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From a morning of birding in Central Park to discussions on clean energy, conservation careers, and the future of nature, birds provided a common thread throughout Audubon’s Climate Week NYC...

The post Four Ways North Carolina Can Meet Growing Electric Loads Without Increasing Utility Bills appeared first on ACEEE | American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy.

Chicago, Denver and New York City joined multistate lawsuits challenging the agency’s move to end greenhouse gas emissions standards and failure to enforce requirements on existing gas-fired plants.

August brought signs of growing pressure on several fronts for Russia’s state nuclear corporation Rosatom, from questions surrounding major construction projects abroad to the first decline in its foreign revenue in a decade.

Meanwhile, at the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in Ukraine, repeated attacks, losses of external power and difficulties securing diesel fuel underscored the precarious conditions surrounding Europe’s largest nuclear station.

Paks II faces a political — and environmental — rethink

In Hungary, the future of the Russian-built Paks II nuclear power plant has come under renewed scrutiny from the new government of Prime Minister Peter Magyar.

Magyar said in August that experts considered the existing permit for the project untenable and that the government was conducting a comprehensive review that would determine, among other things, whether Rosatom could continue building the plant.

Rosatom chief Alexey Likhachev insisted work was continuing according to plan. But Magyar pointed to the project’s long delays: under the original contract Paks II was supposed to be operating by 2024, while Hungary has already spent around 1 trillion forints (€2.8 billion) on the project. At the same time, Budapest is proposing to more than double its 2026 budget financing for Paks II, suggesting that abandonment of the project is not currently on the table.

Bellona nuclear expert Dmitry Gorchakov argues that the review should extend beyond the project’s finances. Extreme heat and exceptionally low water levels in the Danube forced the existing Paks plant to sharply reduce output this summer, raising questions about the cooling system planned for two additional reactors.

“At the same time, judging by Hungary’s continued financing of the project, a complete abandonment of Paks II does not appear to be under consideration,” Gorchakov said. “Under these circumstances, in addition to the financial questions already raised about the project’s cost, the problems facing the existing Paks plant due to extreme heat and low water levels in the Danube also raise the question of whether the project’s environmental parameters should be reconsidered — in particular, its cooling system.”

The existing plant already imposes a substantial thermal load on the Danube, while Paks II would add another 9.5 GW of thermal capacity. Gorchakov argues that increasingly frequent heat and drought could make the present cooling design difficult to sustain.

Rosatom’s foreign revenue falls

Those uncertainties come as Rosatom has acknowledged an unusual reversal in its international business. Its newly released 2025 annual report shows foreign revenue falling 4.1 percent to about $17.2 billion, even as overall revenue rose 7.9 percent to 3.33 trillion rubles. Its lifetime foreign project portfolio nevertheless increased to $206.2 billion.

Gorchakov called the decline significant because it follows 10 consecutive years of growth, with foreign revenue increasing by more than 20 percent annually during the previous five years.

Importantly, the decline does not appear to come from Rosatom’s nuclear fuel business. Bellona estimates that nuclear fuel-cycle deliveries increased substantially to the United States and China, and likewise rose in the European Union.

Instead, Rosatom’s report attributes the decline to lower revenues from nuclear plant construction. Gorchakov says this could partly reflect projects such as Bangladesh’s Rooppur plant and Turkey’s Akkuyu reaching later construction stages, but may also reflect “difficulties and additional costs associated with sanctions pressure, the search for alternative ways to transfer funds abroad, and changing suppliers.”

Egypt illustrates the ambiguity. Leaked documents concerning the Rosatom-built El Dabaa plant reportedly described construction defects, nuclear safety culture problems and a possible 18-month delay to the first reactor. Egyptian authorities disputed the characterization. Yet only days later Cairo and Rosatom began discussing adding two more Russian reactors to the four already under construction. See our article from August for more detail.

Zaporizhzhia survives on an increasingly thin margin

The situation at Zaporizhzhia is considerably more immediate. The plant lost its sole remaining external power connection four times during August. After the fourth outage, on August 20, it remained disconnected for roughly three weeks and depended on emergency diesel generators.

That exposed another vulnerability: Russian officials told IAEA inspectors that the last delivery to the plant’s diesel storage facility had occurred in March. A planned May delivery had been prevented by fighting, leaving fuel for approximately 10 days of emergency-generator operation. Operators progressively reduced the number of running generators from seven to four and eventually two, while cooling pumps were operated intermittently to conserve electricity.

The crisis unfolded amid repeated drone incidents around the station and tentative discussion of a possible Russian-Ukrainian energy ceasefire. Bellona nuclear expert Alexander Nikitin sees a larger issue emerging from those developments: ZNPP is no longer simply a civilian nuclear facility endangered by war, but has itself acquired military and political value.

‘Despite the military value of the territory around the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, judging by their actions, both sides are trying to prevent the plant from permanently losing its potential energy and political value,” Nikitin writes. “This suggests that ZNPP is viewed not only as a source of nuclear risks, but also as a potential asset in future negotiations.’

That possibility makes preserving the plant important for reasons extending beyond nuclear safety. As Nikitin notes, a destroyed plant has little negotiating value; an intact one retains both political and economic importance.

But the August outages also demonstrate why any future agreement concerning nuclear facilities would have to extend beyond simply prohibiting direct attacks on reactors. Transmission lines, substations and other external infrastructure are essential to keeping a nuclear plant safe.

As Nikitin argues, the war has blurred a boundary nuclear regulation traditionally assumed was clear: a civilian nuclear facility can remain civilian in formal terms while simultaneously becoming an element of military strategy.

The post Rosatom faces pressure abroad as Zaporizhzhia’s nuclear risks deepen appeared first on Bellona.org.

Canada sits on enough underground storage space to hold 11.7 years of current global emissions.From the CDR Centre, this infographic explains how direct air carbon capture and storage (DACCS) works, from capturing carbon dioxide with large fans, to...

Only utilities in the Northwest should pay the nearly $20 million in expenses for a 90-day order covering the Centralia unit, and despite the unit’s lack of output, payment is due, the agency said.

It’s unnatural to toss a fully loaded ice cream cone in the trash, but every year more than 500,000 tons of ice cream waste are thrown away by factories around the world. That’s enough to make a frozen pile larger than the U.S. Capitol building—complete with sled and toboggan runs. Scientists have now proposed that this waste could be recycled into a renewable supply of bio-diesel, aviation fuel, lubricants, or industrial solvents.

A new study published in Cleaner Engineering and Technology  demonstrates how dairy fats can be separated from factory ice cream waste and sold as raw material for making these other products that might otherwise come from petroleum. This seemingly simple problem is surprisingly hard to solve.

Your typical pint of vanilla contains a mishmash of water, ice, sugar, proteins, and fat. The fats are dispersed in microscopic droplets that are coated in milk and egg proteins. The protein coatings prevent the fat droplets from merging and rising to the top, the way oil often does in a jar of organic peanut butter. And this, in turn, keeps your cold dessert smooth and creamy—so it won’t separate into oil and crunchy ice, even if you thaw and refreeze it.

But this culinary engineering also makes those valuable fats difficult to extract and purify from ice cream waste.

In this new study, researchers tested two strategies for stripping away the protein coatings, so the fat droplets will join together and rise, allowing fat to be skimmed off the top.

 

.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:Researchers dig deep into the huge potential value of industrial food waste

 

In one approach, they treated the ice cream waste with protease enzymes that slice apart the proteins coating fat droplets. In the other, they added acids or bases to either lower or raise the pH of the mixture, in order to unfold the proteins—causing them to fall off the fat droplets.

Both approaches worked to some degree; but the base treatment, raising the pH to 11, was faster and more effective. In as little as two hours, it recovered 95 percent of the fat from samples of ice cream factory waste, at purity levels up to 85 percent—while avoiding the expenses of intense heating or purchasing enzymes.

The authors calculated that this process could be done cheaply enough that the extracted fats could be sold for around $0.40 per gallon—making them cheaper than similar feedstocks that are often used to make fuels, solvents, or lubricants.

This strategy won’t eliminate the kilograms of ice cream fat that accumulate around our waistlines. But it could redeem the thousands of tons of fat that factories might otherwise throw away.

Ale-Enriquez, et al. “Low-cost fat recovery from industrial ice cream waste: Separation mechanisms, process modeling, and techno-economic feasibility.” Cleaner Engineering and Technology, 2026.

Image: ©Anthropocene Magazine

Headline News:

• “How Many Birds Are Killed By Offshore Wind Turbines?” • Wildlife Imaging Systems installed 16 thermal cameras on an offshore wind turbine, covering all angles and operating 24 hours a day. Over almost a year of monitoring, including the migration seasons, in 22 possible bird collisions seen, two were confirmed and one considered highly probable. [Euronews]

Special camera’s image of flight of a gull (Wageningen University & Research)

• “Puerto Rico Faces Record Electric Rate As Demand And Costs Increase” • A record electric rate went into effect in Puerto Rico as outages persist and the power grid crumbles. A residential customer that consumes 800 kWh a month will see the monthly bill rise about 18%, from $229 to $271, according to Puerto Rico’s Energy Bureau. [ABC News]
• “First Coffee Grown And Harvested In Italy” • A plantation on the outskirts of Palermo has for the first time produced Arabica coffee beans grown and harvested entirely in Italy. The result, achieved on the Morettino family estate, has been made possible by climate change, which has effectively brought the heat of the tropics to southern Italy. [Euronews]
• “Households Will Pay More For Energy Because Of Trump’s Policy Changes” • Households in the contiguous US will pay thousands of dollars more for energy through 2040 because of federal policy changes since President Donald Trump returned to office, according to modeling by the nonpartisan think tank Energy Innovation. [ABC News]
• “Santee Cooper’s New Energy Plan Is Bad News For South Carolina Customers” • In 2023, Santee proposed building 1,500 MW of solar by 2030 and 3,000 MW by 2040. Now, however, rather than meet demand with affordable solar and wind, Santee Cooper wants to double down on expensive new gas plants and delay coal plant retirements. [CleanTechnica]

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

For southeast Iowa farmer Amos Graber, the path to healthier food begins in the soil.

“I firmly believe that if I have healthy soil, then I can raise healthier crops, which in turn will mean healthier livestock,” says Graber. “And then, really the end goal, all this is healthier food for the consumer.”

Graber is the seventh generation to farm his family’s land. Alongside his father, he raises cattle in partnership with specialty meat company Niman Ranch and grows a mix of non-GMO and organic crops, including corn, soybeans, oats, alfalfa, and clover hay.

At 25 years old, Graber is experimenting with new practices to continually improve the family farm. He feeds their cattle a mineral mix including yeast and essential oils, which support animal health without synthetic antibiotics, and applies a worm compost extract to corn and soybean fields to help boost nutrient absorption.

But Graber knows that building healthier soil and livestock does not happen overnight. He is focusing on improving his land, not just sustaining it, and that’s a long-term project.

“By going the natural route, focusing on the soil health, it’s a slow grind, but you’ll start seeing the rewards from it,” says Graber. “We’re not here to just be sustainable in the soil. We’re trying to make it better.”

For Graber, this means being willing to question conventional approaches and experiment with alternatives. He says farmers can feel pressure to follow the practices of those around them, even when those methods may not be working financially or environmentally.

“Some farmers, [they say], ‘Well, this is what my neighbor does, and that’s just the only thing we can do around here,'” says Graber. Instead, he tries to think beyond the status quo at Graber Farms, recognizing that there may be more than one way to make a farm successful.

In his area, it is typical for cattle to move between several separate, specialized operations: a cow-calf ranch from birth, a backgrounder farm for early life, a feedlot for later life, and finally a packing plant. But Graber Farms raises its herd for their entire lifetime, from calves to market, and Graber believes this reduces stress on the animals while allowing him greater control over the conditions in which they are raised.

Maintaining a small, independent, sustainable farm in a highly consolidated and specialized industry is difficult, Graber says. For farms like his to survive, he argues that young farmers need more opportunities to build businesses that are diversified rather than dependent on producing a single commodity.

“To stay farming, I think we’re going to have to think outside the box,” he says. “We’re not just going to be able to grow corn one year and soybeans the other year.”

For Graber, that could mean integrating livestock with crop production, producing value-added foods, or finding markets that reward farmers for more sustainable practices, such as Niman Ranch. The network of more than 600 independent U.S. farmers and ranchers offers a guaranteed market for cattle raised to high standards of sustainable and humane farming practices.

Graber sees a growing group of farmers experimenting with cover crops, grazing livestock, and taking other approaches to improving soil health. He says change may happen gradually, but he is encouraged by a willingness among farmers to question conventional systems and try something different.

“To see people’s minds click, even if it’s just on little things, just to start thinking about it…Then [people can] hopefully see where that health of the livestock and health of the crops and health of the soil comes together,” says Graber.

Graber believes the future of farming will depend on rebuilding connections between soil, crops, and livestock, as well as between farmers and eaters. He believes farmers themselves will need to take an active role in shaping that future.

“At the end of the day, government’s not going to save anybody,” he says. “So, it’s up to us as farmers, and the local people, to work together and figure it out.”

The post Iowa Farmer Says We’re Here to Make the Soil Better appeared first on Food Tank.

Toronto — KEVIN LOCKHART, director of the Buildings program at the Pembina Institute, made the following statement in response to the federal government’s announcement of new home energy retrofit projects across Canada: "Today's announcement shows...

Indigenous communities from Biliqo Bulesa in Kenya have filed a lawsuit against a carbon credit project

Two major reports released this year tell a grim story: Global freedom continues to decline and the US has lost its longstanding classification a liberal democracy. But hope lies in the data.

How a tiny town in Vermont turned a simple weekly gathering into the social glue holding a neighborhood together.

Cities cannot feed themselves, thus people who live in cities will be forever detached from the problems that come with extracting the resources they depend on and producing the food they eat.

Sidestepping his debacle of a war, "smug pathetic little man," warfighter fetishist and Gen.-Patton-cosplaying clown Pete Hegseth just gave a blustering speech before troops In a "hyper-macho freak show" to announce he's cutting forces, starting several senseless new programs, and proclaiming, "We are no longer the woke (or) weak department...No fatties, trannies, beardos, weirdos, wimps, radicals. Just warriors." Appalled consensus on the yahoo "turning the military into a frat house": "What a dick."

Perhaps due to his low-rent credentials as a weekend TV host at Fox - and a history of drunkenness, adultery, sexual assault and on-the-job incompetence so sordid he needed JD's tie-breaking vote to get his job - Hegseth has built a sloppy, fragile "Department of Defensiveness" focused on shaping a self-serving narrative and persona awash in paranoia, distrust, dysfunction, lies and frequent purges of those deemed disloyal. From his make-up studio to his press strictures to his blunders - Signalgate, the war, its first day's war crimes - Pete's spent an inordinate amount of time covering his ass and overcompensating for his multiple failures. "He's just a true believer in way over his head, the living embodiment of the Dunning-Kruger effect,” said one DOD employee. “Generally, we consider him a joke, a deeply unqualified clown.”

Still, with men reportedly fleeing MAGA, their need to "pump up that masculine animus" is well-served by Pete's juvenile, chest-pounding, lethality-obsessed focus on testosterone in the name of a "High-T Department of War" that has "nothing to do with science and everything to do with regressive ideas of what masculinity is." The same idiocy fuels all the culture war malevolence: Banning books, gutting DEI initiatives - "Diversity is not our strength" - blocking promotions for women and Blacks, a "no more dudes and dresses" transphobia, and ending tenure for civilian professors at military academies 'cause who needs to protect independent thinkers, scholars, leaders, experts from "the tyranny of a government that actively hates its critics," the "mindset of someone who has learned nothing (from) American military failures."

And so to another cringey, Strangelovian "State of the Force Address," which was not a thing until a TV bobblehead took over the military and turned it into bumbling amateur-hour theater. Last year, he summoned nearly 800 generals, admirals, advisors from around the world, all smarter and higher-ranking than him, to rant about beards and "fat troops," tell them they "kill people and break things for a living," and prattle about a 10% cut in their numbers by "removing redundant force structure to optimize and streamline leadership." When he paused for applause, there was only deep silence. Maybe because a Joint Chiefs chairman, two service chiefs, two intelligence directors, several generals and the better part of the Army’s senior leadership "were told to run faster by a weekend television host."

On Wednesday, he gathered about 600 officers and enlisted members, again at the Quantico Marine Corps Base in Virginia, for another speech. In the weeks leading up to his latest dash of show business, The Wall Street Journal reported, he emailed commanders asking them to nominate troops to attend. They had to "fit certain physical standards," he wrote, to have the proper height/weight ratio, with "impeccable grooming: "I want central casting." If they were hot enough, he added, as a bonus some would have "the opportunity" to join him in a hot and sweaty dawn work-out at the Pentagon. Totally normal! And luckily, a camera crew was there to follow them on a chanting, banner-bearing run through D.C. To make them look even cooler, he gave them all t-shirts that read, "This Is War." Or at least off-off Broadway.

Later, before a giant American flag, he dropped the hammer in a campy speech many compared to SNL's Colin Jost doing Pete Hegseth, or Tom Cruise's braying misogynist in Magnolia, or George C. Scott's Gen. Patton "minus the inspiration." Under his "less generals, more GIs" mandate - though it's "fewer" not less - he said he was doubling the previous cut of 10% of high-ranking personnel to 20% with, wrote Tom Wellborn, "the confidence of a man who has looked at the most powerful armed force in the world and concluded its central weakness was the number of people in it who outrank a major," what he was. Months into a disastrous war, "That is the force Pete Hegseth has built by subtraction. What it has lost is (what) a general is for, which is to be the person in the room who says no, and (he) has made sure, one firing at a time, there is nobody left in the room to say it."

"The media calls that a purge," blustered Hegseth, evidently expecting criticism. "I call it accountability. As usual, what the media levels as an accusation, I wear as an accomplishment.” He haughtily went on to “lay it out simply for the anti-American losers in our media...We are no longer the woke department, or the weak department. Simple translation? No fatties, no trannies, no beardos, no weirdos, no wimps, no radicals. Just warriors." On coverage of the war and eight attempted suicides on the USS Lincoln, he slammed “disingenuous headlines about deployment lengths, false claims of low troop morale or flat-out propaganda as if it’s written by our adversaries.” "The information space is a battle space," he said. "The ideological clowns are out. The patriotic cowboys are in." Smirking, he added,."With testosterone testing on top." Jesus, dude.

He also announced several new programs with fancy warlike names like Fortress America and Autonomous War Command or AutoWarCom, a "four-star combatant command with service-like authorities built to scale autonomous and robotic capabilities," and "The Next Great American Base," the first new military base in 40 years, with all 50 states "invited to bid for it like an Amazon headquarters," and "America's Corps of Cadets, creating new college partnerships with right-wing Liberty University and Hillsdale College, plus Louisiana State, Mississippi, Tuskegee Universities, to increase the number of "patriotic leaders of character" and counter "anti-American, DEI-worshiping woke factories," aka the Ivy League schools Hegseth attended.

There's the bonkers Project Meridian to study "the future of warfare," headed by "three of our nation’s best minds" - two tech fat cats and one 83-year-old MAGA hawk - none of whom have served in the military, two of whom have made fortunes from it. Cue Elon Musk, a gonzo rocket salesman with billions in Pentagon contracts, GOP pol Newt Gingrich, who got almost as many deferments as Trump during the Vietnam War, and Palmer Luckey, MAGA donor, self-proclaimed "radical Zionist" and founder of tech company Anduril - "three great Americans to help plan the next war with three people who have never been in one," what could possibly go wrong?" From a military Reddit: "Is this real?", "Yes master code-monkey, infosec ninja, and tech infrastructure guru Newt Gingrich age 83. Our enemies are so fuct bro!" and "Oh fuck this fucking Nazi-loving fuck outta here."

There's a new Office of Religious Affairs for a DOD "putting on the full armor of God" to "strengthen the moral, ethical and spiritual readiness of our warfighters," aka "do the Lord's work to improve smiting capacity," because, "while we wage physical war, the real battle is spiritual." (Maybe why the Pentagon's covering up not-real casualties?) It's "voluntary," which skeptics say is akin to being “voluntold” to do things. Finally, as a party favor, troops were given a new 144-page "field manual" of transcripts of Hegseth speeches. Its forward is by Trump, in classic Trumpese. "As your Commander-in-Chief, I will not ask you to fight dumb Wars," it reads. "I will unleash you to be violent, lethal and unstoppable - and I will always have your back. Godspeed, Great Warriors. Thank you for your attention to this matter!"

- YouTube www.youtube.com

Along with other regime Nazis, crackpots and fools, theories abound as to what the fuck is wrong with Pete Hegseth. Many argue he's afflicted with the common sickness of countless, soulless, mediocre white men who know, deep inside, they have risen further than they deserve to. Hence, the bottomless need to be subservient to a monster like Trump (who is too mad to know that) to maintain their place and value in a white guy patriarchy, to always understand "who they get to abuse, and who they are supposed to take abuse from," and to remain within that vaunted structure, the only one where they have power and respect, by continuing to rule over those they've been taught are beneath them. It's also why, conversely, they freak out when their vital slot is threatened: See Hegseth's frantic lie detectors at any sign of leaking, mocking, saying no.

Hegseth seems particularly despised by Americans, many of whom eagerly await his war crimes trial, his impeachment,, his rapturing - hopefully first in line, though maybe behind Goebbels/Miller. The concrete damage done by his legacy - the calamitous war, hollowing of the military's promotion chain, lethality-tinged dumbing down of its intellectual infrastructure and exploitation of those serving - will presumably take years to repair. But people hate him just as much for his personal failings: his gross unfitness and incompetence, his swaggering "Jr High Machismo," the Nazi-adjacent arrogance of "this nose-powdering drunk," the lying, preening chutzpah of the military's worst-ever leader consistently "acting like a 19-year-old edgelord loser," like "a dipshit," "an asshole," "an absolute tinydick in every goddamn way."

Several truly obnoxious moments of his state-of-the-empire speech ignited that animus. His attack on media who do their job and tell the truth about him began with a lame nod to the First Amendment - "A free press is of course important" - that veered to a diatribe: "But partisan activism that intentionally smears the troops and the historic mission they are undertaking (is) anti-American. It's sick. It's a national betrayal. It's treason, actually...It has to be said." Umm, not, said America: "Secretary of Dewar’s doesn't get he’s the only one getting smeared, not the troops," "I love the free press until they say words I don't like in which case I call them traitors and want them killed," "Bro, they're not shitting on the troops, just you," "It's called free speech, fucknut. The thing your troops are supposed to defend," "The mission of our military has become historic only in the degree of its absurdity."

Then there was a pitiful, fitness-instructor-like defense of his bullying of troops: "Telling someone to get in shape or shave or fix their uniform or start busting their ass - that's not discrimination. That's leadership." Fact: Actually, it's neither. It's stupid, shallow, beside-the-point bullying. Many argued it's just "being a dick" and "an asshole." That he should "tell his boss to get in shape and start busting his ass." That it's weird how he "doesn't get to the part where he actually discriminates." That leadership is "inspiring, being an example, not getting your nation into an illegal war, losing it in days and committing war crimes." That he's "a drunk, vain, adulterous rapist with ridiculous sideburns." That it's "stunning in an awful way a man his age is so immature." That "this motherfucker is waaay out over his skis." And damn, more fucking patriotic cowboys is the last thing we need thanks.

How Pete's (deservedly) doingScreengrab from CNN

Harjeet Singh is the global convenor of the Fill the Fund campaign and founding director of the Satat Sampada Climate Foundation. Julie-Anne Richards is strategic campaign lead for the Make Big Polluters Pay campaign in Australia.

This year, a glacier collapse in Nepal’s Himalayan valleys swept away the lives of at least 1,500 people, with recovery costs of US$5 billion, or 10% of national GDP. But this was not a tragedy for which no one can be blamed. This was a crime with a balance sheet – one whose costs are paid by people who did nothing to cause it, and whose profits are booked by polluting corporations that did everything.

Across the Pacific, the calculation of injustice is now brutally clear. According to Oxfam Australia, the average yearly GDP loss of Pacific countries from climate disasters has increased four-fold over the last decade, reaching 14.3% of GDP. The number of Pacific people battered by climate disasters has risen by 700% in a decade. Whole villages are being packed up and moved as the sea takes the land beneath them.

• Sep 30, 2026 Editor’s Column Editor’s Desk: Nepal’s disaster has laid bare the world’s adaptation accountability gap Knowledge about accelerating climate risks and how to adapt to them has grown over the past two decades – but it hasn’t been put into practice fast enough to protect communities Read more
• Oct 1, 2026 News What’s on the climate calendar for October 2026? Brazilians are heading to the polls, diplomats are gathering in the Pacific for pre-COP, and it’s crunch time for the IPCC Read more

Let’s look at the other ledger. This year, as climate change and an oil shock drove up the cost of living for ordinary families, Woodside – touted as “one of Australia’s biggest winners” from the war in the Middle East – reported revenues jumping nearly 30% to AUD$6 billion in just three months.

In Australia, Oxfam finds that in 2023-2024, fossil fuel corporations paid only AUD$22.8 billion in corporate income tax – just 5% of their AUD$436 billion in total reported income – while 26 out of 80, or one in every three large fossil fuel corporations, did not pay corporate income tax at all.

The polluters are not struggling to pay for the damage they cause. They are choosing not to.

This is the moral obscenity at the heart of the climate crisis: the money exists. It is simply flowing in the wrong direction. And nowhere is that clearer than in the funds the world built to protect the vulnerable, now left to languish.

Funds struggle to fill their coffers

The Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage (FRLD) has received US$2.8 billion in requests from 119 countries. And Nepal has sought an urgent US$20 million for immediate needs. Yet the Fund has only US$342 million in total to give.

The Pacific Resilience Facility – a fund the Pacific designed for itself, to prepare its own communities – sits well short of even its modest US$500 million capitalisation target. And the Adaptation Fund is running on empty. While adaptation needs in developing countries could reach US$387 billion a year by 2030, according to the latest UNEP Adaptation Gap report, the Fund’s resource mobilisation target of a modest US$300 million for 2025 fell far short, with only US$135 million pledged.

This is a matter of priorities, not of resources. For decades, the world has accepted a simple principle – the polluter pays principle – whether through the OECD, of which Australia is a member, or Europe’s carbon pricing. New York and Vermont have already passed laws to make Big Oil pay into climate superfunds, and ten more US states are moving to follow.

The idea is neither radical nor new. It’s time to make big polluters pay.

Comment: After Hormuz, Nepal and wildfires, people want action to make polluters pay

What is urgently needed is the courage to apply it to the fossil fuel corporations that have spent decades avoiding it. In November, Australia takes up the presidency of the COP31 negotiations, committing to stand shoulder to shoulder with its Pacific neighbours.

Australia, together with the Turkish COP31 Presidency, must guide and inspire progress at the upcoming climate conference, including on new climate finance pledges by developed countries (which agreed to mobilise at least $300 billion by 2035) and triple the funds available to the FRLD, the Adaptation Fund and the other UN climate funds.

Rich countries agreed to these goals two years ago at COP29. Yet, the reality is that developing countries’ need for climate finance is in the trillions annually, while developed countries continue to delay providing even what they have already committed. A clear signal recognising the importance of delivering the promised climate finance must come at next week’s Pre-COP in the Pacific, and COP31 in Antalya must go on to deliver against existing promises or risk an irreparable breakdown in trust.

Time for a climate pollution levy

Countries must also ensure funding for loss and damage takes its rightful place as the third pillar of climate finance, alongside mitigation and adaptation, in negotiations regarding the UNFCCC climate finance work programme and Article 9 on shifting finance flows towards a low-carbon, resilient world.

Australia, as President of Negotiations and as a Pacific nation, cannot ask the world to fill these funds while it lets its own coal and gas giants off the hook. Australia should not only stop approving new and expanded coal and gas mines, it should also introduce a Climate Pollution Levy on big coal, oil and gas corporations – a charge on every tonne of carbon pollution they extract and profit from. Independent analysis shows such a levy could raise tens of billions of dollars a year, and can be designed so the cost falls on the corporations, not on households.

This is not charity – it is compensation. It is the beginning of accountability. And the public is far ahead of its leaders: eight in 10 people worldwide, and a clear majority of Australians, want fossil fuel firms taxed to pay for the damage they cause.

Fossil fuel expansion threatens COP31 hosts’ credibility, experts warn

The money must go where the harm lands. A Climate Pollution Levy should feed the funds frontline communities are relying on – fully capitalising the Pacific Resilience Facility this year, replenishing the Adaptation Fund, and delivering the billions the loss and damage fund needs.

It is essential for these funds to be able to provide grant-based finance that reaches communities directly, not more loans that push drowning nations deeper into debt. With Nepal’s recovery costs estimated at around 10% of the country’s GDP, if we leave it to fend for itself without loss and damage funding, Nepal will likely be saddled with debt and could fail to recover adequately, increasing poverty and inequality.

We have heard enough empty pledges. We have watched enough funds announced with fanfare, only then to be starved in silence. The era of asking polluters politely is over. Australia, as COP31 president, has a rare chance to prove that the polluter pays principle means something and apply it to those who have profited the most.

The post As COP31 co-host, Australia should make its polluters pay for climate damage appeared first on Climate Home News.

Low private jet tax 'fuels climate crisis, inequality' Channel News brendan 2nd October 2026 Teaser Media

• Buildings come and go, but streets last forever. That’s why cities should start with their street grid and work from there, rather than emphasizing land use over transportation. (CNU Public Square)
• Transit and law enforcement leaders met with White House officials to emphasize the importance of federal funding to safety and security. (Smart Cities Dive)
• Consumer Affairs ranks the Bay Area, New York, Washington, Seattle and Salt Lake City are the cities with the best transit systems, based on safety, reliability and customer service.
• Lyft agreed to pay California drivers $272 million to settle a lawsuit accusing the company of wage theft. (Reuters)
• Maryland’s proposed budget gives Baltimore transit short shrift in favor of the D.C. suburbs. (Banner)
• President Trump could wipe out bike lanes along the East Potomac loop. (Axios)
• Traffic deaths are falling in Phoenix, but not fast enough to reach Vision Zero by 2050. (WOWT)
• New Orleans is offering rebates to low-income residents who buy e-bikes. (Times-Picayune)
• Crime has dropped on Charlotte Area Rapid Transit, but fare enforcement remains a problem. (Carolina Public Press)
• Elon Musk announced he’s building a hyperloop tunnel between San Antonio and Austin, which was news to leaders in both cities. (San Antonio Current)
• Louisville cyclists want safe biking infrastructure in more neighborhoods. (WBRD)
• Richmond has plans to make safety improvements at more than 700 intersections by the end of next year. (WTVR)
• Omaha is considering getting rid of minimum parking requirements for residential developments. (Nebraska Public Media)
• High-speed rail between Calgary and Edmonton is moving forward. (CBC)
• Canadian Cycling Magazine praises Montreal bikeshare BIXI.
• Biking is the best way to enjoy the architecture as a tourist abroad. (Architect)

How should planners identify and emulate success? 

The best advice on this topic dates back to 1932, when Louis Brandeis described U.S. states as laboratories of democracy. The Supreme Court Justice meant that America’s unique brand of federalism helped its citizens identify and understand how to best organize every level of government. The country’s huge number of smaller democracies — 50 states, 3,000 counties and more than 19,000 cities, towns and villages — offered real-world feedback on how Americans might rule themselves.

In a recent report published by the University of Pennsylvania’s Institute for Urban Research, I decided to take Brandeis’s advice and compare state and metropolitan area performance over the last quarter-century on a series of metrics: sprawl, driving activity and public transit use, among others. 

To do so, I constructed a set of statistical models that linked various state and community characteristics to specific performance outcomes. I then closely examined communities that performed better than the models predicted. Some results were expected; others surprised me.

Take excessive urban land consumption, also known as sprawl. I measured this as the amount of farm, forest and range acreage that communities converted to urban uses in each state between 2000 and 2024, divided by the state’s population growth during the same period. Smaller ratios indicate that less land is needed to accommodate a given amount of population growth; larger ratios mean that more land is needed. 

Maryland stood out as one of the states that minimized excess urban land consumption more than my model expected. The Old Line State saw each of its more than 1 million new residents since 2000 consume just 0.11 acres of previously undeveloped land. 

Maryland boasts a long history of successful leadership in managing growth. In 1992, the state legislature enacted the Economic Growth, Resource Protection and Planning Act, which required every local government to incorporate anti-sprawl goals into its comprehensive plan. Five years later, Annapolis passed an even more ambitious growth initiative that directed state infrastructure funds to cities whose plans and development policies expressly favored infill over greenfield development. 

California, by contrast, performed worse than expected. Although the Golden State does a decent job of containing sprawl overall, the California Environmental Quality Act has armed opponents of infill construction with several legal strategies to block development. This dynamic has shifted newer housing from denser, central neighborhoods to outlying suburbs that require a car to navigate.

I also found significant differences between metro areas within the same state. Consider transportation in Florida. The Sunshine State’s four largest metro areas — Miami, Tampa, Orlando and Jacksonville — record very different amounts of average daily vehicle miles traveled, a reliable measure of private automobile usage known as ADVMT. 

Jacksonville and the surrounding Duval County have neglected to create a viable transit system, despite enjoying a consolidated city-county government that makes it easier to do so. In 2024, the area recorded a 2024 ADVMT of 20.2 miles per capita. Tampa was a similar story: After a pronounced effort in the 1990s to build highways, the area saw its ADVMT per capita rise by 17 percent since 2000.

The greater Miami area, by contrast, has capitalized on its elevated residential densities and spatial arrangement — all of its major cities mostly fall within a single, straight line — to promote investments in rail and bus transit. This development strategy has driven down household auto ownership rates. In 2024, the metro area posted an ADVMT of just 17.3 miles per capita, the lowest of the state’s four largest metro areas. Orlando followed the same pattern: The area grew by more than 50 percent since 2000, but its ADVMT fell by two percent.

I found another success story on the West Coast in San Diego’s Metropolitan Transit System. Only one other transit network — New York City’s Metropolitan Transit Authority — recorded better-than-expected ridership performance between 2000 and 2019 and between 2020 and 2024. How did the MTS cope with the loss of ridership during the COVID-19 pandemic? It carefully controlled capital costs, focused on service reliability and safety, met the service needs of key market niches, and sited new housing developments near light-rail stations. 

The states and metro areas that most exceeded their expected performance share a few common characteristics. All of them routinely monitor how their policies work in practice and modify them if they fail to work as intended. They use material incentives to reward good behavior and discourage bad behavior. They enthusiastically promote the expertise and competence of government agencies. And they emphasize public-private partnerships and intergovernmental cooperation.

Our dysfunctional federal government has given up on promoting sustainable urban development, leaving a vacuum for states, counties and cities to fill. These governments demonstrate the wisdom and foresight of Justice Brandeis’s profound affection for America’s smaller democracies. We ought to pay closer attention to their results.

Well, it finally happened: South Park did an episode about e-bikes. Or more accurately, the deadly, super-fast e-motos that every media outlet in the country keeps calling e-bikes, even though they’re totally different things. (Spoiler: Kenny dies in a battery fire.)

YouTuber Berm Peak argues, though, that Trey Parker and Matt Stone actually deliver one of the more thoughtful satirical examinations of the e-moto problem in popular culture … even if they get a few things wrong for narrative effect, like casting lycra-clad “bike dads” as the enemies of the real e-bike revolution. In the real world, car-brained policymakers are the more likely culprits, alongside shady manufacturers who exploit import loopholes to sell lightning-fast vehicles as “bikes” with vestigial pedals.

He breaks it all down in this week’s video; head on down to YouTube and have yourself a time, or watch below.