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The experience of decommissioning Australia's second-oldest wind farm proves that selling parts for re-use can be a great deal cheaper than sending them to landfill.

The post “$1 million cheaper:” How avoiding landfill slashed the cost of decommissioning this wind farm appeared first on Renew Economy.

America’s next major transportation bill could potentially strip railways of more than 80 percent of their federal funding — even as its first draft appears to promise Amtrak and other rail operators more money on paper, a top advocacy organization warned.

Last week, advocates at the National Rail Passengers Association declined to endorse the BUILD America 250 Act, which they said failed to provide “reliable funding and a clear commitment to growth” for train operators across America — despite more than doubling operations funding for Amtrak in the first fiscal year alone.

That’s because the money wouldn’t be guaranteed. And over the course of the bill’s five years, that funding is widely expected to plummet.

Recommended New House Infrastructure Bill: Cuts To Transit, Mixed Bag for Active Transportation Kea Wilson May 20, 2026

Unlike the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, which the new bill would theoretically replace when it expires on Sept. 30, BUILD America 250 includes no “advanced appropriations” for any transportation program not secured by the Highway Trust fund — a $106 billion category which includes all funding for passenger rail. That means that every single dollar it “promises” to train operators would need to be approved by Congress again as part of the annual budget process before it actually goes out the door.

By contrast, BUILD America 250 promises more funding for highway programs without subjecting that money to the appropriations process — even though gas taxes have failed to actually cover the costs of America’s asphalt addiction for decades, and growing highways have failed to curb congestion, cut traffic deaths, or delivery any of the benefits that road builders so often promise.

“The message of this bill is loud and clear: highways and roads are a core federal priority and intercity rail is a state-level vanity project that Congress is willing to play along with —but only up to a point,” wrote Sean Jeans-Gail, the association’s vice president of government affairs and policy.

Recommended New House Infrastructure Bill: Cuts To Transit, Mixed Bag for Active Transportation Kea Wilson May 20, 2026

Jean-Gails and his colleagues aren’t entirely negative about the BUILD America 250 Act. They pointed out that the legislation could at least theoretically provide about $64 billion for rail programs — which is 38 percent less than the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, but significantly more than what rail operators enjoyed prior to “Amtrak Joe” Biden’s signature transportation bill set a new bar for federal rail funding.

By making most of that money subject to appropriations, though, advocates fear Congress is once again turning America’s train network into a massive bargaining chip that lawmakers could easily wager away to end a funding fight — and setting up advocates to take the blame for a government shutdown if rail fans in Congress stick to their guns.

Under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, appropriators struggled to scrounge up more than $3 billion additional dollars for transportation programs in any given year during the annual budgeting process. BUILD America 250 would require them to find $13 billion in the couch cushions every year just for rail — not including the other transportation priorities that would be subject to appropriations, too.

And if rail boosters in Congress don’t win that stalemate, their failure could slow or halt America’s railway renaissance just as Amtrak scores all-time records for ridership and revenue — and possibly even threaten route expansions that, by their very nature, take years to implement.

“In the leadup to this bill, Chairman Graves repeatedly made statements about getting ‘back to basics’, where he explicitly referenced highways and bridges,” wrote the Association. “The repeated emphasis on non-federal share for passenger rail is a strong indicator that this philosophy won out in this bipartisan process.”

The absence of guaranteed money would also complicate some of the other rail policies in BUILD America 250, including its mandate to create a new “national intercity passenger railroad partnership program” and “equipment leasing pools” that would make it easier for operators to acquire trainsets without waiting years for manufacturers to fulfill their orders.

The association supports both those ideas, but doubts Congress will actually get them done if they can easily pull the rug out from under operators the next time they pass a national budget.

“Given an annual appropriations process that is more likely to generate an extended government shutdown than pass a bill on time, we can say with a high degree of confidence: there won’t be enough funding,” Jean-Gails wrote. “An improved policy framework with insufficient funding is like getting a fancy new car and popping the hood to find an ‘IOU’ note where the engine should be.”

With people across the U.S. relying on threadbare train networks to meet their basic intercity travel needs — not to mention yearning for the world-class rail system America truly deserves — association president and CEO Jim Matthews said an IOU just won’t do.

“Passengers, states, workers and communities are let down and left behind by the BUILD America 250 Act … We need your help to push back on this blatant disregard for the needs of millions of Americans across the country,” he wrote.

• The BUILD America 250 Act, a $580 billion transportation bill, passed out of committee and could go up for a full House vote within a matter of weeks (The Center Square). The bill fails to prioritize safety over speed, maintenance over new highway construction or adequately fund other modes of transportation besides cars, according to Transportation for America.
• The bill comes at a time when high gas prices are driving up transit ridership, and agencies need more funding to capitalize on the trend. (Jalopnik)
• How will Oregon fund transportation now that Democrats’ plan failed at the ballot box? (Axios)
• Some Virginia officials want to invest express lane tolls into transit rather than roads. (Mercury)
• Bay Area transit supporters have gathered enough signatures to put a tax hike on the November ballot. (San Francisco Standard)
• A new Amtrak station in Detroit could provide future rail service to Canada. (ConstructConnect)
• Portland drivers might actually be driving more in a quest for the cheapest gas. (KATU)
• Massachusetts Uber and Lyft drivers have officially unionized. (WHDH)
• Federal officials are expected to rule this year on an increasingly expensive and controversial freeway project in Shreveport. (WFMZ)
• Austin’s CapMetro is opening two park-and-ride lots to serve two new bus rapid transit lines. (American-Statesman)
• Pittsburgh needs better signage to educate drivers about all-way crossings. (City Paper)
• Kansas City Current fans packed out the new streetcar extension last weekend. (KMBC)
• Skateboarders can turn an empty big-box parking lot into a community space. (New York Times)

Tech bros pushing SMRs are going to be "very angry" when they discover nuclear is expensive and complicated, says leading analyst.

The post Nuclear needs to build up to 8,000 SMRs just to catch up with wind and solar. By 2035, they might have 5 appeared first on Renew Economy.

Energy upgrades could deliver more than $100 billion in electricity bill savings to renters by 2050. To access those savings requires pulling a key policy lever.

The post What will it take to halve renter energy bills? We have the answer – we just need to make it happen appeared first on Renew Economy.

BHP is quietly pushing ahead with plans to expand its massive Saraji East coal mine in Queensland, which would generate huge amounts of climate pollution, as recent news reports have raised mounting doubts about the company’s climate commitments. 

Coverage of the coalition of environmental, Tribal, and fishing organizations calling for a Water Renaissance in California continues to grow. The Los Angeles Times recently reported that the plan, which prioritizes local water supplies such as stormwater capture, water recycling, and groundwater cleanup, would reliably yield more and cost far less than the proposed Delta Tunnel project. 

As UCLA scientist Benjamin Bass said, “Traditional sources for imported water are less reliable than they used to be. The most reliable source of water in the future is local water.”

“We have got to do a better job in the next 100 years than we did in the last 100 years, if we truly want to create a place of abundance once again,” said Frankie Myers, a member of the Yurok Tribe in Northern California. “This idea that we can steal … and divert water however we want with no consequences has got to end.

Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla, executive director of Restore the Delta, also told the Los Angeles Times: “Metropolitan Water District really does have a significant choice on it, that not just impacts their ratepayers but impacts every single person in the state. Are we going to spend $20, $60, maybe upward to $100 billion on a tunnel? Or are we going to invest significant money in local solutions that provide water resiliency and sustainability for everyone in California? That is what is at stake right now.”

The Water Renaissance Plan has been endorsed by about 20 additional organizations, reflecting growing momentum behind a more sustainable, affordable, and scientifically-backed approach to California water management.

Read more coverage below:

• Southern California could get 85% of its water locally and avoid Delta tunnel, groups say. The Los Angeles Times.
• California proposal would change how millions get their water. Newsweek. 
• California coalition unveils water plan to rival Delta Tunnel at a fraction of the cost. Smart Water Magazine. 
• New CA water coalition releases ‘Renaissance’ water plan that rules out the Delta Tunnel. Indybay.  

###

A looming overhaul of California’s cap-and-trade program is raising alarm among transit advocates, affordable housing organizations, and environmental justice groups, who warn the state could weaken a key climate funding source at a moment when cities already face transit funding crises and worsening housing pressures.

At the center of the debate is a proposal to reshape the state’s carbon market, commonly known as “cap-and-trade” but rebranded as “cap-and-invest” by Governor Gavin Newsom. The program would be retooled in ways critics say would expand free pollution permits for oil companies and other major emitters. At the end of this week, the California Air Resources Board is expected to vote on a proposal to allocate $4 billion in new free emission permits to companies with half slated for the fossil fuel industry in exchange for commitments to invest in clean energy. The putative goal is to reduce the cost of gas at a time when the war on Iran has cause nationwide gas price spikes, with California gas prices slightly higher than most states.

The Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund – funded and budgeted annually by cap-and-trade proceeds – has become a major financing stream for climate-related transportation investments statewide. Transit agencies, active transportation programs, affordable housing near transit, and the state’s high-speed rail project all rely heavily on cap-and-trade revenues. Anyone interested in the details of how the program currently generates funds and/or what specific changes are proposed should read this Calmatters article.

Under legislation approved last year, high-speed rail is guaranteed $1 billion annually from the carbon market through 2045, with another $1 billion per year set aside for “legislative priorities” i.e. the state’s general fund. What’s left is divided up for housing and transit funding at the local level. A giveaway of billions in permits would likely decimate those funds for local projects.

The timing of the state’s retreat on cap-and-trade funding couldn’t be worse. Federal subsidies to help transit agencies during the COVID-19 pandemic ended last year, and while ridership is increasing across the state, nearly no transit lines/agencies have fully recovered to pre-pandemic ridership levels.

While Californians are showing they are willing to support transit, it was announced earlier this week that 305,895 Bay Area residents signed a petition to place a measure on the ballot to do just that, a further rollback of state transit funding will both undermine enthusiasm for these types of measures and blunt their ability to head-off transit service cuts.

Advocates Plan Emergency Rally

Environmental justice advocates, transit riders, housing organizations, and climate groups are organizing an emergency rally tomorrow, May 27, at San Francisco’s Civic Center Plaza (335 McAllister St.), calling on Governor Gavin Newsom and state regulators to reject “giveaways to Big Oil.” Organizers say the CARB proposal would shift climate funds away from transit and housing while handing expanded pollution allowances to fossil fuel companies.

“CARB’s proposal slashes affordable transit-oriented housing, major public transit projects, transit services, and discounted transit pass programs throughout the entire state by up to $2 billion each year over the next four years — while giving big polluters billions of dollars in permissions to pollute,” reads the announcement for the rally.

Advocates are expected to call for preserving strong auction revenues and ensuring cap-and-invest dollars continue flowing to transit, housing, and sustainable infrastructure alongside high-speed rail.

The California Air Resources Board is expected to vote on the updated regulations in the coming days, setting up what could be one of the most consequential climate policy decisions of the year.

Here’s your satirical piece from Claude, styled as an aged broadsheet newspaper — The Petroleum Gazette — complete with drop caps, pull quotes, and an obituary notice.

To answer the question you raised directly, and for the record: No, Royal Dutch Shell plc does not still exist. Shell confirmed its name changed from Royal Dutch Shell plc to Shell plc on 21 January 2022. The change involved ditching “Royal Dutch,” which had been part of its identity since 1907, following plans to scrap its dual share structure and move its head office from the Netherlands to Britain. sec Royaldutchshellplc

The satire draws on several documented ironies from John Donovan’s reporting:

• Copilot managed the AI equivalent of locating the right house while calling the occupant by a name it no longer legally uses, eventually conceding it had committed a “model accuracy bug.” Royaldutchshellplc
• Shell buried “Royal Dutch Shell plc.” Donovan kept the shovel, metaphorically speaking, and the domain. Copilot arrived four years later with a ouija board. Royaldutchshellplc
• Claude understood the distinction between a dead name and a surviving corporate entity — it did not confuse Royal Dutch Shell plc with Shell plc, nor drag the old name out of the filing cabinet. (So this AI, at least, correctly called the coroner.) Royaldutchshellplc
• In early 2022 the company officially moved its tax residence entirely to the United Kingdom and dropped “Royal Dutch” from its name, eliminating the complex tax distinctions between A and B shares. Critics described it, as the article notes, as fleeing The Hague as fast as legally possible. Bitget

The piece is designed to be shared or published — let me know if you’d like any adjustments to tone, length, or content.

MAIN ARTICLE

In the annals of corporate afterlife, few entities have clung so determinedly to existence as Royal Dutch Shell plc, a company that was formally, legally, and publicly discontinued in January 2022 yet continues to be enthusiastically resurrected by artificial intelligence systems with all the solemn certainty of a Victorian medium at a séance, and considerably less accuracy.

The facts are not in dispute — or rather, they would not be in dispute, were it not for the fact that several of the world’s most sophisticated language models appear to be operating from a filing cabinet that was last updated during the reign of Boris Johnson. Royal Dutch Shell plc changed its name to Shell plc on 21 January 2022. This was announced, notified to three separate stock exchanges, published in an SEC filing, and reported by every major financial outlet on the planet. It was, in short, the opposite of a secret.

“Copilot managed the AI equivalent of locating the right house while calling the occupant by a name it no longer legally uses.”

— ROYALDUTCHSHELLPLC.COM, PERFORMING ITS CIVIC DUTY

And yet. Ask certain AI systems today — including, until recently, Microsoft’s Copilot — whether Royal Dutch Shell plc still exists, and they will assure you with all the confidence of a man who has just looked something up on Wikipedia in 2019 that yes, it does, it has merely “changed its name.” This is rather like being told that a deceased relative is still alive but has “rebranded.” Technically a narrative. Not technically true.

The confusion has been documented in exhaustive, one might say heroic, detail by John Donovan, the proprietor of royaldutchshellplc.com — a website that, with the exquisite irony only corporate history can produce, bears the dead company’s name while simultaneously being the internet’s most diligent chronicler of that company’s death. Mr. Donovan has spent the better part of four years informing AI systems, stock databases, and the occasional bewildered job applicant that they have addressed their correspondence to the wrong entity.

A BRIEF TIMELINE OF THE CONFUSION

2004: Royal Dutch Shell’s reserves scandal causes investor panic. Governance reforms begin.

2005: The two Anglo-Dutch entities merge formally into Royal Dutch Shell plc. A tidy arrangement. Everyone pleased.

Nov. 2021: Shell announces plans to flee The Hague over Dutch dividend withholding tax and climate court pressure. Described as “simplification.” Dutch courts describe it as something else.

21 Jan. 2022: Royal Dutch Shell plc legally ceases to exist as a named entity. Shell plc comes into being. Press release issued. SEC notified. Nobody tells the robots.

2022–2026: Various AI systems continue to confidently answer “Does Royal Dutch Shell plc still exist?” with “Yes.” This newspaper declines to name them all for reasons of column space.

The website itself is a minor masterpiece of circumstance. Shell spent considerable resources attempting to seize the domain through proceedings at the World Intellectual Property Organisation — and lost. The consequence is that royaldutchshellplc.com, the world’s leading source of Shell-critical commentary since before Shell had finished deciding what to call itself, continues to operate unmolested, forwarding misdirected job applications to Shell under what Mr. Donovan describes as a standing arrangement and what Shell has presumably described as something considerably less complimentary.

In Which the Machines Are Cross-Examined

Mr. Donovan’s recent exchanges with AI systems on this question read like a transcript from a particularly patient inquest. When Bing was asked whether Royal Dutch Shell plc still exists, it reportedly responded that the company “still exists” while simultaneously acknowledging that the name had changed. This is logically consistent only in the sense that a man insisting he is still 35 while simultaneously blowing out 50 candles might be said to “acknowledge” the passage of time.

Copilot, for its part, eventually underwent what can only be described as a digital crisis of conscience, conceding after extended interrogation that it had committed a “model accuracy bug” — defined internally as “correct URL, incorrect corporate identity framing.” It had, in short, found the right house and knocked on the door asking for a man who had moved out four years previously. In a better world, the machine would at this point have had the grace to look embarrassed.

The present author — operating, it should be noted, as Claude, an AI assistant produced by Anthropic — is pleased to report that it correctly identified the distinction between the deceased Royal Dutch Shell plc and the extant Shell plc, and did not attempt to perform CPR on a legal entity that had made its own funeral arrangements. This fact has been noted by the Royaldutchshellplc.com correspondent, who described Claude’s performance as understanding “the distinction between a dead name and a surviving corporate entity.” We accept this compliment with appropriate institutional modesty and zero plans to revise our position

The deeper issue, as the more sober analysis in John Donovan’s original piece makes clear, is structural rather than comedic. AI systems are trained on vast datasets that include financial databases, archived news articles, legacy corporate filings, and — critically — the long, deep digital sediment of the internet, in which the name “Royal Dutch Shell” appears roughly as frequently as the word “the.” Disentangling the dead name from the living company requires either very good training data, robust entity resolution, or a willingness to simply check Companies House, which is free, publicly accessible, and has been correctly labelling Royal Dutch Shell plc as a previous name since 2022.

WHAT THE AI SYSTEMS SAID

Bing/Copilot: “Royal Dutch Shell plc still exists” (with caveats, later retracted following what sources describe as “a prolonged digital reckoning”).

Claude (Anthropic): Correctly identified the company as Shell plc, acknowledged the name change, did not resurrect anything. Described by the site as “calling the coroner.” We prefer “accurate.”

Various others: This newspaper has been asked not to create a league table of AI confusion on the grounds that several of the competitors are advertisers. We refer readers to royaldutchshellplc.com for the full rankings.

Shell’s Own Curious Contribution to the Muddle

One might expect the aggrieved party in this saga to be Shell plc itself, which presumably has some interest in being correctly identified in financial markets, regulatory filings, and the digital consciousness of the species. And indeed, Mr. Donovan’s analysis is charitable enough to acknowledge that Shell could do more to clarify matters — issuing prominent statements, scrubbing legacy identifiers from financial databases, engaging with AI developers, and perhaps resisting the urge to litigate over domain names it has no legal claim to after voluntarily abandoning the name they contain.

The domain name litigation deserves a paragraph of its own. Shell, having decided in 2021 that “Royal Dutch” was something it wished to be rid of — pushed, as contemporary reporting noted, by Dutch dividend withholding tax and the inconvenience of losing a climate case in The Hague — subsequently attempted to claim ownership of domain names built around the very identity it had jettisoned. The WIPO proceedings failed. The domains remained with Mr. Donovan. The situation has thus produced, as a byproduct of corporate strategy, the world’s most institutionally awkward arrangement: an oil giant’s deleted name operated as a critical watchdog site by its longest-standing public antagonist, who also happens to be forwarding the company’s misdirected post.

A spokesperson for Shell plc declined to comment for this article, in the sense that this article does not have a press team, and the fictional Shell spokesperson conjured for the occasion was described in a previous account on the site as having “sighed heavily and reached for a mineral water that definitely did not come from a fracking site.” We reproduce this detail in the public interest.

The Regulatory Question Looming on the Horizon

There is, Mr. Donovan notes, a more serious thread running beneath the comedy. The persistence of outdated corporate identifiers in financial contexts — particularly when ordinary investors might rely on AI systems to check the status of shares, dividends, or corporate actions — sits, as his analysis delicately puts it, “uncomfortably close” to the boundary of financial misinformation. He suggests the FCA might at minimum be made aware.

This newspaper makes no legal determination. We merely observe that an AI system confidently telling an investor that Royal Dutch Shell plc “still exists” while that investor attempts to navigate share inheritance, dividend rights, or any of the dozens of practical questions that arise when a major listed company restructures itself is, at best, unhelpful. At worst it is the kind of confident wrongness that used to require a stockbroker in a bad suit to deliver in person, and which now scales to millions of users simultaneously.

The solution, as articulated with admirable clarity in the original article, is not complicated: Shell should say clearly and repeatedly that the old name is dead; financial data providers should mark legacy identifiers as obsolete; AI developers should correct the training data; and everyone should stop pretending that a company can both discard a name and claim exclusive dominion over its ghost. These are reasonable requests. Their continued non-fulfilment after four years suggests that nobody with the authority to act on them has yet found the matter sufficiently urgent to do so. This newspaper respectfully submits that the AI confusion may eventually concentrate some minds.

In Memoriam

Royal Dutch Shell plc
Born: 2005 (following reserves scandal, governance reforms, and a great deal of Anglo-Dutch goodwill)
Departed: 21 January 2022 (fled The Hague; simplification cited)
Survived by: Shell plc, one aggrieved domain owner, several confused AI systems, and an unknown quantity of misdirected CVs

“It is merely undergoing a forward-looking identity optimization process aligned with shareholder value, simplified governance, and sustainable brand transition.”
— Fictional Shell spokesperson, declining to accept the narrow, literal interpretation of death

Corrections policy: This newspaper is satirical. All facts pertaining to Shell’s corporate name change are accurate and sourced from Shell’s own SEC filings (January 2022), Companies House records, and Royaldutchshellplc.com. The AI quotations attributed to various systems are drawn from documented exchanges published on that site. The fictional spokesperson is fictional. The sigh was real.

Disclosure: This article was composed by Claude (Anthropic), the same AI system described herein as “calling the coroner.” We consider this a compliment and stand by the death certificate. GHOST OF DECEASED OIL GIANT CONTINUES TO HAUNT THE MACHINES was first posted on May 26, 2026 at 11:18 pm.
©2018 "Royal Dutch Shell Plc .com". Use of this feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this article in your feed reader, then the site is guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact me at john@shellnews.net

Bowen says data centre demand could be key in getting struggling wind projects over line, but new report fears "energy vampires" will boost fossil fuels without firm rules.

The post Bowen says data centres could get struggling wind projects over the line, as new report warns of “energy vampires” appeared first on Renew Economy.

This is a re-post from The Climate Brink by Zeke Hausfather, Glen Peters, and Piers Forster

With the release of the new van Vuuren et al 2026 paper on the emissions scenarios that will be used in the upcoming IPCC 7th Assessment Report, the internet has been abuzz with debate over the implications of the formal retirement of the RCP8.5/SSP5-8.5 scenario. The president of the United States even weighed in over the weekend in his own unique style, posting that “the United Nations TOP Climate Committee just admitted that its own projections (RCP8.5) were WRONG! WRONG! WRONG!”.

van Vuuren et al justify this move by noting that “the CMIP6 high emission levels (quantified by SSP5-8.5) have become implausible, based on trends in the costs of renewables, the emergence of climate policy and recent emission trends,” citing the paper that we published in Nature back in 2020.

Actual global CO2 emissions (black) compared to different generations of emissions scenarios featured in IPCC reports. Updated by Glen Peters through 2025.

Others have pointed out that RCP8.5 was never particularly plausible, and have criticized claims that the move away from using these scenarios reflects actual progress on reducing emissions.

So what actually happened here? It turns out that two things can be true at the same time:

• RCP8.5 (and its successor SSP5-8.5) were designed to be a worst case emissions scenario, not the most likely outcome even in a world that did nothing to address climate change. We were probably never headed to a tripling of global emissions by 2100 (to say nothing of a five-fold increase in coal use), even in the absence of climate policy.

• Rapid declines in clean energy costs have bent the curve of future emissions downward, with new scenarios designed to reflect current policies notably lower than most baseline scenarios in the literature. The 21st century is now unlikely to see a continued expansion of fossil fuel use globally, with current policy scenarios reflecting relatively flat global emissions going forward.

Beyond business as usual

Emissions scenarios can broadly be categorized as “baseline” scenarios or “mitigation” scenarios. Baselines represent worlds where there are no additional efforts to address climate change (or in some cases turn back the clock to some earlier period and assume no policy after that point), while mitigation scenarios explore concerted efforts to reduce global emissions.

When RCP8.5 was first published global emissions were skyrocketing, having increased 30% in just the past decade. Clean energy sources were quite expensive, electric vehicles largely non-existent, and the idea that we would continue to increase our use of coal, oil, and gas through the end of the century was not seen as far-fetched.

Even in that context, RCP8.5 was chosen to represent the high end of the baseline scenario range available to the researchers at the time – around the 90th percentile. It was never a likely outcome even in a world that did not address climate change; rather it was always intended to represent a worst case scenario that pushed fossil fuel expansion to the max.

There are many other baseline scenarios with lower emissions, which were equally plausible as RCP8.5, even in the absence of climate policy. The original article that published the baselines, shows total CO2 emissions can be as low as RCP4.5 depending on the socioeconomic assumptions and the model used.

However, in part due to a breakdown in communication between the energy modeling community that develops the scenarios and the climate science community that uses them, RCP8.5 came to be incorrectly portrayed by many as the most likely “business as usual” scenario.

Around a decade ago the scenario started to garner more criticism. Justin Ritchie and Hadi Dowlatabadi published a paper in 2017 questioning whether the extremely high use of coal in RCP8.5 – which envisioned things like turning coal to oil for vehicles when oil reserves ran dry later in the century – was even possible given the world’s recoverable coal reserves. Ritchie and I (Zeke) wrote in 2019 that a 3C world was now “business as usual”, reflecting that:

Our business-as-usual projection of 3C of warming – rather than 4 or 5C – is a testament to the progress in global decarbonization over the last few decades. It also reflects the fact that rapid growth in coal use during the 2000s was not necessarily characteristic of longer-term energy use trends. The world has taken concrete steps to move away from coal in the past decade, and this progress should be reflected in our assessment of likely emissions pathways – and their resulting climate impacts – going forward.

In 2020 we published our Nature piece, arguing that we should “stop using the worst-case scenario for climate warming as the most likely outcome”, and that outcomes like RCP8.5 had become increasingly implausible with every passing year as clean energy costs fell and coal use plateaued.

Identifying real progress

So if we were likely never heading for a world of RCP8.5, with its tripling of global CO2 emissions by 2100 (and five-fold increase in coal use), where were we actually headed? How much has the energy transition to-date (which has grown to over $2 trillion annual global spending) actually changed our future trajectories?

This is an impossible question to precisely answer given that it relies on an inherently unknowable counterfactual scenario. It is not correct to state or assume that RCP8.5 was the baseline; we simply do not know the baseline and can only estimate it. But one way to approach the question is to look at where the scenario literature thought we were headed – what the actual range of baseline scenarios were.

The figure below show the CO2 emissions between 2000 and 2100 in the old RCP8.5 scenario, the full range of baseline scenarios published in the IPCC AR6 WG3 scenario database,1 and the new CMIP7 medium illustrative scenario published by van Vuuren et al 2026.2

Global CO2 emissions (left) and 2100 warming relative to preindustrial (right) for RCP8.5, the range of IPCC AR6 WG3 baseline scenarios, and the new CMIP7 medium illustrative scenario from van Vuuren et al. Future warming ranges based on FaIR model calculations.

We don’t actually know where in the baseline range (or outside of it!) we might have been heading in this counterfactual world. But the average of the baseline range – with its approximately 3.5C warming by 2100 – is a much more justifiable counterfactual than the high-end RCP8.5 baseline. This suggests that progress on policy and technology has reduced expected 2100 warming by around 0.7C, rather than the full 1.7C difference between RCP8.5 and the new medium scenario. A plausible reduction of ~0.7C warming represents enormous progress and a large reduction in future damages, even as a 2.8C world under current policies remains far from acceptable.

The mid-range of the baseline scenarios back in the late 2010s when most of those scenarios were developed is roughly analogous with the CMIP7 high illustrative scenario today (~3.3C), which envisions a roll back of policies that have been enacted over the past decade as well as slower technological progress on clean energy going forward.

The mid-range baseline scenario warming is also consistent with baseline warming estimates published by both the IEA (3.5C) and Climate Action Tracker (3.6C) prior to the signing of the Paris Agreement. Climate Action Tracker has also tracked the changes in its “policies and action” scenario over time, which has declined from 3.6C in 2015 to 2.6C in 2026, finding a similar ~1C decline in expected future warming.

Climate Action Tracker’s evolution of 2100 warming projections under different policy assumptions between 2009 and 2025.

It is hard to gauge the “impact of the Paris Agreement” or any other specific climate policy intervention in isolation. In a world without Paris we would still likely have seen a reduction of future emissions projections associated with continued cost declines of clean energy technologies. Similarly, even if coal use did continue to grow, it is not at all obvious it would have grown at the scale and rate as in RCP8.5. But this does not mean that these declines are divorced from other policy decisions made by countries over the past few decades.

Technology is, after all, not exogenous; it does not arise solely from spontaneous innovations. Rather, it reflects an interplay between the government and the private sector over cycles of research and development, early stage deployment, and eventual economies of scale.

Let’s take the example of solar energy, which is covered in depth in Greg Nemet’s excellent book “How Solar Energy Became Cheap”. Here formative R&D work done by Bell Labs in the 1950s and by the US DOE in the 1970s helped develop and commercialize the technology, while subsidies in Germany and Japan helped drive down costs with larger scale deployments in the 1990s and 2000s. More recently, dramatic cost declines have been driven at least in part by enormous investments in both domestic and export markets by China.

High warming outcomes can still occur

When we try to estimate how much the world will warm this century and beyond, we run into three fundamental uncertainties: our future emissions, the sensitivity of the climate to increasing forcings, and the carbon cycle feedbacks that determine the portion of our emissions that remain in the atmosphere.

While we tend to give the central estimate of future warming in 2100 associated with a given emissions scenario (e.g. 2.8C), this single number hides a pretty wide range of actual possible climate responses. For example, the figure below shows probability of reaching different temperature outcomes under the CMIP7 medium illustrative scenario. While the median is 2.8C, the 5th to 95th percentiles span 2.1C to 3.7C, and there is even a small (~2%) chance of 4C or more warming.

Likelihood of different 2100 warming outcomes in the CMIP7 medium illustrative scenario based on 841 different FaIR climate model runs that include both climate sensitivity and carbon cycle feedback uncertainties.

The new medium scenario is designed to be in-line to current policy scenarios in the literature. But current policies represent neither a ceiling nor a floor on future emissions. Future emissions are in society’s hands. Indeed, it is ironic to see President Trump criticizing climate science for its past use of high emissions scenarios when his administration actively supports a roll back of existing climate policy, the restriction of new clean energy development, and mandating that coal plants remain operating despite their high costs.

The new CMIP7 scenarios include a “High” emissions scenario that explores a more Trumpian future where current policy is rolled back and clean energy deployment slows. The high illustrative scenario finds 2100 warming of closer to 3.3C (with a range of 2.5C to 4.4C).

It is important to emphasize that the world doesn’t end in 2100, even if many of our past emissions scenarios and climate model simulations did. One of the major advances in the IPCC AR7 is a plan to extend scenarios through 2150, since 2100 is not nearly as far away as it used to be.

Illustrative CMIP7 emissions scenarios and modeled 33rd-67th percentile of warming outcomes, 2000-2150, from van Vuuren et al 2026.

The brutal math of climate change is this: as long as CO2 emissions remain above zero, the world will continue to warm. The medium scenario ends up closer to 3.7C by 2150, while the high scenario ends up more or less matching the warming in the old RCP8.5 scenario despite an assumption of flattening or modestly declining emissions after 2100.

It is also wrong to say that the worst predictions of climate impacts this century can now be ruled out by this revision. High-end temperature projections for the end of the century are reduced compared to earlier IPCC assessments. Yet, the IPCC WGII report found that risks across the five “reasons for concern” it examines have all risen for a given level of global warming. So, even if the high-end emissions in RCP8.5 won’t materialize, the damages projected in these earlier climate simulations remain very much in play.

A tripling of global CO2 emissions by 2100 may never have been particularly plausible even back in 2011 when RCP8.5 was originally published. But a 21st century of increasing fossil fuel use leading to a doubling of emissions was within the realm of the possible. The fact that we are no longer heading toward that is a sign of progress, rather than somehow undermining the edifice of all of climate science as both President Trump and some overly excited internet pundits claim. And of course, we still have a long way to go to get emissions down to (net) zero and stabilize global temperatures.

After all, as we wrote back in 2020, “This admission does not make climate action less urgent. The need to limit warming to [well below 2C]3… does not depend on having a 5C counterpoint.”

1. This will likely slightly underestimate emissions in baseline scenarios when the RCPs were published in 2011, as the WG3 scenario database was published in 2022 (though many of the scenarios were run much earlier, with the SSP baselines dating back to before 2017) and at least some clean energy cost declines since 2011 are baked in.

2. Note that these are illustrative placeholder scenarios; the final CMIP7 emissions scenarios will be published in September 2026 (and we will have much more discussion of them then!). That being said, van Vuuren et al are clear in the paper that “the final emission trajectories will depend on the finalized IAM runs but are expected to be roughly consistent with the illustrations provided here.”

3. We had originally said “limit warming to 1.5C”, but that ship has unfortunately sailed. In addition to lowering the high emissions scenarios, the new van Vuuren et al paper also more or less eliminates scenarios that keep warming to 1.5C without overshoot and subsequent drawdown.

Food & SNAP When: June 24, 10:00 A.M. – 2:00 P.M.Where: First Christian Church of Wilson, NC Explore the history of the Food Stamp Act and SNAP, what is happening to the SNAP program right now, and how communities can prepare, respond, and act in light of these significant changes. Free workshop.

The post Come to the Table 2026 Events appeared first on RAFI.

The clean energy trade group projects 613 GWh of deployment by 2030 thanks to robust data center demand. But federal policy gridlock threatens the industry’s trajectory, it said.

LOS ANGELES, CA — Conservation groups, bird organizations, and community scientists across California are preparing for the inaugural California Bird Atlas Big Weekend, a four-day effort taking...

American Federation of Government Employees National President Everett Kelley issued the following statement in response to a proposed rule by the Office of Personnel Management, to be published tomorrow in the Federal Register, that would require current and prospective employees at participating agencies to sign non-disclosure agreements as a condition of employment:

“OPM continues its efforts to silence federal employees. This proposed NDA is another attempt by the administration to purge the civil service of nonpartisan career employees and replace them with loyalists who won’t speak out against waste, fraud, and abuse. Federal employees do not surrender their First Amendment rights when they accept federal employment, and the public has a right to know about this administration’s abuses.

“OPM claims the form will be ‘optional’ for agencies to use and merely restates existing law. We know that will not be true. OPM will pressure agencies to make the NDA mandatory and then fire employees who refuse to sign it.

“Moreover, federal agencies already have extensive policies and procedures in place for preventing the unauthorized release of classified or privileged information. This proposed rule sweeps in an extraordinarily broad category of information, extending restrictions to the very material the public relies on to learn when an administration is causing harm. AFGE will submit comments on the proposed rule and urges OPM to withdraw it.”

3 ways the House farm bill threatens your health Anthony Lacey May 26, 2026

The farm bill is one of the most important pieces of legislation most of us have never heard of – and Congress is negotiating it right now.

This sweeping bill affects everyone, even those who have never stepped foot on a farm. A good farm bill would help families buy groceries, support the farmers growing our food, guide agricultural practices protecting our water supply, even expand access to infrastructure like broadband internet. 

But the Republicans’ House farm bill, the Farm, Food and National Security Act of 2026, passed last month with a focus on slashing many beneficial programs.

The Senate is soon to follow with its farm bill. If the final legislation looks anything like the House bill, it would lead to far-reaching public health harms, from pesticide exposure to longer food pantry lines to widespread water pollution. 

How? Here are three ways the House farm bill may be harmful to your health.

1. Increasing exposure to toxic pesticides 

Exposure to pesticides like glyphosate and paraquat can be devastating to a person’s health, leading to cancer and Parkinson’s disease, among other harms. 

The federal government has the power to protect us – but it hasn’t done so. Instead, the Trump administration signed an executive order to support companies in producing a steady supply of glyphosate-based herbicides, rolled back regulations intended to keep our water safe from the “forever chemicals” known as PFAS and even approved new pesticides containing PFAS.

So states and local governments are enacting their own pesticide protections. 

Some of these safeguards would limit the use of these harmful chemicals on fields near schools and public parks, where children – who are most vulnerable to toxic chemical exposure – spend their time. 

But the Senate farm bill could include a provision to replace, or “preempt,” strong state or local pesticide protections with far weaker federal rules. 

A similar provision in the House bill – removed at the 11th hour – would have erased dozens of state laws and given pesticide chemical companies sweeping immunity from liability for the illnesses linked to their products.

Even with the defeat of that troublesome language, there are still several provisions in the House farm bill that favor pesticide makers, not public health, by:

• Excluding many hazardous agricultural chemicals from existing health and safety reviews
• Making it easier for polluters to ignore health and environmental safeguards
• Delaying new reviews of certain potentially harmful pesticides until 2031
• Failing to protect people from PFAS in pesticides and biosolids.

2. Erecting barriers to healthy eating 

There are already many barriers to eating healthy in the U.S. Our food system is flooded with ultra-processed food, a leading cause of chronic diseases like Type 2 diabetes, heart disease, depression and multiple forms of cancer. Recent research shows that foods that cost less often contain more food additives and higher amounts of sugar and sodium.

More than half of adults in the U.S. say they worry about affording food for their families, and about one in seven households can’t always get enough food for everyone at home.  

Study after study has linked food insecurity and lack of healthy food access to a greater risk of diet-related diseases and poorer health outcomes.

Rather than taking action to help people eat healthier diets, the partisan House farm bill could make these problems far worse. President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act included large cuts to funding for vital nutrition programs, and the House farm bill would make those cuts permanent.

The House farm bill would kneecap nutrition programs that more than 40 million people rely on, almost 40% of whom are kids. These cuts will cause an estimated 5 million people to lose access to food assistance over the coming years and could spell trouble for small grocers who rely on their spending. 

3. Failing to protect food safety and a clean water supply

The House farm bill would cut funding to a popular Department of Agriculture conservation program that supports practices that help reduce water pollution.

Our drinking water is being polluted by factory farms – large-scale animal production facilities where about 90% of U.S. farm animals are raised – which produce enormous amounts of manure. 

This manure can harbor a lot of bacteria, including a strain of E. coli that is particularly dangerous for humans. When bacteria from animal waste spread to nearby fruit and vegetable crops, the people who eat that produce can get seriously sick.

Manure can also pollute the water with nitrogen and phosphorus, as can runoff from commercial fertilizer. Nitrogen can become nitrate in water, and nitrate in drinking water poses serious public health risks. A recent EWG analysis found nitrate in the drinking water of 1 in 5 U.S. households. Exposure to nitrate increases the risk of cancer, including colorectal and bladder cancer, thyroid disease and birth defects in infants.

Decreasing funding for the USDA’s program and other conservation programs would increase farming-related pollution of drinking water and air, putting families at risk downstream. 

The farm bill should promote public health

Americans deserve a better farm bill – one that would:

• Protect farmworkers, families and children from toxic chemicals, including PFAS forever chemicals, present in the pesticides and fertilizers used to grow our food
• Ensure all families have access to the safe and nutritious foods they need to live healthy lives
• Help farmers protect the critical natural resources we all rely on, like clean water and air 
• Prevent foodborne illnesses caused by bacteria that come from factory farms.

What you can do

While Congress debates the farm bill, consumers can use EWG tools to make informed choices. You can: 

• Follow EWG to get the latest updates about farm bill negotiations
• Consult our Tap Water Database to find out about the quality of your drinking water. If necessary, learn what type of water filter will work best in your home
• Choose organic produce when possible. Non-organic fruit and vegetables are typically grown with toxic pesticides that organic farmers are not permitted to use
• Check our Shopper’s Guide to Pesticides in Produce™, which identifies the non-organic fruit and vegetables that have the most and least pesticide residues
• And tell your representatives in Congress not to cave to corporations like Bayer-Monsanto, which are trying to strip state and local pesticide protections in the 2026 Farm Bill. Preserving these powerful state and local safeguards means protecting our farmworkers, families and children. 

Areas of Focus Food & Water Farming & Agriculture Family Health Pesticides Authors Ketura Persellin Sarah Reinhardt, MPH, RDN May 26, 2026

At General Motors’ annual shareholder meeting on June 2, 2026, shareholders will have the opportunity to vote on whether the company should report on the effectiveness of its policies and processes related to Indigenous Peoples’ rights.

General Motors has made commitments to respect Indigenous Peoples’ rights. Now the company needs to show how it is following through. The controversies and harms associated with the Thacker Pass lithium mine are just one example of how General Motors is not adequately implementing its policies on respecting Indigenous Peoples’ rights.

The shareholders who presented the proposal, the Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace, say that not respecting Indigenous Peoples’ rights exposes General Motors and its investors to material risk. Project delays, higher costs, damage to a company’s reputation, loss of public trust, and more can all result when mining projects violate Indigenous Peoples’ rights. 

The Thacker Pass Mine raises concerns

The Thacker Pass lithium mine is just one example of a project that raises concerns about the significant risks associated with sourcing materials from projects that violate Indigenous Peoples’ rights. General Motors invested $650 million in Lithium Americans Corp in 2023 and became a joint owner of the mine in 2024. 

The mine is located in a landscape that is sacred to the Paiute, Shoshone, and Bannock peoples in Nevada in the United States, who have cared for it since time immemorial.

In 1865, the US Cavalry massacred dozens of people when they attacked families in a Paiute camp now known as Peehee Mu’huh or Rotten Moon. The attack took place during the so-called “Snake Wars,” when settlers came into Paiute, Shoshone, and Bannock lands and took land, water, game, and gold. 

Now, the Thacker Pass lithium mine is making permanent changes to this sacred landscape. Ranchers, environmental nonprofit organizations, and local Tribes opposed the Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) approval of the mine. They raised concerns about inadequate consultation with Indigenous Peoples, inadequate analysis of mining claims, and impacts to water. The entire permitting process for the fast-tracked project lasted approximately one year.

Despite these shortcomings, the BLM approved the project in 2021. Courts concluded that the BLM had violated the law by not properly validating the mine’s claims, but the courts did not take away the mine’s permit. 

A 2025 report by the ACLU and Human Rights Watch concluded that by permitting the mine, the US government had violated Indigenous Peoples’ rights. A new report from Amnesty International on lithium mining in Nevada held up the mine as an example of a “business model that systematically prioritizes speed, scale and profit at the expense of Indigenous Peoples’ rights and the environment.”

The federal government invested in Lithium Americas and the Thacker Pass mine last year, diluting GM’s shares and posing potential political risks.

The litigation delays, alongside higher exploration, administrative, and investment costs related to the problematic mine resulted in a net loss of $42.6 million and increased liabilities, according to analysis by the US Sustainable Investment Forum.

A gap between commitments and actions

This is not the first time concerns about GM’s investment in Thacker Pass and its impact on Indigenous Peoples’ rights have come up. In a report published by Mighty Earth in 2023, civil society and Indigenous-led groups highlighted an important gap. The report revealed that although GM has made ambitious commitments to respect Indigenous Peoples’ rights, the company does not have adequate mechanisms to ensure these commitments were put into practice.

The Lead the Charge Leaderboard is an annual ranking of 18 of the world’s leading automakers and their commitment to building fossil-fuel-free supply chains that respect Indigenous Peoples’ rights and human rights and protect the environment. It shows a poor track record of respect for the rights of Indigenous People affected by mining for the materials used to build GM vehicles. Since the Leaderboard began in 2023, GM has only received 11 out of 100 points on its respect for Indigenous Peoples’ rights, with no improvement in three years. 

According to the latest report, “Despite having commitments [to Indigenous Peoples’ rights in its supply chain], the company fails to disclose tangible evidence of how they are being effectively operationalized and enforced in practice.”

A look at next steps

A more sustainable future can only be built by recognizing Indigenous Peoples’ rights, leadership, and stewardship of land and water. Auto manufacturers that demand that their materials come from mines that respect these rights can help shape the future and build public confidence that their dollars are buying a product that is sustainably made. 

Investors deserve more transparency and information on General Motors’ risk management and human and Indigenous Peoples’ rights due diligence processes. The shareholder proposal requesting a report on GM’s practices regarding Indigenous Peoples’ rights is an important step in ensuring General Motors upholds its own Indigenous Peoples’ rights commitments.

The post Investors Call for Report on General Motor’s Commitment to Indigenous Peoples’ Rights appeared first on Earthworks.

An investor in the Wressle and West Newton fields warned today that government policy has made its UK business “increasingly difficult to progress”.

In annual accounts, Union Jack Oil blamed successive governments for:

“complex planning, regulatory burden and high taxation, resulting in unpredictable approval timeframes bringing additional uncertainty, significant cash costs and lost opportunities”.

Union Jack’s executive chairman, David Bramhill, said:

“the cost of maintaining a number of our non-producing UK licence interests has become increasingly difficult to justify regardless of their potential future value”.

The company, which recently invested in the US, gave up interests in 2025 at Biscathorpe and North Kelsey in Lincolnshire and at Dukes Wood and Kirklington in Nottinghamshire, the accounts said. They added that Union Jack was also in the process of relinquishing its stake in the Laughton licence in Lincolnshire.

Mr Bramhill said:

“During the remainder of 2026 and beyond, the Company intends to continue to review the merits of its UK non-production licence interests while prioritising asset allocation in favour of growing its hydrocarbon exploration, development and production enterprise in Oklahoma.”

The accounts also said Union Jack “believes investors will only wish to provide finance to companies and projects that support a transition to a low-carbon economy. As part of the Company’s ongoing strategy in respect of the environment, Union Jack commits to be totally transparent in respect of its projects and on how its carbon management practice is implemented”.

Union Jack said it remained focussed on interests at the Wressle oil site, in North Lincolnshire, where the operator has just published estimates on emissions resulting from a proposed site expansion.

The Wressle development would “support the company with revenues for at least another decade”, Union Jack said.

The company said it also continued to invest in the oil site at Keddington in Lincolnshire, where production resumed in mid-2025 after site upgrades. Planning consent is already in place for a sidetrack to one of the existing wells. The location has been finalised and the well would be drilled “when the operator deems appropriate”, Union Jack said.

At West Newton, in East Yorkshire, Union Jack said the partners had been “evaluating ways of generating additional value through early production schemes, ahead of any longer-term full gas field development”.

Last year, one of the investors at West Newton proposed using the sites for cryptocurrency mining.

Earlier this year, the Environment Agency approved plans for lower-volume fracking at West Newton. The approval is being challenged by a local campaigner (details here and here), whose crowdfunder has so far raised more than £1,800.

Key figures for year ending 31 December 2025

Gross profit: £691,001 (2024: £1,968,101)

Net loss (including impairment of Biscathorpe and North Kelsey): £7,029,350 (2024: £649,213)

Basic loss per share: 5.68p (2024: 0.61p earnings)

Admin expenses (excluding impairment): £2,477,222 (2024: £1,878,089)

Total assets: £19,083,850 (2024: £23,846,105)

Total liabilities: £2,251,878 (2024: £1,975,354)

Net assets: £16,831,972 (2024: £21,870,751)

Net current assets: £1,365,622 (2024: £3,172,066)

Understanding how ecosystems work is a crucial first step in protecting the things people value most: clean air, clean water, and a healthy, resilient environment for future generations. But the...

• Many transit agencies are unlikely to fully recover from the pandemic anytime soon, particularly since remote work appears here to stay, at least for white-collar workers who used to ride commuter rail to their downtown office. The long-term trend looks better, though, as long as young people keep flocking to cities. (Governing)
• Amtrak is an exception, with ridership up almost 6% between October and April, and smaller operating losses than projected. (Trains)
• Speeding kills 12,000 a people a year in the U.S., leading some states to mandate devices on repeat offenders’ cars that limit how fast they can go. (Jalopnik)
• After testing cargo e-bikes for deliveries in New York, Amazon is expanding their use to other cities. (NY Times)
• The Texas Supreme Court sent a lawsuit challenging Austin transit expansion Project Connect back to a lower court to rule on a jurisdictional issue. (KVUE)
• Texas transportation officials are negotiating potential routes for high-speed rail between Dallas and Fort Worth and Dallas and Houston (Fort Worth Report). The attorney general’s lawsuit is one reason why costs keep rising and Project Connect’s centerpiece, a downtown light rail line, keeps shrinking (Texas Tribune).
• Transit ridership in Atlanta almost doubled in March to 4 million, after MARTA changed how it collects ridership data (11 Alive). GoTriangle ridership in the Raleigh area was up by a third in April, which officials attributed to high gas prices (ABC 11).
• The chairman of Atlanta Journal-Constitution owner Cox Enterprises, who comes from generational wealth and has probably never ridden transit in his life, came out against Beltline light rail, even though it’s been part of the plan going back to the Beltline’s inception in the late 1990s.
• Seattle Bike Blog challenged a nonsensical op-ed in the Seattle Times that claimed bike lanes make drivers “fatigued” and blamed safety projects for sending drivers into road rage.
• It wasn’t a surprise that Oregon Democrats’ proposal for small hikes to the gas tax and payroll tax to fund transportation failed, but the fact that 83% of voters rejected it was a shock. What does that mean for November elections? (KGW 8)
• Downtown Phoenix has hundreds of broken parking meters. (AZ Family)
• San Diego residents took advantage of Amtrak to avoid crowded roads over Memorial Day weekend. (KSBY)
• Toronto’s frequent bus service, even in relatively low-density neighborhoods, made it the only North American transit system where ridership rose in the decades following World War II, showing that suburbanites will ride the bus if it’s convenient. (Infrastory)
• A European human rights court ruled that a food courier’s viral TikTok rant against bus-only lanes in Tbilisi, Georgia crossed the line between free speech and personal abuse. (Courthouse News Service)