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The provisional application of the EU-Mercosur FTA without a vote from the European Parliament remains a democratic scandal.

The post Europe: Temporary ban on Brazilian meat and honey highlights EU-Mercosur risks, says ECVC appeared first on La Via Campesina - EN.

Industrial expansion, data centres, population growth and electrification are putting new pressure on a system already facing affordability, reliability and infrastructure challenges. Much of the public conversation focuses on how much new...

September 9, 2026—Richmondside reporter Jana Kadah covered the appointment of Carl Cohn, a former superintendent and state Board of Education member, to ensure West Contra Costa Unified complies with a requirement to staff its classrooms with qualified teachers. The appointment follows a March ruling from the California First District Court of Appeal in Cleare v. West Contra Costa Unified School District — a two-year legal battle brought by a Public Advocates representing WCCUSD parents and teachers—requiring the district to stop using 30- and 60-day substitutes beyond state time limits and to fill all teacher vacancies at Stege Elementary, Helms Middle, and Kennedy High School. Cohn, appointed by a Superior Court judge on August 27, will recommend compliance steps and mediate disputes going forward. The piece notes Cleare was the first lawsuit filed under the Williams Settlement Legislation, the 2004 agreement guaranteeing California students access to qualified teachers, adequate textbooks, and safe facilities—setting a statewide precedent that teacher shortages can’t justify long-term reliance on substitutes. The article also reports WCCUSD has cut teaching vacancies significantly this year, from over 100 two years ago to 34 at the start of this school year.

Read the story to learn more.

The post Richmondside: Court-appointed former school superintendent to ensure WCCUSD hires qualified teachers appeared first on Public Advocates.

When people initially asked me what I loved most about my Audubon Conservation Ranching (ACR) internship, I would always answer that I loved actually exploring California: racing down dirt tracts in...

Today, the United States and Mexico signed an important Colorado River Treaty agreement known as Minute 334, extending the modern, collaborative binational relationship through 2028. This is good...

ADVISORY

September 9th, 2026

Ohio Power Siting Board Denies Company Request to Block Expert Testimony Describing Potential Impacts of 800MW Gas Plant

PowerConneX Sought to Secure Approval with Limited Information

 

ASHVILLE, Oh. — Developer PowerConneX asked the Ohio Power Siting Board (OPSB) to block scheduled testimony from an Ohio River Valley Institute researcher, an environmental expert, and six local residents just days before they were scheduled to testify in front of OPSB staff. PowerConneX seeks approval of an 800MW behind-the-meter gas-fired power plant tied to a data center project in Ashville, Ohio.

Last week, PowerConneX asked the board to strike the testimony of experts drawing attention to the costs, questionable economic benefits, and environmental impacts of its proposed gas plant. The company then moved to block testimony from residents that would be impacted by this facility. Earlier today, the OPSB denied the company’s motion to block testimony from these experts and will later rule on the motion to block testimony for the remaining witnesses whose testimony was challenged by the company.

Four of the six residents plan to testify on behalf of Teays Valley Community Alliance (TVCA) on Thursday, September 10th. A researcher, an economist, and a research scientist will also be providing testimony on behalf of TVCA. A summary of the expert testimony is included below:

• An independent analysis indicates that the project’s economic impact could depend on various factors, including whether any stages of the project receive tax incentives. According to the testimony of Nick Messenger, Ph.D., Senior Economist with the Ohio River Valley Institute, the company potentially overstated the project’s contributions to local job growth and failed to initially disclose the data needed for independent verification of its analysis. 
• As described, PowerConneX’s proposed plant would be highly inefficient and cost-ineffective relative to standard on-grid gas-fired power plants, requiring 32% more fuel and up to $200 million in additional operating costs annually. According to the testimony of Sean O’Leary, Senior Researcher with the Ohio River Valley Institute, excessive fuel costs and demand for skilled labor may result in inflationary impacts.
• The project’s human health impacts due to emissions of fine particulate matter, nitrogen oxides, and other air pollutants are estimated to cost from $83 million to $280 million. According to the testimony of John Bangsund, Ph.D., Director of Science & Technology at the Better Data Center Project, the pollutants expected from the facility’s operations are associated with numerous health impacts ranging from cardiovascular disease and respiratory illnesses to premature mortality.

Written testimony submitted by residents on behalf of TVCA can be found here, here, here, here, and here. The project has been met with staunch community opposition, including a resident-led referendum to repeal a municipal development supply agreement with PowerConneX.

WHO: Ohio Power Siting Board hearing on Case 26-0196-EL-BGN regarding PowerConneX, Inc.’s application for a behind-the-meter gas-fired generating station to fuel a data center project in Ashville, Ohio

WHAT: Testimony from residents and environmental and economic experts on behalf of Teays Valley Community Alliance.

WHEN: Thursday, September 10th, 9:00 AM ET

WHERE: Continental Office Building, Public Utilities Commission of Ohio, 180 East Broad Street, Columbus, Ohio 43215

###

The post Ohio Power Siting Board Denies Company Request to Block Expert Testimony Describing Potential Impacts of 800MW Gas Plant appeared first on Ohio River Valley Institute.

Nearly 45 million acres of the nation’s most intact forests—an area larger than Oklahoma—could soon open to logging and road building under a proposal from the U.S. Forest Service. The plan...

By Zachery Suaco, Communications and Social Media Intern at the Chesapeake Climate Action Network (CCAN)

I grew up knowing what climate disaster looked like before I had a word for it. My family is Filipino, and Typhoon Haiyan in 2013 was not a news story for us. It consisted of phone calls we were afraid to answer. It was waiting to hear if people we loved were okay. I was in elementary school, and I already understood that the climate was not some future problem, but rather something that had already taken things from people I knew.

That understanding is what led me into climate advocacy. It felt like the most honest thing I could do with the anger and frustration I had been carrying. And I genuinely believed that my generation, Gen Z, was different. That we had grown up with enough awareness to actually do something about it.

But what I did not expect was to look at my utility bill and find out that I was part of the problem in a way I had never considered.

Data centers, part of the physical infrastructure behind every AI tool my generation uses constantly, are one of the biggest drivers of energy demand in the DMV right now. Virginia alone has over 600 data centers, more than any other state in the country, and those data centers already consume more than a quarter of the Commonwealth’s entire electricity supply. That’s not a national statistic spread thin across the country. That’s our grid, and our overall region. And when demand that big gets added to a system, the costs cannot be absorbed quickly or painlessly.

Virginia residents have already seen their monthly bills go up $11.24 in 2026 partly because of the infrastructure being built to support that demand. And regulators had to create an entirely separate rate class just for data center customers to stop the cost-shifting from getting worse. That’s how significant the footprint has gotten.

Here’s the part that is hardest to accept. Gen Z did not build these data centers. But we are the first generation to normalize using AI for everything — from generating images to answering questions we could have Googled to having full conversations with chatbots. And that usage has a physical cost that most of us have never once thought about. Every 20 to 50 queries to a large language model uses roughly 500 milliliters of water, about the size of a standard plastic water bottle, just for cooling the servers and powering the grid that runs them. And by 2028, the onslaught of AI data centers worldwide is projected to consume over a trillion liters of water annually. That’s eleven times what all data centers used just a year ago.

We are the generation that grew up going to climate strikes. But we are also the generation that made ChatGPT the fastest-growing consumer product in history. Those two things are in real tension, and I don’t think we talk about it enough.

Packed room at a Data Center Town Hall at Studio 2,3 in Richmond, VA.

I am not saying AI is irredeemably bad or that we need to stop using it. That is not a realistic or even useful approach. But I do think my generation has been sold a version of climate consciousness that is more about identity than behavior. We recycle, we carry reusable bags, we post in opposition to fossil fuel companies on platforms that run on fossil-fuel-powered infrastructure. And we have mostly gotten a pass on interrogating the digital habits that are now reshaping energy grids in our own backyard.

The good news is that there is already pushback happening. In Virginia alone, 42 community groups and more than 12,000 people have signed petitions pushing back against unchecked data center expansion. People are paying attention. The question is whether my generation is going to show up to that fight the same way we showed up to the ones that felt easier.

Growing up Filipino and watching what Haiyan did taught me that climate change does not wait for people to feel ready. It just arrives, and it arrives when we least expect it. And the least we can do is be honest about where our own consumption fits into that picture, and then actually do something about it. That’s why I’m calling on my peers to show up to local hearings and demand a pause on new energy and water-guzzling data centers. Until we have the right solutions, “build first, figure it out later” is not an option.

About the author: Zachery Suaco (he/him) is a Communications and Social Media Intern at the Chesapeake Climate Action Network (CCAN) for spring/summer 2026. He is a recent graduate of Towson University where he received a bachelor’s degree in Communication Studies.

Zachery’s connection to climate justice is personal, rooted in his Filipino heritage and the devastation Typhoon Haiyan brought to his family’s home country in 2013. That experience shaped his belief that climate change is not a future problem but a present one, and drives his commitment to using communications as a tool for advocacy. In his free time, Zachery enjoys music, exploring DC, and finding new ways to blend creativity with strategy.

The post Your Feed Is Warming the Planet: Why Gen Z’s Next Climate Move Is Data Center Accountability appeared first on Chesapeake Climate Action Network.

Ask any birder to name their favorite birdsong, and you’ll get a variety of answers, from the cheery, rich tunes of the Baltimore Oriole and American Robin to the more musical notes of a Wood...

Four families of wild red wolves welcomed new pups this year.

People are not the only ones who are pestered by wasps during the summer and fall. At Aullwood Audubon, wasps were creating a problem for some of the farms most beloved residents.  A creative...

Joel Mayne is a motorcycle instructor and Desert Storm veteran who lives near the Wyoming border north of Craig, Colorado. Mayne is organizing fellow Moffat County residents to protest the Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) sale of the mineral rights beneath Bakers Peak mountain, taking the fight all the way to the Interior Board of Land Appeals in Washington, D.C. In his November 2025 protest letter, Mayne said the elk migration path runs across the mountain and the peak provides high-priority habitat for mule deer and moose as well. “This region’s ecological sensitivity and biological significance demand a level of caution and stewardship consistent with both federal and state conservation mandates,” Mayne wrote. “I trust the BLM will uphold its commitment to responsible stewardship of public lands.”

Under the second Trump administration, the BLM has offered 287,765 acres in Colorado for oil and gas drilling, and is slated to offer more than 400,000 acres of land in Colorado by the planned December 2026 lease sale.

Mayne is not alone in his opposition to the BLM’s leasing plans in Colorado, as environmental groups, state wildlife officials, and local governments are protesting an unprecedented wave of public land oil and gas lease sales across the state. “We are seeing roadless areas leased, lands with wilderness characteristics, we are seeing places designated as outstanding waters leased, and it is hard to keep track,” said Peter Hart, legal director of the advocacy group Wilderness Workshop. “We are seeing these offered in every lease sale.”

Quick hits Trump is quietly planning to majorly change how national parks are run

NOTUS | Wes Siler’s Substack

Forest Service could open much more of Colorado’s 11 million acres of public land to motorized vehicles

Denver Post

Developers eye Native Nations, Tribal communities for new data center projects

Daily Montanan

Oil and gas lease sales meet local opposition in Colorado communities

Colorado Sun

Feds seek to ‘streamline’ Arctic oil permitting, ending environmental reviews of individual projects

Alaska Beacon

New Mexico town of 50 packs gym as residents push county to ban uranium drilling

The Cool Down

Data center planned on Nevada public land is temporarily halted

Nevada Public Radio

Trump signs order to remove protections for wolves

USA Today | Politico Pro | The Land Desk

Quote of the day

The folks who want to push forward their agenda of sales, extraction, development, and divestment don’t want us unified. They know they can’t win when we’re standing arm in arm. They know they can’t give away our public lands when we’re a concerted bloc. They can’t fight us all.”

—Jonathon Klein, editor-in-chief of RideApart

Picture This

@usinterior

You know what they say about small predators? Big personalities.

The American marten is a quick, agile member of the weasel family that makes its home in forests across northern North America. Don’t let that adorable face fool you. This little hunter is built to climb, chase and absolutely thrive in the woods.

Photo by @jacobwfrank

Featured image: Photo credit: BLM Colorado, Flickr

The post Oil and gas lease sales run into local opposition in Colorado appeared first on Center for Western Priorities.

This briefing note focuses on trade and its effects on peasantry and food sovereignty in Africa.

The post Briefing Note on Africa Trade Issues: Impacts of Trade Liberalisation on Peasants appeared first on La Via Campesina - EN.

Despite numerous complaints, the government of Daniel Noboa signed a Free Trade Agreement with Canada, even though the public had not been made aware of the final text of the agreement.

The post Ecuador: Trade Agreement with Canada Threatens Indigenous Peoples’ Rights appeared first on La Via Campesina - EN.

By several measures, Chinese industry is becoming less dependent on fossil fuels, according to a new analysis.

Read more on E360 →

Eirini-Erifyli Tzekou

What if food systems were designed not to maximize sales and accumulation, but to meet needs fairly within ecological limits? In Thessaloniki, Greece, a range of grassroots food initiatives have emerged over the last fifteen years, shaped by …

For small business owners and aspiring entrepreneurs, the right financing can make all the difference. Unfortunately, not all lenders have your best interests in mind. 

Online lenders often promise fast cash and easy approvals, but those offers can come with high costs and long-term financial stress. Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs) like Mountain Association take a different approach, focusing on your long-term success while still delivering financing decisions quickly. 

Predatory Lending vs. Community Lending 

Predatory lenders often market themselves as a solution for businesses that don’t qualify for traditional bank financing. They advertise same-day approvals and minimal paperwork, but those conveniences can come at a steep price. Many charge extremely high interest rates, add hidden fees, or require daily or weekly payments that put pressure on cash flow. 

We’ve seen annual percentage rates (APRs) ranging from 40% to more than 350%. In some cases, business owners end up repaying several times what they originally borrowed, making it harder to invest in growth and build financial stability. As an example, a small business in Leslie County was having to pay $1,300 per week to a predatory lender. 

At Mountain Association, we believe financing should create opportunity, not become a burden. As a CDFI, we work with entrepreneurs who may not qualify for conventional financing and help strengthen local economies across Eastern Kentucky. 

Our loans range from $1,000 to more than $1 million, with interest rates typically between 5% and 9.75% and flexible repayment terms. We also offer solar financing at a fixed 4% interest rate with terms up to 20 years. For loans under $50,000, decisions are often made within 2 to 10 business days once all required information is received. 

More Than a Loan 

One of the biggest differences between Mountain Association and many online lenders is the relationship we build with borrowers. 

While predatory lenders often rely on automated systems and provide little support after approval, our team takes the time to understand your goals, challenges, and opportunities. Whether you’re starting a business, purchasing equipment, expanding operations, or strengthening working capital, we’ll help identify the financing option that best fits your needs. 

Our lending process is transparent and supportive. We’ll explain the terms, answer your questions, and make sure you’re comfortable before moving forward. We also connect entrepreneurs with free business coaching, technical assistance, and additional resources to help build a stronger foundation for success. 

Financing Designed for Growing Businesses 

We also structure loans differently than many traditional and online lenders. 

For larger equipment purchases, we typically pay vendors directly. For smaller purchases, borrowers can submit receipts for reimbursement. This approach often benefits businesses because they only make payments on funds that have actually been disbursed, rather than on the entire loan amount from day one. 

We also prioritize accountability and flexibility. While we offer working capital loans when appropriate, many of our loans are structured around specific business investments. 

Another important difference is our approach to collateral. We work hard to separate business and personal assets and avoid using personal assets as collateral whenever possible. To address collateral gaps, we may utilize a collateral support fund through the Foundation for Appalachian Kentucky or share risk through lending partnerships. 

Work With Us 

We’re proud to offer financing that helps people build businesses, create local jobs, and strengthen their communities. 

If you have a business idea or are ready to grow an existing business, choosing the right lender matters. Mountain Association is committed to providing fair, affordable capital along with the guidance and support entrepreneurs need to succeed. 

Learn more at mtassociation.org/lending 

The post Avoid the Business Debt Trap: Know the Difference Between Predatory and Community Lenders  appeared first on Mountain Association.

Will Open Piles of Coal in Oakland Replace Open Piles of Coal in Richmond? New Details of Developers’ Plan Emerge

After sitting on a 231-page “feasibility study” of a West Coast coal terminal for more than a month, the eight-county Rural Utah Infrastructure Coalition (RUIC) finally released the engineering and economic analysis on the Saturday of Labor Day weekend, just five days before a public hearing on RUIC”s proposal to invest $40-45 million of Utah public money in the Oakland export facility and another $10 million in a more distant facility in Longview, Washington. 

In February of this year, RUIC commissioned Norda Stelo, a giant Canadian-based engineering firm, aided by Wood Mackenzie, a Scottish energy consultancy, “to identify replacement export capacity for Utah coal following the planned closure of the Levin-Richmond terminal at the end of 2026.” (1) The consultants were paid $488,000 to compare three possible locations: Oakland, Longview, and Guaymas, Mexico.

Guaymas was dismissed without much fanfare, and the competition between frontrunner Oakland and also-ran Longview served mainly as a distraction from the question barely addressed in the report: will the Oakland coal export terminal sink under the weight of economic, regulatory, and political risks. If Utah antes, will any other investors come to the table?

The answer is nowhere to be found in the report. The report gave the Oakland terminal project an overall weighted score of 2.85 on a scale of 1 to 5. The grading considered many detailed requirements  where 1 indicates the facility does not meet the requirement and 5 indicates it fully meets the requirement. If 5 is an A and 4 is a B, an overall grade of 2.85 is a ho-hum C, not a strong argument for investment. Nonetheless, Norda Stelo recommends that RUIC invest approximately $43 million in Oakland.

The report brings new clarity to what developers have been up to since the project emerged from a decade of litigation in September 2025. Last Thursday, RUIC presented a vague overview of the plan to funding decision makers at Utah’s Community Impact Board and said they would be back as soon as October 1 to apply for the money, but, first, RUIC plans to hold a public hearing in Provo, Utah and online on Thursday, September 10.

As developers seek financial support from Utah for their private coal export scheme, the Norda Stelo report presents a mixture of revelations, questionable claims, and concessions to reality.  

Revelations

The developers have no intention of designing a state-of-the-art terminal that will prevent any leakage of coal dust. Coal will be stored in two 150,000-ton open air stockpiles (190), not in “[c]overed bulk material storage buildings” described in the Basis of Design and pictured in the conceptual drawings filed with the City in 2015 and 2018.  

.stk-6kxoqxe .stk-img-figcaption{text-align:left !important;font-size:16px !important;line-height:1em !important;}@media screen and (max-width: 1023px){.stk-6kxoqxe .stk-img-figcaption{font-size:16px !important;}} This drawing was submitted to the City of Oakland in 2015 as part of OBOT’s Basis of Design. “Commodity A” was the euphemism for “coal” that the developers adopted when they were concealing their ongoing business relationship with a Utah-based coal mining company.

The developers need to raise a lot more cash than they admit. Based on comparable coal terminals of similar throughput and material type, Norda Stelo estimates the cost to build the terminal at $430 to $625 million, not the developers’ cost estimate of $250 million.  Norda Stelo notes, without comment, that the developer provided no basis for its estimate “beyond some budgetary vendor quotations.”  (18)

If engineering got underway immediately, the terminal might take until 2031 to begin operations. “The overall project duration is estimated at approximately 53 months from the start of engineering to first cargo. As highlighted in Section 4, the OBOT proponent’s October 2028 first-cargo target is not consistent with this schedule.” Apparently, Donald Trump’s boast is false:  “Starting this summer, the West Gateway project will break ground, and by summer 2028, over 12 million tons of clean beautiful coal per year will be shipped to countries all around the world.” The West Gateway project does not have a building permit, much less a shovel in the ground, and Norda Stelo estimates it will take more than double the President’s timeline to get a terminal up and running.

The “multi-commodity terminal” is no more; it’s all about coal. OBOT’s developers appear to be quietly ditching their oft-repeated (and contractual?) commitment to build a multi-commodity terminal. The only sharing of the terminal discussed by Norda Stelo is between two varieties of coal: Utah coal and Wyoming Powder River Basin coal. Wood Mackenzie provides a pro forma analysis of other commodities – copper, soda ash, and oil and gas – but serious interest in building a multi-commodity terminal is belied by the report’s sharp focus on coal.  

Savage Companies, a large Utah-based logistics firm, has signed up to operate the terminal. Savage has contributed an “OBOT Terminal Project Design Basis” document to the Norda Stelo report along with drawings by Millcreek Engineering. 

Delusions and questionable claims

“A coal handling permit is reportedly in place” (19)  There is no such thing as a “coal handling permit.” This is a good reminder of Norda Stelo’s warning that their report is based on whatever the developers fed them: “The evaluation of the two facilities is based on information provided by each facility proponent, supplemented by site visit observations and publicly available documentation. No independent verification or detailed condition assessment was performed by Norda Stelo as part of this study.” (8)

“No pending legislative or regulatory changes are identified.” (22) Based on Norda Stelo’s caveat, it is fair to read this as a statement about what Phil Tagami disclosed or failed to disclose to Norda Stelo. As widely reported, on June 15, 2026, six weeks before the Norda Stelo’s report was finalized, Assm. Mia Bonta introduced the Communities First Coal Review Act (AB40) which would require an Environmental Impact Report for any major new coal terminal. The California Legislature has overwhelmingly passed Bonta’s bill and it is awaiting signature on Gov. Newsom’s desk. Moreover, the Bay Area Air District has been in the process of revising its fugitive dust regulations for many months, including specifically those governing “bulk material handling and storage.” Both AB40 and the new Air District regulations may significantly impact the future of the project. Failure to capture these major developments calls into question the reliability of Norda Stelo’s assessment of regulatory risk.

“Oakland [Bulk & Oversized Terminal[ … has substantial public funding support.” (28) “Approximately USD 315 million in public funding has been identified (USD 75 million federal and approximately USD 240 million state).” (19) This is deeply misleading. The $242 million Transport Corridor Improvement Money grant to the City and Port of Oakland covered  horizontal redevelopment of the 360-acre Oakland Army Base. It was spent long ago on a rail yard, roads, cleanup, soil compaction, new utilities, and the like. None of this government money was ever available to any of the private developers leasing land from the City or the Port for private benefit. Thus, Norda Stelo’s conclusion that the project has already lined up $315 million dollars of public money is nonsense. That leaves Donald Trump’s pledge to contribute $75 million under the Cold War era Defense Production Act. Trump’s diktat appears legally shaky given the lack of a nexus between shipments of Utah coal to Asia and a legitimate national defense interest. 

Silences That Speak Louder Than Words

No interest from private investors is mentioned.  In 2015, the pitch to the CIB was done by Jeffrey Holt, an investment banker with Bank of Montreal who suggested that, if Utah would seed the project with $50 million of public money, pension funds could be persuaded to make $200 million of non-recourse loans to fund the project. Now, with as much as $625 million to be raised, the report that is supposed to convince the Community Impact Board to open Utah’s pursestrings provides no assurance that there will be any private investors prepared to close the enormous gap between what public sources might provide and the amount needed to get the project off the ground.

Wood Mackenzie’s economic analysis obscures the secular decline of the overseas coal market. The economic analysis consists of 116 densely packed presentation slides without a coherent narrative to tie them together. There is very little information or analysis of the long-term trends or country-by-country risks that may sink any coal export terminal built at this late point in the world’s transition away from coal. 

The study does not show that the market for Utah coal exports “should be profitable for at least 20 years.” Neither does it “confirm” that a West Coast bulk commodities terminal is “a sound and prudent investment for Utah.”  These representations by RUIC prior to its visit to the Community Impact Board last Thursday are not supported by the report.

Redactions cover up key facts. Utah law allows agencies to redact trade secrets and other confidential business information from public documents before releasing them, but some of RUIC’s redactions appear designed to cover up inconvenient facts. For example, the list of approvals that “may” be needed by the West Oakland terminal begins with a four-inch black stripe. (20) The developer may dispute one or more items on Norda Stelo’s list, but this does not make it a business secret entitled to be kept from disclosure. The answer to a simple question about what site preparation and demolition work would be required prior to construction is half-redacted. (33) Hardly a trade secret or confidential business information that could lead to competitive harm.

Concessions to reality

“Significant community, permitting, environmental, and schedule risks have been identified” for the Oakland terminal. (27)

“Very strong opposition is documented from community and environmental organisations including No Coal in Oakland, Sierra Club, San Francisco Baykeeper and Earthjustice, with a demonstrated history of litigation and regulatory intervention. A letter dated 13 May was issued by No Coal in Oakland to the Coalition, Norda Stelo and Wood Mackenzie, stating a commitment to oppose the project by ‘every feasible means.'” (20)

The site remains constrained by its geometry.  A loop track is the most efficient way to unload a mile-long train. The train pulls in from Utah, enters a loop, dumps its load a couple of cars at a time into a below-grade dumping station, and heads back to Utah without reconfiguration and consequent delay. Here’s the plan for Oakland:

“Railcar movements are based on switching and segmented handling of unit trains using a dedicated switching locomotive. Coal is delivered in 116-car unit trains and, for yard operations, trains are assumed to be broken into two 58-car segments and then further divided into 29-car cuts for unloading. Two parallel tracks are provided at the in-motion bottom-dump system, with one track designated for active dumping while the adjacent track is used for switching and train set-up.” (190)

Notably, there is no room for expansion to service other commodities that do not share the physical characteristics of coal, none of which are identified in the report. “[T]he limited site area provides little opportunity to accommodate additional commodity-specific storage or handling infrastructure.” (15)

Image at top: Aerial view of the Richmond-Level coal terminal, which will retire from coal shipment at the end of 2026. Image credit: SF Baykeeper.

Note: Up to page 28, the page numbers in the text are those shown at the bottom of each page of the Study Report. Higher page numbers refer to the page location within the PDF.

 

With prices down, costs up, and trade barriers potentially loosening further, peasant farmers across several provinces are mobilizing in South Korea.

The post South Korea: Peasant Unions Take to the Streets Over CPTPP trade pact and Collapsing Crop Prices appeared first on La Via Campesina - EN.

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• What happened?
• How did bedrock collapse trigger the flash floods?
• How have temperatures risen in the affected region? 
• How have rising temperatures affected mountain stability?
• How have glaciers retreated in the affected region?
• Can the event be attributed to climate change?

On the morning of 26 August, flash floods surged through a Himalayan border region of Nepal and the Chinese region of Tibet, killing more than 1,300 people, with thousands still missing.

In the days since the floods, scientists have examined satellite imagery, drone footage and seismic data in order to understand and explain the forces behind the event.

While initial theories pinned the flood on a glacial collapse, scientists now understand the event as a “multi-hazard cascade”, which began with a bedrock collapse. 

Some climate sceptics have tried to use this to falsely claim that human-caused climate change had no impact on the event. 

Yet, scientists have noted that, while no formal attribution study has been carried out thus far, warming is making such ice-rock avalanches in the region more likely.

Researchers have highlighted how rapid warming is dramatically reshaping Asia’s high-mountain region – and identified rising temperatures, glacier retreat and permafrost thaw as factors that may have all contributed to the disaster. 

Balendra Shah, Nepal’s prime minister, has called the floods a “serious signal that…the risks we must bear in the Himalayan region are increasing” due to climate change.

Here, Carbon Brief unpacks what scientists currently know about the causes of the catastrophic event and what they can – and cannot – say about the role of climate change. 

• What happened?
• How did bedrock collapse trigger the flash floods?
• How have temperatures risen in the affected region?
• How have rising temperatures affected mountain stability?
• How have glaciers retreated in the affected region?
• Can the event be attributed to climate change?

What happened?

A report published on 28 August by the HiRisk scientific consortium of high mountain experts detailed the events that led to the flash floods.

It said that events were set in motion on 26 August when a mass of bedrock, as well as the glacier ice on top of it, broke off a slope of Langtang-Lirung mountain in the Nepalese Himalaya, plunging from approximately 5,200 metres above sea level to the valley floor at 3,000 metres. 

The landslide shook the ground hard enough that, at 8:37am Nepal local time, the US Geological Survey (USGS) initially reported a magnitude 4.4 earthquake. Later that day, it clarified the shaking was caused by glacier collapse and debris flow, equivalent to a magnitude 5.2 earthquake.

On the valley floor, the melting ice, water and debris slammed into the Lhende Khola river, a high-altitude river that runs along Nepal’s border with China. 

Known downstream as the Bhote Koshi river in Nepal and the Poiqu or Poqu in China, the Lhende Khole feeds a network of rivers across Nepal and the Chinese region of Tibet, including the Trishuli river. (In China, the Lhende Khola is known as the Donglin Tsangpo.)

The designations employed and the presentation of the material on this map do not imply the expression of any opinion whatsoever on the part of Carbon Brief concerning the legal status of any country, territory, city or area or of its authorities, or concerning the delimitation of its frontiers or boundaries. Credit: Carbon Brief.

A large “debris” lake was briefly formed on the valley floor. When this lake burst, a wall of water and rock travelled downstream, killing more than a thousand people and destroying settlements, roads, bridges, hydropower plants and border posts across Nepal and Tibet.

HiRisk said that the floodwave travelled down rivers as fast as 30km an hour (around 19 miles per hour) and reached Mugling – a Nepalese town more than 130km downstream – at around 1pm local time.

A separate report from the Center for Land Surface Hazards in the US noted that the flood moved “exceptionally fast, was sediment-laden and extreme in scale”. For example, in the Nepalese municipality of Galchhi, the Trishuli river rose by nine metres in 30 minutes, it said.

Writing in the Conversation, Dr Umesh Haritashya, a glaciologist at the University of Dayton in Ohio, explained that the disaster “wasn’t finished when the first wall of water passed [on 26 August]”. 

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He continued that a new “barrier lake” – estimated to hold a few million cubic metres of water – had developed in a location where two rivers meet in Tibet before crossing into Nepal. This lake burst on 28 August and the river rose again, he said. 

On 4 September, the chief of Nepal’s National Disaster ​Risk Reduction and Management Authority, told Reuters that property and infrastructure worth “at least” $2.5bn (£1.9bn) had been lost. Dharma Raj Upreti estimated the cost to build roads and temporary shelters, provide drinking water and ⁠restore power would be around $53m (£39m). 

How did bedrock collapse trigger the flash floods?

In the immediate aftermath of the floods, initial reports suggested that the trigger was a collapsing glacier or earthquake in the high mountains of Nepal.

After confirming that a seismic tremor was as a result of falling rock and ice, the USGS said the trigger was likely a “glacial collapse and debris flow”. This was widely picked up by the media. 

Subsequently, satellite imagery revealed that an “enormous chunk of the mountainous bedrock” beneath the glacier had also given way, reported the New York Times. 

Dr Kristen Cook, a geomorphologist at the Université Grenoble Alpes in France, told the newspaper:

“The rock that the glacier was sitting on collapsed…It was a much larger collapse than we were initially able to see in the satellite imagery.”

The result was a “deluge of rock and ice, which pulverized into mud and water as it surged down the mountainside”, the newspaper said.

Dr Jakob Steiner a geoscientist at the University of Graz in Austria, tells Carbon Brief:

“It was not a glacier that collapsed. It was the mountain below the glacier that collapsed and the glacier had no other chance but to go with it because it was sitting on top of it. 

“The trigger for that is something that we are not 100% certain about, but, in the end, it very much looks like simply a mechanical failure of the rock material because of stressors that have built up over a long period of time.”

Failures of “bedrock” – the hard, solid rock that sits below looser rocks and soil – are an “increasingly common occurrence”, says Prof Bethan Davies, a professor of glaciology at Newcastle University. She tells Carbon Brief:

“These massive landslides occur in mountain regions, commonly following rapid deglacierisation [the melting away of a glacier]. Similar events happened in the Chamoli event in 2021 [in the Indian Himalaya] and in the Blatten landslide last year in Switzerland. They’ve also occurred recently in Alaska.”

With a shift in focus from the failure of a glacier to the bedrock underneath, some climate sceptics seized on the development to falsely claim that climate change had not played any role in the disaster.

These include Dr Matthew Wielicki, recently appointed by the Trump administration to lead the US Global Change Research Program, on Twitter, as well as former Conservative peer and climate-sceptic commentator Matt Ridley in the Spectator. 

However, scientists have highlighted the likely contribution of rapid warming in the region. These factors include the thawing of permafrost and glacier retreat. (For more, see sections below).

Fundamentally, “this would have been a much less significant tragedy if it had been just a rock-slope failure”, notes Davies.

The initial landslide took a mixture of rock and ice into a valley that “contains buried ice” as well, she says, providing the water that “resulted in the hyperconcentrated flow, which took so many lives”.

How have temperatures risen in the affected region? 

Global temperatures have risen by roughly 1.4C since the pre-industrial period. However, this increase is not uniform across the planet, with some regions warming faster than others. 

A study published in Global and Planetary Change in June 2026 investigated changes in the Langtang catchment – a river basin in central Nepal, in which the Langtang-Lirung mountain is located, which eventually drains into the Ganges. Around one-quarter of the area is made up of glaciers.

The paper found that glacial areas of the catchment – found at 4,000 metres above sea level – warmed at 0.31C per decade over 1960-2023. This was “more than three times” the rate observed at a lower elevation weather station, the authors said.

Looking in more detail at the site of the glacial collapse, Dr Robert Rohde, chief scientist for Berkeley Earth, used ERA5 reanalysis data to show how temperature has changed at the 5,200-metre elevation site where the mass of ice and rock broke loose. 

Rohde’s analysis found that June-to-August temperatures have been rising at the site of the glacier collapse since the year 1940, with 2026’s summer the fourth warmest on record, behind 2024, 2025 and 2022. This is shown in the graph below.

Average summer (June-August) temperature at the ice-rock avalanche site over 1940-2026. Data source: Rohde, Bluesky (2026)

Rohde also found that the days leading up to the disaster recorded the hottest August temperatures ever experienced at the site. This is shown in the graph below.

Daily average temperature, from 1 June-1 September, at the ice-rock avalanche site. 2026, 2025 and 2024 are shown in dark, mid and light blue. All other years from 1940-2023 are shown in grey. Source: Rohde, Bluesky (2026)

On social media, Rohde stated:

“Given the warming trend, this Nepali glacier had probably been thinning and weakening for years, or even decades. But it ultimately failed during the warmest week in one of its warmest years on record. It would be a hell of a coincidence if global warming wasn’t at least partially to blame.”

How have rising temperatures affected mountain stability?

Many experts have linked warming temperatures in the region to thawing permafrost – ground that has been frozen for at least two consecutive years, whose thickness ranges from less than one metre to more than a kilometre. 

Steiner is part of a research team that has been using sensors to monitor permafrost in the region since 2014. He tells Carbon Brief that it is “pretty clear” the permafrost has been thawing “very actively” at elevations as high as 5,200 metres above sea level “for many years”. He adds:

“This means that the ground has, over the last decades, moved from being in a solid state into – at least, periodically during the warm season – patchy ground where some is frozen and some isn’t…

“If you have frozen ground next to non-frozen ground, you have dynamics happening between that because there are different densities and there’s movement happening, which is conducive to interventional failure – and that we know from many other cases.”

Davies also points to the “degradation” of perennially frozen ground as a factor in the disaster:

“This permafrost acts as a glue to hold together the rocks and, as it melts, the rock can become weakened.”

Permafrost thaw can also result in saturated ground, says Davies, which adds “pressure in the joints” of rock and can “facilitate” failure. She continues:

“Sources of the water include melting permafrost and meltwater from the overlying glacier. We know that this event happened during a period of warmth, but in the absence of heavy precipitation, pointing to ice melt as the source of water.”

A 2025 study of rock and ice avalanches in High Mountain Asia found that more than two-thirds started in areas “where permafrost is probable”.

How have glaciers retreated in the affected region?

Glaciers – frozen rivers of ice holding three-quarters of the global freshwater supply – are extremely vulnerable to climate change.

In the Himalaya, the rate of glacier retreat has doubled since the late 20th century, according to a 2019 study in Science Advances.

The Global and Planetary Change study found that glacier area loss rates in the Langtang catchment increased more than fourfold from 1964 to 2023 – with melting accelerating after 2000.

It added that glaciers in the region also experienced “fragmentation” and “widespread thinning” over this period.

The study noted that this loss “coincided with elevation dependent warming”.

The figure below provides an overview of glacier loss in the Langtang catchment over 1964-2023, with orange, red and dark red indicating areas of retreat.

In addition, green dots note points of glacier fragmentation, while blue dots show separation and pink show disconnection.

Glacier loss in the Langtang catchment over 1964-2023. Orange, red and dark red indicate areas of retreat. Green dots note points of glacier fragmentation, while blue dots show separation and pink show disconnection. Credit: Silwal et al. (2026)

In comments released by the University of Reading, Prof Maria Shahgedanova, a climate scientist researching climate impacts on mountain glaciers, said that the glacier involved in the floods had “retreated by approximately 450 metres between 1990 and 2020”.

She adds that this “potentially reduce[d] the mechanical support provided by the glacier to the underlying rock slope”.

Speaking to Carbon Brief, Davies reiterates that the retreat of the glacier is “potentially a contributing factor” to the bedrock collapse and subsequent disaster.

This is because the removal of the glacier from the lower slopes leaves the “upper rock slopes less stable”, she says.

The most recent assessment by the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development said that glaciers in the Hindu Kush Himalaya region are “rapidly shrinking” as a result of climate change. (This region extends 3,500km over Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, China, India, Myanmar, Nepal and Pakistan.)

It said this loss is threatening the safety of the nearly two billion people, including by increasing the risk of “glacial lake outburst floods” (GLOFs). A GLOF is a sudden and catastrophic release of meltwater from a glacial lake. 

Although this disaster was not caused by a GLOF, it is known that climate change is making such events more likely.

Can the event be attributed to climate change?

In the wake of the flash floods, climate campaigners, media outlets and Nepalese politicians have linked them to human-caused climate change.

However, many climate scientists have cautioned that it is too early to say precisely how climate change impacted the disaster. 

Davies tells Carbon Brief:

“These events happen so quickly that the exact causes and drivers can take a little time to uncover, especially if the event was a surprise and there had been no monitoring system in place.”

When trying to determine the role human-caused climate change played in the intensity or likelihood of extreme weather, scientists turn to the field of “attribution science”. 

To date, no formal rapid attribution study has been produced that attempts to quantify whether – and how – climate change contributed to the event.

Scientists have noted that climate attribution of ice-rock avalanches – which are typically driven by a variety of factors – remains limited, in part because of the lack of a long-term observational record of previous collapses in high mountain areas.

Meanwhile, the studies that do exist stop short of directly linking such disasters to climate change. For example, the authors of a 2021 study into the Chamoli ice-rock avalanche concluded that “we cannot attribute this individual disaster specifically to climate change”. 

However, they added, the “possibly increasing frequency of high-mountain slope instabilities can likely be related to observed atmospheric warming and corresponding long-term changes in cryospheric conditions (glaciers and permafrost)”.

In the aftermath of the disaster, many researchers have similarly highlighted that climate change could not be singled out as the cause of the disaster, even if warming likely increased the probability of its occurrence.

On the Climate Brink substack, Carbon Brief’s climate science contributor Dr Zeke Hausfather noted that a “definitive single-event attribution” of the more recent disaster “may never be possible” due to the “messy causality of rock-ice avalanches”.

However, he added that both the existing scientific literature and “essentially every scientist working on these hazards point in the same direction” – namely, that warming is making such events more likely in the Himalaya.

Steiner tells Carbon Brief it might be possible to attribute different factors that played a role in the disasters to climate change – for instance, the recession of the glacier – but it would be more difficult to do so for the event as a whole.

Part of the reason for this, he says, is that rock failures in this region of the Himalaya have occurred for millennia, well before humans started altering the climate. 

However, he continues:

“The physics of it is not something that has been made possible by climate change. This could have happened without it. But the chance of it happening – and the likelihood of it happening five years after a previous, similar event [in Chamoli] – we, as the scientific community, can be pretty confident about that [being increased because of a changing climate].

“This is because so many of the changes that we know are related to climate change can potentially drive the build-up to eventual failure.”

Ultimately, says Davies, a “careful attribution study is needed, but it is hard to argue that the rapidly warming climate is not having an effect in these regions”. She adds:

“A single event may have multiple drivers, but we are seeing an increase in these events and are likely to see more as the permafrost and glacier melt continues.”

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