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Mientras el mundo celebra el Día Mundial del Medio Ambiente de 2026, la atención global se centra cada vez más en la urgente necesidad de tomar medidas contra el cambio climático y la protección del medio ambiente. El tema de este año, “Inspirado por la Naturaleza. Por el Clima. Por Nuestro Futuro,” destaca que la acción climática no solo consiste en reducir las emisiones de carbono, sino también en replantearse los sistemas que dan forma a las economías, las industrias y la relación entre las personas y el planeta.

En la República Dominicana, la creciente crisis medioambiental en torno al embalse de Hatillo, en Cotuí, se ha convertido en un claro ejemplo de estos retos. Hoy, las comunidades hacen de nuevo un llamado sobre la reciente contaminación del agua y exigen medidas de remediación y una mayor protección medioambiental. Su mensaje es claro: proteger el embalse de Hatillo no es solo una prioridad medioambiental, sino una necesidad social y económica.

Las comunidades dan la voz de alarma

Conocido como el mayor embalse de agua dulce de la República Dominicana y el Caribe, el Hatillo es vital para la agricultura, los ecosistemas y el suministro de agua a las comunidades situadas aguas abajo. Sin embargo, décadas de acumulación de sedimentos y la falta de un mantenimiento adecuado han contribuido a agravar la degradación ambiental, poniendo cada vez más en riesgo la salud pública y los medios de vida locales.

La preocupación pública se intensificó en diciembre de 2025, cuando los residentes de las comunidades situadas alrededor del embalse comenzaron a compartir alarmantes fotos y vídeos en las redes sociales que mostraban que el agua había adquirido un color verde brillante. En respuesta, el Ministerio de Medio Ambiente llevó a cabo análisis del agua y emitió un comunicado en el que atribuía el cambio de color del agua a una proliferación de algas.

Se han identificado múltiples fuentes posibles de contaminación, incluyendo efluentes agrícolas  y actividades industriales. Hay tres minas en operación situadas dentro de la cuenca hidrográfica que desemboca en el embalse. El Comité Nuevo Renacer (CNR), que representa a cinco comunidades afectadas —La Cerca, La Piñita, Las Lagunas, Jobo Claro y Jurungo— ha abogado por el reasentamiento lejos de las actividades mineras y sostiene que las numerosas fuentes potenciales de contaminación y los impactos ambientales asociados reflejan grandes deficiencias en la gestión medioambiental de la zona. 

Los análisis revelan graves riesgos

Los estudios microbiológicos posteriores realizados entre diciembre de 2025 y enero de 2026 por el Instituto de Microbiología y Parasitología (IMPA) de la Universidad Autónoma de Santo Domingo (UASD), junto con los análisis del Laboratorio Franja, revelaron hallazgos alarmantes. Los resultados, difundidos públicamente por la periodista Nairobi Viloria en el programa “Te lo explico” y posteriormente diseminados por Diario Libre, identificaron altas concentraciones de bacterias asociadas a la contaminación fecal, lo que indica graves riesgos sanitarios.

Los estudios también detectaron especies de Microcystis, un tipo de bacteria relacionada con la proliferación excesiva de algas que provoca la depleción de oxígeno y puede producir potentes toxinas perjudiciales para la salud humana, el ganado y la vida acuática. Además, se identificaron otros tipos de microalgas que indican aguas ricas en nutrientes, altas cargas orgánicas y desequilibrio ecológico. En conjunto, estos hallazgos sugieren que el embalse está sufriendo un deterioro ambiental progresivo. También se registraron niveles elevados de nitrógeno y fósforo, lo que contribuye a la proliferación de algas nocivas.

También hay metales pesados

Un análisis del Laboratorio Franja reveló concentraciones elevadas de metales pesados y sustancias tóxicas, entre ellas níquel, cromo total, manganeso, sulfatos y cianuro, algunas de las cuales superan los umbrales de seguridad establecidos. Estos resultados apuntan a múltiples fuentes de contaminación, entre las que probablemente se incluyen actividades mineras, vertidos industriales, escorrentías agrícolas y residuos urbanos. 

Resulta particularmente preocupante los niveles de níquel, que alcanzan hasta 1.613 mg/L, muy por encima del límite permisible de 0,1 mg/L para aguas superficiales destinadas a sustentar la vida acuática. Un artículo de 2025 publicado enEnvironmental Science and Pollution Research también informó sobre niveles elevados de cobre, arsénico, antimonio, aluminio, cobalto y zinc en el embalse de Hatillo.

Tras revisar los resultados analizados por el Laboratorio Franja, la Asociación Dominicana de Ingenieros Químicos publicó un informe de 20 páginas en el que expresaba su profunda preocupación por los resultados de la calidad del agua y recomendaba un seguimiento y análisis continuos, incluyendo los sedimentos del fondo del embalse, así como la reclasificación de la calidad del agua.

La Academia de Ciencias de la República Dominicana también emitió una declaración pública instando a las autoridades a tomar medidas inmediatas. Según la declaración, la coloración verdosa observada en el embalse puede deberse a una combinación de factores, entre ellos el uso intensivo de fertilizantes y agroquímicos, la afluencia de materia orgánica, la reducción de los niveles de agua durante períodos prolongados de sequía y posibles vertidos procedentes de operaciones mineras cercanas.

El agua del Embalse de Hatillo sigue con un color verdoso seis meses después de la primera proliferación de algas. Crédito: Ramón Ventura Las comunidades responden a la contaminación

Más allá de las pruebas científicas, la crisis medioambiental en torno al embalse de Hatillo ha provocado una fuerte respuesta ciudadana. Los residentes de Cotuí se han movilizado para exigir medidas inmediatas, expresando su preocupación por la posible toxicidad del embalse y su impacto en la salud, los medios de vida y el medio ambiente.En marzo de 2026, los miembros de la comunidad se reunieron cada noche en el parque del pueblo para celebrar vigilias a la luz de las velas, que culminaron en una gran marcha popular el 20 de marzo.  Meses después, siguen haciendo un llamado por la justicia medioambiental y medidas urgentes para proteger y restaurar el embalse de Hatillo, como una fuente vital de agua dulce para el futuro.

The post Con motivo del Día Mundial del Medio Ambiente, las comunidades de la República Dominicana reclaman responsabilidad ambiental appeared first on Earthworks.

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Utility Dive caught up with the associate deputy secretary of energy at the Edison Electric Institute conference in Las Vegas, where the dominant theme was balancing demand growth with affordability.

Headline News:

• “Trump Delivers Boost To Coal Worth Hundreds Of Millions” • The Trump administration is putting $700 million into coal. Trump announced the move during remarks in the Oval Office, saying his administration is “taking historic action to bring down the price of energy and the cost of living for all Americans with the power of clean, beautiful coal.” [The Hill]

Clean, beautiful coal mine (Carol M Highsmith, public domain)

• “France Accused Of ‘Climate Denial’ As Green Funding Quietly Shrinks Following Blistering Heatwave” • Last month, France sweltered under a powerful heat dome. Weather agency Météo France said that new monthly highs had been logged at 352 weather stations. The highest temperature was 37.1°C. But France repeatedly cut its funding to deal with heat. [Euronews]
• “Energy, Water Use And Pollution Of AI And Data Centers Rival Most Countries” • The environmental footprint of data centers already rivals some of the world’s largest countries, a United Nations University report says. The report predicts their water and energy use will double in just four years as use of AI grows. So will their pollution. [MSN]
• “Citing Cleaner, Cheaper Alternatives, Colorado Regulators Deny Xcel Energy’s $2.9 Billion Gas System Plan ” • Colorado’s Public Utilities Commission declined to approve much of Xcel Energy’s Gas Infrastructure Plan, which lays out the utility’s forecasted investments in methane gas infrastructure over the coming years. [CleanTechnica]
• “Wind And Solar Are Saving Texans $20 Million A Day” • In Texas, more than a third of electricity came from wind and solar projects as early as the first half of 2022. This year, wind and solar capacity have both set records already. RMI estimates that, on average, wind and solar projects in Texas have avoided $20 million per day in fuel costs. [RMI]

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

Salah satu alasan utama mengapa slot pulsa semakin diminati adalah kemudahan akses yang ditawarkannya. Generasi milenial dikenal sebagai kelompok yang tumbuh bersama perkembangan teknologi digital. Mereka cenderung memilih layanan yang dapat digunakan secara instan tanpa prosedur yang rumit.

Metode pembayaran menggunakan pulsa memungkinkan pengguna melakukan transaksi langsung melalui nomor telepon yang dimiliki. Tidak diperlukan proses registrasi perbankan tambahan atau langkah-langkah teknis yang kompleks. Kesederhanaan ini menciptakan pengalaman yang lebih praktis dibandingkan metode pembayaran konvensional.

Dari perspektif perilaku konsumen, kemudahan akses sering kali menjadi faktor yang lebih menentukan daripada harga atau fitur tambahan. Inilah yang membuat sistem berbasis pulsa mampu menarik perhatian pengguna dalam jumlah besar.

Peran Smartphone dalam Mendorong Popularitas

Tidak dapat dipungkiri bahwa penetrasi smartphone menjadi salah satu pendorong utama pertumbuhan layanan digital berbasis pulsa. Saat ini, hampir seluruh aktivitas online dilakukan melalui perangkat mobile, mulai dari komunikasi, belanja, hingga hiburan.

Slot pulsa memanfaatkan tren tersebut dengan menghadirkan sistem yang kompatibel dengan penggunaan smartphone sehari-hari. Pengguna tidak perlu berpindah perangkat atau membuka aplikasi tambahan untuk melakukan transaksi. Seluruh proses dapat dilakukan secara cepat melalui perangkat yang selalu berada dalam genggaman.

Kondisi ini menunjukkan bahwa keberhasilan slot pulsa tidak hanya bergantung pada produknya, tetapi juga pada kemampuannya beradaptasi dengan kebiasaan digital masyarakat modern.

Faktor Psikologis di Balik Preferensi Milenial

Aspek yang jarang dibahas adalah faktor psikologis yang memengaruhi preferensi generasi milenial terhadap layanan berbasis pulsa. Dalam banyak studi perilaku digital, pengguna cenderung lebih nyaman menggunakan metode pembayaran yang terasa sederhana dan familiar.

Pulsa telah menjadi bagian dari kehidupan sehari-hari selama bertahun-tahun. Karena sudah terbiasa melakukan pengisian pulsa untuk kebutuhan komunikasi, pengguna tidak merasakan hambatan psikologis ketika memanfaatkannya sebagai alat transaksi digital.

Selain itu, generasi milenial dikenal menghargai pengalaman pengguna yang cepat dan minim hambatan. Semakin sedikit langkah yang diperlukan untuk menyelesaikan suatu aktivitas, semakin tinggi kemungkinan layanan tersebut digunakan secara berulang.

Integrasi dengan Ekonomi Digital Modern

Popularitas slot pulsa juga tidak dapat dipisahkan dari pertumbuhan ekonomi digital yang semakin masif. Saat ini, masyarakat hidup dalam ekosistem yang mengutamakan transaksi elektronik, layanan berbasis aplikasi, serta konektivitas tanpa batas.

Dalam konteks tersebut, pulsa bertransformasi dari sekadar alat komunikasi menjadi instrumen transaksi yang memiliki nilai ekonomi lebih luas. Perubahan fungsi ini mencerminkan bagaimana teknologi mampu mengubah perilaku masyarakat dalam memanfaatkan sumber daya yang sudah ada.

Fenomena ini menunjukkan bahwa inovasi tidak selalu berarti menciptakan sesuatu yang baru. Dalam banyak kasus, inovasi justru lahir dari kemampuan memanfaatkan teknologi yang sudah dikenal masyarakat untuk memenuhi kebutuhan yang berkembang.

Pengaruh Komunitas dan Media Sosial

Generasi milenial merupakan kelompok yang sangat dipengaruhi oleh interaksi digital. Rekomendasi dari teman, komunitas online, hingga media sosial memiliki dampak besar terhadap keputusan penggunaan suatu layanan.

Ketika sebuah layanan mendapatkan eksposur luas melalui berbagai platform digital, tingkat kepercayaan publik cenderung meningkat. Efek jaringan atau network effect ini membuat popularitas slot pulsa berkembang lebih cepat dibandingkan metode yang kurang mendapat perhatian di ruang digital.

Di era informasi saat ini, persepsi publik sering kali terbentuk bukan hanya melalui iklan, tetapi juga melalui pengalaman yang dibagikan oleh sesama pengguna. Faktor inilah yang turut mempercepat adopsi berbagai layanan berbasis digital.

Tantangan dan Prospek di Masa Depan

Meskipun popularitas slot pulsa terus meningkat, terdapat sejumlah tantangan yang perlu diperhatikan. Persaingan antarplatform semakin ketat, sementara ekspektasi pengguna terhadap keamanan dan kenyamanan terus meningkat.

Ke depan, keberhasilan layanan berbasis pulsa akan sangat bergantung pada kemampuan penyedia layanan dalam menghadirkan sistem yang aman, transparan, dan responsif terhadap kebutuhan pengguna. Selain itu, perkembangan teknologi pembayaran digital juga akan menjadi faktor penting yang menentukan arah pertumbuhan industri ini.

Jika mampu beradaptasi dengan perubahan teknologi dan perilaku konsumen, slot pulsa berpotensi mempertahankan posisinya sebagai salah satu metode transaksi digital yang diminati oleh generasi milenial dan generasi digital berikutnya.

Kesimpulan

Popularitas slot pulsa di kalangan generasi milenial bukanlah fenomena yang terjadi secara kebetulan. Kemudahan akses, integrasi dengan smartphone, faktor psikologis pengguna, pertumbuhan ekonomi digital, serta pengaruh komunitas online menjadi elemen utama yang mendorong perkembangannya.

Memahami fenomena ini dari berbagai sudut pandang memberikan gambaran yang lebih luas mengenai bagaimana teknologi membentuk perilaku konsumen modern. Slot pulsa pada akhirnya menjadi contoh nyata bahwa kesuksesan sebuah layanan digital sering kali ditentukan oleh kemampuannya menghadirkan solusi yang sederhana, relevan, dan sesuai dengan gaya hidup masyarakat masa kini.

The country is currently facing a runoff election to choose its new president. National organizations representing Indigenous Peoples and peasants have outlined a critical agenda to ensure full respect for their rights.

The post Peru: Indigenous Peoples and Peasants Mobilize Against the Threat of a Setback for Democracy appeared first on La Via Campesina - EN.

In an increasingly divided nation, Americans agree on at least two things. For one, politicians across the political spectrum are scrambling to get more housing built, which happens to be an accidentally powerful way to fight climate change. And two, Americans love their parks: A recent poll found that 88 percent of them visited one in the past year. Nearly 90 percent of people who voted for Kamala Harris, and 80 percent of those who voted for Donald Trump, consider these spaces critical infrastructure in their communities. 

That alone should encourage elected officials to build as many of them as possible. But a new report finds another, potentially even more motivating, factor for American cities: For every dollar invested in parks and recreation, communities reap $3 in local economic benefits each year. “You really do get so much goodness out of them,” said Will Klein, director of parks research at the Trust for Public Land, which produced the report. “People are healthier, people connect with each other. They drive business activity, especially for small businesses.”

Parks aren’t as much about land as they are about people. In an increasingly commodified world, they’re one of the few remaining public places where folks can roam without the pressure of spending money. That makes them a critical kind of “third place,” somewhere to gather beyond the workplace and the home. Whereas people must pay a premium to use a gym, they can use a park or rec center for free.

This brings huge benefits, and cost savings, to public health. The new report notes that the United States spends $5.3 trillion annually on health care. Physical inactivity, which greatly increases the risk of chronic problems like cardiovascular disease, costs the country more than $200 billion a year. “Our polling this year showed that the most popular place in America in 2025 to run around and play and exercise are parks and public spaces, much more popular than private gyms,” Klein said. “That physical activity has real health and economic benefits, about $2,000 per person in health care savings each year.”

Parks boost mental health as well. Simply being among greenery boosts positive well-being, research has shown. Parks also foster social interaction and reduce loneliness, which is a public health crisis of its own. This kind of commerce-free third place is especially important for the elderly, who may be living on fixed incomes and can’t afford to frequent cafes and the like. “There’s movie nights in the park, concerts in the park,” Klein said. “Just playing on the playground, talking to neighbors, having barbecues — all that stuff allows people to afford that higher quality of life.”

Even though they exist outside of the frenzy of capitalism, parks provide major economic value. The crowds they attract, for example, filter into surrounding neighborhoods, buying food and drinks for picnics or perusing mom-and-pop shops and boutiques. Famous green spaces — New York City’s Central Park, Chicago’s Millennium Park, San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park and newly minted Sunset Dunes — attract tourists, too. The Trust for Public Land says that the Florida Gulf Coast Trail, the 420-mile greenway it’s helping develop, will bring $200 million in economic activity in Sarasota County alone by attracting bicyclists and other recreationists.

Read Next Pocket gardens: The tiny urban oases with surprisingly big benefits Matt Simon

Even if you own a home near a park but never visit it, you’re benefiting economically in a way. “People want to live near green spaces,” Klein said. “So you see increased property values, which supports a broader tax base, which can be reinvested into community benefits through the increased property tax revenue.”

The trick is ensuring everyone — not just those who can afford condos and single-family homes — can enjoy the aura of these jewels. While new housing developments might seem at odds with green spaces, the two can exist in harmony. Even if they’re crammed into the densest of cities, affordable complexes can incorporate pocket gardens, which have the added benefit of reducing increasingly unbearable urban temperatures. Some developers are even building communities around working farms, known as agrihoods, which bring yet another benefit of local food production.

Any additional green space will also help cities adapt to one of the stranger consequences of climate change: It’s raining a lot harder. City sewer systems were designed to handle the rainstorms of old, but are overwhelmed by the additional water falling today. By soaking up some of that liquid, parks help save money in two ways: They reduce the amount of water that a city has to pay to manage, and they help prevent the surrounding neighborhood from flooding, avoiding property damage. 

More so than ever before, then, the humble green space is a surprisingly powerful way to solve a bunch of problems at once — improving mental health, helping cities adapt to climate change, and supercharging economic activity. “Parks,” Klein said, “are actually one of these solutions hiding under the feet of all these local leaders.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Your local park is bringing in the green (and by that, we mean money) on Jun 5, 2026.

A gentle shower fell as four people in rain gear made their way deep into a spruce-fir forest high in Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Ducking beneath bright green underbrush and stepping away from the road, a hush took over.

Just a few steps in, they came across an aging yellow birch tree covered in moss.

But it wasn’t just moss. James Hollinger, a retired computer scientist turned amateur lichen scientist, leaned closer and spotted a rare, spongy lichen that has been documented about a dozen times in the park. As far as he knows, it does not appear in any botanical guidebooks.

“So, we could, right here right now, come up with a common name for it,” Hollinger said excitedly, as fellow volunteer and lichenologist Laura Boggess unfolded her magnifying lens. Counting carefully, she found more than 17 other moss and lichen species on just one side of the tree. 

Every square foot of the Smokies teems with life that most visitors never notice: lichens clinging to bark, fungi hidden in fallen logs, and salamanders darting beneath damp leaves. Scientists and volunteers say paying attention to those small creatures — and returning often enough to notice when they change — has grown increasingly urgent as climate change alters the park’s ecosystems and federal agencies see deep cuts that threaten long-term monitoring and biodiversity research.

Hollinger, Boggess, and the others in the group call themselves the Gang of Retirees in Search of Life’s Diversity, or “GRISLD.” Not all are retired — Boggess is beginning a teaching job at Warren Wilson College in the fall — but they share a habit of spending hours moving deliberately through remote corners of the park, documenting species few people will ever see. Connected through a listserv and their keen interest in the Smokies’ rich biodiversity, the group quietly contributes to a long-running project called the all taxa biodiversity inventory, or ATBI, conducted in partnership with the park. 

The Great Smoky Mountains are the most biodiverse site in the national park system. Every square foot of the park teems with life, much of which park visitors rarely see. Katie Myers / Grist

“We’ll hike into these places that other researchers don’t have the resources, the funding to,” Hollinger said. “We watch all these things and keep an eye on how things are changing.”

The Smokies project is one of the oldest and longest-running all taxa biodiversity inventories in the country, one of several decades-long efforts to document biodiversity in dozens of ecological hotspots around the world. That work has taken on increasing urgency in the Great Smoky Mountains, the most biodiverse site in the national park system and a global hotspot for salamanders, fungi, mosses, and other less-studied forms of life.

The mountains’ varied elevations and countless microclimates may help some species survive a warming world by providing pockets of cooler habitat. But climate change is also reshaping the park in visible ways, from an increase in invasive insects and dying trees to more frequent floods, fires, and violent storms. The inventory is conducted with the park and managed by the nonprofit Discover Life in America, where Will Kuhn — one of the hikers threading through the wet forest that morning — leads scientific research.

“We’re up to over 22,000 species of everything that has been documented here in the Smokies,” Kuhn said. More than 1,000 of them documented since 1998 are new to science, a number believed to just scratch the surface.  “That is maybe a third to a quarter of the actual diversity here.” 

Finding a new species might seem like a rare joy, but it happens regularly, Kuhn says. Larger, charismatic species are well documented, but little ones, such as mites, mosses, and microscopic plankton-like rotifers are often understudied.

Much of the park’s biodiversity data is collected during spring and summer, when academic researchers tend to visit, Kuhn said. Volunteers are there year-round, however, tracking species that are active in colder months or, like many birds, pass through while migrating. “The park’s really known during that time of the year, but what about the things that are off-period?” Hollinger said, turning over a log as a red-cheeked salamander scampered into the wet leaves. 

A red-cheeked salamander scampers under a log. Volunteers take photos of every species they log and upload them to iNaturalist, a citizen science database. Courtesy of Will Kuhn

Although the Park Service grants permits to academic researchers, its relationships with local nonprofits and tourism-dependent communities allow it to support ecological work it cannot manage on its own. Those organizations can also raise money in times of need, in one recent case helping to keep the park open while salaries were on pause during the 2025 government shutdown. 

“Ultimately, we’re able to spend money on things that benefit the park but that a federal agency just can’t do,” Kuhn said.

Retired biologist Paul Super coordinated research in the park for over two decades. He’s interested in lichens, mosses, insects, and other small creatures in part because of the way they hold moisture, keeping the mountain cool and foggy. If they die, the water cycle will change. 

“Regulating the moisture in these high elevation areas is pretty important because we’re at the top of the watershed, and everybody’s drinking water is downhill from here,” Super said.

In the decades he’s spent in the park, he’s seen long-term changes unfold. Warming temperatures are rippling through the food chain, making way for invasive parasites like the woolly adelgid. The tiny insect, which is native to Asia, has infested and killed thousands of the park’s hemlocks, a towering tree sometimes called the “redwood of the East.” Other pests have attacked Fraser firs, elms, and white and green ash trees that keep streams cool for temperature-sensitive aquatic species like the beloved brook trout.

The high-elevation ecosystems of the Smokies are “sky islands” –  isolated pockets of unique species that depend upon cooler, wetter conditions. When the climate warms, there’s nowhere else to go. Some may disappear before anyone even knows they’re there.

To Super, logging these species is about noticing the minute, day-to-day, month-to-month, year-to-year changes that become earth-shattering over time. “The visitor coming here for a day or a week is not going to notice things and know that this is not what it used to be,” he said.

Laura Boggess was born and raised in western North Carolina and drawn to science through a lifetime love of climbing the region’s remote cliffs. She considers these data-gathering trips a critical way to monitor the changing climate from the ground up. “The small ways, the paying attention, the naming of a species, which isn’t a small thing, but it’s like an accumulation of small, cooperative creation,” she said. “It is even more important as we enter into even more rapid change.”

There is so much to see in the park that it took the volunteers about two hours to go half a mile. Even as they left the trail and returned to the road, they found a rare parasitic fungus. The magnifying glass came out, and everyone slowly leaned in for a good look.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline In the Smoky Mountains, a volunteer effort aims to document every species — before it’s too late on Jun 5, 2026.

In the second of our Breaking the Sword dispatches from the West Bank, Farah, Calico and Noah report on the Israeli practice of establishing Shepherding Outposts as an instrument for grabbing Palestinian land

The post Zionist pogroms and shepherding outposts in the West Bank appeared first on Red Pepper.

Regulator seeks feedback on range of updates to retailer guidelines, following a series of market rule changes and reforms aimed at demystifying electricity bills and keeping retailers honest.

The post Regulator drafts new retail energy guidelines in push for “honest and fair” consumer experience appeared first on Renew Economy.

CATL launches world’s biggest open-source energy storage testing platform, as it starts mass production of sodium-ion batteries and points to lithium-air..

The post CATL launches world’s largest energy storage testbed, starts mass production of sodium-ion batteries appeared first on Renew Economy.

The economics of building new wind farms in Australia is "getting worse, not better," project developers warn, as rising construction costs and a fickle off-take market block the path to final investment.

The post “Worse, not better:” Developers paint grim picture of wind energy economics – even with CIS support appeared first on Renew Economy.

Believe it or not, America has the largest train network in the world, but it’s mostly used by freight companies who ship coal at five miles per hour. But how on earth did things get so bad for trains that carry people?

If you need a crash course in why it’s so hard to travel a long distance in America outside of a car or an airplane, look no further than one of our favorite YouTube channels, Climate Town, to learn about the last 200 years of U.S. passenger rail history in under 30 minutes.

And because it’s created by the hilarious “guy with a climate science and policy degree” Rollie Williams and his crack team of researchers and producers, we promise it’ll be one of the most informative and funny things you’ll watch all month. Seriously: make it all the way to the end for a truly deranged illustration of a horse, more than one jump scare of Jim Cramer eating Spam, and most important, a recipe for fixing this mess and getting America’s transportation future back on the rails:

• Can more investment save Brightline? The first privately owned intercity rail company in the U.S. since the formation of Amtrak in the 1970s looked like it would be a huge success, but is now on the verge of going bankrupt. It’s not quite fast enough, a bit too expensive, and because it uses existing at-grade rail lines, kills a lot of people. (Fast Company)
• Despite high gas prices, Americans were driving more than ever in April, according to new Federal Highway Administration statistics. (Wall Street Journal; paywall)
• Electric vehicle owners save money on gas and maintenance, but they pay an average of $1,000 extra for insurance because EVs cost more to fix after a crash. (Grist)
• Planners have retreated from politics since the Jane Jacobs area and no longer lead community discussions about transportation or other issues, writes Billy Cooney. (Southern Urbanism)
• Commercial roads lined with aging strip malls could become transit-oriented boulevards with mixed-income housing instead. (Architect Magazine)
• Almost half the miles driven by California’s Waymo robotaxis are “deadheading,” without any passengers inside. (Findings)
• Texas is cracking down on immigrant school bus drivers, already in short supply. (Observer)
• Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek’s administration is treating the failure of a transportation funding referendum as a PR problem, not a policy one. (Oregon Public Broadcasting)
• Voters in two Bay Area counties overwhelmingly approved a sales tax measure to fund rail transit. (KQED)
• The Illinois legislature passed a bill allowing Uber and Lyft drivers to unionize. (Capitol News)
• Transit advocates want to make sure addressing a funding shortfall is at the top of Pennsylvania legislators’ minds. (Capital-Star)
• As the Trump administration continues to make hay over a supposed crime wave on transit, the Federal Transit Administration is now investigating MARTA after a stabbing on an Atlanta train and another at a station. (WABE)
• Minneapolis bikeshare Nice Ride shut down in 2023, but could return with e-bikes. (MinnPost)
• Warsaw is turning a large parking lot in front of a government building into a park. (Pragmatika)
• Coach operator FlixBus restored the route number 666 to a bus connecting Krakow and the Polish seaside resort of Hel. (BBC)
• Walking and biking rather than driving made an Irish Times writer feel more connected to her city.

Repairs to one of its three transformers allows Australia's most powerful battery to reach full storage capacity, but still short of delivering its full "shock-absorber" contract.

The post Transformer repair allows Australia’s most powerful battery to reach full storage capacity appeared first on Renew Economy.

Lightsource bp hails "new phase" in global power sector after announcing the start of construction of major new solar and battery project to help power smelter.

The post Power sector enters “new phase” as huge solar-battery project that will supply giant smelter starts construction appeared first on Renew Economy.

In an exclusive interview, Tesla Energy’s Asia Pacific boss Josef Tadich discusses energy abundance (read solar), the role of batteries big and small, hybrids, the EV surge and the arrival of V2G.

The post Tesla Energy boss on energy abundance, EVs, V2G and big and small batteries | Energy Insiders appeared first on Renew Economy.

For Immediate Release:

June 4, 2026

Contact:
Ashley Castaneda, ashley@restorethedelta.org

SACRAMENTO – Tribes, environmental justice organizations, fishing groups, and environmental advocates joined forces yesterday in a Day of Advocacy for the Delta, engaging with legislators on water policy issues impacting Delta communities, environment and economy. The Day of Advocacy, organized by the Bay-Delta coalition, focused on:

• Support for the California Water Renaissance Plan which proposes a shift towards a sustainable local water supply and away from expensive, unreliable water imports
• Support for AB 2218 which would establish a statewide policy directive to remedy historical water inequities with California Tribes
• Support for SB 872 which invests proactively in Delta levees and subsided state conveyance infrastructure to ensure long term protection for communities and water supply 
• Opposition to AB 2026 which deepens water system inequities, minimal protections for the Delta and extends unpermitted diversions
• Opposition to AB 2215 which fast tracks permitting of the controversial Delta Conveyance Project and bypasses review for environmental impacts

The Advocacy Day brought together 45 volunteers, who organized into 11 teams and held more than 60 meetings with legislative offices. Participants had productive conversations with decisionmakers, voicing broad community support for common sense water solutions desperately needed in the state. 

STATEMENTS FROM COALITION MEMBERS:

Gary Bobker, Program Director, Friends of the River:

“CA Bay-Delta Flows Advocacy Day is a chance for citizen activists to provide a counter-narrative to the official state ‘party line ‘ that in order to address the impacts of climate change, California must divert and dam every drop of water and build incredibly expensive and inefficient projects to move and store that water. Instead, people from diverse communities and regions come together to talk to legislators about how the biggest new source of water for our cities is from reusing and recycling water and capturing storm runoff; how recharging our depleted groundwater aquifers can be done without robbing our rivers and lakes of the water they need to survive, provide clean water and support healthy ecosystems; and how expensive and unnecessary boondoggles like the Delta Tunnel can only be made to seem feasible when the rules are relaxed to ignore legal, environmental and financial realities – steps that the legislature cannot and should not sanction. These citizen voices are vital to helping lawmakers make the right decisions that promote a sustainable water future for all Californians.”

Bruce Reznik, Executive Director, Los Angeles Waterkeeper:

“Agencies throughout the Los Angeles region have established aggressive local water supply goals, aiming to move from 40% local water to 80% countywide by 2045, and they are already moving ahead on major wastewater recycling, stormwater capture and groundwater remediation projects. These efforts will not only make the region more water secure in the face of increasingly less reliable sources of imported water due to our changing climate; they will also help reduce water pollution as well as our carbon footprint, create greener and healthier communities, and provide a tremendous number of local jobs and economic activity for the region. We now need the LA delegation to the state legislature to get behind this agenda if we are going to successfully bring all these critical projects to fruition.”

Cintia Cortez, Policy Manager, Restore the Delta:

“California faces a critical choice in its water planning: legislators can either invest in a resilient and affordable water future for all Californians, or waste billions on the destructive Delta Tunnel, a project that would fail to deliver reliable water supplies for future generations. Over 40 volunteers joined the Delta Flows Coalition to advocate for the Water Renaissance Plan, which would protect the Delta’s annual $7 billion economy, enhance the Delta ecosystem so local communities can reconnect with their waterways, and support local investments in Southern California.”

Christie Ralson, Associate Attorney, San Francisco Baykeeper:

“The San Francisco Bay Estuary ecosystem is in crisis. Through conversations with over 60 legislative offices, San Francisco Baykeeper and our colleagues educated decision makers on the direct threats to the continued survival of this unique ecosystem and the communities that rely on it and shared our vision for the future of water in California.”

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FoodCorps and Teachers College, Columbia University recently announced a new microcredential designed to help K-5 teachers integrate food education into everyday classroom learning. The six-week program, Food Education in the Classroom (Food-E), combines nutrition science and experiential learning to help educators foster students’ knowledge, curiosity, and confidence around food.

Food-E is launching on the 80th anniversary of the National School Lunch Program, which feeds nearly 30 million students every school day and is an important source of fruits and vegetables for many children, Rachel Willis, President of FoodCorps, tells Food Tank.

But access alone is not enough, according to FoodCorps. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data shows that 60 percent of U.S. children fall short of fruit intake recommendations and 93 percent do not consume enough vegetables.

The launch comes eight months after the One Big Beautiful Bill Act cuts eliminated SNAP-Ed, a federal nutrition education program that served roughly 90 million Americans, including 35 million children. One consequence of those cuts, Willis says, was the loss of nutrition educators in schools and communities. Food-E is designed to help address that gap by preparing K-5 teachers to integrate food education throughout the school day.

The course integrates biology, ecology, environmental science, sociology, and history, allowing educators to connect food lessons to existing learning standards rather than treating food education as a separate subject. Willis says conversations with Pamela Koch, Associate Professor of Nutrition and Education at Teachers College and head of the Food-E program, helped shape this approach.

Koch’s work with educators reveals a common challenge: many teachers recognize the value of food education but struggle to fit it into already packed curricula. Food-E addresses that challenge by helping educators identify opportunities within lessons they already teach. A geometry lesson, for example, might incorporate food through concepts such as measurement, shapes, or fractions.

The course also encourages teachers to make use of “micromoments”—brief periods before an assembly, during transitions, or at the end of the school day—to spark conversations and curiosity about food. Rather than adding another responsibility to educators’ workloads, Willis says the goal is to make food education a natural part of students’ daily learning experiences.

Food-E pairs nutrition science with experiential learning, helping educators help students engage with food through hands-on activities. According to FoodCorps, an average of 60 percent of students who participate in its food education programs report greater preference for fruits and vegetables. Students who participate in more hands-on activities, such as cooking and gardening, consume up to three times as many fruits and vegetables.

Willis says Food-E is designed to help more educators bring these experiences into the classroom through activities ranging from cooking and gardening to science experiments, taste tests and food-related storytelling, helping students build curiosity, confidence, and agency around food from an early age.

In addition to nutrition science and classroom activities, Food-E challenges participants to think critically about their own experiences with food. Early modules ask participants to reflect on their memories of school meals, the messages they received about food growing up, and the experiences that shaped their attitudes toward eating. The course also explores how those experiences can influence classroom conversations and shape students’ perceptions of food.

Willis says this work is important because educators have an opportunity to help children develop curiosity and confidence around food rather than judgment or anxiety. Reflecting on her own experience, Willis says her work in food education has led her to reconsider some of her own assumptions about food. Food-E, she explains, creates space for educators to do the same while ensuring that students have the opportunity to develop their own relationships with food.

Making Food-E broadly accessible was essential to FoodCorps’ vision for the program. Willis says the organization wanted to create a resource that could support nutrition educators, classroom teachers across disciplines, and individuals with little or no prior experience in food education. That approach extends to the program’s cost. FoodCorps set the enrollment fee at US$295 in an effort to reduce barriers to participation and make it easier for both schools and individual educators to enroll.

FoodCorps envisions a future in which all 50 million public school students have access to food education and nourishing meals at school. Willis says Food-E is a critical tool for scaling that impact. By equipping more educators with food education tools, Willis believes the program can help build support for policies and practices that expand children’s access to nourishing school food.

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 Wikimedia

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Last Friday, after most people left work, President Trump announced the repeal of two executive orders (11644 and 11989) that govern off-road vehicle (ORV) use on public lands nationwide. He also directed federal land management agencies to rescind or revise their regulations implementing these orders, setting the stage for chaos and confusion across the country.  

For a bit of background, Presidents Nixon and Carter issued those executive orders in response to an explosive increase in ORV use in the 1960s and 70s across public lands and the corresponding environmental damage and conflict. Together, the orders directed federal land management agencies to develop regulations to address that increasing ORV use by “minimizing” the resultant impacts. This included locating ORV areas and trails to minimize damage to public land resources and wildlife as well as conflicts between different recreationists. The orders also empowered agencies to act swiftly to close areas to ORVs when they are causing or will cause considerable damage to natural and cultural resources.  

For roughly 50 years, these orders have helped protect streams, wildlife and their habitats, and opportunities for safe recreation by providing clear and consistent guidance for motorized and nonmotorized users on Bureau of Land Management (BLM), U.S. Forest Service and National Park Service lands. And each of those agencies subsequently issued regulations to implement the Nixon and Carter orders.  

Trump’s latest action marks a significant shift in public lands management, one that prioritizes ORV use over all other activities and at the expense of clean water, wildlife habitat, cultural sites, and the experience of motorized and non-motorized recreationists alike. 

Off-road vehicle tracks in the Factory Butte area. © Ray Bloxham/SUWA

SUWA is no stranger to the problem of excessive ORV use. BLM lands and redrock country have been at the center of ORV issues for decades, and SUWA has been on the front lines of this issue the entire time. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, we challenged extensive cross-country ORV use in wilderness study areas and BLM’s hands off approach to ORV use across the state. More recently, SUWA successfully challenged unbalanced travel management plans that prioritized ORVs to the detriment of cultural sites, wildlife habitat, desert waterways and those seeking quiet and solitude in redrock country. And we are not going to stop now. 

While motorized groups and the Trump administration like to throw around words like “access,” what they really mean is they want ORV use anywhere and everywhere regardless of the impact to natural and cultural resources or other public land visitors. Simply put, “access” does not only mean motorized access. In Utah alone, right now there are tens of thousands of miles of dirt routes and trails open to ORV use in addition to more than 130,000 acres open to cross-country ORV use (meaning vehicles can literally drive anywhere within those designated areas). 

Trump’s actions won’t make public lands more accessible but will make the public land experience worse for everyone. It will create confusing and unsafe conditions, while at the same time damaging wildlife habitat and cultural resources.  Hikers, hunters, bikers, equestrians, and those seeking quiet time with friends and family in the outdoors will end up being overwhelmed by the dust, noise, and damage caused by unregulated ORV use.  

For now, regulations implementing the two executive orders—requiring local land managers to minimize damage from ORVs and conflicts between different public land users—remain in place, as do existing travel management plans. We expect, however, that the Trump administration will work quickly to weaken if not outright eliminate both the regulations and individual plans. SUWA will be there every step of the way, fighting to protect Utah’s incredible wild places. 

If you haven’t already, please submit comments via our San Rafael Swell and San Rafael Desert advocacy actions; proposals for these areas would add new routes or re-open previously closed routes to ORVs. The comment period closes on Monday, June 8. 

The post Trump Administration Takes Aim at Public Lands . . . Again appeared first on Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance.