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Events Upcoming events Conceptualizing security in a time of deep civilizational crisis - June 17th The first webinar will open the series with a conceptual discussion on security in a time of deep civilizational crisis. It will examine how security has traditionally been framed through the international order, the nation-state, sovereignty, militarization, and the management of threats, while asking how communities and movements are challenging this paradigm today.AlternativesalternativesT…

Eventos Próximos eventos Reflexiones sobre la seguridad en una época de profunda crisis civilizatoria Este es el primero de una serie de seminarios web que dará inicio al ciclo con un debate conceptual sobre la seguridad en una época de profunda crisis civilizatoria. Se analizará cómo se ha concebido tradicionalmente la seguridad a través del orden internacional, el Estado-nación, la soberanía, la militarización y la gestión de amenazas, al tiempo que se cuestionará cómo las comunidades y l…

Energy efficiency is a good thing—but is it being undermined by some part of human nature?

There’s a long-running debate in energy economics about whether as technology becomes more efficient, people may cancel out (or significantly decrease) energy savings because they consume more resources, not fewer.

This effect, variably known as the rebound effect or the Jevons paradox, traces way back to 1865, when the English economist William Stanley Jevons noticed that as steam engines burned coal more efficiently, Britain burned dramatically more coal, not less. Cheaper energy services, he argued, simply invite more energy use.

Few examples illustrate the Jevons paradox as starkly as the humble light bulb. A modern LED produces the same brightness as a Victorian gas lamp using less than one percent of the energy (a 1,000-fold leap in efficiency). Yet humanity now uses vastly more light than ever before: glowing billboards, 24-hour parking lots, and cities visible from space. Each efficiency gain in lighting has been met, and often surpassed, by more and more lights. Did the carbon savings we expected partly evaporate into a brighter world?

The question for the climate era is uncomfortable—but unavoidable. Nearly every national climate plan, every net-zero pledge, and every IPCC pathway leans heavily on energy efficiency as a pillar of decarbonization. How much can more efficient cars, heaters, and other appliances really help stave off climate change? 

• • • The Good News

1.  The big numbers look good. Energy efficiency has to date been one of the main drivers of emissions reductions. The International Energy Agency estimates that improvements to energy efficiency saved the world 7 gigatons of carbon dioxide from 2010 to 2022. For context, that’s more than the tailpipe emissions from 1.5 billion gas-powered passenger cars driven for an entire year. And, the IEA projects that improving fuel efficiency in vehicles, better insulation in houses, and other energy efficiency measures could deliver two-thirds of the oil demand reduction and half of the natural gas demand reduction necessary to meet net zero energy sector emissions by 2050.

2.  Jevons’ paradox is only a problem if the metric is a problem. As Adam Dorr pointed out in a blog post for the nonprofit research org RethinkX, swapping out an emissions-heavy coal plant for a more efficient solar farm may cause energy consumption to spike as prices drop, but that doesn’t mean emissions went up. We often associate energy efficiency with energy austerity. But what if a fully decarbonized economy turned that association on its head? We could use a whole lot more energy, but our emissions footprint would be undetectable. Check out Adrienne Bernhard’s piece for the BBC on “How limitless green energy would change the world.”

Source: The International Energy Agency 2026 Electricity Report

3.  A (possible) ceiling on consumption. Full-fledged rebound requires appetites without limits; in practice, energy appetites saturate. In other words, there may be a ceiling to how much energy most people actually want. A family that switches to a heat pump does not crank the thermostat to 85°F because heating got cheaper; they nudge it up a degree or two and pocket the rest. Even at a national level, at some point, enough really is—well—enough. In his New York Times article, “The Paradox Holding Back the Clean Energy Revolution,” Ed Conway cites research showing that steel and copper consumption seem to slow down as countries achieve a high standard of living.

In short, rebound may be real, but it may also be overblown within the context of carbon emissions. In fact, the strongest version of the Jevons’s claim—that efficiency raises total emissions—is, when tested against modern data, surprisingly hard to find.

• • • The Bad News

1.  AI is the wrench in the works. If ever there were a real-time Jevons experiment, it is unfolding now in data server farms in Virginia, Ireland, and Arizona. Google, for example, seems keen on energy efficiency. In their 2024 environmental report, the company reported that their latest custom processors were 2.7 times more energy efficient than the previous generation, and that they’d found ways to slash the energy required to train models by up to a thousand-fold. In their 2025 report, they highlight how improvements in hardware energy efficiency, among other things, helped them avoid two-thirds of possible emissions the previous year. And yet, that same report noted that once you include the emissions produced building and rigging up their new AI data centers, Google’s overall real-world emissions have actually risen by more than 50% between 2019 and 2024. AI systems overall were estimated to have had the same carbon footprint as New York City in 2025.

Source: The International Energy Agency 2026 Electricity Report

2.  Shipping may also have a big rebound. A 2024 study in Nature Energy found that Jevons’ may have eroded the carbon savings from regulations designed to increase fuel efficiency in long-haul trucking by more than 25 percent. “We didn’t anticipate effects of this magnitude,” Jonathan Hughes, one of the study’s authors, told Anthropocene. That’s because more fuel efficient trucking is cheaper trucking, which could encourage manufacturers to switch from the relatively cleaner, but slower rail shipping.

3.  Rebounds don’t stay in one lane. If increases in energy efficiency result in less demand from power plants for petroleum to burn, one might think this would result in a straightforward reduction in petroleum use, but not so fast. As investment management firm Van Eck pointed out in a blog post, petroleum isn’t just an energy source, it’s also a feedstock for many petrochemicals such as plastics and fertilizers. If increased energy efficiency drives down petroleum demand, basic economics suggests petroleum prices should also go down. Manufacturers might happily gobble up the cheaper feedstocks to produce more plastics and fertilizers. Considering that petrochemicals also produce emissions (around 5 percent of the US’ annual emissions), what had been a simple picture gets messier. 

 

• • • What to Keep An Eye On

1.  Autonomous vehicles. When researchers conducted a full life-cycle analysis of autonomous electric cars, they found some tell-tale signs of rebound. While autonomy cuts fuel-use emissions by about 21%, manufacturing the more complex vehicles, combined with increased travel, can surge emissions by up to 40%—and even with recycling offsetting some of that, autonomous electric vehicles end up emitting roughly 8% more greenhouse gases over their lifetime than standard electric vehicles.

2.  The Global South. Most rebound studies come from wealthy economies where appetites for light, heat, and mobility are largely saturated. In countries where billions of people are only now gaining reliable electricity, air conditioning, and personal vehicles, even modest efficiency gains may unlock enormous new demand. How the world handles that legitimate growth, and whether the energy meeting it is clean, may matter more for the global carbon trajectory than any rebound coefficient ever measured.

3.  Carbon pricing. Even where rebound is real, it is not destiny—it is a policy problem with a known fix. Inês Azevedo’s makes the point in a 2014 paper. When efficiency is paired with a carbon price, an emissions cap, or a clean-electricity standard, the freed-up money and energy cannot simply re-fuel fossil consumption, because the cap or the price is still binding. Efficiency under a carbon constraint is not Jevons’s coal mine; it is a tightening lid on a shrinking budget. The paradox, in this view, is not a law of human nature—it is what happens when you do efficiency without doing climate policy.

Top image: ©Anthropocene Magazine  

A sea of solar panels is rapidly engulfing one of the world’s largest salt deserts. By 2029, nearly 60 million panels will cover 280 square miles of India’s Rann of Kutch, extending right up to the border with Pakistan. The Khavda solar park is set to be the world’s largest and most powerful supplier of electricity from the sun, with a generating capacity of 30 gigawatts — 30 times the size of a typical coal or nuclear power station and enough to power Austria. 

With India’s economy now growing faster than China’s, Khavda epitomizes the country’s breakneck rush to electrify with solar power. Installed solar capacity in India has been growing by 40 percent a year. In March, it passed 150 gigawatts, and by 2030 is set to double again. 

Analysts say the world’s most populous nation is on the verge of becoming the first major country to power its industrialization predominantly with solar energy. 

Cheap solar is “enabling India to develop without the long fossil-fuel detour taken by the West and China,” said Kingsmill Bond, energy strategist and director at Ember, a U.K.-based think tank that tracks the world’s transition to renewable energy. “China built on coal; India is building on sun,” he said. “And what India is doing could also be mirrored in other emerging economies.” 

India’s solar revolution comes as a surprise. Just a decade ago, apart from rooftop installations and a few microgrids serving remote rural villages, solar power was virtually unknown. The government seemed hell-bent on industrializing with coal, unleashing a rising tide of carbon dioxide emissions and supercharging climate change.

Sources: Ember, Energy Institute. Yale Environment 360 / Made with Flourish

In 2015, shortly after taking office, Prime Minister Narendra Modi promised to double coal output by 2020. And at successive international climate negotiations, his ministers pushed back angrily against demands that the country renounce the fossil fuels that drove industrialization in Europe and North America. 

“How can anyone expect that developing countries make promises about phasing out coal [when they] still have to deal with poverty reduction?” Environment Minister Bhupender Yadav asked angrily at COP26 in Glasgow five years ago, before sabotaging the conference’s planned declaration on eliminating coal from the global economy. 

But back home, policy was already changing. The country’s sunny climate made it a natural home for solar energy, and the cost of solar panels was falling fast. Ever since the Glasgow conference, India has been introducing solar energy at an accelerating rate. Last year, for the first time, more than half its installed generating capacity was from non-fossil fuel sources. 

As booming India’s electricity demand continues to grow by more than 6 percent each year, the solar trend is set to continue. According to the International Energy Agency, or IEA, about half the growth anticipated between now and 2030 will be met by solar power, and another 25 percent from other low-carbon sources, mostly wind, hydroelectric, and nuclear. 

Leading the solar surge is the country’s largest private power producer and the world’s second largest solar developer, the Adani Group. Founded in 1988 initially as a commodity importer by Gautam Adani, a long-time confidante of Prime Minister Modi and reputedly now Asia’s richest person, it is widely regarded as having benefited from Modi’s patronage. 

Eyebrows were raised in 2023 when long-standing military protocols banning all construction within 6 miles of the border with Pakistan were set aside weeks before Adani gained control of that land for the Khavda project. And in 2024, the U.S. Department of Justice accused Adani executives of paying hundreds of millions of dollars in bribes to Indian government officials to obtain lucrative supply contracts for its solar energy and hiding this from potential investors. The case was dropped this month after Adani made offers to invest in the U.S., though U.S. officials denied any link. 

Read Next Solar to overtake coal on Texas grid for the first time ever this year Julian Spector, Canary Media

Still, the fast-growing Khavda solar park, which had an installed capacity of 9.4 gigawatts as of April, is the jewel in the Adani crown. Its panels are attended by robots that dry-clean them at night to remove desert salt and dust without requiring precious freshwater. The project also includes wind turbines in the windy coastal region on the shores of the Arabian Sea, which should secure nighttime power for the grid.

India still has a long way to go to break its dependence on fossil fuels. Coal still delivers most of the country’s baseload and fuels about 70 percent of total power generation. It helps make India the world’s third-largest carbon dioxide emitter, after China and the U.S, and is a major cause of the country’s urban smogs, which are the worst in the world. But the target to double coal mining output has been quietly forgotten, and construction of coal-fired power stations has been much reduced. Coal’s share in the energy mix is set to fall below 50 percent by 2035, according to the IEA.

Still, with its enormous generating capacity, coal remains deeply entrenched. And there are other constraints on how much solar power can contribute to keeping the lights on in India. While solar last year made up 28 percent of the country’s total installed electricity-generating capacity, it accounted for only 9.4 percent of the electricity put into supply. 

Why the difference? There are two reasons. 

The first is that the country’s outdated grid cannot yet transmit all the solar power being captured in the deserts of western India to where it is needed in the urban heartlands. At times last year, almost 40 percent of the country’s solar power output did not reach customers. 

Read Next The Iran war is changing how millions of people cook — and what they eat Ayurella Horn-Muller & Naveena Sadasivam

Charith Konda, an India-based energy researcher for the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, attributes this to the rapid growth of solar facilities, which has outstripped grid development. “Solar plants typically take 18 to 24 months to build, while transmission projects usually take about five years… The grid is trying to catch up.” To that end, the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy has committed to spending more than $100 billion on expanding the national grid by 29 percent by 2032, through a series of green energy corridors linking solar hubs to major industrial and population centers.

But a revamped grid is only part of the answer, said Debajit Palit, who researches the country’s energy transition at the Chintan Research Foundation in New Delhi. Solar also underdelivers because India lacks the infrastructure to store renewable energy to meet demand after the sun goes down and during the cloudier monsoon season.

One solution being hurriedly adopted is to use water as a battery — so-called pumped storage. This involves linking two storage tanks or reservoirs, one higher than the other.  When the grid has surplus power, that electricity is used to pump water from the bottom tank to the top tank. Then, when the grid needs extra power, it can be generated by dropping the water through turbines to the lower tank. 

Starting later this year, a 1.4-gigawatt project is expected to pump water from one of India’s largest hydroelectric reservoirs, the Gandhi Sagar on the Chambal River in the state of Madhya Pradesh. Another, with a capacity of 3 gigawatts, is set for completion near Mumbai in 2030. In January, the country’s Central Electricity Authority identified 120 potential pumped-storage sites with a combined capacity of 180 gigawatts.

Another solution to the storage problem is lithium-ion batteries. World battery prices are falling dramatically — down 58 percent since 2023, said Ember’s global electricity analyst Kostantsa Rangelova, “making round-the-clock solar electricity increasingly viable.” 

Recognizing this, the Indian government has since last year required new solar farms to install battery storage so they can supply more constant power to the grid. Adani is currently assembling the country’s biggest battery storage system at the Khavda complex — enough to discharge over a gigawatt of power to the grid for three hours every evening. 

Read Next Solar was poised to help Puerto Ricans survive blackouts — until Trump axed nearly $1B in funding Naveena Sadasivam

An additional concern is that India remains heavily dependent on China for the technology behind its solar push. While it now manufactures most of its solar panels, the silicon materials that make the photovoltaic cells largely come from China, as do three-quarters of the lithium-ion batteries essential for energy storage. 

The Indian government is working to address this reliance on its northern neighbor for the supply chain for its renewables technologies by boosting domestic manufacturing. A more long-lasting constraint may be land. 

Solar panels require a lot of space — a difficult issue in a densely populated country that has more people than China on little more than a third of the land area. In a few places, solar companies are offering farmers the option to continue cultivating below raised solar panels, so-called agrivoltaics. But elsewhere, solar facilities are evicting peasant farmers, creating angry protests. 

Occupying areas empty of people, such as the desert salt flats of Khavda, avoids disturbing people but may put wildlife at risk. The Khavda complex abuts the Rann of Kutch Wildlife Sanctuary in Pakistan, which is home to threatened species such as striped hyenas, desert lynx, jackals, and desert foxes, as well as critically endangered great Indian bustards and migrating waterfowl following the Central Asian Flyway from Siberia to the Indian Ocean. 

Read Next The Iran war is destroying oil demand. Could it also spark a shift to clean energy? Kate Yoder

Despite such drawbacks, optimists believe that mass deployment of batteries should one day allow India to meet 90 percent of its electricity demand from solar energy. “The question is no longer whether solar can power India’s electricity system,” said Rangelova, “but how quickly it can scale.”

Not all of India’s booming industries can easily banish coal and hook up to solar-powered electricity, however. One logjam is the steel industry, which requires coal to produce the intense heat needed for blast furnaces and to convert iron ore into pig iron and then steel. India has the most ambitious plans of any country in the world for increasing steel manufacturing, aiming to double production in the coming decade. “Steel is the elephant in the room for India’s decarbonization,” said Palit. 

But in other sectors, the news is better. The country is electrifying its transportation system, for instance. The 42,000 miles of broad-gauge track in India’s vast railway network have been almost entirely electrified in the past decade. Meanwhile, electric road vehicles are moving into smoggy city streets. Most rapidly, India’s ubiquitous motorised rickshaws, often called tuk-tuks, are being electrified. Some 60 percent of sales of motorized rickshaws are now electric, making India the world leader. 

The choking of oil and gas supplies from the Middle East in recent months will only further accelerate the country’s shift to electrify its transportation sector, said Konda.

Whatever the drawbacks, the rapid advance of Indian solar power continues, and marks a sharp difference from the energy path chosen by China and, until now, what has been seen by many countries as essential for their economic development. 

For years, China was notorious for building a new coal-fired power station every week. But India is avoiding that path. Its coal use is only 40 percent of that in China at a similar stage of economic development, according to Bond. Instead, it is installing solar generating capacity at almost the same rate as China once built coal plants. 

With India’s leaders aiming to complete the country’s transition into a modern industrial economy by 2047 — the centenary of its independence from Britain — this matters for the world. India’s current per capita use of electricity is only a third of the global average, a fifth of that of China, and less than a tenth that of the U.S. Closing that gap by burning coal would be ruinous for the world’s climate. Achieving it with solar power could go a long way toward saving the planet.

toolTips('.classtoolTips1','A type of rechargeable battery that functions by shifting lithium ions between two charged metal components, the anode and cathode, and is commonly used to power EVs and consumer electronics.'); toolTips('.classtoolTips4','The process of reducing the emission of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases that drive climate change, most often by deprioritizing the use of fossil fuels like oil and gas in favor of renewable sources of energy.'); toolTips('.classtoolTips8','A lightweight, silvery-white alkali metal with properties that allow it to store large amounts of energy. Lithium is a key component of many batteries, including those that store renewable energy and power electric vehicles.');

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline A first among major nations, India is industrializing with solar on May 30, 2026.

Each week, Food Tank is rounding up a few news stories that inspire excitement, infuriation, or curiosity.

U.S. States Move To Ban Food Dyes and Additives

The USDA’s new public tracking system was updated this month to show the progress food companies are making to remove petroleum-based synthetic dyes from their products.

This federal push encourages companies to act before states implement their own restrictions but, over the past few days, several states have advanced major food safety measures to limit or ban certain food dyes and chemical additives.

In Iowa, Governor Kim Reynolds signed a sweeping health bill that bans certain artificial food dyes and additives from school meals and expands ingredient-related health regulations.

The legislation prohibits six food dyes and two additives from foods and drinks served in many K-12 schools across the state. The law is being described as one of the most prominent state-level food and health measures in the country.

Meanwhile, lawmakers in New York have advanced the “Food Safety and Chemical Disclosure Act,” which would ban additives in foods sold in the state.

Potassium bromate, one of the additives targeted in the New York bill, is commonly used to strengthen dough and improve texture in some iconic New York foods like pizza and bagels.

According to a report from The New York Times, some bakers have pushed back against the proposal, arguing the additive helps preserve the texture and consistency of traditional recipes.

However, many bakeries have taken the bill in stride and are now adjusting their family recipes to ensure a safer slice for New Yorkers.

Thailand’s THAIFEX Expo Highlights the Global Shift Away From Ultra-Processed Foods

As legislation moves forward in U.S. states, food leaders are gathering in Bangkok this week to discuss the next generation of cleaner, more sustainable foods at Thailand’s THAIFEX expo.

THAIFEX is one of Asia’s largest food and beverage trade shows and is being promoted by the Thai government as part of its strategy to position Thailand as a global food hub.

One of the primary focuses of this year’s expo is the future of alternative proteins, especially plant-based products.

Industry leaders at the expo are emphasizing a shift toward plant-based foods that are more affordable, more flavorful, and more nutritious than earlier generations of meat substitutes.

Fermentation technology is also a major theme at the conference this year, as companies look for new ways to create proteins and ingredients with fewer additives and less industrial processing.

The event reflects a broader global push to adapt food production as governments, startups, and major food manufacturers respond to concerns about climate impact, supply chain resilience, and long-term food security.

U.S.-Mexico Trade Disputes Continue to Drive Up Tomato Prices

In the U.S., trade disputes with Mexico over tomatoes are beginning to hit consumers. More than 70% of the fresh tomatoes consumed in the U.S. are imported from Mexico, making American grocery prices especially vulnerable to supply disruptions and tariffs.

Last year, Food Tank reported on the U.S.’s termination of the “Tomato Suspension Agreement.” Now, the U.S. is enforcing a 17% tariff on many fresh tomatoes imported from Mexico and American consumers are feeling the effects of rising costs.

Tomato prices recently reached an eight-year high, 23% above last year’s prices.

Supporters of the tariffs, including many Florida tomato growers, argue that Mexican producers have long sold tomatoes below fair market value, undermining domestic farmers. But industry experts warn that U.S. producers are unlikely to replace Mexico’s supply quickly enough to stabilize prices.

The situation has been further complicated by winter freezes and crop diseases across North America this year which significantly reduced tomato production on both sides of the border.

Food policy experts say the dispute underscores broader challenges facing the global food system, including climate-related production risks, water scarcity, supply chain vulnerability, and growing concerns about long-term food security and regional resilience.

Federal Decision Could Remove Bison From Public Lands

Concerns about regional resilience are also surfacing in the American West this week, where a federal decision threatening bison herds has sparked backlash from tribal nations and conservation advocates.

The recent federal decision could remove bison from public land in Montana, potentially displacing nearly 1,000 animals.

The decision centers on grazing permits administered by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), where officials have argued that bison are not a “productive” livestock species like cattle.

Bison help shape grassland ecosystems, support biodiversity, and maintain prairie health. They also hold deep cultural and economic importance for many Native American tribes.

In the late 1800s, federal eradication campaigns devastated the North American bison population from tens of millions to only a few hundred surviving bison.

Tribal nations and conservation groups have spent decades rebuilding herds and restoring the species to parts of its historic range.

The Coalition of Large Tribes joined protests to oppose the bison removal as a threat to tribal food sovereignty, cultural traditions, and ongoing conservation efforts. They argue the federal decision may mark worse to come for bison herds across the country.

The Hajj Brings People—and Culinary Traditions—Together

This week also marks the beginning of the annual Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca, one of the largest religious gatherings in the world. Millions of Muslims are traveling from across the globe to Saudi Arabia, bringing with them important food traditions, ingredients, and cooking styles from their communities.

Pilgrims this week will share foods including Indonesian rice dishes, Nigerian stews, South Asian biryanis, North African couscous, Turkish desserts, and so many more regional specialties.

Food safety, refrigeration, sanitation, and supply logistics become especially critical during the pilgrimage because of the scale of the gathering and the intense summer temperatures in Saudi Arabia.

This week, thousands of farmers, workers, volunteers, and aid organizations will work to get meals safely to millions of people participating in the Hajj.

At a time of such global division, the Hajj is a reminder that food remains one of the most powerful ways people connect across borders, languages, and traditions.

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

Photo courtesy of Omer F. Arslan, Unsplash

The post Food Tank’s Weekly News Roundup: The Hajj Begins, States Move to Ban Food Dyes and Additives, and Trade Disputes Continue to Drive Up Tomato Prices appeared first on Food Tank.

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Headline News:

• “European Energy Receives German Hydrogen Support” • European Energy secured support under Germany’s hydrogen auction framework linked to the European Hydrogen Bank for adding 150 MW of hydrogen production capacity in Denmark. Funding of up to €228 million will support additional hydrogen production connected to its Kassø site. [reNews]

Kassø hydrogen plant (European Energy image)

• “Four EU Countries Push Brussels To Ease Carbon Market’s Pressure On Industry” • Estonia, France, Germany, and Spain are urging the European Commission to rethink part of its planned carbon market reforms, warning that some industries could face serious competitive pressure under stricter emissions rules due to take effect between 2026 and 2030. [Euronews]
• “Iran Deal Coming Soon – Because Exxon Is Running Out of Oil” • Exxon Mobil Senior Vice President Neil Chapman warned that oil inventories are draining fast and could reach “really low levels” in the coming few weeks if the situation in the Middle East isn’t resolved. Naturally, if that happens prices will spike. We could be in for a real shock. [CleanTechnica]
• “Africa Is Embracing Renewable Energy” • African countries are increasingly looking to renewable energy to meet growing power demand. In 2025, African countries added a total of 11.3 GW of renewable capacity, up from 4.2 GW in 2024, according to the International Renewable Energy Agency. And increasingly, renewables are displacing fossil fuels. [Yale E360]
• “Over 100 Home Heat Pumps Helped Balance Germany’s Grid For Nearly Three Years Without Affecting Comfort” • Viessmann Climate Solutions, part of Carrier Global Corporation, said it has concluded a pilot in Germany that shows residential heat pumps can actively support grid operations, according to Renewable Energy Magazine. [The Cool Down]

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

In spring, Tricolored Blackbirds stage one of California’s great birding spectacles, amassing in the tens of thousands to breed in the Central Valley. This season, the largest colony documented so...

Regulator quantifies the revenue cuts caused by the delayed start of the giant shock absorber" battery, and the impact of the catastrophic transformer failure.

The post Delays at Australia’s most powerful battery lead to a more than $90 million cut in payments appeared first on Renew Economy.

May 29, 2026 – FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

SUWA Statement on President Trump’s Repeal of Travel Management Executive Orders – 5.29.26  Will bring unregulated motorized recreation and chaos across public lands  

Contacts:
Grant Stevens, Communications Director, Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance (SUWA); (319) 427-0260; grant@suwa.org

Washington, DC – Friday evening, in his latest attack on federal public lands, President Trump announced the repeal of Executive Order 11644 of February 8, 1972 (Use of Off-Road Vehicles on the Public Lands), and Executive Order 11989 of May 24, 1977 (Off-Road Vehicles on Public Lands). He further directed federal land management agencies including the Bureau of Land Management and Forest Service to rescind or revise their regulations implementing these Orders. Below is a statement from SUWA Legal Director Steve Bloch and additional information.  

“The reality is that there are tens of thousands of miles of dirt roads and trails in Utah’s canyon country open today to motorized vehicles. Far from motorized vehicles being kept out of public lands, it’s quite the opposite: it’s the wildlife and visitors trying to picnic or camp with their families that are being chased out at every turn,” said Steve Bloch, Legal Director at the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance (SUWA). “These executive orders provided the foundation for common-sense management of motorized vehicles on public lands. They recognized the destructive impact unmanaged motor vehicles have on our public lands and required federal agencies to minimize the damage. The impacts of today’s Order will be significant, long-lasting, and devastating.” 

About Executive Orders 11644 and 11989 

Presidents Nixon and Carter issued Executive Orders 11644 and 11989 in 1972 and 1977, respectively, in response to the growing use of dirt bikes, snowmobiles, all-terrain vehicles, and other off-road vehicles (ORVs) and corresponding environmental damage and conflicts with non-motorized recreationists. These executive orders require federal land managers to plan for ORV use to protect resources and other recreational uses. Specifically, the executive orders require that, when designating areas or trails available for ORV use, the agencies locate them to: 

(1) minimize damage to soil, watershed, vegetation, and other resources of the public lands;  

(2) minimize harassment of wildlife or significant disruption of wildlife habitats; and  

(3) minimize conflicts between off-road vehicle use and other existing or proposed recreational uses of the same or neighboring public lands.   

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The Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance (SUWA) is a nonprofit organization with members and supporters from around the country dedicated to protecting America’s redrock wilderness. From offices in Moab, Salt Lake City, and Washington, DC, our team of professionals defends the redrock, organizes support for America’s Red Rock Wilderness Act, and stewards a world-renowned landscape. Learn more at www.suwa.org. 

### 

The Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance (SUWA) is a nonprofit organization with members and supporters around the country dedicated to protecting America’s redrock wilderness. From offices in Moab, Salt Lake City, and Washington, DC, our team of professionals defends the redrock, organizes support for America’s Red Rock Wilderness Act, and stewards a world-renowned landscape. Learn more at www.suwa.org. 

The post SUWA Statement on President Trump’s Repeal of Travel Management Executive Orders – 5.29.26  appeared first on Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance.

Chika Okoye discusses Movement Generation’s Just Transition Principle: If it’s not soulful, it’s not strategic.

  At the start of this year we decided to embark on a process of evolving MG frameworks, tools, and curriculum—including Just Transition, Resilience-Based Organizing, Three Circles and others—to reflect the more than 10 years of practice with our movement comrades and, most importantly, to meet this moment. We started by reaching out to beloved comrades from many, many organizations and have already received so much excellent feedback, critique, gaps, innovations, and offerings!   Please consider donating to Movement Generation to support our Frameworks Evolution project!   DONATE

A historic gold mine re-opened using modern technology, to scour out minerals the old-timers couldn’t get at? Twenty kilometres from Tofino? Is this the best we can hope for, a third of a century after the historic 1993 Clayoquot Summer peaceful protests put the region on the map of global ecological hotspots?

It seems that’s what the BC government wants. This spring, they issued mineral exploration permits to Vancouver-based Imperial Metals. The permits would allow Imperial to explore in the territories of the Tla-o-qui-aht First Nation (TFN), in Clayoquot Sound. This despite 2 years of consultation, in which TFN made it clear that mining is not a permissible activity in their territories.

The permits issued allow for 22 drill pad sites, 6 trenches, and 3 helipads in the Tranquil Creek watershed, which is designated as a Tribal Park by Tla-o-qui-aht. They will not expire until 2031. Imperial Metals also holds mineral rights on Catface Mountain (čitaapii), just 13 kilometres from Tofino.

A disaster that changed the conversation around mining in BC

Imperial Metals is notorious for the catastrophic 2014 failure of the tailings dam at their Mount Polley mine, spilling 25 million cubic metres of toxic tailings and slurry into pristine Quesnel Lake—home to a quarter of the Fraser River’s sockeye salmon. It was one of the biggest mining disasters in the world. They are currently facing 15 charges under the federal Fisheries Act in relation to this disaster. Mount Polley is located in the traditional territory of Xat’sull First Nation, near Likely BC in the Cariboo region.

“The province of BC should be respecting our vision for our territories, not issuing permits for mineral exploration without our consent and against our wishes,” said Saya Masso, Tla-o-qui-aht Manager of Lands and Resources. “We’ve seen some positive steps from the BC NDP government, but this move jeopardizes efforts towards reconciliation here in Clayoquot Sound.”

Clayoquot Action has stood united with Tla-o-qui-aht against mining since our founding in 2013, and will continue to oppose any attempts to open mines here in the Clayoquot Sound UNESCO Biosphere Region.

Take action now. Please make your voice heard—send your letter now using our simple online tool. The letter is already written; it only takes a minute! Send the letter HERE

The post No mines in Clayoquot Sound appeared first on Clayoquot Action.

By Cecilia Allen, Global Projects Advisor, GAIA

(c) Nipe Fagio

Once seen as the domain of dreamers, zero waste is now mainstream. It has even entered the language of the UN: the body created a resolution urging governments to “promote zero‑waste initiatives,” an International Day of Zero Waste, and a Zero Waste Advisory Board, and UNEP, UN‑Habitat and other UN bodies use the concept in campaigns and reports. This year, zero waste was named one of the top priorities on the Global Climate Action Agenda. Türkiye’s Zero Waste Foundation, a leading promoter of these efforts, is organizing its second Global Zero Waste Forum under the motto Road to Antalya: Zero Waste as Climate Action. Türkiye will be the host of climate COP31. 

While this progress is exciting, words matter. When the same UN bodies that are meant to promote zero waste recognize waste-to-energy incineration plants and reuse of the highly toxic incinerator fly-ash as a zero waste solution, it means something is off. Likewise, when Pakistan claims to pursue a “zero waste” economy by increasing waste-to-energy capacity, alarm bells go off among zero wasters worldwide: Incineration is an oxymoron to zero waste. What these examples show us is that a true definition of zero waste needs to be adopted and vigorously defended.

What is zero waste?

The concept of “zero waste” emerged 30 years ago by adapting manufacturing targets such as “zero defects” to solid waste.  Zero waste is both a vision and an action plan. As an action plan it includes strategies to design out the idea of “waste”: waste prevention, redesign, reuse, changes in consumption patterns, recycling, composting, and other methods to reprocess organic material. Zero waste is guided by the goal of progressively reducing disposal in landfills and incinerators, a yardstick for judging the effectiveness of waste programs and policies.

As a vision, its ultimate objective is to change how we produce, consume and process discards so our materials economy fits within planetary boundaries. This concerns not only materials but our relationship with them, the environment, and one another. That is why zero waste is rooted in environmental justice– supporting the flourishing of everyone regardless of race, class, or any other identity, and the rights of nature. Zero waste systems are community‑based, recognize waste pickers as workers, eliminate “sacrifice zones” that disproportionately burden poor and marginalized communities, and put people at the center of solutions.

That is the beauty of zero waste: it offers an encouraging alternative to a linear waste system that perpetuates disposal, resource depletion, climate change and pollution that threaten public health and well-being. It will not happen overnight, but it sets a clear direction.

Defending zero waste

There are multiple conversations within the environmental movement about the co-option of the zero waste concept. Should we let it go? Defend it? There are solid arguments on all sides of the table. But our objective is to expand true zero waste worldwide. Mainstreaming means ideas become accepted as normal because most people share them — that is what thousands of communities, government officials and businesses have worked toward for decades. Fighting this co‑option is therefore an inevitable part of mainstreaming.

Every time a waste‑to‑energy or plastics‑to‑fuel project is presented as “zero waste,” authorities in the field must set the record straight. Waste‑to‑energy incineration perpetuates waste generation because it requires feedstock to burn, competes with reuse and recycling for high‑calorific materials, relies on fossil‑based feedstocks such as plastics, produces greenhouse gas emissions, and creates hazardous residues. None of that could be farther from zero waste. 

Most importantly, zero waste is not just an abstract concept. For over three decades, hundreds of cities, thousands of communities and many waste practitioners have led the transition toward it. They have shown that it is possible to achieve over 90% source separation, diversion rates of 80% and higher, improved working conditions for waste pickers, and local economies based on repair and reuse. They also demonstrate that following the waste hierarchy creates more jobs, reduces more methane emissions, and improves public health.

Enabling zero waste implementation 

In recent years more governments, financial institutions, universities, and waste practitioners have embraced the zero waste vision and prioritized upstream measures over disposal. That is encouraging, but much more is needed. For example, only 1% of international finance aimed at methane abatement in the waste sector goes to zero waste strategies such as composting.

If multilateral development banks and other international financial institutions directed the remaining 99% shifted from harmful end‑of‑pipe systems like incinerators and megalandfills to community‑based organic waste prevention and recovery, the the playing field would level: there would be more incentives for a shift in production and consumption patterns, and local governments and communities would speed up the zero waste transition. If governments that claim to pursue zero waste acted accordingly, they would lead the transition and inspire others.

UN bodies such as UNEP, UN‑Habitat and the Zero Waste Advisory Board have a special responsibility to set a clear vision for governments and institutions, and promote an authentic zero waste agenda to advance environmental sustainability, social equity and economic systems that respect natural boundaries.

As we continue the work toward a zero waste future, let us honor its true spirit that drives systems change. And let us support and scale up the proven programs and policies that governments, communities, waste pickers, NGOs, and businesses are sustaining.  Let us protect the term, and honor the practice: put real zero waste into action.

Rommel Cabrera/GAIA, 2019. Waste pickers collecting separated waste from households. Tacloban City, the Philippines.

The post Defending the Real Spirit of Zero Waste first appeared on GAIA.

ICYMI: Clean fuels report card is A+++ Leah Missik Fri, 05/29/2026 - 1:19 pm

  Nicolas Salmon In our experience working on nature-based solutions in cities across Ecuador and Latin America, the problem is not that we do not know participation matters. Everybody says participation matters. The problem is that almost everything in the way projects are designed — timelines, funding structures, institutional cultures, and even expert anxieties — […]

Transcript of EWG podcast 'Ken Cook Is Having Another Episode' – Episode 60 Adam Levin May 29, 2026

There is an ongoing lawsuit between the American Academy of Pediatrics and Robert F Kennedy, Jr., head of the Department of Health and Human Services. The lead attorney of the lawsuit challenging the HHS vaccine policy changes is EWG co-Founder and President Ken Cook’s guest today.

Richard H. Hughes VI is a professor at George Washington University Law School as well as a partner at Epstein Becker Green. In addition to the American Academy of Pediatrics, Hughes’ law firm also represents the American College of Physicians and the American Public Health Association.

Hughes breaks down the legal framework behind the lawsuit against Kennedy, including the effort to dismantle and remake HHS’ immunization advisory committee, the broader implications for federal vaccine policy, and the growing erosion of public trust in pediatricians, vaccines, and public health institutions.

Disclaimer: This transcript was compiled using software and may include typographical errors.

Ken Cook: Hello there. Ken Cook here, and I'm having another episode. You know, ever since Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was confirmed as Secretary of Health and Human Services, and specifically during his confirmation process, I've been keeping a close eye on the dismantling of our vaccine policy infrastructure. I suspect a lot of you have been keeping an eye on it too.

It's one of the top priorities of the public health community now. And I've come to think of the approach that he's taken, uh, I've, I've coined a term for it, I call it vaccilation. This is why, uh, he's able to make the case on the one hand to his anti-vax followers that he's doing all he can to pursue their agenda, and that agenda is to prove various things about vaccines being harmful, even maybe more harmful than the diseases they prevent, that vaccines cause autism and so forth.

And he always does it in a kind of vacillating, vaccilating way where science is never settled, so we can always ask questions. A gold standard science is needed, and he's bringing that because you can't rely on existing authorities. And m-most importantly of all, he's not wanting to be positioned as either anti-vaccine or supporting vaccine.

He's in that vaccilating middle ground. And that has worked for him surprisingly well. It didn't work for Casey Means. Ultimately, she got caught up by not really saying what she thought when she was rejected by the Senate in the confirmation process for becoming surgeon general. But for Kennedy, it has mostly worked.

But there's one arena where it does not work, not the arena of hearings where Kennedy gives and takes with senators, not press statements, not podcasts, not Instagram posts. In all of those places, vaccilation has been a very smart strategy for him to remain elusive about where he is even as he pursues anti-vaccine measures.

But the one place where it doesn't work is in court, in legal proceedings before a judge. And today I'm joined by a lawyer who's doing something about vaccilation. Richard H. Hughes IV, who is a partner at Epstein Becker Green, a health law professor at the George Washington University Law School. And the lead counsel in American Academy of Pediatrics versus Robert F. Kennedy Jr. This was a landmark lawsuit challenging the vaccine policy changes Kennedy has implemented at HHS. 

And in that setting, there is no wiggle room afforded for vacillating. You have to follow the law. Now, Richard's clients have included some of the most respected medical organizations in the country: the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American College of Physicians, the American Public Health Association, the Infectious Disease Society of America, among others.

And in March, a federal judge looked at all this vacillating, and specifically the steps Kennedy had taken under the cover of vacillating, and handed these organizations a very significant early victory, ruling that HHS had acted arbitrarily, ignored established law, and failed to follow basic administrative process.

But the fight is far from over. Richard is one of the nation's leading experts in vaccine law, and he has spent his career building the very public health infrastructure that's now under attack. I'm grateful that he's here because he, like EWG, follows science, and his objective is very clear: to protect the health of America's children and their future.

Professor Hughes, thank you so much for being here. The stakes could not be higher. And knock on wood, at least from my perspective, and I'm sure yours. So far it looks like it's gone pretty well, but we've got quite a ways to go, no question about that. I just wanted to ask, how did you, as you were starting your career, what brought you, Richard, into the health arena, and specifically this subset of health pertaining to vaccines? If you don't mind. I'm just curious to know. 

Richard Hughes: I don't mind. Yeah, no, Ken, I appreciate that question. It actually goes, uh... and, and thank you for having me. It goes so far back, long before I was a lawyer. I was a very young political appointee in my home state of Arkansas. So I was 22 years old, and I was appointed to the Arkansas State Board of Health, and I didn't know anything about public health.

I was incredibly unqualified. It was an undeserved privilege to get that appointment. And right after I was appointed, I survived a brain tumor. 

Ken Cook: Oh my goodness. 

Richard Hughes: Yeah. I was misdiagnosed with glioblastoma. It was basically a death sentence, and got a second opinion and found out that I was gonna live, and got involved in cancer issues.

And I said, "You know, I'm in this position, and I can do something, you know, to, to improve the health of Arkansans." I felt compelled to do that. And I learned about the HPV vaccine. So a colleague came to me one day and said, "There's this vaccine to prevent cervical cancer." And I didn't know anything about it.

But as I, as I dug into it, as I learned more about it, I said, "You know, we really need to talk about, uh, this vaccine, and we really need to make this vaccine accessible." At the time, this was before the Affordable Care Act, we had a lot of access issues in our state, and I knew that if we were gonna reach the most rural parts of the state, that we should consider requiring the vaccine.

That was a really unpopular opinion to have. It got me kicked out of party politics. It ended my political ambitions completely, and so I got my master's in public health, I moved to DC and said I'm gonna work in vaccine policy for the rest of my career. I went back to law school, and, um, you know, added a lot more tools to my toolbox.

Ken Cook: Wow, I, I had no idea there were so many layers to that, to your history, and, uh, just as a editorial note to start off with, you know, Environmental Working Group has, you know, we, we generally speaking, have, have always supported vaccine policy, the conventional policy that is now at least temporarily back in place, and the, the CDC's positions on all, all of those things.

We did raise questions about thimerosal back in the day, but those were resolved. But generally speaking on vaccine policy, my overall feeling is the environmental health community looked the other way on the vaccine debate, which was probably not helpful. I think we now find ourselves in a s- a situation where, uh, there is such a threat to that frontline defense, and so much energy around undoing the reputation of the CDC and of science and of practicing physicians. 

I, I read some of the things people say about pediatricians, and I just... I wonder what, what pediatricians are they talking about? Uh, everyone I've ever met, and I've met, hundreds of them, because we work on children's environmental health all the time, and m- from my own experience having a son, I don't get it.

But anyway, I just wanted to, I wanted to put that out there... because a big part of this is the, the kind of atmospherics that drove you away from the job in Arkansas, right? I mean, you must feel that... in your current role as well, right? 

Richard Hughes: I absolutely do. I absolutely do. And it was really hard to watch the distortion around vaccine science, and a lot of that was wrapped up in religion back in Arkansas, right?

And... you know, talking about abstinence and sex and, and that was unfortunate, but I feel like, you know, we're up against a lot of the same issues, a willingness to spread misinformation and disinformation so easily, a public that maybe at first glance sometimes, you know, you might see something, uh, that looks like a potential correlative relationship, and you might have real questions.

And I do think that we should be answering those questions and helping- Yeah ... people understand the science, right? But... it's really hard to, you know, sometimes get people off of these beliefs, these misguided beliefs, when you have somebody like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. with the bully pulpit now, right, spreading all this misinformation. 

Ken Cook: Yeah, no, and, and of course there's conspiracy-minded, uh, approaches to these issues. It's very convenient and very hard to overcome. It's, uh... a great, uh, retreat from, from critical thinking. 

Richard Hughes: Yes, it is. 

Ken Cook: Right? And that- that's, that's done a lot of harm. I found myself, when I read the judge's, uh, decision, uh, in March, I was fortified by that. Uh, not... not just because of the way the decision came down, but the learned way in which he argued it.

And I just want, I just wanna say, uh, just from the beginning of his order, uh, he, he writes that, "For our public health, Congress and the executive have built over decades an apparatus that marries the rigors of science with the execution and force of the United States government. One extraordinary product of that apparatus has been the eradication and reduction of certain communicable diseases through the development and use of vaccines."

And right there, he's drawing a distinction in his position, his conclusions, from Kennedy's, which... increasingly is to argue that these vaccines didn't play any role. And so, uh, the, the whole presence of the government in this sphere is questionable because, you know, better nutrition and sanitation and other measures… really, that's what caused polio and mumps and other diseases to be controlled. Patently not the case, but I appreciated that he was standing upright then. 

Richard Hughes: Yeah. Yeah, I did too. I love that decision. It reads beautifully. I love that on the first page, he intertwines science and law, and talks about... the importance of process to both.

This is the first case I've worked on as a litigator. I'm not a litigator. I didn't go to law school to sue anybody. 

Ken Cook: Oh, is that right? 

Richard Hughes: It is. It is. 

Ken Cook: Oh my goodness. 

Richard Hughes: And sitting in the courtroom, you know, sitting in the courtroom as a vaccine law expert at the counsel table and, and really just hoping that we are doing the best possible job to help the judge get the facts right, to get the law right, to make the best, most informed decision, because we want the decision to stand.

He wants... to write an, an effective decision. He wants to get it right. He's not an ideologue. And, you know, the government over here is saying in the, in the courtroom that, you know, there's no binding, you know, guiding principles in the law that says the secretary has to do this or that, the secretary can just basically do whatever he wants, and that, you know, reasonable minds can differ on how to best prevent infectious disease, and that we're all here to protect public health.

It was really disturbing to hear some of those arguments and the way they framed it. And, and then it was so encouraging to hear the judge come back to them and, and, and to recite back to them law, and to see how he followed the apparatus that, that he described. And it has... I mean, I have to say, there was a time when all we had were vaccines, and we didn't put policy or the force of law behind it.

Sometimes then we would do that in an outbreak context. So late, you know, late 1800s, smallpox outbreaks, we're saying, "You have to go get vaccinated because we're trying to prevent it." But one of the greatest innovations in the law and in vaccine law and policy in the, in the 20th century was we realized, if we can just get everybody vaccinated early, we can actually stop the transmission of these diseases.

We can lower the overall incidence of disease, the overall morbidity and mortality, and we started to do that in a really systematic way with vaccine policy. And as the judge recited, we have these federal laws. The federal government is not making people get vaccines, that's the role of the states. 

But there is a robust apparatus in federal law that says, you know, Congress has thought about this, and they've enacted a variety of laws where we essentially presuppose that vaccination is the best way to control vaccine preventable diseases in this country. And that's what, simply what we're trying to do. 

Ken Cook: Yeah. I was astonished at some of, uh, when the judge asked certain questions about, well, how, how far could Secretary Kennedy go?

You know, how much power... does he have? Could he actually say, um, "Getting some of these diseases is okay, or is good, or we would, we would like to pursue policies that would encourage them to get these?" Which, which of course, Aaron Siri and others, Dale Bigtree have openly said they think that should be the case.

Yeah. I was astonished. What, what was it like in the courtroom when you were hearing that? 

Richard Hughes: Well, what's really hard is when you're a... you know, I, I, I speak a lot on these issues publicly, right? I'm, I'm a policy-oriented lawyer, and I have opinions. And to sit in the courtroom at the counsel table and to really, you have to maintain decorum in the courtroom.

It's not a raucous place, right? You know? And, uh, you know, and so to have to sit and listen and keep a straight face to those kinds of arguments was really, really, really hard for me. And the number of things I w- I w- you know, that you wish you could say, right? And so for the judge to point that out, uh, and to use that example, and I think it's one of the great things that, that judges sometimes do, is to present absurd hypotheticals, and it was a really really, really effective one. 

And so I think what gets overlooked is they frame up natural infection as just fine. You know? That, that natural infection is just fine. And what in reality is if you go to old graveyards and you look at the number of infant graves that are there, and you can, these graveyards are all over our country, right?

In the early 20s, late 19th century,  early 20th century, right? And then I always go back, I, I tell my team all the time about this letter to the editor that I read around 1994 or 1995 in The New York Times, where a mother wrote to The New York Times, and she said, "You know, I just learned about this new vaccine to prevent chickenpox, and I don't understand why I wasn't made aware of this five years ago when the vaccine first became available."

Because she said, "To my family, chickenpox is not a minor illness." Chickenpox had devastated her household. Her kids ended up with all sorts of infections that I didn't even realize that, you know, measles, chickenpox, these things can result in other infections, other morbidities. 

Ken Cook: Very serious, yeah. 

Richard Hughes: Right. Very serious. Very serious, and, and sometimes very deadly. And so, you know, vaccination is a way not just to prevent cases and to have fewer or hopefully zero cases. You know, we have a sophisticated tool. People don't have to die from these diseases. They don't have to deal with the long-term effects of these diseases.

Ken Cook: And, you know, the, the consequence of not intervening through vaccines on the, the cost of the healthcare system, and I've even said to, to my colleagues in the environmental community, we all noticed what happened during COVID, where all the resources rushed from the CDC  and elsewhere, rushed straight to the concerns and the, the need to a- adapt to the COVID conditions. 

You lose a lot of ability to do other health-related interventions, including environmental health, and talking about pollution or, uh, contamination of food or what have you. 

Richard Hughes: Yes. Yeah. 

Ken Cook: That, that contracts in the face of emergencies, where it has a huge impact. I noticed, and I, I just, I wanna mention the other plaintiffs, because it's an impressive list. It's the American Academy of Pediatrics, the lead plaintiff, but it's also the American College of Physicians, the APHA, the American Public Health Association. We also have a longstanding association with them. Infectious Diseases Society of America, Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine, the Massachusetts Public Health Alliance, and I'm sure there are others that I'm not naming. 

It's impressive to me, and I've, I've said this to several, uh, people, you know, when you look at the way these, uh, interests are arrayed on the two sides of this issue, it's kind of shocking to think that there is virtually no reputable independent science association or organization that, that stands with Kennedy.

Now, I think everyone agrees, yes, there can be vaccine injuries, and yes, we should address those, and we should, we should be concerned about those, and, uh, unfortunately sometimes they're, fortunately very rarely, but sometimes they are serious. 

Richard Hughes: Yes. Yeah. 

Ken Cook: No question about that. But on the basic question of whether we need vaccines, whether the, where any kind of mandate, again, at the state level, which is where these are proffered, it really is shocking that we're at the state of the debate that we're at. And even to the point where I noticed that quite a bit of time was spent by the government to try and make the case that the plaintiffs you represent shouldn't have had standing. 

Richard Hughes: Right, right, right, right, right, right.

Ken Cook: Can you talk a little bit about that? I just- I mean, why not try it? Why not try it? 

Richard Hughes: I sure can. And I... look, I'm very honest. I, I, I'm very honest and open about how we got to this point. We knew when Robert F. Kennedy Jr. came into office that he was going to do a lot of these things. I knew he was gonna do a lot of these things because I've helped build up the system that he's trying to tear down.

And so I, I looked around me and I said to my team, I said, "You know, he's going to do these things, and we have to be prepared. We have to watch everything he does. We have to watch when he takes these actions, and we're gonna need to be prepared to put up a legal fight." 

Okay, so we have a policy disagreement. Absolutely, we do. The government wants to suggest that that's all we have, and that policy disputes don't belong in court, and they belong in the legislature and, and, and all that. But there are real harms here. And I would not, I would not have pursued this and put my name and, and, and resources and effort behind this if I thought it was a mere policy disagreement.

I knew that this was going to harm, uh, not only public health and families, but that it was actually going to harm the organizations that we're representing. And they do have standing. And so if you look at the pediatricians of this country represented by AAP, not only has AAP itself as an organization had to divert all of its time and resources to deal with, with this, but the providers on the front lines, and they'll, they'll say, "Oh, you know, it's just… you know, they make a lot of money." 

You know, it is so not true. Being a pediatrician is not some sort of gangbusters, you know, business to be in. It's very, uh, costly to maintain an inventory of vaccines in those practices, and the reimbursement, you know, it's not usually profitable. And so this is causing them, you know, the, the frustrating experience of having to address misinformation and disinformation that their patients are hearing, coming in confused, and to practice effective medicine.

That's been frustrated. And the same thing, uh, American Public Health Association, and, and Dr. Benjamin doesn't mind me telling folks that when I called him and I said, "You know, would you be a part of this?" He said, "We're in." It was a no-brainer. Because he and I knew, we instinctively knew, that this was going to impact health departments across the country.

There are clinical practitioners that are members of the American Public Health Association. They represent this vast constituency across the country of public health workers, clinical workers, all kinds of folks, and, um, we knew that the harm was going to just, just permeate the public health system. And so we demonstrated those harms.

We're proud to represent these plaintiffs and we take very seriously the work of showing the court that they have been harmed, and we did that. We went in in December. The government tried to get our case dismissed on standing. And we went in, and we, you know, demonstrated to the court — they're experiencing real harms.

And if anybody's interested, go read the declarations that have been filed by the dozens of, of physicians and others, uh, in the case. 

Ken Cook: Yeah, I encourage people, you know, to read the whole record so far. Yeah, yeah. Every aspect of it is to me informative, up to and including the, the judge's order at, in mid-March.

You know, Kennedy's often claims that pediatricians are in the pocket of big pharma, as you suggested, and it's very profitable to, uh, give kids shots, and they make a lot of money doing it. Sometimes I've, I've seen it suggested that this is the main way they make money is by vaccines. I haven't seen any evidence of that.

But what interests me is that i- in order for his, uh, approach to work, he has to then say, "We want you to have a conversation with your doctor before you decide for yourself about getting vaccinated." So where do all the good doctors go, and where, where do all the bad doctors go that you can just... and it turns out that if it's your pediatrician, that's a good doctor.

But when they gather together under The Academy of Pediatrics or they, when they assemble, that's when they're evil. Makes no sense. 

Richard Hughes: No, it doesn't. It doesn't. It doesn't. And there are fringe, you know, very, very, very, very fringe physicians out there that are a part of his movement, right? That, and I'm, I'm sure that's who they would rather you go to and talk to. But they want to frame this, because these are political issues, right? 

And they, they know he has a, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has a base and a constituency that he is pandering to. And when they talk about medical freedom and choice and forced medical treatment, this is all so deceptive.

And so if you go back, the old case Jacobson v. Massachusetts, 1905, the Supreme Court, where the Supreme Court said states can require vaccination. There's a lot of really great discussion in that case. It's a dense read, and I have my class read it every year. But it talks about sorting junk science from evidence, you know, in early 20th century terms. 

And by the end of the decision, it talks about the importance that we not make people who shouldn't be vaccinated get vaccinated. It acknowledges that. That is in the opinion. So inherent, when I think about vaccine policy, and I think about requiring vaccines so that people can be healthy and we save lives, what I know as a part of that equation is that it's always going to be a conversation between the pediatrician and the parent about the child's health, and they should sit down, and they should say, you know, "Which vaccines do you need to get? Well, we have this schedule, and it's standardized, and it's based on evidence, and we should follow it." 

But if this child's contraindicated, if they're at risk of some sort of harm that is ascertainable, you know, then we shouldn't vaccinate. But those cases are rare. Those cases are rare, and we should acknowledge when there are rare vaccine injuries, we need to compensate those. 

We need to do it quickly and adequately. So that we can continue to pursue the public health goal. I ask my class every year, would you rather have 100 cases of polio or would you rather have, you know, two injuries? And, you know, we have to make some trade-offs. And there's a, there's a social compact here that they misconstrue, that they absolutely misconstrue.

Ken Cook: Yeah. No, I think that's right, and it's hard to think of a, of a medicine or a drug that doesn't have those kinds of potential complications for some subset of the population, these side effects. Um, and, um, I mean, even cancer drugs sometimes cause cancer, so it is a conversation with physicians, and to me, what, what I worry about is th- this debate is missing how to actually make parents better consumers of information and make them more able to have those conversations. You don't have a lot of time often in those offices. But how to, how to make the most of those conversations because that's certainly gonna be in the interest of the physician treating you as well. 

Richard Hughes: That's right. 

Ken Cook: So one of the things that I had all kinds of thoughts about which direction Kennedy might take vaccine policy.

I did not foresee him going immediately in the face of what he promised Congress and firing every member of the committee and replacing them summarily with his own people. B- but it goes to a, a question that I've, I've had, which is I thought in this second Trump administration they were being more careful than in the first Trump administration, certainly in environmental, uh, decision-making, where they, they made it easy to lose in court, and they mostly did lose to my colleagues in the environmental community who practice public interest law, so law that sues the government.

But then I, as I read this judge's decision and saw what, what was piling up, I was shocked at the fumbles, the mistakes that HHS made with the Administrative Procedure Act, that you made great use of, um, of that law to point out to the judge, and he ruled, I think in every instance, on your side. That's there for a purpose, too, in addition to vaccine law, which is, you know, it's to make sure that the government proceeds in an orderly manner.

It's not, uh, arbitrary. It's not capricious. And the thing that puzzled me the most, Richard, was, you know, if you're an environmental lawyer, the Administrative Procedure Act is central to how you think about challenging the government, maybe more than almost any other area.

Richard Hughes: Yes. Yes.

Ken Cook: Of public interest law, right? Because it's, it's, it's the clockworks of EPA and Interior Department and Fish and Wildlife Service. 

Richard Hughes: Yes.

Ken Cook: And when they get a procedure wrong, when they're arbitrary, when they're capricious, when they side, uh, make a decision, you know, in favor of, of industry that is ill-considered, that's where the environmental community, and Kennedy in the past, has grabbed on.

I was surprised that there were so many mistakes that they're, uh, in the rush to get these decisions made, which to me tells me also that they're, they're not likely to be lasting. But I'll go back to that. But just talk a little bit about the the Administrative Procedure Act and how you saw that play in this case. 

Richard Hughes: Uh, you don't even need to take a, a law school administrative law class to see that. I mean, it is so just patently obvious. I said early on, I said, "Anything this man does is going to be arbitrary and capricious because- ... the science isn't there." The science doesn't support it.

They're not going to be able to point to anything legitimate and to say, "That's the basis for this decision." Now, what I didn't expect was the lack of process. You know, the explanation part of it, and these are all, I'm talking about sort of the recipe of, of what we expect government officials to follow, right?

Ken Cook: Yeah, yeah. 

Richard Hughes: We expect them to take a hard look at evidence. We expect them to follow a process to explain why they did it. I knew that they wouldn't find the evidence. I did think that they would at least try to give the appearance that they were following a process and taking a hard look. The way they throw around the term, the, well, the terms gold standard science and transparency and everything, I, I think it's very misleading, and I didn't expect a lot of explanation or transparency.

But I really did think that they would try to follow some process. 

Ken Cook: So did I.

Richard Hughes: You know, right? And so for a long time environmental lawyer, who, as you said, you know, should have a deep understanding of the importance of the APA and procedure, to just go out one day and film a video, and in 58 seconds make statements like, "The previous administration's recommendations were based on nothing," right? 

And to say that, "I, standing here, you know, a lawyer surrounded by two other political appointees, I'm just gonna tell you that I, I'm delighted, in fact, I'm gonna use the word delighted, to tell you that you no longer need to get the COVID vaccine."

I mean, it just reeked, it reeked of lack of process, of unseriousness. And, um, same thing with the January 5th schedule changes. And as President Trump is saying, "Well, let's look at the Danish schedule," I think there was actual reporting that, that HHS knew that what they were discussing would likely violate or potentially violate the APA. So they're, they know this, and I think that this is just evidence of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and the forces around him will stop at nothing, you know, to get their agenda through. 

Ken Cook: Yeah, I mean, w- what I've been saying to my friends on the other side of this issue is, "If you really did believe that you wanted to tear down vaccine policy in this country, and do it on the basis of transparency and gold standard science, you've been failed by Kennedy."

The pace at which he's operated. The fact that, I mean, here he has, he has control over the, all these funds. He could launch- the study that he says we've long not done to link vaccine harm to, you know, autism or whatever it might be. I mean, th- you've got all the money now. You could, you could control it.

Where are the studies? Where is the evidence that you're- Yeah ... putting forward or, or what basis? And then you have a, a press conference in the, in the White House a- about Tylenol, and the promise that by September of 2025 we'll know what causes autism. So obviously these aren't serious people. They don't show their work.

Anti-vax interests, anti-vax proponents, ought to begin to understand by now that these changes are not going to endure. They're not gonna stand up scientifically, and as we f- see in the case that you've been arguing, it's not standing up in the law either. 

Richard Hughes: No. 

Ken Cook: And the political support seems to be eroding.

At least Republicans wanna talk about healthy eating, not vaccine policy anymore. It's a real shortcoming of Kennedy's approach, but I think it's what he's left with because the evidence really isn't there. 

Richard Hughes: Yeah. You know, it's not, and ultimately we're gonna prevail. We have to litigate this thing, and I, it's, it's unfortunate, but we, it, I, I knew that if he did these things and if we were going to stop him and show to be true what you just said, is that they're not showing their work, this is all false, and we need to stop it, and we need to go back to... and it's not to say that our system before couldn't use improvements. Absolutely it needs improvements. 

But, you know, if we were ever going to stop this and restore sanity, we were going to have to sue, and we still have the work to do to do, we're not done yet, right? But ultimately, yes, it won't endure. It won't endure because we're stopping it. 

Ken Cook: Yeah. Now let me just ask you. Kennedy in, in recent weeks, and I, I, I don't know exactly where this stands now, so help me out here — he has proposed a restructuring of the, uh, advisory committee on immunization practice, the ACIP committee at the CDC, to restructure it to include the kinds of personnel that he thinks will represent vaccine-injured people.

I was surprised the judge actually went as far as he went in go- kind of going through the list of people appointed to this committee and basically- Yeah ... saying, "You know, we, this committee can't continue." It doesn't meet the, the, the test of the law for expertise. So how do you see this latest move by Kennedy to reorient the committee and give it a, a different charter?

Richard Hughes: Yeah. Yeah. So they are trying to circumvent the judge's ruling. 

Ken Cook: Patently. 

Richard Hughes: Patently. I hope the White House is watching. I hope that White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles is listening to this podcast, and I assume that she wanted him to cool it on vaccines, because that's not a popular issue. Going into the midterms, I don't think they want him to continue this. 

Now, what they've done is they've gotten really creative. They said, "Oh, the charter's going to expire on April 1st." And so they got together, and Aaron Siri said, "We're gonna put in a petition, and we're gonna just change the charter." So Andel Bigtree, uh, has been on his podcast, and there was a Politico story that ran last week where he said, "Oh, you know, Kennedy basically just has to change the T's he's crossing and the I's that he's dotting."

Wow. You talk about transparency. I mean, they're being so transparent about their nefarious- Finally, yes. Finally.

Ken Cook: Right? Isn't it funny? So- finally some useful transparency, 

Richard Hughes: Yeah ... ri- right. Very useful, because it's like, okay, you broke the rules, and you got your hand slapped, and so now you're just going to change the rules?

Well, I'm sorry, you have to follow some rules to change the rules. And it goes back actually to where we started in this conversation, too, is that the law presupposes we want to use vaccines, right, to control vaccine preventable disease. There is that thoughtful apparatus that's been set up. 

They are flying, they continue to fly in the face of that. And so, you know, we'll see what he does. We need to see how he would execute on these charter changes. But it's, it's just egregious, and I hope it gets the attention that it deserves. 

Ken Cook: Yeah, I do, too. Well, we'll certainly try and help as much as we can to shine- Thank you a light on that, because, you know, there's, there's never been a more opaque administration when it comes to decision-making. 

And more arbitrary, almost clownishly so, and oftentimes to deadly effect. Lots of bad decisions on environmental policy that are causing harm. And we see from the shifting attitudes, the new poll that came out from Politico, that it seems like more and more Americans are, Republicans in particular, are vaccine skeptical and might decide not to have their kids vaccinated because of this ambient debate or discussion.

Debate's hard to say. Uh, it d- doesn't really suit it. What are the next steps that will unfold? Um, they haven't formally appealed yet, have they? 

Richard Hughes: They haven't, and they don't have a window to appeal. There have been statements made out of HHS that they have, you know, 60 days following the ruling. This was an interlocutory decision.

They have 10 days. They would have had to have a question of law certified to be able to take it up to the First Circuit on appeal. They have missed their window. And so if they want to try to appeal this late, we would oppose that. And so where we are right now is in a relatively boring place, where we essentially are working with the government to get the administrative record and, you know, going back to the APA, because this is an APA case, we are entitled to see the record, and there are different records for each of the decisions, right?

And so we're, it's the ver- again, the very boring part of litigation, of trying to get the documents. Now, are they going to give us all of the documents we want? Are we gonna see the emails and the text messages? You know, we're looking. 

Ken Cook: I would love to. I would love to. 

Richard Hughes: I would, I would as well. I would as well. I would as well. So, you know, once we have that record, and once it's completed, we'll be pursuing a final judgment and to get a final decision on the merits. And, um- presumably that could be appealed in the future. I would assume they want that to happen after the midterms, because of the way we've talked about this.

But we're doing the work of getting to that final decision. 

Ken Cook: Well, I wanna thank you for that work, and thank you for your time, Richard. Thank you. I've read deeply into the court record here. I, again, I encourage everyone to do the same, and I know your students will be reading through it. 

Richard Hughes: Yes, they have. They have already been... yes. 

Ken Cook: I, I'm sure, I'm sure. This is a pretty exciting time to be reading through something as a curriculum that's so present in the world, and that their professor is so heavily involved in. And I, I'm not happy that you had to leave your political career in, in Arkansas, but I'm, but I'm grateful in a way that where you ended up is, uh, making this case. 

Richard Hudges: Me too

Ken Cook: These organizations, again, they're not perfect. The law is not perfect. The science is not perfect. But in the scheme of things, we cannot afford this area of law and policy and science to be degraded in the way it is, and that's my, one of my greatest regrets. People wor- worry about authoritarianism, I get that.

But I think before, well before we get to that, it's the corrosion in understanding what authority really means. The authority of, of knowledge and expertise as well as the, the authority of law. To me, that's the greater, that's the greater threat right now. Because that sits in a parent's head.

Richard Hughes: Yeah. 

Ken Cook: Who do I trust? 

Richard Hughes: I agree. 

Ken Cook: If it's a pediatrician of the sort that Kennedy caricatures as in the pocket of big pharma, why would you trust them? On the other hand, you have a kid that, um, really will be vulnerable. Look at what's happened with, uh, all these infectious diseases just in the past year and a half. It's very worrisome. 

Richard Hughes: No, it absolutely is, and we have so much work to do to actually reestablish trust. He talks about reestablishing trust. I'm not saying that we were ever perfect at communicating about vaccines. I think there are so many things that we could do better when it comes to talking with parents, right? You know? 

Ken Cook: I agree. The fact that they feel ghosted is really upsetting to me. It is. People say that to me on, you know, on direct messaging and on, in LinkedIn and other ways I communicate, that I even questioned Kennedy, and we came out against his, his confirmation. And, uh, George Benjamin, when I called him, he said, "I'm in," when we were live streaming the con- confirmation hearings.

It's, it's like a no-brainer. And there's no one in the nonprofit environmental community who's standing up with Kennedy, which is also noteworthy. I say that to a lot of my friends who are, you know, MAHA fans and adherents that take note of that. It's kind of noteworthy that you don't have anyone in the major environmental groups that he worked with- 

Richard Hughes: No ... 

Ken Cook: Uh, who's willing to stand up for him. Quite the contrary, so.

Richard Hughes: That's right. That's right. 

Ken Cook: Anyway. Well, thank you so much. I really- 

Richard Hughes: Thank you, Ken 

Ken Cook: ... appreciate it. As this evolves, I hope I can get you back on if there's- 

Richard Hughes: Please, anytime 

Ken Cook: ...important developments that

Richard Hughes: Please

Ken Cook: Really great. Thanks so much, counselor. Thank you so much. 

Richard Hughes: Thank you, Ken. 

Ken Cook: Thank you to Professor Richard Hughes for joining me today, and thank you out there for listening. If you'd like to learn more, be sure to check out our show notes for additional links so you can take a deeper dive into today's discussion.

Make sure to follow our show on Instagram, @KenCooksPodcast, and if you're interested in learning more about EWG, head on over to ewg.org or check out the EWG Instagram account, @EnvironmentalWorkingGroup. Now, if this episode resonated with you or you think someone you know would benefit from it, send it along.

The best way to make positive change is to start as a community with your community. Today's episode was produced by the extraordinary Beth Rowe and Mary Kelly, who wrote that last sentence. Our show's theme music is by Moby. Thank you, Moby, and thanks again to all of you for listening.

Areas of Focus Family Health Children’s Health May 29, 2026