News Feeds

Tanzania’s aviation sector is seeing rapid growth, with investment being put into expanding airport infrastructure and an increase in flights. Against this backdrop, End Fossil Occupy Tanzania, ran a youth engagement workshop to make the case for sustainable transport systems and to raise awareness of the devastating environmental impacts of airport expansion. In this blog post…

Source

The PJM Interconnection expects Engie’s two storage projects totaling nearly 1.7 GW and LS Power’s 455-MW gas-fired uprate will be online by mid-2029.

Investor-owned gas and electric utilities in the third quarter requested a record $4.5 billion in rate hikes, according to a Wednesday report from PowerLines. Collectively, utilities in the South requested the highest amount, at $2.2 billion.

It wasn’t that long ago that bison were scarce in South Dakota.

In just six years, that’s changed dramatically. Now, more than 1,100 bison roam the grasslands, already the largest Native-owned bison herd in the world and still growing. The Sicáŋğu Food Sovereignty Initiative is also helping community members learn to grow, produce, harvest, and prepare their own food, while workforce development programs support farmers, ranchers, aspiring entrepreneurs.

The name of the organization speaks for itself: This is not only a success story for one Indigenous group; it’s a success story for efforts everywhere toward food sovereignty.

“When I first started, [people couldn’t] really articulate what food sovereignty was or understand the importance of it. But now, people are seeing the urgency and that importance,” says Matte Wilson, Deputy Director of the Sicáŋğu Community Development Corporation.

The urgency of building food sovereignty in Indigenous communities is stark. Food insecurity levels among Native households in the United States are significantly above the national average. Indigenous people are “up to three times more likely to die from cardiometabolic diseases compared to other groups,” a Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems report notes. And tragically, this is no accident. Over recent centuries, federal policies have restricted traditional food systems, disinvested in reservations, interfered in organizing efforts, and more.

But when Indigenous communities set the terms for their own food and agriculture systems, land management practices, economic structures, cultural expression, and health policy, things change for the better. There’s deep wisdom in these foodways—wisdom that’s lasted thousands of years and can continue to protect and nourish communities to this day.

Michael Kotutwa Johnson’s work at the University of Arizona’s Indigenous Resilience Center, for example works to advance Indigenous resilience research, education, and outreach. And Johnson’s work in particular has focused on bringing back traditional varieties of Hopi crops.

Without biodiversity, “we have no true sustainability,” he says. “[These seeds are] a backbone of our community. They’re the things that survived us, and it’s taken us years and years to cultivate. So to bring them back home, finally, is very important.”

Within Indigenous models of food sovereignty, we also see concepts like Food is Medicine and local foodways as inherent truths. This is why acclaimed Chef Sean Sherman is so frustrated with the U.S. government’s new upside-down-pyramid model of dietary guidelines, he told us at Climate Week NYC a couple weeks ago. Rather than a one-size-fits-all approach, he created the RING Diet (Regional Indigenous Nutritional Guide).

“We’re all different people and that’s what’s beautiful about this one because it’s regional, so you can make rings everywhere and it can go global quickly,” he said at Climate Week. “The more we eat for health, the better off we’ll be and the more understanding we have.”

Those benefits extend beyond food systems, to all parts of people’s livelihoods. I love seeing how the First Nations Development Institute works to not just invest in Native food and agriculture systems but also to strengthen research and advocacy for Native economic justice, support the stewardship of Native lands, and help protect and amplify Native arts, language, and knowledge systems.

And the organization Native Agriculture Financial Services (NAFS) provides capital to support agriculture production, rural business development, and rural infrastructure for Native American farmers, ranchers, and agricultural communities.

“Health isn’t just about individual choices. It’s about community, environment, and the systems around us,” says A-dae Romero Briones, a Vice President at the First Nations Development Institute.

Across the entire food system, we would all do well to continue elevating Indigenous voices—and, for those of us who come from different backgrounds, deeply listening. How can we learn from these traditions to build stronger local food networks and more resilient land management practices everywhere? How can we advocate for food sovereignty in even more communities? How can we embed this interconnected understanding of food and environment and health into all parts of our political and economic systems?

None of us has all these answers, of course—but there’s no question that, the harder we work toward a food system model rooted in local sovereignty, the better off we’ll all be!

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 Anne Preble, Unsplash

The post Celebrating Indigenous Food Sovereignty Efforts that Drive Wide-Ranging Change appeared first on Food Tank.

South Africa is facing a defining crossroads: do we continue pushing investment in climate-change-causing fossil fuels – which may harm people and the environment, and could threaten livelihoods – or do we transition toward more sustainable energy? By bringing the Climate Change Act into law, it is clear that there is recognition of the need to address this crisis and protect vulnerable communities. Why then do we continue to see more fossil fuel legislation being proposed, such as the South African National Petroleum Company (SANPC) Bill, which will likely lock the country into new fossil fuels and could risk the country not meeting its global climate commitments under the UNFCCC. 

As a young South African, I am concerned about what this legislation could mean for the future and I have many questions, most critical of which is, where are we heading to as a country? The sixth IPCC and the International Energy Agency NetZero by 2050 report concluded that, if we are to protect vulnerable communities already impacted by climate change, there should be no new investments in fossil fuels. Communities are already feeling the impacts; severe weather conditions have caused major damage to property and over 400 people have already lost their lives in KwaZulu-Natal and Eastern Cape. 

While section 7 of the Climate Change Act mandates every organ of state to review, align and harmonise policy – to ensure that this growing crisis is taken into account – it is difficult to understand why we still continue to see legislation proposed that could lead to more loss and more damage in vulnerable communities who are ill-prepared to shoulder further climate impacts.

Governance and Energy Security 

As a result of ongoing global geopolitical tensions, ordinary South Africans continue to be impacted by fluctuating energy costs. It hits us in our pockets when we must pay more for transport and other essentials. This is one of the key reasons we keep questioning government’s ongoing push to keep South Africa dependent on fossil fuels and for what seems to be an unnecessarily slow uptake of renewable technologies. 

With the SANPC Bill – currently before Parliament – government not only seeks to accelerate more fossil fuels but is also pushing for South Africa to have its own local production of oil and gas. The country’s dependence on fossil fuels also means that citizens will continue being exposed to volatile markets. From our point of view, however, the current situation – including the geopolitical impact on fuel prices and increasing extreme weather events – and see these as warnings, and instead prioritize developing legislation that will drive investments in wind, solar and hydro energy.

Another major concern is that 90% of South Africa’s oceans remain leased-off to oil and gas companies for exploration, while simultaneously being challenged by indigenous coastal communities – who call for the protection of their livelihoods from the risks related to oil and gas exploration and drilling. In 2025, 147 fishing communities were recorded – totalling more than 28 000 fisher households. This proposed petroleum company legislation is decades too late and would not be fit for what is needed in this moment. Instead, this legislation could undo all the effort put in to protect small-scale fisher rights. 

There is no place in a just transition for such restrictive, short-sighted legislation because communities must benefit in the process. While there are those who may see this state-owned company as a silver bullet to our energy problems, governance issues remain a critical concern.  When it comes to PetroSA particularly, the real question is who will carry the decommissioning and rehabilitation liability, which is estimated to cost upwards of R9.8 billion? Will South African taxpayers find themselves footing the bill of decisions they didn’t agree to?

Energy Sovereignty Must Begin with Communities 

We can’t speak of the energy transition and the importance of grounding the transition in justice and making sure that it benefits communities but continue to see proposed legislation that may only exacerbate and entrench communities deeper into poverty.  Energy prices and electricity costs remain at an all-time high, affecting citizens and making energy access an even bigger issue. Communities must define and determine the type of development they want. This must be accompanied by policy and legislation that will ensure that there is local economic development and meaningful participation without risking the livelihoods of coastal communities. 

As climate change exacerbates it is important that government puts forward laws that will ensure communities are adapting and can withstand future climate shocks. But, maybe more importantly, our laws must ensure that we do what we can to protect future generations.

END

By: Lisa Makaula, Advocacy Lead at The Green Connection

The post SOUTH AFRICA’S ENERGY CROSSROADS: RENEWABLE, INCLUSIVE ENERGY OR FUTURE FOSSIL FUEL LIABILITIES? appeared first on The Green Connection.

From Swiss trademarks and Bahamas trading profits to Dutch tax secrecy, Shell’s financial history has acquired an impressive recurring theme: when the numbers become interesting, the explanation becomes complicated. Very complicated.

SATIRE — based on documented events, published investigations and official regulatory records.

After three Shell tax articles in a single morning, readers might reasonably wonder whether we are in danger of becoming repetitive.

Not at all.

Shell has thoughtfully provided several decades of material.

Today we learned that the Dutch Ministry of Finance cannot discuss Shell’s leaked transfer-pricing arrangements because they remain protected by fiscal confidentiality — despite the relevant documents having been leaked, published, analysed by researchers, debated by tax academics, defended by Shell and placed before Parliament.

Earlier, our deceased guest columnist Sir Henri Deterding expressed admiration for this achievement.

Everything is public.

Everyone can read it.

But the people who know whether the tax authority agreed with it are forbidden from saying so.

Even Deterding could hardly have designed a better system.

And he was very good at systems.

Shell tax avoidance: apparently not a new hobby

Readers encountering the 2026 Shell Files controversy for the first time might assume that offshore structures, Swiss intellectual property, low-tax jurisdictions and inventive intra-group arrangements represent some exciting new innovation.

Our archive rather spoils that theory.

The Royal Dutch Shell Tax Avoidance Index, assembled years ago, preserves reporting stretching back through earlier controversies involving Switzerland, Bermuda, Luxembourg, Australia, Alaska and the United Kingdom.

Among the contemporary reports indexed there were:

The Guardian, 2009: Shell had transferred ownership of its famous trademarks to Switzerland.

Dutch reporting, 2013: Shell and ABN Amro were described by critics as “masters in tax avoidance.”

US reporting, 2013–14: Shell’s handling of the Kulluk Arctic drilling rig became embroiled in allegations that tax considerations influenced its movements.

Australian reporting, 2015: scrutiny of Shell’s tax position included substantial intercompany financing costs paid to offshore Shell entities.

The old index is still available here. Royal Dutch Shell Tax Avoidance Index

The terminology has evolved.

So have the jurisdictions.

But the general subject matter has a reassuring familiarity.

The Shell logo went skiing in Switzerland

One particularly useful historical reference comes from The Guardian’s 2009 Tax Gap investigation.

The newspaper reported that legal ownership of Shell’s globally recognised trademarks had been transferred to Shell Brands International AG in Switzerland.

That Swiss entity could then receive royalties from other Shell companies using the trademarks.

Shell told the Guardian that the move was undertaken for “entirely commercial” reasons, enabling more effective and consistent management of its trademarks.

Which is perfectly possible.

Switzerland is, after all, famous for mountains, watches, chocolate and unexpectedly efficient management of multinational intellectual property.

The Guardian also reported that Shell’s corporate restructuring following the 2005 unification had placed the parent company’s tax residence in the Netherlands. The Guardian

Fast-forward seventeen years and the newly leaked Shell Files are once again examining Swiss Shell royalties.

One could almost believe in corporate tradition.

Bahamas: population 400,000, Shell traders 37, profits $6.2 billion

Then we reach the Bahamas.

According to SOMO’s 2026 analysis, Shell Western Supply and Trading Limited recorded approximately $6.2 billion in profit between 2018 and 2023 while employing 37 people.

Shell says those employees were skilled commodity traders genuinely responsible for substantial commercial risk.

That may be so.

They must certainly have been busy.

Thirty-seven people generating billions of dollars in profit makes the average British productivity debate look embarrassingly unambitious.

Perhaps the Dutch government should stop worrying about economic growth and simply relocate Rotterdam to Nassau.

Shell rejects allegations that it improperly shifted profits and says its transfer-pricing arrangements comply with OECD guidelines and applicable law.

That defence belongs in any serious account.

Unfortunately for satire, it also gives us the perfect institutional arrangement:

Shell says the tax authorities knew.

The tax authorities cannot say whether Shell is right.

Everybody wins.

Except perhaps Parliament, which would quite like an answer.

Dutch service companies discover socialism

Then there is the intriguing question of Shell service companies in the Netherlands.

According to the Shell Files investigation, some historic arrangements involved group services being recharged at cost without a profit mark-up.

Professor Jan van de Streek has publicly criticised aspects of those arrangements and reportedly considers some of them inconsistent with the arm’s-length principle.

Shell strongly disputes allegations of illegality.

The Dutch government has now helpfully explained the general rule without saying anything about Shell specifically.

Routine intra-group services generally attract an arm’s-length profit margin.

Certain qualifying low-value services can use a simplified 5% mark-up.

There can also be circumstances where no mark-up is justified.

And was Shell’s particular treatment correct?

Ah.

Article 67.

Fiscal confidentiality.

Next question.

For an oil company usually regarded as an enthusiastic practitioner of capitalism, the concept of one Shell company performing services for another without making a profit has a certain charming collectivist quality.

From each subsidiary according to its functions.

To each offshore entity according to its transfer-pricing documentation.

Karl Marx would presumably have asked to see the comparables.

Fortunately, Shell has experience with awkward numbers

Whenever Shell and complex financial numbers appear in the same story, students of corporate history may experience an involuntary flashback.

The year was 2004.

The subject was not tax.

It was something even more fundamental for an oil company:

oil and gas reserves.

Shell had repeatedly reported quantities of “proved” reserves to investors which did not satisfy the required SEC standards.

The ultimate scale was enormous.

The US Securities and Exchange Commission found that Shell had overstated its reported proved hydrocarbon reserves for 2002 by:

4.47 billion barrels of oil equivalent

or approximately:

23%

The SEC also found that the corresponding standardised measure of future cash flows was overstated by approximately $6.6 billion.

Shell paid a $120 million civil penalty in the US settlement.

The companies settled without admitting or denying the SEC’s substantive findings. SEC

That was not an activist allegation.

It was an enforcement action by the United States Securities and Exchange Commission.

And there is a particularly uncomfortable passage in the SEC record.

The Commission said the overstatement and delay in correcting it resulted partly from a desire to create and maintain the appearance of a strong reserves replacement ratio, an important performance measure watched by investors. SEC

In other words, Shell once had a problem involving numbers that looked excellent until someone examined how they had been classified.

Purely by coincidence, the present tax controversy involves arguments over where profits should be classified.

History does not repeat itself.

It sometimes does, however, develop an unfortunate sense of humour.

The important difference

There is a crucial distinction.

The reserves scandal produced regulatory findings.

The current transfer-pricing controversy has not.

No court judgment identified in the present material establishes that Shell’s leaked transfer-pricing arrangements were unlawful.

No Dutch government finding currently establishes that Shell received improper tax treatment.

No European Commission ruling identified here concludes that the arrangements constituted prohibited state aid.

SOMO, Follow the Money and tax academics have raised serious questions.

Shell disputes accusations of wrongdoing.

And the Dutch government will not disclose Shell’s individual tax treatment.

That distinction is not a minor legal footnote.

It is the difference between documented regulatory wrongdoing in 2004 and contested allegations in 2026.

Satire works better when the facts beneath it are accurate.

Shell has heard this tax tune before

What the older archive demonstrates is that the 2026 controversy did not appear from nowhere.

In 2009 the Guardian reported on Shell trademarks being held in Switzerland and royalty payments flowing there.

Shell denied that tax avoidance motivated the move and described the rationale as commercial. The Guardian

Years later, Shell’s Swiss intellectual-property arrangements have again become the subject of transfer-pricing scrutiny.

The old archive also records controversies involving Bermuda, Luxembourg and other offshore arrangements.

Again, the existence of an offshore company does not prove tax evasion.

Nor is tax avoidance necessarily unlawful.

Multinational groups operate across borders and legitimately organise financing, intellectual property and trading through international subsidiaries.

The interesting question is not whether Shell has subsidiaries in exotic locations.

It is whether the allocation of profit between them reflects genuine economic activity and complies with the arm’s-length principle.

That is precisely what the leaked documents have reopened for debate.

A short course in modern corporate transparency

The 2026 system can therefore be summarised as follows.

Shell publishes tax principles.

Shell says it complies with OECD rules.

Shell says relevant arrangements were discussed transparently with tax authorities.

Internal Shell documents leak.

Researchers analyse them.

Academics question them.

Parliament asks the Dutch government whether the tax authority agreed with Shell.

The government replies that taxpayer confidentiality prevents it from answering.

The government then assures Parliament that it sees no reason for a special investigation.

This is not secrecy in the traditional sense.

Traditional secrecy involves preventing people from learning something.

This is a more sophisticated Dutch model in which everybody knows what they are discussing, but the institution with the answer is legally prohibited from joining the conversation.

Sir Henri Deterding was right.

It really is an art form.

Imagine the reserves scandal under the same rules

For purposes of satire, imagine applying the current model retrospectively to 2004.

Investor: “Did Shell overstate its reserves?”

Shell: “We comply with all applicable reporting standards.”

Regulator: “We cannot discuss the affairs of an individual oil company.”

Investor: “But Shell just cut the reserves.”

Regulator: “We cannot confirm that the barrels you can no longer see were previously there.”

Investor: “The company announced it.”

Regulator: “Information becoming public does not remove our duty of confidentiality.”

Investor: “How many barrels are missing?”

Regulator: “Approximately—”

lawyer whispers

Regulator: “We cannot comment.”

Fortunately, securities regulation did not work that way.

The SEC investigated.

It published detailed findings.

Investors learned that the 2002 reserve overstatement amounted to approximately 23%.

Accountability became possible because the regulator could actually explain what it had found.

Tax confidentiality presents a different problem

Tax information is legitimately subject to greater confidentiality.

Nobody should pretend otherwise.

A functioning tax system depends upon businesses and individuals being able to provide sensitive information to revenue authorities.

The State Secretary therefore has a serious legal basis for refusing to disclose taxpayer-specific material.

But that does not eliminate the accountability problem exposed by the Shell Files.

Indeed, it creates it.

The public can inspect leaked material.

Parliament can ask questions.

Shell can provide its explanation.

Researchers can publish competing calculations.

But there is no public access to the most important piece of the puzzle:

what the Dutch tax authority actually concluded.

Perhaps it thoroughly examined the arrangements and found them correct.

Perhaps it challenged them.

Perhaps Shell made adjustments.

Perhaps rulings were reached.

Perhaps additional tax was paid.

Perhaps none of those things happened.

We do not know.

And the government says it cannot tell us.

Shell therefore occupies a remarkably comfortable position

The company can legitimately say:

“We discussed these matters with the tax authorities.”

Critics can ask:

“And did the tax authorities agree?”

The government responds:

“Confidential.”

Shell need not invoke secrecy itself.

The state does it for them.

This does not make Shell guilty of anything.

It does make independent verification rather difficult.

Which is rather convenient when your corporate history already contains a 2004 reminder that independent verification can occasionally uncover several billion barrels’ worth of unpleasant surprises.

The ghost of Sir Henri returns

Our fictional Deterding therefore wishes to amend yesterday’s statement.

“I initially praised the Dutch Ministry for turning tax secrecy into an art form. Having now reviewed the historical archive, I withdraw the compliment.

“This is no longer art.

“It is heritage.”

He would perhaps also observe that international tax planning has become unnecessarily complicated.

In his era, businesses went abroad because that was where the oil was.

Now apparently the oil can be in Nigeria, Brazil or the North Sea, the traders can be in the Bahamas, the trademarks can be in Switzerland, the parent company can move from The Hague to London, and the tax explanation can reside safely inside a Dutch government filing cabinet marked:

CANNOT COMMENT

Progress.

The serious conclusion behind the joke

There is a serious point beneath all of this.

Shell is one of the world’s largest multinational corporations.

It operates through hundreds of companies, across numerous tax systems, with internal transactions involving oil, gas, LNG, intellectual property, finance, technical services and commodity trading.

Transfer pricing is unavoidable.

The question is whether the rules consistently allocate taxable profit to the places where genuine economic value is created.

The Shell Files argue that the international system can produce outcomes in which very large profits appear in low-tax jurisdictions.

Shell says its arrangements reflect genuine commercial functions and comply with the rules.

Those competing positions deserve scrutiny.

The problem is that the Dutch institution best placed to resolve at least part of the argument is legally prevented from telling the public what it knows.

That may be entirely proper under current law.

But nobody should confuse legally mandated silence with exoneration.

The Dutch government has not cleared Shell of the allegations contained in the leaked transfer-pricing material.

It has declined to discuss Shell’s individual tax affairs.

Those are very different things.

And Shell’s history gives investors one further reason to insist upon precision.

In 2004, Shell’s proved-reserves numbers turned out to be overstated by 4.47 billion barrels — approximately 23%.

That episode taught a rather expensive lesson:

When dealing with a multinational oil company, the location and classification of billions can matter.

Then it was barrels.

Today it is profits.

And this time, the government says the answer is confidential.

Documentary sources

The current Shell tax controversy and Dutch government’s fiscal-confidentiality position are covered in today’s related articles:

Dutch Government Refuses to Reveal What It Knows About Shell Tax Leaks — Citing Tax Secrecy

Read the article

Dutch Ministry of Finance Says Leaked Shell Tax Documents Remain Confidential: Cannot Confirm What Everyone Has Already Read

Read the satire

Shell Founder Hails Dutch Ministry’s Tax Secrecy as “An Art Form”

Read Sir Henri Deterding’s entirely fictional contribution

The site’s historical tax archive demonstrates that scrutiny of Shell’s international tax structures considerably predates the 2026 Shell Files:

Royal Dutch Shell Tax Avoidance Index

The Guardian’s 2009 investigation documented the transfer of Shell trademark ownership to Switzerland and Shell’s explanation that the move was made for commercial reasons. The Guardian

The US Securities and Exchange Commission’s 2004 enforcement record documents the 4.47-billion-barrel, approximately 23% proved-reserves overstatement and the $120 million civil penalty. SEC

Satirical disclaimer: Sir Henri Deterding died in 1939 and has not commented on Dutch tax policy, transfer pricing, the Bahamas, DEMPE functions or anything else since. Any purported remarks from him in this article are obviously fictional. The factual material surrounding the satire is drawn from the sources identified above.

Site-wide disclaimer applies.

Shell Tax Secrecy: Same Playbook, Different Century — And Please Don’t Mention the 23% was first posted on October 9, 2026 at 1:43 pm.
©2018 "Royal Dutch Shell Plc .com". Use of this feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this article in your feed reader, then the site is guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact me at john@shellnews.net

The fertilizers that feed humanity are made in huge pressure cookers, heated to 450°C (840°F), in factories that gush an estimated 450 million metric tons of CO2 into the atmosphere each year. But what if tomorrow’s fertilizers were grown—nourished with sunlight and air—instead of cooked into existence?

A new study published in NPJ Sustainable Agriculture demonstrates how purple bacteria—normally found in estuaries, bays, ponds, and lake—could be grown in vats of water, smooshed into dry powder, and sprinkled on fields to increase yields. If successful, this approach could also alleviate other environmental harms caused by synthetic nitrogen fertilizers.

Overuse of these fertilizers has acidified farm soils—ironically, making them less productive. Fertilizers that flow into lakes, rivers, and bays spur algal blooms that deplete the oxygen in the water, killing fish and damaging ecosystems. And every year, millions of tons of these nitrogen compounds return to the atmosphere as nitrous oxide (N2O), a greenhouse gas 298 times as potent as carbon dioxide.

Farmers have tried to replace these synthetic fertilizers with natural materials like manure or hay, but those contain less nitrogen, making them less useful in many cases.

Researchers at the Kyoto University in Japan have experimented with another potential fertilizer—a ‘marine purple non-sulfur photosynthetic bacterium called Rhodovulum sulfidophilum, that is common in coastal waters, rivers, and lakes. Because it absorbs CO2 as it grows, people have investigated it as a possible source for biofuels. But as it grows, it also does something else that’s extremely valuable: it fixes nitrogen from the air, turning it into proteins and other biomolecules, without the need for industrial pressure-cooking.

 

.IRPP_ruby , .IRPP_ruby .postImageUrl , .IRPP_ruby .centered-text-area {height: auto;position: relative;}.IRPP_ruby , .IRPP_ruby:hover , .IRPP_ruby:visited , .IRPP_ruby:active {border:0!important;}.IRPP_ruby .clearfix:after {content: "";display: table;clear: both;}.IRPP_ruby {display: block;transition: background-color 250ms;webkit-transition: background-color 250ms;width: 100%;opacity: 1;transition: opacity 250ms;webkit-transition: opacity 250ms;background-color: #eaeaea;}.IRPP_ruby:active , .IRPP_ruby:hover {opacity: 1;transition: opacity 250ms;webkit-transition: opacity 250ms;background-color: inherit;}.IRPP_ruby .postImageUrl {background-position: center;background-size: cover;float: left;margin: 0;padding: 0;width: 31.59%;position: absolute;top: 0;bottom: 0;}.IRPP_ruby .centered-text-area {float: right;width: 65.65%;padding:0;margin:0;}.IRPP_ruby .centered-text {display: table;height: 130px;left: 0;top: 0;padding:0;margin:0;padding-top: 20px;padding-bottom: 20px;}.IRPP_ruby .IRPP_ruby-content {display: table-cell;margin: 0;padding: 0 74px 0 0px;position: relative;vertical-align: middle;width: 100%;}.IRPP_ruby .ctaText {border-bottom: 0 solid #fff;color: #0099cc;font-size: 14px;font-weight: bold;letter-spacing: normal;margin: 0;padding: 0;font-family:'Arial';}.IRPP_ruby .postTitle {color: #000000;font-size: 16px;font-weight: 600;letter-spacing: normal;margin: 0;padding: 0;font-family:'Arial';}.IRPP_ruby .ctaButton {background: url(https://www.anthropocenemagazine.org/wp-content/plugins/intelly-related-posts-pro/assets/images/next-arrow.png)no-repeat;background-color: #afb4b6;background-position: center;display: inline-block;height: 100%;width: 54px;margin-left: 10px;position: absolute;bottom:0;right: 0;top: 0;}.IRPP_ruby:after {content: "";display: block;clear: both;}Recommended Reading:Can we keep producing more food in a warmer world?

 

In 2024, the team reported that in greenhouse experiments, lysed, dried, and powdered R sulfidophilum improved the growth Japanese mustard spinach (komatsuna) just as well as synthetic fertilizers.

By 2025, these researchers developed a method for growing large amounts of R sulfidophilum inexpensively, in vats of diluted sea water—making it potentially feasible for use as a mass-produced fertilizer.

In their newest study, they’ve tested the effects of R sulfidophilum fertilizer—or purple-PB (processed biomass)—in fields where broccoli was farmed for two years. The purple-PB fertilizer boosted the yield of these plants as effectively as synthetic fertilizers. It also increased the plants’ nitrogen content (a surrogate for protein content) just as well as synthetic fertilizers.

Lab experiments, meanwhile, showed that purple-PB released its nitrogen into the soil more gradually than synthetic fertilizers. And as expected, this slower release helped reduce the amount of planet-warming N2O seeping into the air; in the first 6 days after fertilizing, N2O flux decreased by 15 to 73 percent compared to synthetic fertilizers.

It is said that the Green Revolution—which included the synthetic fertilizers—made it possible for farmers to feed the planet’s growing population. And now a Purple Revolution might make help to make our agriculture sustainable.

Shruthi, et al. “Effects of marine purple bacteria fertilizer on mineralization, nitrous oxide emissions and broccoli yield.” NPJ Sustainable Agriculture, 2026.

image: ©Anthropocene Magazine

 

Midwives in Ontario have been fighting for equitable pay and fundamental labour rights for decades. But the Ministry of Health has continually denied them fair...

The post The ongoing denial of midwives’ labour rights first appeared on Spring.

Andy 'must cap oil' Channel News brendan 9th October 2026 Teaser Media

Louisiana’s offshore wind industry has a date circled on the calendar: January 21, 2029 — the first day after President Donald Trump is scheduled to leave office.

Trump’s policies have brought offshore wind development to a near standstill around the country, with his administration paying developers roughly $4 billion to walk away from projects. But in Louisiana, leaders in the industry say they are trying to preserve their expertise and supply chain in hopes of reviving offshore wind projects under the next administration. 

“Come January 21st, 2029, we all get to wave goodbye,” said state Representative Joe Orgeron, a Republican from southeastern Louisiana who worked in the offshore wind industry. “The current administration has been a one-man stopping show. I’m pretty confident, and I’m hopeful that it’ll change.”

Orgeron later put the industry’s near-term strategy more succinctly: “Just wait for the clock to run out.”

His views were echoed by the other wind energy experts on a panel at Tulane University’s Future of Energy Forum. “The Trump administration has been pretty openly hostile to seeing the advancement of the offshore wind industry,” said Madelyn Smith, a program manager with the Southeastern Wind Coalition, a nonprofit that supports the development of wind power across 11 states. 

Trump’s second-term efforts to halt the industry’s growth in the United States started on his first day in office last January with executive orders withdrawing federal waters from new offshore wind leases and halting permitting for any additional projects. The Trump administration also issued a series of stop-work orders for all of the projects under construction. When that sparked a legal fight, the administration shifted tactics, offering federal money for offshore wind developers to simply walk away from their projects. 

“For many reasons, it’s very compelling,” Smith said of the payout offers. “And there’s no real pathway for progress in the next two to three years, and some of these leases are quite expensive.” 

Smith said developers have relinquished 12 offshore wind leases in exchange for federal payouts, including plans for a 2-gigawatt wind farm in the Gulf of Mexico south of Lake Charles, Louisiana.

“About $4 billion of taxpayer money has been spent to remove those from the pool,” Smith said. “And those projects also represented about 21 gigawatts of potential capacity.” That’s enough energy to electricity to power more than 5 million homes. 

Several Louisiana companies that long served the offshore oil and gas industry had shifted to helping plan and build offshore wind farms on the East Coast. Orgeron’s family-owned supply boat business, along with several Louisiana engineers and metal fabricators, helped build the United States’ first offshore wind farm near Block Island, Rhode Island, in 2016.  

For Louisiana companies, the work kept coming. By 2024, nearly a quarter of all offshore wind work contracts in the U.S. had gone to Gulf-based firms, with about $1 billion in investments flowing to the region’s ship and fabrication yards, according to the Oceantic Network, an industry trade group.

Read Next The bipartisan energy bill tearing the climate movement apart Jake Bittle & Austin Corona

Louisiana colleges shifted their curricula to meet the growing demand for workers. Nunez Community College in Chalmette launched a two-year turbine technician program, while the University of New Orleans started the Wind Energy Hub, offering engineering scholarships and internships with offshore wind companies. 

RWE, the German company behind that 2-gigawatt project, had planned to tap into this workforce to build its wind farm about 44 miles south of Lake Charles by 2035. It also had a customer for its power, securing a deal with Entergy to deliver electricity to an estimated 350,000 homes in Louisiana and Texas. 

But as the offshore wind industry expanded under the Biden administration, Trump became an increasingly vocal opponent, eventually pledging to halt new projects. His opposition to wind energy dates to at least 2006, when he began a decade-long fight against the Scottish government over an offshore wind farm he said would spoil views from a golf course he planned to develop. Since then, he has frequently derided wind energy, portraying turbines as threats to property values and wildlife while also claiming that the technology spikes food prices, causes cancer, and can somehow drive people insane. 

Trump has managed to stall and at times derail Louisiana businesses that had steered investment toward supporting the industry, said James Martin, CEO of Gulf Wind Technology, an Avondale-based company that builds and tests wind blades. “It is a shame,” he said at the Tulane forum. “It’s been a big pause button on what was a sleeping giant of an industry.”

Martin’s company has tried to adapt by seeking work in the aerospace and defense sectors. Other companies have trimmed budgets and laid off workers. 

“There’s huge layoffs in the wind space, and some of the best engineers on the planet — they’re giving up,” he said. 

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline The Louisiana wind industry’s plan for survival: Outlast Trump on Oct 9, 2026.

Last week, this magazine published a review of Digger, the new climate change allegory from Mexican provocateur Alejandro Iñárritu. In it, my colleague Jake Bittle explains in detail why he “hated it.” 

I was skeptical of the bad reviews that Digger has been getting; after all, I like more of the Iñárritu films I’ve seen than not. I would even call one of them (his 2001 debut, Amores Perros) a cinematic masterpiece. (Birdman was fine.) In any case, most of the time a Mexican person is in the news, I am invested in their success, so I decided to see the movie for myself. 

Even then — two hours, nine minutes, and a small popcorn later — I was surprised by my reaction: I simply loved the movie. Despite the negative reviews and poor box-office numbers, Digger is a film well-worth seeing — and talking about. To do that fully, this review contains spoilers. 

Digger is Iñárritu’s most ambitious, visually maximalist, thematically convoluted, and sonically grating movie yet. Or as Jake puts it, yes, it is “ugly, loud, and unpleasant,” but I didn’t mind the sensory overload. In fact, it’s part of why I liked it. There are plenty of movies that try to capture the non-stop roar of the so-called unprecedented times we live in: Sorry to Bother You, Uncut Gems, and Eddington come to mind. These movies offer up cacophony as a form of contemporary social commentary. They’re grating on purpose, because that’s often how waking up, checking your phone, and heading to work feels. 

Digger joins the ranks of these unsubtle, borderline noxious films; it features fiery accidents, signs of planetary collapse, bumbling bureaucrats, casual sexism, decaying pet animals, and bouts of senseless violence. But it also stars Tom Cruise in one of his weirdest roles ever, which is truly a delight to watch. 

Digger revolves around a morally unsound man named Digger Rockwell, an oil tycoon (played by Cruise) who ignores warnings from climate scientists that he should stop drilling in the Arctic. A crack has formed in the ice sheet and is leaking methane into the atmosphere — and it’s only likely to get bigger, they say, posing a massive threat to life and property. When their warnings come to pass and an explosion at Rockwell’s oil operation in Greenland triggers a monstrous ice shelf to break off and drift toward Europe, Rockwell and the president of the United States (played by a ghoulish John Goodman), who helped facilitate the drilling, start to panic. These cartoonish men are, clearly, avatars for the real-life architects of the climate crisis: the companies that knew what they were doing, and the powerful governments that delayed meaningful action to correct such oversights. 

Iñárritu takes pleasure in portraying them as howling windbags, targets of both ire from Ganesh, the film’s noble climate scientist played by Riz Ahmed, and of laughter from the audience. The way Rockwell and President Compson stumble through their hubris is often funny, but the laughs are closely followed by discomfort. Uncanny shots of trees falling in the background (only to be propped back up again?) begin to disorient the viewer. You think you’re watching a satire about the bad guys who started this mess, and then a crack in the movie’s narrative world appears. 

At its heart, Digger presents the problem we have with climate change as one of narrative: What is the story about how things went wrong, and who gets to tell it? Its answers might get Iñárritu called a doomer, but I found the way he intellectualizes our current predicament too compelling to look away from. (Spoilers start here!) 

Iñárritu pulls back a curtain, and reveals that Cruise is not actually Digger Rockwell; he’s an actor named Curtis Markson, and he’s playing Rockwell in a stage play. More specifically, Markson is an actor struggling to understand his character’s internal motivations. Here is where Cruise really shines: not as a laughable villain, but as a tortured artist trying to tell the story of the greatest crisis of our time. Goodman and Ahmed are, likewise, actors in supporting roles in this play-within-a-movie. 

As the movie goes on and more details of the theatric production are slowly revealed, this structure offers up more complicating questions for the viewer. Why stage a play about climate change in the first place? Isn’t it bad enough to have to live through global warming without figuring out what to say about it? These questions are aimed at Iñárritu as much as they are at Hannah, the “hip” theatre director (played by the wonderful Sophie Wilde) tussling with a pedantic Markson. These two cannot agree on the nature of what they’re doing onstage. Is the story of climate change a farcical comedy or a devastating tragedy? What would be the point of telling it either way?

The answers offered by Digger will certainly alienate some audiences. During tech rehearsal, Hannah explodes at Markson, saying the purpose of art is to comfort the dispossessed, especially those whose families were lost or displaced by climate change. The point, she argues, is to laugh at Markson as Rockwell, and the sooner he gets onboard, the better. At this point, the viewer learns that an iceberg really did take untold lives throughout Europe, and the play is a cult classic detailing how the Rockwell family attempted to profit off of disaster. 

Exactly why and how the play is being staged 25 years after these horrific events is a juicy twist I won’t share here. Suffice to say, Digger is concerned with legacy, and Iñárritu, the first and only Mexican filmmaker to have won the Academy Award for Best Picture twice, clearly is too. “The movie is not perfect,” he told the New York Times in a recent interview. He did it anyway because, as he put it, “I like taking risks.” Digger feels like the director’s latest bid to cement himself as an auteur, and it also feels like a vehicle for a potentially unpopular idea. Maybe art can’t change the world and maybe we shouldn’t expect it to — at least not when a tsunami is approaching. 

toolTips('.classtoolTips7','A powerful greenhouse gas that accounts for about 11% of global emissions, methane is the primary component of natural gas and is emitted into the atmosphere by landfills, oil and natural gas systems, agricultural activities, coal mining, and wastewater treatment, among other pathways. Over a 20-year period, it is roughly 84 times more potent than carbon dioxide at trapping heat in the atmosphere.');

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline ‘Digger’ has a lot of haters. Here’s why they’re wrong. on Oct 9, 2026.

Keeping the goal of limiting global warming to 1.5°C within reach requires developed countries to lead on emissions reductions and provide public climate finance without shifting the burden onto developing countries.

9 October 2026

The conclusion of Pre-COP31, held in Fiji and Tuvalu ahead of November’s UN climate summit in Antalya, Türkiye, has underscored the need for governments to move beyond promises and deliver concrete action, particularly on public climate finance for developing countries.  

Keeping the 1.5°C goal within reach requires both urgent emissions reductions and the finance developing countries need to confront worsening climate impacts. Developed countries must lead on both, in keeping with their historical responsibility and obligations under the Paris Agreement. 

The climate crisis is already exacting an intolerable cost. The recent devastating floods and landslides in Nepal are another stark reminder of the growing risks facing countries that have contributed least to global warming. Yet access to adaptation and loss-and-damage finance remains far too slow and far too small. Developing countries need climate finance on the scale of trillions, not billions, without being pushed further into debt to address a crisis they did little to cause.

There can be no implementation without the means of implementation. If COP31 is to be about implementation, developed countries must first deliver on their existing climate-finance obligations. Under Article 9.1 of the Paris Agreement, developed countries are required to provide financial resources to support mitigation and adaptation in developing countries. DCJ calls for new and additional, adequate, predictable and accessible public finance for developing countries, with grant-based and non-debt-creating finance at its core. 

Mobilising private investment, promoting new financing schemes or improving access to existing finance cannot substitute for the obligation to provide public finance. Asking developing countries to borrow to adapt, recover and rebuild simply transfers the costs of the climate crisis onto their people and future generations. 

COP31 must also deliver on the Just Transition Mechanism agreed at COP30. This mechanism must move beyond dialogue and coordination to provide real support for communities, particularly in developing countries. This requires strong governance, accountability, meaningful participation and access to finance, technology and capacity building.

The dialogue around 1.5°C and possible temperature overshoot must also remain grounded in both science and equity. Overshoot cannot become an excuse to promote false solutions such as carbon dioxide removal (CDR), carbon capture and storage (CCS), and geoengineering that delay real emissions cuts and shift risks onto peoples, lands and ecosystems in the Global South.

The task before COP31 is to turn climate urgency into delivery. COP31 cannot become another talk shop of voluntary pledges and unfulfilled commitments.  Developed countries must demonstrate real ambition through deeper emission cuts and the provision of public climate finance to all developing countries. Climate action and support must move together.  

                                                                                       ………………………..

Reacting to the conclusion of Pre-COP31, representatives of DCJ and member organisations said: 

Meena Raman, Head of Programmes, Third World Network (TWN), said: “The climate crisis is not suffering from a shortage of promises. What is missing is delivery, especially climate finance at the scale the crisis demands. Developed countries have a clear obligation under the Paris Agreement to provide new and additional, adequate, predictable and grant-based public finance to developing countries. This is a responsibility they must fulfil, not one they can pass on to private investors or shift onto developing countries through loans and debt. If COP31 is serious about keeping 1.5°C within reach, it must put the provision of public finance, equity and historical responsibility at the centre of its outcomes. Developed countries must stop evading their obligations. They cannot claim to champion high climate ambition while delivering so little on both finance and emissions reductions.”

Lidy Nacpil, Coordinator, Asian Peoples’ Movement on Debt and Development (APMDD), said: “Workers and communities, especially in the Global South, welcomed and celebrated the COP30 decision to develop a just transition mechanism — or BAM — which has the promise of delivering real support and action for just transition on the ground. However, at Pre-COP, governments of the Global North have once again exposed their determination to pour cold water over this promise by limiting what a mechanism can do and delaying the process of its operationalisation. We demand a just transition mechanism that provides and facilitates the support and means of implementation needed for just transition, ensures seats at the decision-making table for rights-holders, and is fully operational by COP32.” 

Rachitaa Gupta, Global Coordinator, DCJ, said:  “The climate crisis is not waiting for finance processes to catch up. From Nepal to the Pacific, communities that did least to cause this crisis are losing lives, homes and livelihoods while rich countries continue to delay the finance they owe. COP31 must be where that changes. The Global North must deliver public, grant-based and non-debt-creating climate finance not as aid or charity, but as the fulfilment of its obligations and ensure that the Just Transition Mechanism delivers real support to people and communities on the ground.”

Tzeporah Berman, Chair and Founder of the Fossil Fuel Treaty Initiative, said: “This week, the Pacific has shown world leaders what is at stake. Keeping 1.5°C alive means stopping the expansion of fossil fuels and accelerating a fair, orderly and supported transition away from them. The growing support for fossil fuel phase-out must now translate into action at COP31 and beyond, including through the diplomatic process which began in Santa Marta and will continue next year under the leadership of Tuvalu and Ireland.”

Victor Menotti, Global North Coordinator, DCJ, said: “If Antalya is to be about implementation and delivering on countries’ commitments, then we need to see Global North governments come clean on their unfulfilled legal obligations under Paris Agreement’s Article 9.1, in which they agreed they “shall provide financial resources to assist developing countries”. Parachuting an electrification agreement into any official decision driven by COP31 Presidencies would clearly be a coup for the Global North’s Big Tech agend and any COP Presidency pushing its own initiatives will face due opposition by demands for party-driven processes to prevail as well as a fierce credibility crisis among civil society groups.”

Media enquiries and updates

For media enquiries, interviews and further information, contact the Global Campaign to Demand Climate Justice (DCJ) at dcj.comms@demandclimatejustice.org.

For the latest statements, analysis and updates from COP31, visit https://demandclimatejustice.org and follow DCJ on social media:

X (Twitter): https://x.com/gcdcj

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/gc.dcj/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/global-campaign-to-demand-climate-justice

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ClimateJustice

The post COP31 must deliver: Developed countries must honour their climate finance obligations, not make more empty promises appeared first on Global Campaign to Demand Climate Justice.

The launch of the Africa Energy Bank (AEB) has been put back yet again, raising doubts about the institution’s future ability to finance fossil fuel projects – its main objective – as global lenders retreat from such investments over climate concerns, experts told Climate Home News.

The bank, which had been billed to launch in September after a series of delays, is now scheduled to begin operations in November, according to the head of the African Energy Chamber, an advocacy body for the continent’s oil and gas sector.

Even as the world aims to transition away from fossil fuels, many African leaders have made clear they want to continue exploring and extracting the continent’s large oil and gas deposits – estimated at around 125 billion barrels of crude and over 600 trillion cubic feet of gas – to boost economic development.

As a group, Africa sided with a number of powerful oil-and-gas producing nations in blocking progress on negotiations to craft a global roadmap to transition away from fossil fuels at last year’s UN COP30 climate talks, although some countries did individually support the proposal.

• Jul 15, 2026 News Campaigners oppose Dangote’s planned Kenya refinery over climate and ecological risks Plans to build Africa’s second largest oil refinery in ecologically sensitive region criticised as “environmental recklessness” Read more
• Dec 2, 2025 News Tanzania pushed African nations to oppose fossil fuel transition at COP30 While chairing the African group at the summit, the gas-dependent nation advised the continent’s ministers to block language on transitioning away from fossil fuels Read more

Meanwhile, major projects under development across the continent – including the 1,443-km East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP) and Dangote’s 700,000-barrel-per-day Kenyan refinery – show that African governments see oil and gas as playing a significant role in meeting their energy and economic needs for many years to come.

In 2022, at a gathering of the African Petroleum Producers’ Organization (APPO) in oil-rich Angola, ministers from its member states adopted a resolution to create the Africa Energy Bank to finance projects for the production, use and trade of oil, gas and broader energy sources.

African control over energy resources

An article on the APPO website explains that the bank was conceived as a way to overcome “disenchantment” with fossil fuels among “the international community” which it said had crystallised around the “energy transition” concept.

“If Western countries, after having long taken advantage of the energy sources they now revile to develop, can afford the luxury of abandoning them, this is not the case in Africa,” it adds, noting that many of the continent’s economies are still largely dependent on oil and gas revenues.

A separate web page about the bank, also hosted on APPO’s website, says its objectives include financing the exploration, production and refining of oil and gas, as well as supporting member states in transitioning from fossil fuels to cleaner energy sources “while ensuring energy security”.

What’s on the climate calendar for October 2026?

Said Addi, a former executive with Shell and energy commodities trading house Gunvor, said the new bank was judged necessary because financing for hydrocarbons from many traditional international lenders has become constrained.

In trying to fill this financing gap, Africa is not simply setting up another fund to support oil and gas, he added. “It is also an attempt to give African countries greater control over how their energy resources and infrastructure are financed,” he explained.

Nigeria to host the AEB

The energy bank – a joint initiative of APPO and the African Export–Import Bank (Afreximbank) – has so far suffered several delays and is almost two years behind schedule. The initial plan was to start operations in January 2025, with Nigeria as the host country, but the bank’s opening was delayed to June of that year to allow Nigeria time to finalise the construction of the bank’s headquarters in Abuja. 

After the government announced the completion of the offices in late November 2025, a new launch date was set for January 2026, which was moved back to April, June and then September. Now it has shifted again to November, raising concerns that the institution may be losing momentum. 

Former Shell executive Addi said that if the capital is eventually paid in, the bank becomes operational and its first projects are commercially credible, then the delays will be regarded as normal teething troubles in setting up a multilateral institution. But, he added, scepticism will be justified if it continues to stall. 

Uganda may see lower oil revenues than expected as costs rise and demand falls

Baron Lamarré, an oil and gas expert and former Petronas oil trader, said that missing “three deadlines in a row is not normal”, and warned that if the timeline slips again, “the story flips from ‘ambitious institution finding its footing’ to ‘good idea that lost momentum before it found any’.”

The Nigerian government, APPO and Afreximbank did not respond to requests for comment by the time of publication.

The funding challenge

The Africa Energy Bank is targeting base capital of $5 billion, with plans to scale up to $120 billion within five years by mobilising private-sector funds. However, it is expected to start operations with initial seed capital of $500 million. 

The funding plan is to have the 18 member countries of the APPO contribute $83 million each to the bank as equity for a combined $1.5 billion. Afreximbank, other non-APPO African countries and investors  outside the continent are expected to provide the remaining $3.5 billion. 

But even the initial $500 million has not been easy to mobilise. In May, APPO Secretary-General Farid Ghezali called on members to deliver on their pledges towards the startup goal before the end of June. But the delays suggest this may not have been met, with experts saying Africa may be finding it difficult to self-fund its oil and gas projects in the absence of international capital.

Lamarré said every extension of the deadline points to the fact that “raising fossil fuel capital in Africa without the majors and their financing networks is brutally hard”.

Why the global electrification agenda misses the point on Africa’s energy crisis 

Since 2020, Western lenders, export credit agencies and insurers have been in steady retreat from African hydrocarbons, he said, while oil majors are divesting their African assets, handing over fields to smaller local operators whose credit ratings are not high enough to borrow cheaply.

Even capital from China and the Gulf, which has partially filled the gap, cannot match the volume, tenor or pricing that Western investors once offered, Lamarré argued. 

“If mobilising the first $500 million of seed capital [for the AEB] has taken this long, that’s the clearest signal yet of how steep the climb to $120 billion looks,” he said, noting that the continent’s energy financing gap is as large as $30 billion-$45 billion per year.

Africa’s investment landscape, meanwhile, has been shifting. While foreign direct investment dropped from a 2024 peak, inflows remained roughly one-third above the continent’s long-term average in 2025, according to the 2026 World Investment Report from UN Trade and Development (UNCTAD). They are concentrated in a few sectors including critical minerals needed for renewable energy technologies, battery manufacturing and advanced industrial production.

At the same time, data on global energy investment from the International Energy Agency (IEA) shows that fossil fuel investment in Africa has declined over the last decade.

“Trojan horse” for fossil fuels

While the Africa Energy Bank struggles to get off the ground, climate campaigners have criticised its primary aim of financing oil and gas on the continent at a time when the world is starting to move away from high-carbon fuels to cleaner alternatives. 

Bhekumuzi Dean Bhebhe, founder of Africa Change Lab, described the bank as a “Trojan horse”, arguing that its focus on fossil fuel financing runs counter to the global energy transition and the African Union’s Agenda 2063 goals of sustainable development and inclusive growth.

The energy bank, he warned, “risks locking Africa into a new cycle of debt, dependency and fossil fuel entrenchment”, adding that its financing blueprint does not pave the way for a climate-resilient future. “In truth, it is to deepen the same extractive, carbon-heavy pathways that the continent should be moving away from,” he added.

Ugandan farmers use British court to try to stop East Africa oil pipeline

Kenya-based climate and energy expert Joab Okanda said the AEB’s plan to finance oil and gas is “a misplaced priority” and it should instead back clean energy in line with the policies of some of Africa’s major export markets like Europe.

In addition, the new bank could struggle to mobilise enough resources to advance large-scale oil and gas projects, he added, noting that its proposed $5-billion initial capital is equivalent to the cost of the East African Crude Oil Pipeline alone.

The AEB’s aim of backing more fossil fuels should be flipped “to support countries that are oil-dependent to start working on their transition plans”, Okanda said.

The post Launch of Africa Energy Bank delayed again in blow to oil and gas hopes appeared first on Climate Home News.

It’s time to give you an update on what’s going on at your favorite website.

On Jan. 1, I’ll step down as editor in chief of Streetsblog and hand the reins (and reign) to David Meyer, whose talent and experience make him perfectly suited for this moment. David will be just the fourth editor in chief in our 20 years (following me, Ben Fried and founding editor Aaron “Honku” Naparstek).

I’m not doing the full George Washington — I’m not departing to my vine and fig tree. In fact, I’ll remain on hand as senior editor for as long as people think I can help make this city a better place, one street at a time. I know, some of you feel I’ve never helped do that, but we’ll have to agree to disagree.

But one thing we can all agree on is David Meyer, who was a reporter for Streetsblog under Fried and in my early days, and returned in 2023 as managing editor. In between, David worked as a reporter at the New York Post, which is certainly not our favorite paper ideologically, but we have long respected how Post reporters turn in clean, tight copy with a strong point of view.

And that’s Streetsblog’s MO: aggressive, in-the-moment, challenging, bold, and, most important, narrow and visionary at the same time. I’ve played a role in that, but thanks to his two tenures, David has been a major reason why we have become such a crucial part of the media landscape. We’ve also won many awards and broken many important stories, attesting to the importance of the work that reporters Dave Colon, Kevin Duggan, Sophia Lebowitz, Sammy Sussman and Henry Beebe-Center, and editors J.K. Trotter, Emily Lipstein and Kea Wilson have done and are doing.

We won a freakin’ Polk Award, for Pete’s sake!

That was fun, but Streetsblog needs to keep that momentum going, and David Meyer is the ideal person for the task. He needs no introduction to the scope of the road violence problem in our supposedly great city, where road fatalities remain a nearly daily occurrence; injuries from crashes are in the tens of thousands per year; and there are roughly 220 reported crashes every day. The numbers are simultaneously mind-boggling and also barely a blip on the frenzied radar screen of New York life.

The livable streets movement is, again, at a crossroads: despite New York City’s reputation as a progressive Mecca, our civic life is dominated by revanchists who fight all improvements, whether it is a simple bike lane to keep kids safe, a bus lane to speed the commutes of thousands of working people, a new residential development to house our neighbors, or even a train line to bring hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers closer to jobs that they can access without the debt cancer of car ownership.

The movement for safe streets is winning — there are open streets, there are school streets, there are investments in our buses and subways, there are more and more bike lanes — but two steps of progress are often accompanied by one step backwards.

With David in charge, Streetsblog will re-energize the movement against that sclerotic status quo. He will bring fresh strategies and energy to a movement whose arc of history definitely does not always bend towards bike lanes. Unlike my aging brain, David’s is nimble, savvy and strategic — far better able to respond to the challenges of today and tomorrow (looking at you, robo-cars).

So please welcome him to his new position by extending all courtesies — and emails and late-night texts — to him. With your help, dear readers, he’s going to do great.

One more note. Streetsblog provides its reporting free-of-charge, and we rely on your support to make it happen. If you’d like to make a contribution, perhaps in my honor, use widget below. Any amount goes a long way.

Streetsblog!

We’re all ready for the holiday weekend, so let’s take a quick jaunt up to Minneapolis, which has arguably the best cycling network in America — and some lessons to teach other communities about how to create connections for people on two wheels.

And that’s coming from a channel called “Chicagoans Who Bike.” If these ultra-wide, curb-level, full-size-snow-plow-ready paths can overcome the Bears/Vikings rivalry, you know they’ve got to be good.

Or, if you need a longer getaway, head on over to the international terminal to tag along on Shifter’s trip to Shanghai, where the prolific YouTuber unpacks China’s surprising history with the bicycle.

A few decades ago, some of the country’s megacities logged cycling mode share as high as sixty-four percent, absolutely crushing the numbers from far more talked-about bike paradises like Amsterdam and Copenhagen. Today, though, cities like Beijing may still have some of the best bike “hardware” (read: infrastructure) around, but they don’t always have great “software” (read: culture) — though he argues that could change. Watch below to find out why.

• Parking mandates raise rents by 17 percent nationally, or about $204 a month, according to a UCLA study. Even worse, 71 percent of carless households are paying for a parking space they don’t use. Minimum parking requirements drive up rents not only by bundling the cost of parking, but by reducing the number of units built. (California YIMBY)
• Early suburbs were walkable and build around railways and streetcar lines, and they can still provide inspiration today. (Planetizen)
• In addition to improving fuel efficiency, California’s new tire standards will save drivers $1 billion a year in fuel or electricity costs. (Grist)
• New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Agency is adding fare gates to more subway stations after finding that they reduce fare evasion by 72 percent. (NY Times)
• High-speed rail connecting Portland, Seattle and Vancouver, British Columbia is making progress. (The Columbian; paywall)
• Plans to convert Louisville’s 9th Street from a highway to a boulevard with a bike path and linear park are almost complete. (WDRB)
• San Antonio transit agency VIA approved a $1.1 billion, five-year spending plan that will fund a second bus rapid transit line and a new transit center. (KSAT)
• Minnesota updated its statewide bicycle master plan. (BikeMN)
• Miami-Dade raised transit fares by 50 cents, the first hike in 13 years. (Florida Politics)
• Knoxville built a raised crosswalk at the site where a hit-and-run driver killed an elderly woman last year. (10 News)
• Denver scooter- and bikeshare operator Veo is paying users to stop illegally riding on the sidewalk. (Westword)

The "35 by 35" electrification goal has an Australian origin that the government seems to be coy about.

The post Kudos where it’s due: Australia’s quiet role electrifying the rallying cry for the COP we never got to host appeared first on Renew Economy.

It’s almost time for Spring’s fourth annual conference, “Red October: A conference of socialist ideas in action.” Taking from place Friday, October 30 to Sunday,...

The post RESOURCES: Help us build Red October! first appeared on Spring.

If we fail to ensure data centres pay for new renewables and storage to cover their demand, power prices will increase for all of us – and by $20 billion a pop to fund new coal.

The post The Queensland LNP plan for coal-powered data centres could cost taxpayers $20 billion a pop appeared first on Renew Economy.

Home batteries look like resetting the behaviour of households when it comes to responding to time-of-use tariffs, research by the VEPC shows.

The post Home batteries and time-of-use tariffs may be best combination to steer households away from evening peaks appeared first on Renew Economy.