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The fight to protect Oregon’s Climate Protection Program continues Nora Apter Wed, 06/03/2026 - 9:56 am

On May 16th, 2026, dozens of supporters gathered at the beautiful Oak Hill Farm in Glen Ellen, shared food grown just a few steps from the table, and talked about one of the most pressing challenges of our time: how do we protect our communities from the growing threats of wildfire and extreme heat?

During our traditional Annual Sonoma Leadership Council Luncheon, supporters raised over $150,000, surpassing our goal in 20% and making it one of our best fundraising events ever, to fund climate resilience work underway across the Bay Area. A huge thank you to our incredible host and supporter, Arden Bucklin-Sporer.

The funds raised at the event will go toward concrete, on-the-ground work:

• Expanding wildfire buffer strategies countywide and helping homeowners take proactive mitigation steps.
• Advancing zoning policies that steer development away from the highest-risk areas.
  Strengthening local Fire Safe Councils with coordination and resources.
• Running community workshops that help Southwest Santa Rosa residents recognize heat risks early and protect their health.
• Creating opportunities for young people to take an active role in shaping climate solutions in their own neighborhoods.

We’ve captured some wonderful moments from the day—view event photos here.

Focusing on Solutions for Wildfire Resilience

After years of devastating fires in Sonoma County, the question is no longer whether the threat is real; it’s what to do about it. The Sonoma Luncheon has become a hub for discussing this topic and the cutting-edge solutions that are emerging in the region.

Over the past several years, Greenbelt Alliance partnered with the Sonoma County Agricultural Preservation and Open Space District and local organizations to develop the Interwoven Greenbelt Buffer—a first-of-its-kind, landscape-scale approach to wildfire risk reduction.

Rather than treating parcels of land in isolation, the model uses data and cross-sector collaboration to “weave together” conserved lands, working agricultural lands, and developed neighborhoods into coordinated buffer zones. The goal: reduce wildfire intensity before it reaches homes, protect biodiversity and farmland, and shift communities from reactive disaster response to proactive, landscape-level prevention.

It’s a scalable concept, and one that could serve as a model not just for Sonoma County, but for fire-prone communities across California and the Western US.

Rising Threat of Extreme Heat 

As a major driver of intensifying fires, extreme heat is becoming one of the region’s most dangerous public health threats. Over the past decade, Southwest Santa Rosa alone has seen nearly 10,000 heat-related emergency room visits.

In response, Greenbelt Alliance is partnering with Latino Service Providers to develop a community-led Extreme Heat Action Plan for Southwest Santa Rosa, one of our Resilience Hotspots. The effort, supported by the Governor’s Office of Land Use and Climate Innovation, centers the people most affected—agricultural workers, families, and youth— in designing the solutions. It’s a process built on community knowledge, cultural responsiveness, and local leadership.

Our Marin Resilience Manager Jessie Rountree put it simply at the luncheon: climate solutions aren’t just possible. They’re already happening.

Help Make a Difference

As we look ahead, we invite you to continue standing with us in this critical work. With your support, we can expand these solutions across the region and safeguard the places we all love.

Every year, we host this event for our Sonoma Leadership Council, a group of supporters in the North Bay who donate $1,000 or more annually towards the work we do in the region. Our work would not be possible without our donors, and this is a great opportunity to thank them and help raise funds for ongoing projects in Sonoma County and beyond. If you would like to donate toward our work or join our Sonoma Leadership Council, click here. 

Thank you again to our wonderful supporters for helping us work to build a safer and more resilient Sonoma County! 

 

The post Funding Solutions for Fire and Heat at Sonoma Luncheon appeared first on Greenbelt Alliance.

In 2021, amidst a wave of corporate net-zero targets, a campaign group called Investors for Paris Compliance was set up in British Columbia, aiming to use investor pressure to hold Canadian companies to account on their climate promises.

In the five years since, the group has notched up several wins: pressuring National Bank into providing $20 billion of finance to renewable energy, getting Royal Bank of Canada to improve its green finance labels and persuading 20-25% of investors to regularly back climate proposals at annual general meetings (AGMs) for shareholders.

But last month, the group’s then executive director Matt Price put out a statement saying it was shutting down. Despite some progress, Price explained, his organisation had concluded that “investor accountability has reached its limits”.

Companies and their investors often understand that climate change threatens the economic system, Price said. But, he added, they do not respond adequately because they are worried that, if they do, their competitors will not put in as much effort and could therefore gain a financial advantage.

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This “tragedy of the commons” situation cannot be fixed by shareholder advocacy, Price said, but instead needs litigation, regulatory action and accountability mechanisms. “Some of our team will take those things on in new initiatives,” he said.

Price’s words echo the findings of a London School of Economics (LSE) report published last month, based on workshops with asset owners and managers in New York, Amsterdam, London and Singapore.

Government policy key

The LSE report noted that “action by investors on climate change is severely constrained by their duties, the limited tools at their disposal and the pathways of technology development”. To be effective, pressure from climate-conscious investors must be coupled with government policy that incentivises green investment and technological innovation, the authors concluded.

An investigation by the Guardian recently found that, despite overwhelming shareholder support for its climate action plan, Australian mining company BHP has carried on buying polluting diesel trucks instead of electric ones. The Australian government subsidises diesel, saving BHP hundreds of millions of dollars a year.

As EU acts to stop greenwash, funds drop climate claims from their names

Lindsey Stewart, director of institutional insights for investment research firm Morningstar, told Climate Home News that investor activism does work but it “doesn’t do everything that people expected it to do towards the beginning of the 2020s”.

“There is a limit to what can be achieved by minority shareholders exercising their votes and engaging with companies. Quite a lot, it does seem, is reliant on the legal and regulatory framework,” he said, adding that the closure of Investors for Paris Compliance shows this “realisation is sinking in a lot more than perhaps it was in 2020, 2021, 2022”.

Decline of investor activism

Stewart said that in the early 2020s, investor activists were pushing companies for “things that were sort of already on the regulatory conveyor belt anyway”, like companies setting targets for their operational (Scope 1 and 2) emissions, disclosing their carbon footprints, and assessing their exposure to risk from climate change.

With this low-hanging fruit picked, green-minded investors have moved on to make demands that are more controversial and have received less support from other investors, he said. He gave examples of just transition reporting, green capital expenditure financing ratios for banks and disclosing emissions from the use of products a company sells, known as Scope 3 emissions.

On top of this, Stewart said, there has been pressure from the “right-wing political establishment in the US” against investors taking climate change into consideration. BlackRock, which manages $9.5 trillion of assets, has walked back its climate commitments after pressure from US Republicans.

More fundamentally, Stewart described the idea that fossil fuel majors would dismantle their oil and gas business and transform into renewables companies as a “pipe dream on the part of environmentalists”. “Why would they have the skill or capability, or even the stakeholder backing, to completely transform a business of that size?” he asked.

Shareholder activism is only possible at privately owned and listed companies, while most investment in oil and gas is now coming from state-owned companies, like Saudi Arabia’s Aramco. In 2025, less than a quarter of investment was from oil majors like BP and Shell.

Business backlash shows power

Yet despite the uphill climb, Mark van Baal defends shareholder activism. He runs an Amsterdam-based campaign group called Follow This, which has tried to get investors to vote for pro-climate resolutions at the AGMs of oil and gas multinationals.

He accepts that success peaked around 2021, but says the effort oil and gas firms are now putting into winning over shareholders and discouraging pro-climate resolutions – which he characterised as “the Empire Strikes Back” – shows the power of shareholder activism, which was previously underestimated.

Mark van Baal is the head of Follow This (Photo: Follow This)

In January 2024, ExxonMobil sued Follow This, aiming to block the group’s climate resolution. Fearing the case would end up in the Supreme Court, where conservative judges could set an anti-climate precedent, Follow This withdrew the resolution.

But, said van Baal, although the legal battle created a “chilling effect among investors”, it is a “proof point that shareholder pressure works and that they’re really afraid of the shareholders”.

Vote, don’t sell

Stewart and van Baal both agreed that selling, or threatening to sell off shares is not an effective way to change a company’s behaviour.

It allows less climate-conscious investors to buy the shares, they said, adding that there is no evidence that threats to sell shares and therefore lower the valuation over climate concerns have influenced company management.

Van Baal said the share price is set by short-term traders, not long-term shareholders like the pension funds he works with.

How Shell is still benefiting from offloaded Niger Delta oil assets

Nonetheless, investors’ engagement should be forceful, van Baal insisted – and not just within their comfort zone of talking to management about sustainability behind closed doors without voting for it at AGMs. “Shareholder democracy is the only democracy where voting is called escalation,” he said.

The Follow This website says that only investors can stop fossil fuel companies destroying the planet. “Marches didn’t change their minds. Lawsuits didn’t stop them. But shareholders can,” it trumpets.

But van Baal told Climate Home News this wording is “too strong” and may have to be revised, adding that shareholder activism just “fits me more than gluing myself to roads” and is a tactic he “stumbled on” 11 years ago.

Legal, political and investor activism can reinforce each other, he added. When Friends of the Earth sued Shell alleging inadequate climate action, for example, the green group’s lawyers cited the company’s rejection of a Follow This resolution as evidence. “The pressure needs to come from all sides,” van Baal said.

The post Investor climate group closes down, blaming “limits” of shareholder activism appeared first on Climate Home News.

The lawsuit calls the deal a “sham settlement agreement to unlawfully cancel an offshore wind lease and redirect the money paid for the lease to a separate, unauthorized use favored by the President.”

We handpick and explain the most important stories at the intersection of climate, land, food and nature over the past fortnight.

This is an online version of Carbon Brief’s fortnightly Cropped email newsletter.
Subscribe for free here.

Key developments Amazon updates

RECORD-LOW LOSS: Amazon deforestation rates have fallen to their lowest level since 2019, according to a report covered by Agence France-Presse. The newswire called the figures “good news” for president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, but said the rate of deforestation is still “breathtaking”, with five trees felled every second, on average. Separately, a report from Rainforest Foundation Norway found that the “currently anticipated growth in Brazilian beef production may lead to deforestation of ~57,000km2 in the Amazon by 2034”.

ROAD AND RAIL: The Brazilian government will invest $75m into a new highway “cutting through the Amazon rainforest”, reported Deutsche-Welle. The Associated Press said the administration also announced an environmental protection plan to “safeguard the forest from potential impacts from the highway”, but added that environmentalists still fear the move “could speed up Amazon deforestation”. Separately, Inside Climate News reported on a Brazilian supreme court ruling that has brought a 965km railway through the Amazon “one step closer to reality”.

BANNED IMAGES: Mongabay reported that “Brazil’s Congress has passed a bill prohibiting environmental agencies from using satellite images to restrict the commercial use of illegally deforested lands”. According to the outlet, supporters say that “satellite-only enforcement infringes upon farmers’ right to a fair defense”, while critics argue that the bill will “weaken environmental protection” and “create unsafe conditions” for Brazil’s federal environmental police. Separately, the Brazilian government has committed more than $600m (£446m) to “foster ecological investment in the Amazon region”, according to the Associated Press. 

El Niño forecast and extreme heat

‘SUPER’ STRESSED: The predicted “super” El Niño event would add stress to an “already dysfunctional and fragile global food system”, wrote the University of Sussex’s Prof Benjamin Selwyn in a commentary in the Conversation. He added that “El Niño alters rainfall, shifts jet streams and raises global temperatures”, all of which could damage harvests this summer. Reuters noted that the forecast for the phenomenon is “particularly worrying”, due to the predicted strength of the event and the contribution of climate change. 

HEAT BURDEN: “Scorching temperatures” in India have “disrupted daily life across several northern states”, said the Washington Post. The outlet added: “Some farmers have switched to nighttime work to avoid scorching temperatures as a heatwave grips large parts of India.” The heatwave is also affecting Nepal, as high temperatures have “added burdens to public health, education, agriculture, livestock, environment, employment and public infrastructure”, reported Nepal News.

‘MIND-BOGGLING’ HEAT: Meanwhile, a “heat dome” over western Europe broke UK temperature records for the month of May. Carbon Brief summarised how the “mind-boggling” heatwave was covered in both national and international press. Agence France-Presse wrote that parts of Italy approved rules limiting work in conditions “with prolonged exposure in the sun” during the hottest part of the day. The newswire added: “Farmers reported accelerated harvests as temperatures went beyond 30C across the region.”

News and views

• SNAKEBITE DANGER: “The risk of snakebites is increasing across the world as reptiles shift their habitats to cope with rising temperatures and growing human pressures,” according to new research covered in the Guardian. It added that human-snake interactions are “forecast to become more pronounced”.
• RICE RISK: “Several parts” of China are experiencing heavy rains early this year, “raising risks for agriculture and disaster management”, wrote Bloomberg. This includes “key grain-producing provinces”, as well as areas that grow rice, vegetables and fruit, added the outlet.
• DATA DROUGHT: Chile’s Quilicura wetland, just north of Santiago, is drying up as “datacentres have drained water from drought-stricken wetlands, consuming billions of litres annually”, said the Guardian. It noted that the area is home to Latin America’s “largest concentration of datacentres”. 
• ACCOUNTING TRICK: A group of scientists have called on the Irish government to reject a proposal that would allow the livestock to use a metric called GWP* to measure methane emissions, reported Inside Climate News. According to the outlet, they warned that this “accounting trick” would “downplay” the industry’s emissions. (See Carbon Brief’s explainer on GWP* for more information.)

Spotlight Three key findings on the state of carbon dioxide removal

This week, Carbon Brief unpacks three key findings from the third edition of the “state of carbon dioxide removal” report. 

Global carbon dioxide removal (CDR) will need to increase fourfold by 2050 if the world is to have a chance of limiting global warming to 1.5C by 2100, said a new report.

Nearly all pathways to meeting the Paris Agreement’s highest ambition of keeping global temperatures to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels in 2100 involve CDR techniques – ranging from tree-planting to sucking CO2 from air with machines.

This is in addition to steep and immediate emissions cuts.

Scientists expect carbon emissions to push warming beyond 1.5C in the decade ahead, meaning that the target can only be achieved via large-scale CDR.

Here, Carbon Brief pulled out three key findings from the third state of CDR report.

‘Novel’ CDR is small, but growing

The report said that, at present, “99.9%” of existing CDR is conventional, land-based techniques, such as tree-planting and ecosystem restoration.

The world currently removes 2.2bn tonnes of CO2 (GtCO2) per year, equivalent to around 5% of gross global CO2 emissions.

The largest contributors to removing CO2 from the atmosphere are China, the US, the EU, Brazil and Russia, largely through tree-planting (afforestation) and forest restoration (reforestation).

“Novel” CDR, such as biochar and direct air capture, currently removes just 2m tonnes of CO2 annually at present, according to the report.

These methods have been growing at a rate of 40% per year – which is “insufficient for the scale-up required to meet the Paris temperature goal”, said the report.

Current ambition will not lead to net-zero

The report examined several scenarios where global temperature rise is limited to “well below” 2C by 2100, including a current ambition scenario and a highest-possible ambition scenario.

The current ambition scenario was based on “nationally determined contributions”, or NDCs, which countries submit periodically to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

Under this scenario, the report projected a total of 5.9GtCO2 of CDR by 2050 and 12GtCO2 by 2100. This scenario would result in end-of-century warming of 1.7-2.7C. 

Importantly, the report said, current ambition does not result in the world reaching net-zero CO2 levels, “meaning that global temperatures would continue to rise” – albeit more slowly – beyond 2100.

Under the highest-possible ambition scenario, CDR scales up to 8.8GtCO2 by mid-century and 15.3GtCO2 by the end of the century. This results in global temperatures peaking at 1.7-1.8C around 2050 and the world achieving net-zero emissions around that time. 

Reducing emissions now lowers the need for future CDR

While many countries include some amount of CDR in their NDCs, there is currently a large gap between the amount of CDR pledged and the amount that will be needed to limit global temperature rise to 1.5C by the end of the century, said the report.

This quantity is referred to as the “CDR gap” – the difference between what is pledged and what is needed. 

The size of the CDR gap is dependent on both the pledges made by countries and the choice of the “benchmark” scenario against which they are measured.

Current NDCs and other country submissions to the UNFCCC total 2.5GtCO2 per year of removals in 2030 and 3.6GtCO2 per year in 2050. Using the highest-ambition scenario as a benchmark, this gives a CDR gap of 0.3GtCO2 in 2030 and 5.2GtCO2 in 2050, according to the report. 

By comparison, a 10-year delay in implementing ambitious emissions reductions will result in the need to remove at least an additional 150GtCO2 from the atmosphere, compared to the most ambitious scenario.

This Spotlight is adapted from Carbon Brief’s Q&A on the state of CDR report. You can read the article in full here.

Watch, read, listen

‘DEVASTATING’ DATA: Grist reported on a proposed Utah datacentre that could be “devastating” to the ecology of the Great Salt Lake – the largest saline lake in the world. 

ECO-OIL: The Times explained how a new synthetic oil, grown in a lab in north-west England, could be used as a substitute for palm oil. 

EL NIÑO IMPACTS: An interactive piece from BBC News described how the forecasted “super” El Niño could impact global climate and weather in the coming months.

‘BATTERY COWS’: The Guardian covered work from the Bureau of Investigative Journalism that found a “huge rise” in factory-style dairy farming of “battery cows” in the UK.

New science

• Greenhouse gas emissions from rice paddies have doubled globally over the past six decades | Nature Food
• Climate change will shift the timing and location of hailstorms – increasing the risk of damage to winter crops, such as wheat, but decreasing the risk to summer crops, such as maize | Nature Climate Change 
• Wind turbines in western Europe put more than 100m migratory birds “at risk” of collision annually, but this number can be lowered through limiting energy production at strategic times | Nature Sustainability

In the diary

• 2-5 June: UN expert meeting on food and agriculture | Rome
• 5 June: World environment day
• 8-18 June: Subsidiary body meetings of the UNFCCC | Bonn, Germany
• 15-19 June: Meeting of the parties to the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea | New York City
• 16-18 June: Our Ocean Conference | Mombasa, Kenya

Cropped is researched and written by Dr Giuliana Viglione, Aruna Chandrasekhar, Daisy Dunne and Orla Dwyer.  Please send tips and feedback to cropped@carbonbrief.org

The post Cropped 3 June 2026: Highway through the Amazon | El Niño impact | State of CO2 removal appeared first on Carbon Brief.

Contact: Kayla Ritchie | kayla@unbendablemedia.com

In response to Trump’s latest artificial intelligence executive order, Mar Zepeda Salazar, Policy Director at the Climate Justice Alliance, a coalition representing nearly 100 frontline community-based and supporting networks across the country released the following statement: 

“The latest AI Executive Order is being couched in terms of US dominance, cybersecurity, and national competitiveness. But for the communities living near data centers, gas plants, and transmission corridors, the real story is the collateral damage that will be left in its wake because of what this order leaves out.

No mandatory environmental review. No energy or water use disclosures. No Tribal consultation. No cumulative impact analysis. No legal protections for communities.

Accelerated AI and data center infrastructure buildout will only raise our electricity bills, increase pressure for new fossil fuel plants, drain our  water supplies, and expand polluting industry — disproportionately sited near rural, Black, Brown, Indigenous, and low-income communities.

At a time when the climate crisis and public health emergencies continue to accelerate with little to no end in sight, we will continue to demand strong mandatory safeguards, licensing requirements, environmental protections, and community protections for the people of this country. Nothing less will do.”

 

 

 

The post The Real Story Behind Trump’s Latest AI executive order is what it leaves out appeared first on Climate Justice Alliance.

In a few days, host cities across North America will welcome huge World Cup crowds by pedestrianizing major streets – and in some cases, entire neighborhoods – to keep traffic jams out of the fan parades and festivals associated with the international event.

Boston will not be among them.

On Tuesday, the City of Boston and MBTA announced a compromise plan for managing heavy crowds around South Station that would keep Summer Street open to vehicular traffic on some – but not all – World Cup match days.

Mayor Wu’s administration had been fighting the T to keep Summer Street open to cars and trucks amidst the thousands of soccer fans that are expected to converge at South Station as they wait to board trains to Foxboro.

In the compromise plan announced Tuesday, Summer Street will be pedestrianized between Dorchester Avenue and Atlantic Avenue for eight hours on four match days: Saturday June 13, Friday the 19th, Monday the 29th, and for the quarter-final match on Thursday July 9.

For matches held on Thursday the 16th, Thursday the 23rd, and Sunday the 26th, the city plans to keep the northern lanes of Summer Street open to cars for the convenience of people who desire to drive through thick crowds of soccer fans into one of the most congested districts of the city.

But drivers should be warned: “the direction of travel will be coordinated based on the demands of the respective day and time,” and the city and the T may add “additional temporary traffic restrictions and lane closures to accommodate crowd management,” according to a press release that the MBTA and City of Boston issued yesterday.

Summer Street will also be entirely closed for an indeterminate period on all seven match days “while the MBTA sets up the temporary security screening and queuing space” outside South Station.

Other cities have more serious game plans

Boston’s nearest World Cup peer city, New York, recently announced a major transit-focused transportation plan for match days that will ban private cars and truck deliveries from numerous busy streets around Midtown Manhattan, even though the actual games are happening six miles away in New Jersey.

New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani last week announced that on World Cup match days, the city will expand bus-only lanes throughout Midtown Manhattan and transform 42nd Street – a major cross-town connection – to a bus-only corridor.

In a striking contrast to Mayor Wu’s approach, Mamdani’s administration is also planning to create large car-free pedestrian zones on the streets around Penn Station so that thousands of soccer fans will have plenty of space as they wait for trains to New Jersey.

New York had also previously announced plans to transform 50 streets near schools into car-free “soccer streets” this summer.

In another contrast with Boston, Philadelphia is also coordinating its World Cup traffic planning with its preparations for a surge of tourism for the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.

Philadelphia will close several Lemon Hill roadways to vehicular traffic for the duration of its World Cup fan festival, and it will also pedestrianize the outer lanes of Benjamin Franklin Parkway, the grand boulevard between Center City and the Philadelphia Museum of Art, for the entire summer.

The city is also pitching in $450,000 to subsidize additional PHLASH bus service between the fan festival in Lemon Hill and the central city.

Even the two World Cup host cities in Texas are taking a more enlightened approach to transportation.

Houston is pedestrianizing roughly 30 blocks of streets in its East Downtown district for daily World Cup “fan festivals” in June and July.

In Dallas, where games will take place in a suburban stadium about 17 miles from the city center, the city will close several downtown streets near its World Cup broadcasting center in the downtown convention center, and on several blocks around the city’s fan festival in the state fairgrounds.

The Trump administration is moving to dismantle an ocean observation system consisting of more than 900 instruments in the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. Data supplied by the system has been used to study key Atlantic currents that increasingly appear in danger of collapse as the climate warms.

Read more on E360 →

By 2042, DTE expects to have more than 2.9 GW of energy storage on its system, more than doubling its current storage capacity.

By late May, New York City is full of baby birds. Speckled young robins have fledged their messy nests and hop along after their parents, still hoping for an offered worm. Young Red-tailed Hawks...

Con el objetivo de fortalecer y dar visibilidad a experiencias locales que promueven la prevención y gestión responsable de residuos, la iniciativa Rutas basura cero seleccionó una serie de recorridos presenciales ejecutados por organizaciones locales en distintos países de América Latina. 

La propuesta surge en un contexto de creciente preocupación por la crisis de los residuos y los impactos ambientales, sociales y económicos asociados al actual modelo de producción y consumo. Frente a este escenario, las estrategias de basura cero han demostrado ser una alternativa efectiva para reducir la generación de residuos mediante prácticas de reducción, reúso, reciclaje y compostaje, al tiempo que promueven la justicia ambiental y el fortalecimiento de las economías locales.

En particular, los sistemas de reúso y rellenado están cobrando cada vez más relevancia como soluciones replicables y escalables para avanzar hacia comunidades más saludables y sostenibles. Sin embargo, muchas de estas experiencias continúan siendo poco conocidas fuera de sus zonas, lo que limita su potencial de incidencia y réplica.

Para revertir esta situación, el proyecto Rutas basura cero impulsa recorridos presenciales coordinados por organizaciones locales, que permiten a tomadores de decisiones, representantes de gobiernos, académicos, líderes sociales y otros actores clave conocer de primera mano iniciativas exitosas en funcionamiento.

Las rutas incluyen visitas a proyectos con al menos un año de trayectoria y resultados comprobables, vinculados a prácticas como el rellenado de envases, el lavado y reutilización de utensilios, el compostaje descentralizado y el cooperativismo. Además, cada experiencia es documentada mediante registros audiovisuales que pasan a integrar una base regional de casos de éxito.

La iniciativa busca generar espacios de intercambio entre experiencias consolidadas y actores estratégicos, así como producir materiales que contribuyan a la difusión y sistematización de aprendizajes sobre modelos basura cero en la región.

A continuación, compartimos las organizaciones e iniciativas seleccionadas que forman parte de esta primera edición de Rutas basura cero:

Entrejardines nos lleva a la compostera y huerta comunitaria del barrio La Floresta en Quito, luego pasamos por Pure!, una empresa de turismo que comparte cómo ha adoptado prácticas de reúso y segregación en origen dentro de su oficina, y terminamos en el restaurante Pim’s donde conocemos cómo gestionan sus residuos sólidos y orgánicos. 

La Asociación Defensores Monumento Zona de los Santos, nos muestra cómo están trabajando para preservar una zona de alta biodiversidad a través del manejo de residuos de subproductos de procesos de cultivo de café como el que hacen en CoopeTarrazu y Coopedota. Luego terminamos con una parada en el Centro de acopio Preserve Planet (CAPP) para saber más sobre segregación de residuos y recuperación de tapas de refrescos.

Fundación Lenga nos traslada a la zona más austral del Chile donde iniciamos el recorrido en Compost Coiron y su proyecto de gestión de residuos orgánicos, donde además nos cuentan cómo el turismo influye en el colapso del vertedero municipal de Puerto Natales. En Punta Arenas, conocemos el laboratorio textil Puro Viento, una iniciativa de reuso que utiliza residuos textiles y gigantografías publicitarias para hacer artículos como mochilas, estuches, entre otros. Finalmente, llegamos a Puerto Williams para saber más sobre la iniciativa municipal de gestión de residuos.

The post Rutas basura cero: una iniciativa regional para visibilizar experiencias de reúso y gestión sostenible de residuos first appeared on GAIA.

Reform run councils do not represent local opinion on climate

Image by Mick Holder

The increased number of Reform run Councils reversing climate emergency declarations and rowing back on limited but essential climate mitigation and adaptation measures should not be confused with popular support for them on this issue; even in areas where they have won with a landslide. 

Friends of the Earth have produced a very useful study of popular opinion – and the key environmental/climate issues – for every local authority in England. You can find yours by typing your postcode into the home page here. 

An example is Thurrock, where Reform won 45 seats out of 49 in May, but; 

• 71% of people are worried about the climate crisis, 

• 60% think it should be a government priority 

• and 75% support renewable energy.

This concern is also reflected among existing Reform voters nationally, almost twice as many of whom would back a solar farm over fracking as the best way to create energy in their local area when forced to pick between the two (43:23%). The figures for voters in general are even more strongly opposed to Reform policy, with 60% choosing solar over 10% choosing fracking.

Back in Thurrock, there are serious climate and environmental issues affecting people’s everyday lives that any council will have to address; however you label them: 

• 52% of homes are poorly insulated, 

• 100% of neighbourhoods have air quality below WHO standards, reflecting poor local public transport, non existing cycling infrastructure and too few public EV chargers, 

• 54,480 people are at extreme risk of flooding, 

• only 28% of household waste is recycled 

• and 89% of neighbourhoods have less than 20% tree cover.

Every other Reform dominated area will have a similar, but specific, profile and this is an area of political vulnerability for them.

Check out your own local authority, gain strength from the knowledge that Reform Councillors are a loud minority standing on very thin ice (which is getting thinner as it gets hotter) and think about how to campaign on the key problems, and who else to do it with. 

Paul Atkin 

 

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The post Reform run councils do not represent local opinion on climate first appeared on Greener Jobs Alliance.

Constellation Energy will be able to transfer capacity interconnection rights, enabling the nuclear unit to potentially deliver all its power when it restarts, possibly before the end of 2027.

Google has worked to make its data centers flexible, the company’s global head of data center energy told Utility Dive, but it’s often faster and more cost effective to pay other customers to shift their electricity usage.

Each summer, people in mosquito country slather themselves with DEET, or diethyltoluamide, the synthetic liquid widely seen as the most effective mosquito repellent around.

But in some situations, they might be turning themselves into mosquito magnets, according to new research published in the Journal of Experimental Biology.

The discovery makes for interesting insights into why DEET is usually so effective. It’s also a cautionary lesson about nature’s adaptability in the face of human ingenuity, and to not take for granted the promise of such seemingly bullet-proof inventions as DEET.

“We need to understand how mosquitoes keep outsmarting our control strategies,” said Clément Vinauger, a Virginia Tech researcher who took part in the research and has spent years plumbing the behavior of mosquitos.

The stakes are much more than a few scratchy bites. Mosquitoes can spread dangerous blood-borne illnesses including malaria, dengue and yellow fever, killing an estimated 1 million people every year.

The use of DEET has been a mainstay of dealing with these biting insects, usually by spreading it on people’s skin or clothes. But despite its widespread use since its invention in the 1940s, it’s not entirely clear why it works. Does it trigger some kind of irresistible physiological reaction in mosquitoes? Or can insects overcome that response and come to tolerate or even like the smell?

To figure that out, Vinauger and his collaborators took a page from the work of Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov, who famously showed that he could train dogs to salivate at the sound of a bell, because they had learned to associate it with food.

 

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In a sense, the new experiments took it even a step further. What of an animal could become so conditioned that it would seek out a disgusting physical sensation, such as a terrible smell?

To figure that out, the scientists took laboratory-raised Aedes aegypti mosquitoes, a species that spreads yellow fever and dengue. They enclosed individual insects in a plastic cylinder topped with wire mesh. They lowered a warm bag of sheep blood toward the mesh and watched to see how often a female mosquito tried to poke its proboscis into the bag. Some mosquitoes were tested in a DEET-free setting. Others were offered a blood bag while being perfumed with DEET. In a third version, mosquitoes were allowed to feed on the bag unmolested for 10 seconds, then had DEET wafted into the chamber while feeding for another 10 seconds.

For each version, individual mosquitoes went through their routine three times, to drive home the behavioral lesson.

Then the scientists exposed each trained mosquito to the smell of DEET minus the actual blood bag. Most of the ones that had never encountered DEET before or had a constant dose of the chemical while the blood was presented reacted as we might expect. They showed little interest in feeding.

But the ones that had started feeding and then encountered the DEET smell did the equivalent of Pavlov’s salivating dogs. They acted as if they were going to bite, even when there was no blood bag.

To see if this response could be replicated in a more realistic situation, mosquitoes were exposed to the two hands of scientist Ayelén Nally of the University of Buenos Aires in Argentina. Just one of her hands was doused in DEET. Mosquitoes without any special training all headed toward the DEET-free hand. But more than half the trained mosquitoes showed a preference for the hand covered in the insect repellent. (Nally didn’t shed blood for the experiment – there was a mesh barrier blocking the mosquitos.)

The startling results suggest that rather than a hardwired physical response, the repellent might work because it evokes the smell of natural occurring repellents such as chemicals from a plant, the scientists suggested. “What we are showing is that the mosquito’s brain can rewrite that response based on experience. What the insect has learned matters just as much as what the chemical does,” said Vinauger. “That, I think, is a paradigm shift.”

That doesn’t mean people should toss away their DEET. It’s still highly effective in many cases. “If you’re in tropical regions where disease risk is real, you should use it,” he said.

But people might need to use it more thoughtfully. “Instead of applying a lot at once, you may want to reapply regularly so it’s always active and providing continuous protection,” Vinauger said.

That way, mosquitoes won’t get close enough to take a bite and begin associating the smell with a snack. Because if they do, then you might just be putting on mosquito perfume.

Lazzari, et. al. “Associative learning switches DEET valence from aversive to appetitive in Aedes aegypti.” Journal of Experimental Biology. May 28, 2026.

Image: ©Anthropocene Magazine

By Vanessa Mascia Turri

Naples became one of Europe’s most ambitious experiments in democratic water governance after Italy’s 2011 referendum against water privatisation. Yet bringing water back into public hands did not necessarily redistribute power over how water itself would be governed.

In 2011, after the Italian referendum against water privatisation, Naples became one of the most ambitious experiments in remunicipalised water governance in Europe. The city transformed its water utility into ABC Napoli (Acqua Bene Comune Napoli), a publicly owned entity presented not simply as a return to public management, but as an attempt to implement the “democracy of the commons” theorised by the Italian Forum of Water Movements.

Within this perspective, water was understood not only as a public service, but as a common good whose governance should involve the direct participation of citizens and social movements.

Over the following decade, Naples became a testing ground for a broader political question that has emerged across many remunicipalisation struggles: what happens when the language and practices of the commons enter public institutions? The Neapolitan experience shows that bringing water back into public hands does not automatically democratise its governance. Instead, participation became continuously negotiated and reshaped through political conflict, financial pressures and struggles over who should control public resources.

From water struggles to the democracy of the commons

Since the early 2000s, struggles against water privatisation have connected local mobilisations to broader debates around the commons. Struggles against water privatisation in Europe have often gone beyond opposition to market reforms and increasingly connected demands for public ownership with broader claims around the commons and direct democracy, as explored throughout the Reimagining, remembering and reclaiming water series. In many countries, water movements have challenged not only privatisation, but also the idea that essential services should be governed through technocratic and top-down forms of management, increasingly linking water struggles to broader claims around the commons and direct democracy, as discussed in Transforming capitalism? The role of the commons and direct democracy in struggles against water privatisation in Europe.

In Italy, these debates converged in the Italian Forum of Water Movements, one of the broadest water movements in Europe. As broader discussions around the commons in Italy have shown, these debates extended well beyond water itself and raised wider questions about collective resources, democracy and institutional change. Under the slogan “si scrive acqua, si legge democrazia” (“it is written water, it is read democracy”), the movement argued that remunicipalisation should involve not only public ownership, but also direct civic participation in water governance.

Naples became the most ambitious attempt to translate this political vision into institutional practice.

 

Poster from the 2011 Italian referendum campaign against water privatization reading “Water is not for sale.” Image courtesy of the Forum Italiano dei Movimenti per l’Acqua.

Naples became the most ambitious attempt to translate this political vision into institutional practice.

Yet public and academic debates on remunicipalisation have often focused on privatisation conflicts and legal transitions, paying far less attention to what happens afterwards. How are participatory mechanisms actually organised inside remunicipalised utilities? How much power are institutions willing to share with social movements and citizens once remunicipalisation has taken place?

My article From theory to practice: evaluating civic participation in Naples’ remunicipalised water service examines these questions through the case of ABC Napoli, reconstructing how participation was progressively organised, contested and reshaped during the decade following remunicipalisation.

Participation and the limits of the commons

At the moment of remunicipalisation, Naples faced deteriorated infrastructures, chronic underinvestment and a massive municipal public debt. For many activists of the Neapolitan water movement, remunicipalisation was therefore not only about public ownership, but also about transforming the priorities of water governance through ecological restoration, infrastructural investment and more equitable access to water.

Over the following decade, ABC Napoli experimented with different forms of civic participation. Initially, the municipal government opened the board of directors to representatives linked to the Italian Forum of Water Movements and to environmental associations. Yet local activists who had led the mobilisation against privatisation were largely excluded from these arrangements, generating immediate tensions over who had the legitimacy to participate in the governance of the utility.

The most ambitious participatory experiment emerged with the creation of the Civic Council, a public assembly open to citizens, activists and ABC workers. Meetings were held directly inside the company and addressed issues such as tariffs, infrastructure maintenance, hiring policies and investment priorities. Delegates from the assemblies also participated in discussions with the board of directors, creating one of the most advanced attempts in Europe to institutionalise direct civic participation inside a remunicipalised water utility.

However, participation became far more conflictual once these assemblies started intervening in concrete political and economic questions. Members of the Civic Council promoted long-term infrastructural investments and the recruitment of specialised personnel while defending the financial stability of the utility. According to several interviewees, these priorities increasingly clashed with those of the municipal government, which was more focused on short-term employment policies and the management of public-sector jobs within a broader context marked by debt, unemployment and political pressures surrounding public employment.

These tensions ultimately led to the removal of the board of directors and to the progressive weakening of participatory governance. In the following years, participation increasingly shifted towards weak consultative mechanisms with limited influence over decision-making processes. Many activists gradually distanced themselves from the experiment, while severe financial constraints continued to limit investments in infrastructures and ecological renewal.

Rather than evolving towards deeper forms of democratic governance, the Neapolitan experience progressively revealed the difficulties of institutionalising the “democracy of the commons” within existing municipal structures and political priorities.

Remunicipalisation without democratisation?

Poster from the Italian public water movement following the 2011 referendum campaign, emphasising water as a public right rather than a source of profit. Image courtesy of the Forum Italiano dei Movimenti per l’Acqua.

The experience of ABC Napoli complicates many celebratory narratives surrounding remunicipalisation. Bringing water back into public hands did not automatically redistribute power inside public governance. On the contrary, the Neapolitan case shows how quickly the language of the commons can become absorbed into existing institutional structures once participation starts challenging concrete political and economic interests.

The weakening of participatory governance inside ABC Napoli did not result from a lack of civic mobilisation or technical expertise. Quite the opposite: activists involved in the water movement developed increasingly detailed proposals on tariffs, infrastructures and long-term investments, becoming capable of intervening directly in the governance of the utility. Participation became problematic precisely when it stopped being symbolic and started questioning how public resources, infrastructures and employment should be managed.

In Naples, these tensions unfolded within a broader context marked by public debt, deteriorated infrastructures, unemployment and long-standing systems of political mediation surrounding public-sector employment. Under these conditions, the “democracy of the commons” increasingly collided with the political and administrative logics shaping municipal governance.

More broadly, the Neapolitan experience suggests that remunicipalisation alone cannot democratise essential services without a real willingness from public institutions to share decision-making power. Commons become politically difficult when they move beyond participation as consultation and start demanding participation as co-governance.

Rather than offering a linear model of democratic transformation, Naples reveals the unresolved tensions that emerge when social movements attempt to institutionalise the commons inside existing state structures. The question, then, is not simply whether remunicipalisation is possible, but whether public institutions are truly willing to democratise the power through which public resources are governed.

—

Featured image: Protest sign reading “Public water, public management. Clear?” during a demonstration of the Italian water movement. Photo courtesy of the Forum Italiano dei Movimenti per l’Acqua (acquabenecomune.org).

The post From remunicipalisation to the democracy of the commons appeared first on Undisciplined Environments.

Headline News:

• “Markey Demands Trump Cancel DOE Plan To Give Private Companies Enough Plutonium To Build 2,000 Nuclear Bombs” • Senator Ed Markey implored President Donald Trump to cancel his DOE’s plan to give private companies enough plutonium to build around 2,000 nuclear bombs, warning the move raises a number of important concerns. [Common Dreams]

Senator Markey (USDAgov, public domain)

• “Almost Everywhere Will Face Above Average Summer Heat, WMO Warns” • El Niño will hit this summer with 80% certainty, according to the latest forecast by the World Meteorological Organization. El Niño is expected to leave virtually nowhere untouched, with above-average temperatures forecast around the globe for June to August. [Euronews]
• “The UK Government Set A Target Of An 87% Cut In Carbon Emissions By 2042” • The British government said that it will stick to its net-zero goal, despite pressure on energy supplies from global conflicts. It will reduce the UK’s planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions by 87% of 1990 levels in the next decade and a half. [ABC News]
• “What Hormuz Is Teaching Traders About Utilities” • The Strait of Hormuz shows how vulnerable electricity markets are to fuel price shocks, even after years of investment in renewable energy. The effects of the disruption are steadily working their way through natural gas markets, fuel contracts, and wholesale electricity worldwide. [OilPrice.com]
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For more news, please visit geoharvey – Daily News about Energy and Climate Change.

Beberapa tahun lalu, aktivitas yang berkaitan dengan permainan angka masih banyak dilakukan melalui metode tradisional. Informasi disebarkan secara terbatas, pencatatan dilakukan secara manual, dan proses verifikasi membutuhkan waktu yang relatif lama.

Kini, berbagai platform digital memanfaatkan teknologi berbasis cloud untuk mengelola jutaan data dalam waktu singkat. Informasi dapat diperbarui secara instan, sementara pengguna dapat mengakses layanan melalui perangkat komputer, tablet, maupun smartphone kapan saja.

Transformasi ini menunjukkan bagaimana digitalisasi mampu mengubah sistem yang sebelumnya sederhana menjadi ekosistem teknologi yang jauh lebih efisien dan responsif.

Teknologi Keamanan Menjadi Prioritas Utama

Salah satu aspek yang paling berkembang dalam platform digital modern adalah sistem keamanan. Pengelola layanan online kini menerapkan berbagai lapisan perlindungan guna menjaga stabilitas sistem dan keamanan data pengguna.

Beberapa teknologi yang banyak digunakan meliputi:

• Enkripsi data tingkat lanjut.
• Sistem autentikasi ganda
• Pemantauan aktivitas secara otomatis.
• Proteksi terhadap serangan siber.
• Sistem deteksi anomali berbasis kecerdasan buatan.

Teknologi tersebut memungkinkan aktivitas digital berlangsung dengan tingkat keamanan yang lebih tinggi dibandingkan era sebelumnya.

Pengalaman Pengguna yang Semakin Interaktif

Salah satu faktor yang membuat platform digital modern berkembang pesat adalah fokus pada pengalaman pengguna atau user experience. Tampilan yang responsif, navigasi yang mudah dipahami, serta desain visual yang menarik menjadi standar baru dalam dunia digital.

Saat ini, banyak platform mengadopsi desain minimalis dengan antarmuka yang intuitif. Pengguna dapat menemukan informasi yang dibutuhkan dengan lebih cepat tanpa harus melalui proses yang rumit.

Selain itu, teknologi real-time memungkinkan berbagai informasi ditampilkan secara langsung sehingga pengalaman digital terasa lebih dinamis dan interaktif.

Integrasi Mobile yang Mengubah Segalanya

Kehadiran smartphone menjadi salah satu pendorong utama pertumbuhan layanan digital modern. Mayoritas aktivitas internet kini dilakukan melalui perangkat mobile, sehingga pengembang platform berlomba menghadirkan sistem yang sepenuhnya ramah terhadap pengguna smartphone.

Optimalisasi mobile tidak hanya mencakup tampilan visual, tetapi juga kecepatan akses, efisiensi penggunaan data, serta kompatibilitas dengan berbagai sistem operasi. Hasilnya, pengalaman pengguna menjadi lebih praktis dan fleksibel tanpa terikat lokasi maupun waktu.

Data Analytics Menjadi Mesin Penggerak

Di balik tampilan yang sederhana, terdapat sistem analisis data yang bekerja secara terus-menerus. Teknologi data analytics memungkinkan pengelola platform memahami tren penggunaan, meningkatkan performa sistem, serta melakukan pengembangan layanan berdasarkan kebutuhan pengguna.

Melalui pengolahan data yang akurat, berbagai keputusan strategis dapat dilakukan dengan lebih cepat dan terukur. Inilah alasan mengapa analisis data kini menjadi salah satu aset paling berharga dalam industri digital modern.

Masa Depan yang Semakin Berbasis Teknologi

Perkembangan teknologi menunjukkan bahwa sistem digital akan terus berevolusi. blockchain, komputasi awan generasi terbaru, hingga otomatisasi berbasis machine learning diperkirakan akan semakin banyak digunakan untuk meningkatkan efisiensi dan keamanan platform online.

Dalam beberapa tahun ke depan, berbagai layanan digital kemungkinan akan menghadirkan pengalaman yang lebih personal, cepat, dan terintegrasi dibandingkan saat ini. Inovasi tersebut menjadi bukti bahwa transformasi digital masih berada dalam tahap perkembangan yang sangat dinamis.

Penutup

Togel online menjadi salah satu contoh bagaimana teknologi mampu mengubah sebuah sistem tradisional menjadi platform digital yang jauh lebih modern. Kehadiran cloud computing, kecerdasan buatan, analisis data, serta keamanan siber tingkat lanjut telah menciptakan ekosistem yang semakin canggih dan efisien.

Meski demikian, penting bagi pengguna untuk memahami bahwa setiap aktivitas yang melibatkan permainan uang memiliki risiko. Pemanfaatan teknologi sebaiknya disertai kesadaran digital, pemahaman terhadap regulasi yang berlaku, serta pengelolaan aktivitas online secara bertanggung jawab. Dengan begitu, perkembangan teknologi dapat dipahami dari sisi inovasi dan transformasi digital yang terus bergerak maju.

Freddie Daley is a research associate with the Centre for Global Political Economy at the University of Sussex. Charlie Lawrie is a postdoctoral associate at the University of Sussex.

In December 2025, Indonesia quietly abandoned plans to close the Cirebon-1 coal power plant. This was no ordinary power plant. Cirebon-1 was supposed to be the centre-piece of a $21.4 billion (£16.5bn) international deal backed by the US, UK, Japan and the EU to help Indonesia end coal use.

Indonesia’s so-called Just Energy Transition Partnership, or JETP, was launched at a G20 summit in Bali in 2022. Similar deals have been struck with South Africa, Vietnam and Senegal. They are widely regarded as the most ambitious attempt at getting international climate finance to end coal use in populous, coal-dependent middle-income countries.

The UK government once touted the JETPs as “a template on how to support just transition around the world”. This refers to efforts to ensure that the phase-out of fossil fuels and phase-in of low-carbon technologies is fair, inclusive and reflects the demands of workers and affected communities.

But if this approach cannot retire a single plant in Indonesia, the world’s fourth largest coal consumer, there is reason to question whether the model itself works. Our research suggests these partnerships are better understood as a cautionary tale.

Investors needed

The idea underpinning the JETPs is elegant in theory: use public money from rich countries to attract private investment for renewable energy projects and closing down coal plants.

Grants from governments and low-cost loans supposedly reduce the risk enough to bring in billions more from banks and asset managers. The public money “unlocks” the private money, and together they fund an energy transition that benefits the public through cleaner air, reliable energy and reduced climate risk. Win, win.

But across all four JETP countries, the private money has yet to materialise at the scale envisioned. In Indonesia, as of early 2025, only around $1.1 billion of public money had been disbursed. But the country’s plan for decarbonising electricity estimates it needs $97 billion in investment by 2030 – a cavernous gap.

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More troubling still is the lack of consolidated financial reporting for the JETP funds. Fifty separate funding packages within the Indonesian JETP, all with their own financial instruments and accounting frameworks, make it all but impossible to track how much money has been spent.

As international climate law expert Lukas Bogner has argued, this kind of finance creates complex bureaucratic layers that recipient countries must navigate.

Why investors haven’t shut coal plants

Decommissioning a coal plant is not like building a new one. It means buying out existing contracts, compensating investors for lost future profits, and renegotiating complex legal agreements.

Even then, the electricity the plant provided still needs to be replaced. This requires further investment in generation systems that may not yet exist. Investors have little appetite for any of this, and the costs fall primarily on the state.

In fact, the supposed unlocking of private investment with public money raises a perennial tendency: private capital moves where returns are highest and risks lowest.

Investors in London and New York, for example, demand high returns from middle-income economies like Indonesia, yet baulk at complex regulatory environments, state-owned electricity companies, powerful coal interests and mounting sovereign debt burdens. Public money can make some projects more attractive, but will not remove the supposed political and economic risks investors see in countries like Indonesia.

The energy transition deal aims to wean Indonesia off coal, which now takes up nearly half of the country’s electricity mix. Photo: Kemal Jufri / Greenpeace The energy transition deal aims to wean Indonesia off coal, which now takes up nearly half of the country’s electricity mix. Photo: Kemal Jufri / Greenpeace

The JETP also means loading Indonesia with more debt. Of the $21.4 billion now pledged, only 2.6% comes in the form of interest-free grants. Most JETP finance would arrive as commercially-priced loans which Indonesia must eventually repay.

In other words, Indonesia is being asked to borrow more to decommission coal assets that currently generate government revenue and employment. At the same time, it will have to purchase renewable electricity from the privatised companies that would replace them.

In the words of one of our interviewees, the Indonesian state is expected to “pay twice” – once to close the old system, and again to buy power from the new one. Trade unions in Indonesia have been blunt about what this means in practice. Under the JETP model, they warn electricity will no longer be treated as a public good, but as a commodity that ordinary Indonesians will pay more for.

Why rich countries are “reluctant” on additional JETP coal-to-clean deals

The JETP model can also weaken the same state institutions needed to manage the energy transition. Countries that have managed rapid clean-energy booms, from China to Vietnam, have done so through strong state-owned enterprises, clear industrial strategies and the ability to direct investment and discipline business.

The JETPs, by contrast, are designed around a diminished role for the state and a central role for private capital. This happens through regulatory reform, the creation of new private markets, or through investor-friendly technologies.

In the case of Indonesia, this “de-risking” agenda explains the pressure to break up the national electricity company and sell off its assets – a prospect fiercely resisted by trade unions, civil society and even wealthy groups who profit from the existing system.

A broken model?

International climate finance remains important. Rich countries must still fund energy transitions in the Global South. But the Indonesian JETP suggests that relying on private investors to deliver coal phase-outs may be the wrong model.

Alternatives do exist, from proposals for much larger grant-based financing to the Bridgetown Initiative proposed by Barbados’s prime minister, Mia Mottley, which would use International Monetary Fund resources to support climate investment. More radical proposals call for publicly-owned, worker-led transitions. But so far, these ideas have made little progress.

Our research suggests just transitions are more likely when governments receive direct grants that help them retain the capacity to shape their own energy systems, and to support domestic industries through green industrialisation.

The failure to decommission Cirebon-1 matters beyond Indonesia. It suggests the world’s flagship model for financing the end of fossil fuels isn’t working. And the longer it takes to admit that, the harder the transition becomes – for Indonesia, and for everyone.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The post Indonesia’s failing Just Energy Transition Partnership is a cautionary tale appeared first on Climate Home News.

Thin Blue Rage: The Police Countermovement, by Andrew Crosby and Jeffrey Monaghan (Fernwood Publishing, May 2026). The years following the George Floyd rebellions have witnessed...

The post Book Review: “Thin Blue Rage: The Police Countermovement” first appeared on Spring.