”, FFFL said.

FFFL described the Egdon pathways as “untethered from the reality of existing, consented and planned projects.”

FFFL said the company failed to “carry out a proper assessment of the cumulative effects of the proposed development in relation to other planned and permitted fossil fuel projects”.

WAG said:

“By not considering forecast emissions from already existing and approved oil and gas projects it fails to place Wressle’s scope 3, category 11 emissions within a global cumulative emissions context.”

Amanda Suddaby said it was “mathematically unsound” to argue that any single development was insignificant in the context of a larger overarching budget.

She said:

“Treating any source individually rather than additionally is to misunderstand the nature of the mitigation problem: emissions from all sources must be rapidly cut, with no scope for additional fossil fuel extraction”.

She added:

“The drop in the-ocean argument has been rejected by courts around the world, and by the government”.

“No substance to substitution argument”

Egdon suggested that demand for oil would be met from alternative sources if Wressle expansion did not go ahead. It said the sources could include imported oil, resulting in additional emissions from transport and different regulatory standards.

UK government guidance requires developers to provide evidence of substitution if it relies on this argument.

WAG and FFFL said no evidence of substitution had been provided and the argument should be disregarded.

FFFL said:

“Egdon purports to rely on alleged substitution and a reduction in the need for imports into the UK, that is inappropriate and unlawful.”

Lincolnshire Climate Commission said:

“Global oil markets do not operate on a one‑in, one‑out basis. Additional production from small fields such as Wressle adds to total global supply, increasing global emissions. This conclusion is consistent with independent climate‑energy research and the position of the UK Climate Change Committee. The substitution argument should therefore be given no weight in the planning balance.”

“Contradicts local climate plan”

Several responses said Wressle expansion would contradict local climate policies.

The North Lincolnshire Council Green Future Programme aims to create a “cleaner greener and more sustainable North Lincolnshire”, with its own commitment to net zero in operational emissions by 2030.

Amanda Suddaby said estimated emissions associated with Wressle expansion were approx 200 times greater than the council’s six-year carbon reduction target. She said:

“This highlights a fundamental inconsistency between the council’s stated climate ambitions and the continued approval of new fossil fuel developments”.

Lincolnshire Climate Commission said:

“Approving further oil extraction at Wressle would directly contradict these strategic aims, undermine the Council’s stated commitment to a “cleaner, greener and more sustainable North Lincolnshire,” and increase the very climate and nature risks the Council has pledged to reduce.”

There are farcical elements to the Farage/Lowe schism but also a real danger of dragging British politics ever rightwards, writes Rhys Clarke

The post Reform, Restore and the fragmentation of the British right appeared first on Red Pepper.

Dancing towards the revolution Channel News brendan 24th July 2026 Teaser Media