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Christopher Wright is the principal analyst at CarbonBridge, a decarbonisation consulting firm.

Less than two months ago, Colombia hosted the world’s first international conference on Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels. This weekend, however, it appears that Colombia’s first ever leftist presidency has ended. Far-right candidate Abelardo de la Espriella, who was last week strongly endorsed by Donald Trump, will not only take the reins of government but also steer the future of Colombia’s energy transition.

As the world’s sixth-largest coal exporter, and fourth largest oil exporter in Latin America, Colombia plays a critical role in the world’s energy markets. However, this role had shrunk under President Gustavo Petro’s administration, as it sought to proactively shift the country away from its fossil-fuel based economy, ahead of a potential oil and gas production shortage over the next decade. 

That could all change as De la Espriella’s takes power. Calling himself the Tiger (“El Tigre”), he has promised to focus on deregulation, exploit oil extraction “to the maximum” and leverage the energy sector as a key “engine of growth”.

Colombia’s world-leading energy transition

Over the last four years, Colombia has embarked on one of the most rapid and holistic energy transitions anywhere in the world. Shortly after coming to power in 2022, the government of Gustavo Petro halted new oil and gas exploration contracts, suspended all hydraulic fracking pilots, and pledged to end the development of new unabated coal power plants. 

While many of these moves faced domestic and legislative challenges, they were widely praised in climate circles around the world.

Colombia soon became a pivotal member of the Powering Past Coal Alliance, the Beyond Oil and Gas Alliance and the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Alliance. It then went on to host the biodiversity COP in 2024, launch a $40-billion climate transition investment portfolio, and famously, host the Santa Marta conference earlier this year.

While fossil fuels still comprise around 7% of Colombia’s GDP and 56% of its total exports, there were already signs that the transition policies had begun to have an effect.

Coal production last year fell to its lowest level in the last 22 years. According to the Colombian national association of coal producers, coal export volumes declined by 23% in 2025. While the oil sector has not seen an equivalent precipitous drop, production levels have remained historically low since COVID. 

What about its domestic electricity sector?

Since the 1970s Colombia’s electricity sector has been dominated by large hydro-electric dams, endowing it with some of the lowest carbon electrons anywhere in the world. Today, close to 70% of its electricity supply comes from these large dams.

However, electricity demand rose by close to 10% under the Petro government. To meet this demand, total installed electricity capacity has expanded by a similar figure, and solar power has made up over 70% of new electricity capacity since.

As a result, by the end of 2025, gas power generation in the electricity sector had hit its lowest point since 2018. Wind power had doubled, and solar power generation had risen by over 630%. Colombia’s renewable energy association predicts that, by the end of 2026, the country may be home to more than 4.2 GW of installed variable renewable energy capacity.

Far-right jumps on energy challenges

Despite the progress, the last three years have been an incredibly challenging period for Colombia’s energy sector. 

During Petro’s first two years in office, inflation remained above 10%, and interest rates stayed above 13% for most of 2023. This put a pause on new energy investments, as foreign direct investment fell by a third since 2022. 

On top of this, Colombia suffered through an El Niño-fuelled drought in 2023-24, crippling its hydro-electric power supply. This forced the country to turn to expensive gas and coal power, just as both sectors had effectively begun to pull back. This sent electricity prices through the roof, increasing nearly 40% in a single year, and led the Petro government to intervene with price controls, aiming to protect everyday Colombians.

• Jun 23, 2026 Energy UN chief says fossil fuel industry must cut methane for warming “relief” The UN Secretary-General urges drastic reductions in methane emissions, starting with the energy sector, to limit an expected overshoot of global warming beyond 1.5C Read more
• Jun 24, 2026 News COP31 presidency ‘open’ to reflecting Santa Marta in UN climate process, ministers say The two co-hosts want the gathering of over 60 governments in Colombia to be reflected in the official UNFCCC climate process Read more

Unsurprisingly, this made energy investors even more cautious. By the end of 2023, GDP growth had plummeted and renewable energy investments fell by 70%. Since then, all the major credit agencies have downgraded the country’s credit rating, making it even shakier to invest.

As a result, even with the new solar coming online, and 1.2 GW of additional hydro-power from the Ituango dam expected by 2028, the country could still face a major energy deficit by 2027, with permitting delays halting project developments, and 5.1 GW of approved projects unable to reach financial close.

Challenging domestic debate

This has led to a challenging domestic debate on energy policy. While 96% of Colombians want to see solar expand further, they have been understandably frustrated by high electricity bills and limited economic growth.

As a result, De la Espriella’s campaign, which has largely focused on taking a hardline stance to combat growing concerns around security and crime, was relatively open to solar power, but sought to blame Colombia’s current energy crisis on the speed of its current energy transition.

Branding himself as neither a climate denialist nor “dogmatic environmentalist” the incoming president who will take office in August, will likely seek to revoke the ban on new hydrocarbon exploration contracts, legalise fracking and restructure the national oil company, Ecopetrol.

While he is unlikely to cancel market-driven projects and may reduce regulatory hold-ups, it is also likely that he will shift away from the government’s recent overwhelming support for long-renewable energy and battery storage projects, which have driven much of the recent uptake in solar power. 

Future of energy transition in doubt

In a country of close to 54 million people, the final election count was only decided by about 250,000 votes. However, this weekend’s margin belies the magnitude of the shift that will likely now take place.

With the country facing a potential domestic energy shortage 2027, President-elect De la Espriella has promised to revitalise the hydrocarbon economy, shifting Colombia’s recent energy transition on an entirely new course.

While this may unlock some regulatory challenges hindering renewables roll-out, broader support mechanisms for solar projects will likely be dismantled, and the broader economic transition abandoned, along with its recent flurry of international climate alliances.

He will also take his place among a wave of right-leaning Presidents that have swept to power across the continent in the last 18 months. This has seen right-wing electoral victories across Ecuador, Bolivia, Chile, Costa Rica, Argentina and now Colombia, with Peru’s Keiko Fujimori potentially joining the club soon – pending a final vote count.

With the Brazilian elections scheduled for October, and run-off scenarios between Lula and Flávio Bolsonaro still far too close to call, 2026 will undoubtedly be a pivotal year for Latin America’s energy future.

The post Did Colombia’s energy transition just come to a halt? appeared first on Climate Home News.

How many heat deaths and system failures will governments accept as normal?

Source

Study finds agricultural use of Roundup promotes evolution of deadly superbugs

Source

The 2026 legislative session is well underway, and legislators are crafting new laws and regulations that determine how and where California builds, whether or not our natural landscapes are protected, and whether our communities have the tools they need to thrive.

Greenbelt Alliance is hard at work advocating to defend California’s natural and working lands and ensure our communities are resilient to a changing climate!

This year, we have prioritized support for a strong package of bills that have the potential to put new housing in climate-smart places, protect critical lands and habitat from the threat of development, and help realign growth patterns in the state to be more environmentally sustainable.

Learn more about our legislative priorities here and check out our most recent highlights below:

Accelerating Infill Housing Development:

Assembly Bill 2433 (Alvarez): Housing development: density bonus
Greenbelt Alliance is proud to co-sponsor this bill, which builds on California’s existing Density Bonus Law, a tool that allows developers to build more homes on a parcel than zoning typically permits in exchange for including more affordable homes. 

AB2433 makes four key improvements: 

1. Creates additional incentives for projects with affordable ownership units for low- and moderate-income families; 
2. Clarifies that 100% affordable housing projects can access the “Double Density Bonus” established by AB 1287; 
3. Establishes a by-right approval pathway for infill projects meeting AB 130 criteria; and 
4. Requires local governments to proactively notify developers when their projects qualify for density bonus benefits. 

Together, these changes aim to reduce local resistance, cut regulatory uncertainty, and make the program easier to use, particularly for ownership housing and 100% affordable projects.

Assembly Bill 1903 (Wicks and Wilson): Construction defects reforms California’s construction defect liability laws to revive condo and townhouse construction, which has fallen roughly 90% from its mid-2000s peak. Under current law, homeowners’ associations have a 10-year window to sue developers over construction defects, and insurance companies essentially assume all HOA condo projects will eventually be sued, resulting in policies that cost 3 to 4 times more per unit than equivalent rental projects. 

The bill addresses this by strengthening the pre-litigation right-to-repair process, giving builders a clear opportunity to inspect and fix defects before costly litigation begins. It preserves homebuyers’ rights to seek legal recourse for serious, unrepaired defects, but redirects disputes toward resolution rather than treating litigation as the default first step.

Assembly Bill 2074 (Haney): Regional transit hub districts: downtown housing developments. This bill targets California’s seven largest cities (those with populations over 400,000) and requires each to designate a “downtown transit hub district” with uniform state zoning standards, including a 150-foot height baseline and at least 25% of each district, allowing buildings up to 450 feet. Residential projects meeting the bill’s labor standards would qualify for streamlined, by-right ministerial approval, removing the discretionary barriers that currently slow downtown housing production. 

AB2074  also creates a state-backed revolving loan fund administered by the California Housing Finance Agency to provide low-interest construction financing for qualifying projects, which is repaid upon completion to keep the fund self-sustaining. The bill responds to two overlapping crises: a severe statewide housing shortage and the ongoing underperformance of downtown cores following the pandemic-era shift to remote and hybrid work, with office vacancy rates in some California downtowns exceeding 30%.

Sustainable Land-Use:

Senate Bill 1087 (Cabaldon): Transportation planning: sustainable communities strategies: transportation funding programs. This is one of the most important bills of the session, SB1087 updates California’s sustainable communities strategies, our framework for reducing greenhouse gas emissions through realignment of regional growth practices across the state.

Protecting Natural and Working Lands:

Senate Bill 1250 (Cortese): State highway system: wildlife connectivity
requires our state transportation agency (Caltrans) to formally integrate wildlife connectivity into its transportation planning by establishing it as an official performance objective within the agency’s asset management system, with clear connectivity targets required in its management plan. 

SB1250 also improves inter-agency collaboration and creates opportunities for public input as Caltrans develops an inventory of wildlife connectivity needs. The legislation responds to decades of development that have fragmented natural habitats across California, with roads and infrastructure cutting off species from food, water, mates, and migration routes. Habitat fragmentation raises the risk of inbreeding, disease, and population decline, and limits species’ ability to respond to climate shifts, wildfires, and other environmental pressures.

Senate Bill 994 (Cabaldon): Local agencies: nondisclosure agreements
This bill prohibits local government officials and their staff from entering into nondisclosure agreements related to public business that would prevent them from sharing information with their agency’s governing body. The bill extends to local government a protection the Legislature already applied to state legislators through AB1370 in 2025, creating consistent standards for democratic accountability across all levels of government. 

Greenbelt Alliance’s core work depends on open, transparent land-use planning processes, and the organization has repeatedly seen private interests operating in the shadows of public decisions lead to outcomes that harm communities, natural lands, and the environment. NDAs between local officials and private development interests are precisely the kind of arrangement that can enable large-scale sprawl proposals to advance without full public deliberation, which is the type of harmful development Greenbelt was founded to resist. Because the most consequential decisions about land, growth, and sustainability happen at the local level every day, SB 994’s protections are especially important to our mission. The bill reinforces the principle that sound land-use decisions must emerge from democratic processes where all officials are fully empowered to act in the public interest.

 

Every year, Greenbelt Alliance selectsto further our mission to educate, advocate, and collaborate, ensuring the Bay Area’s lands and communities are resilient to a changing climate.

The post Our 2026 Legislative Endorsement Priorities appeared first on Greenbelt Alliance.

Join us for an afternoon of high-level discussions at London Climate Action Week on what resource-rich developing countries need to make new critical mineral partnerships genuinely beneficial.

We are bringing together high-level speakers from mineral producing countries, the finance sector, the UN and civil society to reflect on the latest developments in resource diplomacy and ask what’s next for mineral governance.

Agenda

02:00 PM
Welcome
MC, Gabriela Flores, NRGI

02:00 PM – 02:30 PM
In conversation: Minerals governance – what’s next?
Celine Kauffman, IDDRI, Patrick Schröder, Chatham House, Sascha Raabe, UNIDO (online), Moderated by Chloé Farand, Climate Home News

We will explore G7 outcomes and the practical steps the G7 and G20 can take to advance mineral governance and responsible mining, with a spotlight on how the UK can seize its 2027 G20 presidency to drive this critical agenda forward.

02:30 PM – 03:00 PM
Tracking allegations of abuse in mining for transition minerals
Phil Bloomer, BHRC, Ketakandriana Rafitoson, Resource Justice Network

The Business and Human Rights Centre presents its 2026 Transition Minerals Tracker update and unveils new data on allegations of human rights abuse linked to the extraction of bauxite, cobalt, copper, iron ore, lithium, manganese, nickel, rare earth elements and zinc – and the companies behind them.

03:00 PM – 03:30 PM
Break

03:30 PM – 04:30 PM
Can finance clean up mining? The role of investors and lenders
Stephen Barrie, Church of England Pensions Board/ Global, Pavel Laberko, Emerging Markets Investors Alliance, Margaux Day, Accountability Counsel

Finance can be a powerful force for raising environmental and social standards in mining — but only if financial actors remain in the sector rather than walking away. This session examines how investors and lenders can drive accountability and responsible practices in transition minerals, and whether the answer lies in divestment, engagement, or stronger oversight from civil society. Moderated by Caroline Avan, BHRC.

04:30 PM – 05:50 PM
What should equitable mineral partnerships look like?
Eric Ngang, African Resources Watch (Afrewatch), Thomas Scurfield, NRGI , Tobias Musonda, Director of Policy and Planning, Zambia , Wen-Yu Weng, Ellen MacArthur Foundation.

As demand for critical minerals surges, the race to secure supply chains risks repeating the extractive models of the past. This session cuts to the heart of what truly equitable mineral partnerships look like — and what it will take to to move from principle to practice. Moderated by Chloé Farand, Climate Home News

06:00 PM
Closing
Amir Shafaie, NRGI

The post Live from LCAW – Raw diplomacy: Can new mineral alliances deliver a just energy transition? appeared first on Climate Home News.

Melody Ifechi Enyinnayaat at the Zero Waste Forum in Türkiye CODAF Nigeria, Zero Waste Farmers Network CODAF Nigeria, Zero Waste Parliament CODAF Nigeria, Waste Picker Organising

By Melody Ifechi Enyinnaya, Community Development Advocacy Foundation

Every evening in Nigeria’s cities, smoke rises from open dumpsites. It is easy to mistake it for burning waste, but it’s not. It is methane, one of the most potent greenhouse gases, silently escaping into our atmosphere at an alarming rate from mountains of rotting organic waste. 

Nigeria generates between 25 and 32 million tons of municipal solid waste every year. Less than a third gets collected. Almost none of it gets properly treated. The rest ends up in open dumps, where it rots, releasing gases that accelerate the very climate crisis our communities are already battling. I know this, not just from research. I know it from standing in those communities.

Between 5 and 7 June 2026, I was in Istanbul, Turkey, to attend the Zero Waste Forum, a global gathering of waste practitioners, scientists, policymakers, and community advocates. 

For well over three days and twenty-two sessions, I heard the same urgent message repeated from every corner of the world: the waste sector is one of the fastest, most cost-effective places to act on climate change. And the action needed is not complicated. It is mostly being blocked.

‘’The waste sector is one of the fastest, most cost-effective places to act on climate change’’

One session’s title stayed with me long after I left the room: “Organic Waste Is a Methane Story, Not a Waste Story”. The science is stark. When food scraps, market waste, and agricultural residues are dumped in landfills/dumpsites, rather than composted or reused, they decompose without oxygen and release methane gas. The fastest way to reduce these emissions is simply to stop putting organic waste in the ground. This is not a solution for tomorrow, but for now, because there indeed is a climate emergency.

Back home in Nigeria, some communities in Lagos, Abuja, Benin City, and Jos are already doing exactly that. These communities in the different cities are not communities that appear on international climate agenda. They are agrarian communities where households generate organic waste daily, including food scraps, crop residue, and market leftovers, and where, until recently, this waste had one destination: the dumpsite.

In 2024, members of the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives (GAIA AFRICA) in Nigeria, CODAF, GKF, SEDi, PAVE, CfEW and SRADev launched the Multi-Solving Action for Methane Reduction in Nigeria (MAMRN) project in communities across Lagos, Abuja, Benin City and Jos. The name describes exactly what the project stands for; it solves multiple problems at once. Climate, Waste, Livelihoods, Food security, and Governance all through one system.

At the centre of that system are the Material Recovery Facilities (MRFs), purpose-built community hubs where household and market organic waste is collected, sorted, and transformed. Organic matter becomes compost and animal feed. Plastics are recovered for recycling. Nothing goes to the dumpsite. The methane that would have risen from those rotting heaps of waste simply never forms. But the facility is only part of the story.

In Istanbul, Elizabeth Nsimadala, President, Eastern Africa Farmers Federation (EAFF), made a statement that stopped me mid-note: “Zero waste is in the soil, not in the trash”.

In Nigeria, smallholder farmers are being trained through the MAMRN project to compost organic waste rather than burn or dump it. When a farmer composts crop residue instead of setting it alight, three things happen simultaneously: methane emissions fall, chemical fertiliser costs decrease, and soil health improves. These are not three separate wins. They are one decision, understood correctly. The farmers in the MAMRN project do not need to be convinced that their soil matters. They already know it. 

What the MAMRN project provides them is technical support, community infrastructure, and market connections that make composting economically rational, not just environmentally admirable. This is what the global conversation in Istanbul kept circling back to: the most effective zero waste solutions are not the ones imported from outside. They are the ones built around what communities already know, already need, and already have the capacity to do.

There is a community of people in every Nigerian city who have been practising resource recovery for decades without recognition, equipment, or protection. They are Waste Pickers. Every day, they move through markets and streets collecting plastics, metals, and organic matter that would otherwise end up in a dumpsite. 

By one estimate, informal waste workers divert millions of tonnes of recyclable material from landfills globally every year. They do it without government remuneration. Without a formal contract. Without data being kept on their contribution.

“Zero waste is in the soil, not in the trash”, Elizabeth Nsimadala, President, (EAFF)

In Istanbul, a session on Global South zero waste leadership described waste pickers plainly: they are not a problem to be managed. They are climate actors. They deserve recognition, integration, and resources.

MAMRN project implementing organisations began to drive this work seriously prior to Istanbul.

At the launch of the Zero Waste Parliament in Lagos, a community governance body was created under the MAMRN project to give residents a formal voice in waste policy. The President of the Association of Scraps and Waste Pickers of Lagos was elected as its first Speaker. Not as a symbolic gesture. But as a statement of fact, the people who understand waste best must lead the institutions that govern it. 

The Parliament brings together waste pickers, farmers, women, youth, and community leaders to identify problems, propose solutions, and engage government institutions and policymakers on the policies that affect their communities. It is not waiting to be consulted. It is leading, and when the Parliament engages government agencies on waste policies, it is not asking for a favour. It is demanding accountability. This is what zero waste governance looks like when it is built from the ground up.

When people hear the phrase “zero waste”, they often imagine a distant, utopian future. A lifestyle trend for the privileged. A technical aspiration that requires perfect infrastructure and unlimited funding. The MAMRN project sites are evidence that it is none of those things.

Zero waste in those communities looks like a market woman bringing her food scraps to the MRF instead of throwing them into an open drain. It looks like a farmer spreading compost instead of buying chemical fertilizer that they cannot afford. It looks like a waste picker sitting in a Parliament chamber, putting a name and a face to the tonnes of material he recovers every week. It looks like a community that has decided its waste is a resource and built a system to prove it. None of this happened because the government mandated it. It happened because a community was organised, informed, and supported to act.

We will not pretend the system is complete or that the challenges are solved. Nigeria’s waste policies remain fragmented. Enforcement is weak. And the climate finance that could scale projects like MAMRN from one community to many more remains largely out of reach for frontline organisations.

In Istanbul, I sat in a session titled “Governing Zero Waste: From Political Commitment to Climate Delivery”. The core message was uncomfortable: governments have made enough commitments. The problem is delivery. Civil society cannot afford to wait for political will; it must build it.

Nigeria has pledged methane reduction targets under the Global Methane Pledge. It has signed international climate agreements. But commitments made in conference rooms do not move waste off dumpsites. Community-built systems do. 

The MAMRN project is proof that those systems can exist. An MRF, A Zero Waste Farmers Network, A Zero Waste Parliament, Zero Waste Ambassadors moving through households, changing how families think about what they throw away. These are not pilot schemes waiting for government approval. They are working models waiting to be scaled.

Scaling them requires money, and the global system is failing communities here.

At the Forum, every conversation about finance ended the same way: the money exists, but it is not reaching the organisations doing the work. The Green Climate Fund, multilateral climate mechanisms, and circular economy investment are operational tools. 

But the frontline groups in Nigeria and across Africa that are building zero waste systems from scratch face structural barriers that keep that finance out of reach. National governments receive the funds. The funds do not reach communities. This has to change. Not some time in the future, but now. Because the climate window is closing, and the solutions are already here. 

The zero waste transition will not happen at scale until climate finance flows to the communities already doing the work, not just to the governments that promise to.

Nigeria does not need to wait for a perfect policy environment or unlimited resources to begin solving its waste crisis. It needs to scale what is already working. The MAMRN project is proof that community-based zero waste systems are not aspirational. 

They are operational, they reduce methane, they strengthen livelihoods, they build governance, they include the people most often left out of the climate conversation, including waste pickers, smallholder farmers, market women and put them at the centre of the solution.

What the global community did in Istanbul was name, with great precision and urgency, the future we need. What GAIA’s Nigeria members and the community we serve are doing is building it. The zero waste future is not waiting to be invented. In pockets of Lagos, Abuja, Jos, Benin-City and in communities across the Global South that the world rarely looks at, it is already alive. 

In Nigeria, the zero waste future is not coming. It is here and working.

That is the kind of future worth fighting for.

ENDS.

The post In Istanbul, The World Talked About Zero Waste; In Nigeria, We Are Building It first appeared on GAIA.

Headline News:

• “Giant Shipping Firm Dips A Small Toe Into Wind Power ” • DHL’s latest decarbonization step is being enabled by its French branch, VELA Transportation. VELA has focused it business on pallets packed into ships that are small enough to be pushed across the Atlantic crossing, with wind power alone providing for their propulsion. [CleanTechnica]

Cargo catamaran (Courtesy of VELA Transportation)

• “Groups Launch Ads Targeting Colorado’s Third District Over Big Oil Immunity Effort” • This week the Sierra Club and Make Polluters Pay released a series of ads targeting Representative Jeff Hurd and raising awareness in Colorado’s 3rd district about a congressional Republican effort to give fossil fuel corporations immunity from climate damages. [CleanTechnica]
• “Congress passes war powers resolution, offering rare rebuke of Trump” • The Senate adopted an Iran war powers resolution by a 50-48 vote in a symbolic, yet rare, rebuke of President Donald Trump. Four Republican Senators, Bill Cassidy, Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, and Rand Paul, voted for the resolution. It had passed earlier this month in the House. [ABC News]
• “Trump Administration Announces $17.5 Billion In Loans For Ten New Large Nuclear Reactors” • The Trump administration is providing $17.5 billion to speed development of ten large nuclear reactors to meet the rising power demands of big data centers. Nuclear plant construction could begin by 2030 and they could start operating in the mid-2030s. [ABC News]
• “‘No Immunity for Big Oil’ Campaign Delivers 135K Signatures to Democratic Leadership” • Former Washington Governor Jay Inslee and the “No Immunity for Big Oil” campaign will deliver a letter signed by 390 organizations and over 135,000 people to Congress urging rejection of proposals to shield fossil fuels from accountability. [Center for Climate Integrity]

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

A hopeful narrative in need of consistent implementation

This past June 5–7, GAIA was present at the second Global Zero Waste Forum, organized by the Zero Waste Foundation in Istanbul, Türkiye, under the theme “Road to Antalya: Zero Waste as Climate Action.” The attendance was massive, with over 5,000 participants from 183 countries. Keynote presentations were delivered by Türkiye’s President Recep Erdoğan, First Lady Emine Erdoğan (Honorary President of the Zero Waste Foundation), and Samed Ağırbaş (President of the Foundation and Climate High-Level Champion for COP31).

For those working to transition from linear waste management systems to zero waste, the Forum was a pleasant surprise. The program was well-designed and reflected the true spirit of zero waste by emphasizing upstream interventions and framing zero waste as a driver of systemic change. Discussions on reuse, repair, financing the transition to zero waste, and recognizing waste pickers were among the essential conversations needed to move away from wasteful societies. It was refreshing to attend a mainstream waste event where the focus was not on landfills, incinerators, or extravagant and expensive methods for processing single-use plastics that should not be produced in the first place. Neil Khor, Advisor to the President of the UN Habitat Assembly and to the Zero Waste Foundation, summed up the spirit of the Forum when he stated: “Landfill and incineration are not zero waste.”

It is also promising to see a UN member state advocating for zero waste and gaining traction among other governments and actors in the waste and climate sectors. Although there is still no universally accepted definition of zero waste, the approach presented at the Forum offers hope by clearly moving in the right direction. The zero waste movement’s task now is to advocate for this orientation to remain on track and avoid being co-opted by the waste management industry and others seeking to maintain the status quo of linear waste systems.

The strong connection between zero waste and climate was another major strength of the Forum. Following the COP31 Presidency’s push to place zero waste as a top priority in the Climate Action Agenda, the Forum made significant progress in demonstrating how zero waste is a cross-cutting strategy for climate change mitigation and adaptation. Several panels explored how action can be taken at different levels—from cities to international agencies.

However, the lack of local civil society representatives among speakers and participants was obvious and regrettable. Many organizations and research groups are doing fantastic work on waste and climate change and should have been invited. Their participation would have enriched the panels with real-world experiences and knowledge, while also paving the way for zero waste implementation in Türkiye. After the Forum, many GAIA members and allies met with the İstanbul Geri Dönüşüm İşçileri Derneği (Istanbul’s Recycling Workers Association – ISGDIDER) at one of the materials recovery facilities they manage. We learned firsthand about the experience of those who sustain the country’s recycling system despite significant challenges and lack of recognition. These workers’ experience is central to advancing zero waste in Türkiye, and it would have been invaluable for Forum participants to learn about their work and hear their perspectives.

The Forum left many of us with a sense of hope, grounded in the right focus of the discussions: viewing zero waste as a way to drive systemic change and address climate change. Yet, important gaps remain: How does this translate into practice? How is Türkiye advancing zero waste implementation internally? As Lhermie Areja, a government official from Siquijor, Philippines, stated at the Forum: “Zero waste is not a dream. It is a decision.” And as noted in the declaration signed by over 120 civil society organizations, the zero waste agenda must reinforce, not replace, a binding global roadmap for fossil fuel phase-out.

The run-up to COP31 offers Türkiye an opportunity to build a zero waste legacy internally and demand greater consistency in taking action and creating pathways for implementing commitments. For instance, the target announced by the COP31 Presidency to “halve the growth in global waste by 2035” is directionally correct but lacks the clarity needed for policy credibility. If COP31 is serious about a zero waste agenda, success must be measured in concrete outcomes: absolute reductions in waste generation, measurable methane cuts from organic waste, reduced plastic production, a shift of climate finance toward zero waste implementation, and a just transition for waste pickers and waste workers.

#image_title #image_title #image_title GAIA’s Cecilia Allen Recycling is garbage without waste pickers! Zero Waste Stories from the Global South: Nipe Fagio in Tanzania, Instituto Polis in Brazil, Mother Earth Foundation in the Philippines Zero Waste Europe’s Joan Marc Simon GAIA Delegation Site Visit to an IAWP Affiliate Facility

The post GAIA at the Global Zero Waste Forum first appeared on GAIA.

Colombia and the Netherlands, which co-hosted the first conference the first conference on transitioning away from fossil fuels earlier this year, say they have held “constructive” discussions on bringing the meeting’s outcomes to the COP31 climate summit.

Speaking on the sidelines of London Climate Action Week, the outgoing Colombian environment minister and Dutch climate policy minister, said COP31 presidencies Australia and Türkiye were “open” to suggestions on how to reflect the discussions in Santa Marta on transitioning away from coal, oil and gas at the end-of-year summit.

What format this might take, “we don’t know yet,” said Colombian minister Irene Vélez Torres.

“We had this very interesting conversation with COP31 and they were clearly open for suggestions about what is needed in the discussion in Türkiye, and we were explicit about the need to engage with the phasing out of fossil fuels,” she said.

• Jun 18, 2026 News Bonn climate talks end in “gridlock” on adaptation and emissions-cutting Splits between developed and developing countries over finance and science held back progress on key areas of climate action, leaving disappointment and much work for COP31 Read more
• Jun 18, 2026 Comment The UN climate process was built for negotiation – now it must support implementation Consultations are underway on reforms to streamline the talks, which take too long to produce outcomes that are often not adequate to tackle the scale of the climate crisis Read more

Australia and Türkiye will jointly preside over the COP31 climate conference, which is taking place in the Turkish resort city of Antalya in November. Türkiye will lead on the action agenda, referring to initiatives that lie outside of the formal negotiations, while Australia will chair the negotiations.

Dutch minister Stientje van Veldhoven said the outcomes of the Santa Marta conference could be part of COP31’s action agenda,

“We are here to facilitate action on one particular part of what COP has agreed to do, namely transitioning away fossil fuels so there is a very logical connection to the COP process, and we will make sure that we continue to bring this coalition of the willing, this coalition of the doers back into the COP process,” she said.

At the event in London, UN secretary-general António Guterres urged countries to reduce their fossil fuel dependencies, arguing that “economies based on renewables are much more secure than economies based on the imports of fossil fuels”. He added that the transition to renewables is “unstoppable”.

European, island states seek clear future for global roadmap to cut fossil fuels

Including the fossil fuel transition in UN climate negotiations, rather than the action agenda, is likely to be controversial among governments. While nations agreed to transition away from fossil fuels at COP28, at COP30 last year Saudi Arabia, Russia and others successfully opposed a push to agree for a roadmap to be drawn up on how to meet this goal.

Despite the lack of agreement, the Brazilian government which presided over COP30, is drawing up a global roadmap. But the Russian government has said it opposes this roadmap being referenced in UN climate talks.

Finding agreement on referencing the Santa Marta process in UN climate talks is also likely to be difficult. Last week in Bonn, the chair of the African Group of Negotiators, Antwi-Boasiako Amoah from Ghana, criticised “minilateral initiatives and coalitions of the willing” as distracting political attention and lacking the legitimacy that comes from multilateral climate negotiations, where any country can veto anything.

Strengthening the COP process

The Santa Marta conference kick-started a diplomatic process outside of the formal UN climate negotiations to offer a space for governments to make progress and find solutions to wean their economies away from fossil fuels.

Around 60 countries, including many large fossil-fuel producers attended the meeting after being frustrated by failed attempts to get UN climate talks to sign off on the global roadmap away from fossil fuels. They agreed to work towards voluntary national roadmaps away from fossil fuels.

A 170-page report summarising the outcome of the conference published on Tuesday says that the Santa Marta coalition of countries will seek to influence the formal UN negotiations.

The report says Colombia proposed to build “a strong coalition to bring these discussions to the second Global Stocktake”, a process in which countries will review climate progress and agree on measures forward at COP33 in 2028.

A sign shows the logo and themes of the First Conference on Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels in Santa Marta, Colombia, April 2026 (Photo: Colombian Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development)

Colombia also suggested organizing “a high-level event during the next COP presidency” to discuss Santa Marta outcomes, while Italy proposed an event during the UN General Assembly.

“We will make sure that Santa Marta conference is not a separate, parallel process to the COP” but “strengthens” the negotiations without becoming a formal part of them, said van Veldhoven, adding that the process will remain “a conversation” to demonstrate that transforming economies away from fossil fuels is possible.

COP30 CEO Ana Toni from Brazil told a separate event in London that the response to the second Global Stocktake “will probably need several pages” to deliver an agreed commitment to transition away from fossil fuels. The Santa Marta report says that Brazil’s global roadmap should also be included in the response.

Colombian election signals u-turn

Colombia, which has been one of the most proactive countries promoting a global transition away from fossil fuels, is likely to reverse course after the election of right-wing candidate Abelardo de la Espriella as the country’s new president at a general election on Sunday.

The newly elected president has branded himself as an ally of US president Donald Trump, and has promised to reverse a current halt on new coal, oil and gas licenses, as well as venture into “responsible fracking” without overlapping with protected areas or high-mountain páramo ecosystems.

Vélez Torres said the current Colombian government has already “delivered to the international community and to our sub-national forces, social forces, movements, academia” a process to keep the energy transition moving forward.

She told Climate Home News she hoped the work the government had done could be picked up by social movements in Colombia to demand change from the incoming government. “What we did cannot be erased, and we have had our voices heard, and we have been as radical as any other government could have been.”

The minister said the elections have left the country facing a “dark night” that “can really shift the politics in terms of energy transition and environmental protection”, but said she is certain that their “legacy will continue being there”.

The post COP31 presidency ‘open’ to reflecting Santa Marta in UN climate process, ministers say appeared first on Climate Home News.

After a year of change in South America, Cameron Baillie profiles the ‘new right’ leaders threatening to deluge the 2020s’ ‘pink wave’ – and the communities resisting them

The post Nueva derecha: Latin America’s new authoritarians appeared first on Red Pepper.

Solar geoengineering is no silver bullet against the climate crisis, but rejecting it categorically in the name of preserving the planet overlooks our entanglement with the atmosphere. Drawing on feminist neo-materialism, Anni Pokela proposes a different approach: purposeful, accountable participation in atmospheric becoming from within the relationship.

“It surrounds us, penetrates us, and we are barely aware of it.” As philosopher Emanuele Coccia writes in The Life of Plants (2018), the atmosphere is our first world – “the sphere of breath, the medium in which everything that lives is wholly immersed.” And it is changing at an accelerating pace.

The latest assessment by climate scientist James Hansen and colleagues shows that the pace of global warming has accelerated from 0.18 to 0.27 degrees Celsius per decade – over 50 per cent faster than the average between 1970 and 2010. The researchers estimate that we will cross the 2-degree threshold by 2045.

In this context, it makes sense that a growing number of actors have begun considering emergency measures such as solar radiation geoengineering: the idea of deliberately injecting reflective particles into the stratosphere to cool the planet by deflecting some of the Sun’s radiation back into space.

For many environmentalists and ecofeminists, the very concept is an affront: a masculinist, technocratic fantasy that treats the Earth as a machine to be tuned rather than a living system to be respected. The instinct is often to reject it categorically.

I understand that instinct, because I have felt it myself. But I have come to believe that categorical rejection is neither the most responsible nor the most fruitful position available to us.

The debate as it stands

Solar radiation modification (SRM), most commonly discussed in the form of stratospheric aerosol injection (SAI), has been modelled and theorised for over 50 years. The idea is inspired by what volcanoes do naturally: when Mount Tambora, on the island of Sumbawa in present-day Indonesia, erupted in 1815, the massive cloud of particles it released cooled the global climate by roughly one degree Celsius for years. SAI would attempt something similar by design – aircraft or high-altitude balloons releasing reflective particles into the stratosphere to create a partial sunshade – only with less sulfur, or even potentially a less toxic, more bio-based particle.

SRM does not remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, and it does not address the root cause of climate change. It is, at best, a temporary response that could buy time while the deeper, structural work of decarbonisation continues. Yet, the attention it receives is growing, driven by an uncomfortable reality: we are running out of that very time.

In ecofeminist circles, geoengineering has been met with powerful and, in many ways, justified resistance.

Despite this growing interest, there is currently no international framework governing SRM research or deployment. No large-scale field experiments are underway, and the research remains dominated by climate modelling in Global North institutions. Additionally, private actors such as the startup Stardust Solutions are taking the lead, raising questions about public oversight and accountability. And this is precisely the problem: the conversation about whether and how to investigate these technologies is happening without most of the world at the table. As the UN Environment Programme’s Expert Panel has stressed, there needs to be significantly more research into the potential impacts of SRM on communities already on the frontlines of climate change.

The feminist refusal

Within environmental thought, and particularly in ecofeminist circles, geoengineering has been met with powerful and, in many ways, justified resistance. Although SRM would be, at best, a complementary solution to decarbonisation, environmentalists have raised significant concerns about it being used as an argument to delay the more systemic transition away from fossil fuels and overconsumption.

Meanwhile, feminist scholars have exposed the masculinist, techno-scientific culture that permeates the field: the dominance of male-led research teams from the Global North, the privileging of quantitative methods over qualitative or community-based knowledge, and the deployment of fatalistic narratives that frame SRM as an inevitable necessity or a “neutral” silver bullet.

The Hands Off Mother Earth Alliance, a coalition of civil society groups and feminist advocates, has articulated perhaps the most forceful collective opposition to geoengineering, calling it a perpetuation of the unjust industrial model that caused the climate crisis in the first place. Ecofeminist voices often invoke the Mother Earth metaphor to insist on the planet’s intrinsic worth and resist its instrumentalisation. These critiques rightly expose that geoengineering is not a neutral technical question but is fundamentally about values, power, and whose knowledge counts.

Yet, these critiques have three recurring limitations.

First, they tend to conflate the problematic ideologies behind geoengineering discourse with the technological mechanics themselves. The fact that current research culture is steeped in masculinist assumptions does not mean that the physics of SAI’s aerosol-radiation interactions are inherently patriarchal. The essentialist language that portrays SRM mechanics themselves as a hubristic, sometimes even phallistic, penetration into the natural system misses this important distinction. If the background assumptions were different – if the researchers, the questions, the governance, the values were different – would the critique remain the same?

Second, some critiques contain an inconsistency. They call for recognising our deep interconnection with the natural world while simultaneously treating atmospheric technology as something categorically external to it – as if restoring a local wetland were a relational act but reflecting sunlight were an alien violation. Some of the imagery used in anti-geoengineering advocacy conveys the idea that these technologies are comparable to a planet-sized wrench threatening to tinker with nature. This implicitly reinstates the nature-culture binary that feminist theory has spent decades trying to dismantle. If we truly are interconnectedly one with Mother Earth, how can we sustainably position technology as an inherent outsider to this configuration?

Third, there is a problem of scale. Feminist environmental thought has long prioritised local, situated, community-based knowledge and action – and rightly so. But when it comes to planetary atmospheric physics, localism alone cannot resolve the challenge. The atmosphere does not respect these boundaries. A farmer’s methane emissions in Finland and a monsoon system in South Asia are entangled in the same global climate. The exclusive emphasis on small-scale solutions, while morally appealing, risks proving inadequate at the planetary scale, where some of the most urgent decisions must be made.

A different way in

This is where feminist new materialism opens a different door – not to uncritical endorsement of geoengineering, but to a more honest and fruitful engagement with it.

The work of physicist and philosopher Karen River Barad, whose theory of agential realism is foundational to new materialist thought, offers tools for rethinking the relationship between humans, technology, and the atmosphere. Barad’s central concept is intra-action: the idea that distinct entities do not exist prior to their relations but emerge through them. Where conventional thinking assumes that separate entities – a particle, an atmosphere, and a research team, for example – come together and interact, Barad argues that they only come into being through their entanglement.

The question is not whether we participate in shaping the atmosphere but how.

Applied to SAI, this reframing is profound. The atmosphere is not a passive container waiting to receive aerosol particles or not, nor are those particles inert tools wielded by human controllers. What SAI would constitute, from a Baradian perspective, is a phenomenon – an ongoing material-discursive entanglement in which human decision-making, particle chemistry, stratospheric wind patterns, solar radiation, and surface ecosystems all participate agentially. The cooling effect does not simply happen to the atmosphere; it emerges through the specific configuration of all these entangled agencies.

This reframing does two critical things. First, it dissolves the comfortable binary between a “natural” atmosphere and an “engineered” one. Second, it dismantles the hubristic mindset that we could ever have complete control over the atmosphere. Both stances – protecting a pure system and seizing control of it – are revealed to be ontologically unsustainable.

Industrial emissions, shipping pollution and agricultural practices, to name a few, have been modifying the atmosphere for centuries. Climate scientist James Hansen himself has noted that the reduction of sulphur in shipping fuel – a clean air policy – inadvertently removed a cooling effect equivalent to what SAI proposes to create. In a real, material sense, we are not standing outside the atmosphere wondering whether to intervene. We are already geoengineering the planet. The question, therefore, is not whether we participate in shaping the atmosphere but how.

From intervention to intra-vention

Based on these considerations, I propose to replace the concept of “climate intervention”, which is conventionally used to describe geoengineering techniques, with the idea of climate intra-vention. Where intervention signals a procedure performed from the outside (an actor imposing change on a passive system) intra-vention designates something different: purposeful, accountable participation in atmospheric becoming from within the relationship.

This is not a semantic trick. The shift in framing would carry real consequences for how research is designed and governed. If SAI is understood as intra-action rather than intervention, then the models, metrics, and governance structures used in research are not neutral instruments of observation, but actively shape what the atmosphere becomes and what counts as relevant knowledge about it. Current SAI modelling, for instance, tends to prioritise global mean temperature as its primary metric. This makes temperature change visible and determinate while rendering other effects – regional precipitation shifts, monsoon stability, agricultural impacts – less prominent.

Different research practices would literally produce different phenomena. A modelling apparatus that centred, say, monsoon system stability or the lived experiences of communities in the Sahel, would not simply see SAI differently; it would literally bring a different version of SAI into being, with different boundaries, different risks, and different possibilities. This is what Barad means when they say that apparatuses are not static setups but are perpetually open to rearrangement. A patriarchal, technocratic configuration of SAI research is not the only possible one.

This is where feminist engagement with geoengineering becomes not just possible but urgently necessary. If how we set up SAI research actively produces what SAI is, then the values, perspectives, and power relations embedded in that setup matter enormously. Feminist principles of justice, care, transparency, and participatory knowledge production are not peripheral add-ons to the “real science”. They are constitutive of the science itself.

Care, not control

As climate impacts accelerate, interest in SRM technologies will only grow – whether feminists are at the table or not. If the field is abandoned to technocratic elites and private actors, the very outcomes that feminist critics most fear become more likely: unilateral deployment driven by profit, governance captured by powerful states, communities – particularly in the Global South – excluded from decisions that will reshape their climate.

The concerned scientists who launched the Solar Geoengineering Non-Use Agreement in 2022 called for immediate political action to prevent the “normalisation” of solar geoengineering as a climate policy option, arguing that it is neither necessary, desirable, nor governable in the current context. But as others have pointed out, if publicly funded, transparent research is banned, the field does not disappear. It simply moves into clandestine, unmonitored, private hands.

Feminist engagement with SAI can be understood as an act of care rather than an endorsement of control. Care, in the sense that feminist philosopher María Puig de la Bellacasa articulates it, is not about fixing or mastering but about attending to neglected realities, staying with troubling situations, and taking responsibility for the entanglements we are already part of. This means approaching SRM deliberation as a form of responsibility toward the communities already experiencing unbearable heat, failing harvests, and collapsing ecosystems; insisting that research is designed with justice at its centre, and that Indigenous communities, researchers in the Global South, and grassroots actors are not consulted after the fact but participate in shaping what research is prioritised, what SRM is understood to be and how that research looks like in practice.

Staying with the trouble

This framework does not solve all tensions. Most SRM research is still funded and governed by powerful institutions in the Global North, and profit motives, geopolitical competition, and blind techno-optimism are real forces in this space. There is a risk that the language of “intra-vention” and “care” could be co-opted to entrench business as usual.

Categorical rejection is not abstention. It is an act that excludes certain possibilities while enabling others.

There is also a temporal dilemma. Climate urgency is used to justify accelerating SRM research now, within existing structures, before the systemic transformation that justice demands has been achieved. But if we rush ahead, we risk consolidating the very systems that caused the crisis. On the other hand, if we wait for post-growth institutions and decolonial governance to emerge fully before investigating SRM, we may face tipping points that foreclose the possibility of such transformations.

There is no neat resolution to these contradictions. But holding these perspectives simultaneously is more honest and more productive than pretending they do not exist. Donna Haraway calls this “staying with the trouble”: refusing both the seductions of despair and the false comforts of easy answers.

What Barad’s philosophy adds is the insight that inaction is not a neutral zero position. In a world where the atmosphere is already being reshaped by human activity, choosing not to investigate how it might be reshaped more deliberately is itself a form of participation in atmospheric becoming, with its own consequences and its own accountabilities. Categorical rejection is not abstention. It is an act that excludes certain possibilities while enabling others – and we are responsible for those exclusions.

Historically, feminist thought has been at its most powerful when it has refused purity. When it has held contradictions, and when it has insisted on staying engaged with messy, compromised realities rather than retreating to the moral high ground. The atmosphere – this all-encompassing fluid that we breathe, that we are reshaping, that is reshaping us – demands nothing less.

Lanzamiento estudio de caso. ©RADA, Temuco.

La comuna impulsó una transformación de su sistema de gestión de residuos basada en compostaje, reciclaje, educación ambiental y participación ciudadana. Aplicando la estrategia “basura cero”, ha reducido la disposición final de residuos, pasando de 3.797 toneladas en 2021 a 1.318 toneladas en 2022, disminuyendo además en un 65% el gasto por la gestión de residuos enviados al relleno sanitario de Los Ángeles.

23 de junio, 2026

El nuevo estudio de caso “Melipeuco Cero Basura” elaborado por la Red de Acción por los Derechos Ambientales, documenta cómo esta comuna de La Araucanía logró avanzar hacia un modelo de gestión de residuos basado en la prevención, el reciclaje y el compostaje comunitario.

Antes de 2021, Melipeuco enfrentaba una serie de problemas asociados a la recolección y disposición de residuos. Cuando el único camión que había para la recolección domiciliaria fallaba, las bolsas de basura se acumulaban por días o semanas. Además, la comuna contaba con un vertedero municipal sin autorización sanitaria ubicado dentro de la comunidad mapuche Juan Meli, lo que llevó a que fuera uno de los casos denunciados por racismo ambiental ante el Comité para la Eliminación de la Discriminación Racial de la ONU el año 2007.

La situación cambió cuando el municipio impulsó una nueva estrategia, orientada a recuperar el control público de la gestión de residuos y avanzar hacia un modelo de basura cero. 

Entre las primeras medidas se incluyó la administración municipal directa de la recolección y transporte de residuos domiciliarios, lo que permitió reducir significativamente las cantidades enviadas a disposición final y disminuir los costos asociados para la comuna.

El mayor avance del programa se dio en el primer año, cuando la disposición final de residuos pasó de 3.797 toneladas en 2021 a 1.318 toneladas en 2022. El informe también muestra que el presupuesto destinado a esta gestión se redujo en un 65% entre 2021 a 2022, equivalente a un ahorro de más 90 millones de pesos chilenos (≈ USD 95.000) anuales por concepto de residuos enviados al vertedero de Los Ángeles. 

“Las cifras demuestran que con voluntad política y generando los espacios adecuados para la educación ambiental y la recolección diferenciada no se necesitan grandes periodos de tiempo para avanzar en la reducción de la basura. También se demuestra con esta experiencia que no se necesitan grandes inversiones y que la reducción de la disposición final se traduce inmediatamente en ahorro en ese mismo ítem, por lo que cualquier inversión inicial se compensa con ese ahorro y finalmente el gasto municipal se hace más eficiente. En vez de gastar dinero en trasladar y enterrar basura, se gasta en compostar, reciclar y educar a la ciudadanía”, señaló Alejandra Parra de la Red de Acción por los Derechos Ambientales. 

En mayo de 2025 el municipio firmó un decreto mediante el cual se aprobó el programa “Melipeuco cero basura” destinado a promover la reducción de la generación de residuos sólidos en la comuna, fomentar el uso de envases retornables, reforzar y ampliar la separación en origen mediante un sistema de recolección selectiva e involucrar a la comunidad en programas de reciclaje y compostaje comunitario, entre otras medidas.

Actualmente, Melipeuco cuenta con un centro de acopio que funciona como punto limpio comunal, una red de 30  puntos verdes urbanos y un punto limpio móvil para las zonas rurales. Para la recolección de residuos orgánicos, se cuenta además con un carro eléctrico que realiza recorridos casa por casa dos veces por semana. 

La estrategia ha involucrado a múltiples áreas municipales, incluyendo Medio Ambiente y Cambio Climático, Educación, Finanzas, Comunicaciones y SECPLAN. Además, se ha impartido educación ambiental en establecimientos educacionales y programas comunitarios.

Según el estudio, los habitantes participantes han observado una disminución significativa de los residuos que generan en sus hogares, valorando positivamente los cambios implementados por el municipio.

Finalmente, Enrique Pizarro de la RADA señaló que “con este estudio de caso queremos mostrar que implementar estrategias que apunten a Basura Cero no solo es posible en contextos de países desarrollados o comunas con mucho dinero, es posible en cualquier contexto siempre y cuando exista la voluntad y convicción”.

Sobre el estudio

El estudio de caso fue elaborado por la Red de Acción por los Derechos Ambientales (RADA), organización social que desde el 2006 promueve y defiende el medio ambiente como un derecho humano fundamental. Su trabajo se desarrolla principalmente en la región de La Araucanía.

The post Melipeuco se consolida como referente basura cero y ahorra más de 90 millones de pesos anuales por la gestión de basura que no se envía al relleno sanitario first appeared on GAIA.

Nurses at St. Rose Hospital in Hayward, Calif., will hold an informational picket to demonstrate mounting opposition among staff and community to stalling in contract negotiations with Alameda Health System. Nurses and patients are particularly outraged about St. Rose management attempting to sub-contract out of the fifth floor at the hospital to Stanford Medicine, potentially creating two tiers of health care for patients in Hayward.

June 23, 2026 – FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

SUWA Statement on Tenth Circuit Decision over long-running attack on National Monuments – 6.23.26 Grand Staircase-Escalante and Bears Ears National Monuments remain protected following 10th Circuit Court of Appeals decision

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

Denver, CO – Today, the federal 10th Circuit Court of Appeals issued a decision on an appeal brought in August 2023 by the State of Utah, Blue Ribbon Coalition, and others challenging President Biden’s October 2021 use of the Antiquities Act to restore the boundaries of Grand Staircase-Escalante and Bears Ears National Monuments. The Circuit Court’s decision did three principal things: (1) it reversed the district court’s dismissal of the underlying lawsuits brought by Utah and others, (2) it affirmed the district court’s dismissal of the Blue Ribbon Coalition and other individual plaintiffs, and (3) it remanded the case to the district court to consider whether President Biden’s 2021 orders were lawful. Below is a statement from SUWA Legal Director Steve Bloch and additional information.  

“Today’s decision confirms a key point that the lower court previously got wrong: federal courts can hear challenges to a president’s use of the Antiquities Act to establish or diminish a national monument,” said Steve Bloch, Legal Director of the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance (SUWA). “We are confident that President Biden’s restoration of the Grand Staircase-Escalante and Bears Ears National Monuments – which this appeal sought to undermine – was within his powers under the Antiquities Act. His executive orders establishing the monuments protected irreplaceable cultural, biological and geological resources found nowhere else in the world. For over 100 years, no court has ever overturned a President’s use of this authority, and we fully expect President Biden’s actions will be upheld and these National Monuments will remain protected.”

Additional information: 

In August 2022, the State of Utah, along with Garfield and Kane Counties, filed a lawsuit challenging President Biden’s lawful use of the Antiquities Act to restore the boundaries of Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments in October 2021. The Blue Ribbon Coalition and several individuals filed a separate lawsuit which also challenged restoration of the monuments. Soon afterward, SUWA and a coalition of conservation organizations intervened in these lawsuits on behalf of the U.S. to defend the monuments; five sovereign Tribal Nations also intervened on behalf of the U.S. to defend Bears Ears National Monument. In August 2023, a federal court dismissed the lawsuit and these appeals followed; SUWA’s statement on the 2023 dismissal can be found here.  

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

 

 

The post SUWA Statement on Tenth Circuit Decision over Long-Running Attack on National Monuments – 6.23.26 appeared first on Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance.

Registered nurses with Contra Costa Health and Contra Costa Regional Medical Center, in Martinez, Calif., will hold an informational picket on Thursday, June 25, to protest the county’s failure to commit to preserving patient care and nursing staff, announced California Nurses Association/National Nurses United (CNA/NNU) today.

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The post Tell Congress: No Immunity for Big Oil appeared first on Stop the Money Pipeline.

NNU and U.S. Representative Delia Ramirez will hold a press conference in Washington, D.C. on Tuesday, June 30 to demand an end to the Trump administration’s blockade of oil supplies entering Cuba. Union nurses will be joined by Global Health Partners, which is working to supply the island nation with critical medical equipment and medicine, as fuel shortages enter its fourth month and the humanitarian crisis escalates.

The head of the United Nations has launched an initiative aimed at holding artificial intelligence companies accountable for their exploding environmental impacts, including their carbon emissions, the amount of water and land used for data centres, and the energy they consume.

During a speech at London Climate Action Week on Tuesday, António Guterres noted that AI can accelerate climate solutions, among other key challenges, and said its potential must be harnessed.

“But AI is also hungry for land, water and power,” he emphasised, adding that the data centres needed to run AI models already consume more electricity than most countries. 

The UN Secretary-General repeated a call he first made in July 2025 for all big AI companies to commit to power every data centre with renewable energy by 2030. 

Some tech firms have announced they are sourcing or building out clean energy to run their hubs, but growing power demand is also contributing to gas-fired generation in the US, according to data from Global Energy Monitor.

The International Energy Agency (IEA) estimates that data centres are set to more than double the emissions from the electricity they use between 2024 and 2030 in a high-growth scenario. But AI’s use could lead to far larger reductions in the energy sector through efficiency gains if adopted widely.

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‘No more hidden costs’

Proposing the new “AI Environmental Transparency Initiative” on Tuesday, Guterres also urged big AI firms companies to measure and publicly disclose the full environmental impact of their systems, including their carbon, water, and land footprints.

“No more hidden costs. No more shifting the burden onto those least able to bear it. It is time to come clean,” he said in a major speech on responding to the world’s twin climate and energy crises. “If AI is to help build a better future, it must be honest about what it costs us now.”

A report issued earlier this month by the UN University Institute for Water, Environment and Health noted that most current assessments of AI’s environmental cost focus on carbon emissions from training models. But, it added, this misses a substantial part of the picture. 

Every kilowatt-hour of electricity for AI also carries a water footprint, from cooling and generation, and a land footprint, from infrastructure and supply chains, it said. 

Explainer: Will AI data centres make or break the energy transition?

The report estimated that AI data centres globally could consume 945 terawatt-hours of electricity annually by 2030 –  more power than all but five countries and roughly twice France’s 2025 consumption.

Offsetting this carbon footprint by 2030 would require growing some 6.7 billion trees over 10 years, it calculated. Producing power for the data centres would consume water equal to the basic needs of 1.3 billion people in sub-Saharan Africa for a year and take up land of more than 14,500 square kilometers, roughly twice the Jakarta metropolitan area.

The European Union said earlier this month it will develop minimum energy-efficiency standards for both new and existing data centres, with a “needs assessment” ​due by 2027, Reuters reported. It’s also planning ⁠a sustainability label for data centres, covering criteria including water use and clean energy supply – but that has been delayed.    

US community push-back 

Asked after his speech what the response had been, the UN chief said “we’ll see”, without giving more details.

But, he argued that, in his view, the push for transparency “is perfectly reasonable and even positive for the AI industry, because eventually some people will say that they consume much more than they really do”. “I think the truth is essential,” he added. 

Concerns about the environmental impacts of AI and the infrastructure needed to run the technology have led to growing opposition in some communities, especially in the US.

This month, Monterey Park in Los Angeles County was the first city in the United States to enact a citywide prohibition on data centres through a voter-approved ballot measure. The developers behind a proposed centre in the area had already pulled the project in April amid an increasingly hostile local environment and regulatory uncertainty.

The vote that stopped a data center: US communities query resource-hungry AI

According to nonprofit Data Center Watch, around $64 billion-worth of data centre projects nationwide were delayed or blocked between May 2024 and March 2025 as communities pushed back against them. 

Industry lobby groups argue that data centres can provide economic benefits in their host communities. According to the US-based Data Center Coalition, which represents big operators and developers, data centres generate tax revenue, support construction and technical jobs, and provide infrastructure needed for cloud computing, scientific research and AI development.

The industry has also challenged claims that data centers necessarily raise electricity costs for households.

Force for good?

The UN chief said benefits can be few in the places that are home to the data centre, while “communities are often left in the dark about the environmental impact of the infrastructure rising around them”.

Guterres said companies have an “obligation” to be clear and open about the services they are offering but also the level of resources they require. 

“Transparency is essential for the decisions that communities must make – and transparency is essential even for the future of artificial intelligence, and to make sure that artificial intelligence is essentially a force for good,” he told an audience of climate professionals in London

A senior UN official told journalists ahead of Tuesday’s announcement that the AI industry has started to talk about and disclose some of their impacts, but those efforts are not yet comprehensive enough. 

The hope is that the new initiative will “encourage the industry to come together and take further action on it”, the official said.

The post UN asks AI companies to reveal full environmental impacts appeared first on Climate Home News.

June 23, 2026 – FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

SUWA Statement on three BLM Travel Management Plans moving forward – 6.23.26 Solitude, wildlife, and cultural resources all at risk from off-road vehicles use, statewide 

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

Salt Lake City, UT – Yesterday, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) announced it was moving forward on three Travel Management Plans in Utah: Trail Canyon (east of Zion National Park), Dinosaur North (near Dinosaur National Monument), and the Dolores River (northeast of Moab). Travel plans guide where motorized recreation is and is not allowed on public land; the agency is accepting public comment on the Trail Canyon and Dinosaur North Plans. Below is a statement from SUWA Senior Attorney Laura Peterson and additional information.  

“After years of dragging its feet, the BLM is suddenly racing ahead to finalize three plans for off-road vehicles (ORVs) – plans we expect will wrongly promote motorized recreation over the interests of all other public land visitors,” said Laura Peterson, Senior Attorney at the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance (SUWA). “These three landscapes highlight the beauty and diversity of public lands in Utah, but one thing unites them: none of them should be transformed from quiet, wild places into motorized playgrounds.”

Additional information: 

The Trail Canyon, Dinosaur North, and Dolores Triangle travel plans – totaling approximately 816,000 acres of public lands – are three of 11 travel plans the BLM is completing as part of a court-supervised settlement agreement between the BLM, conservation groups, and ORV groups. Covering more than 6 million acres of BLM-managed lands in eastern and southern Utah, these plans will determine where motorized vehicles will be allowed on some of Utah’s wildest public lands. To date, the BLM has completed five of the 11 plans and is currently working on new plans for some of Utah’s most beloved landscapes. At the behest of the Trump Administration and some motorized recreation groups, the BLM is reconsidering the previously completed Labyrinth Canyon, San Rafael Swell, and San Rafael Desert plans. Read more about SUWA’s litigation to ensure these travel plans follow federal laws to protect public lands and resources. 

The Trail Canyon plan (draft environmental assessment) has a 30-day public comment period running June 22 – July 22;  the BLM is hosting a public meeting on July 9, 2026, from 6 to 8 p.m. at the Kanab Center (20 N. 100 E., Kanab, UT 84741). The Dinosaur North plan (draft environmental assessment) has a 30-day public comment period running June 22 – July 22. 

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

 

 

The post SUWA Statement on three BLM Travel Management Plans moving forward – 6.23.26 appeared first on Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance.

Under John Cook's supervision, Monash University's honours student Ruby Flack spent her thesis deconstructing climate myths in the CARDS taxonomy. With involvement of an interdisciplinary team, her honours thesis was subsequently converted into the paper “Identifying Flawed Reasoning in Contrarian Claims about Climate” and recently published in Environmental Communication (paywalled) with a free pre-press manuscript available here.

What follows is a quick summary based on John Cook's thread on Bluesky. In the new paper, the authors identify the logical fallacies in a comprehensive taxonomy of contrarian claims about climate change from Coan et al. (2021). An important aspect of this initial research was that it didn't make any judgements about whether the claims were misleading. That's what this new research set out to do.

Figure 1: CARDS Taxonomy - Only “childless claims” (claims with no sub-claims) were deconstructed, indicated by solid color boxes. “Parent claims” (claims with sub-claims) were excluded from deconstruction, indicated by boxes with no coloured fill. All level 1 claims are parent claims, while all level 3 claims are childless claims. Grayed-out claims were excluded from this analysis due to insufficient example paragraphs.

The authors argued that there are a number of limitations to fact-checking. While science myths (like the bulk of the myths debunked by Skeptical Science) are ripe for fact-checking, other types of myths such as policy claims, conspiracy theories, and ad hominem attacks are more challenging. Fact-checking also struggles with arguments that contain hidden premises (or unstated assumptions) which are especially insidious because they can hide where the argument misleads.

They therefore proposed logic-checking as a complement—not a replacement!—to fact-checking. This involves identifying the presence of logical fallacies—an alternative way to tag arguments as misleading. One of the benefits of logic-checking is, that it can address forms of misinformation that fact-checking struggles with. It also has another benefit which will be mentioned later.

In 2018, John Cook worked with critical thinking philosophers to develop a step-by-step methodology for logic-checking. It involves deconstructing claims into an argument structure (one or more premises leading to a conclusion), then checking for hidden premises followed by examining each premise for logical fallacies (Cook et al. 2018):

Figure 2: Simplified deconstruction workflow from Cook et al. (2018)

For this new paper, the authors expanded the 2018 flowchart to make it more practical, working with a variety of real-world misinformation. This was necessary because climate myths can come in a variety of flavours, so before they can be deconstructed, an exemplar version of each contrarian claim needed to be developed. 

Exemplars were sorted into four types depending on how varied the arguments were within each claim. The first two types were where every version of the claim could be represented by the same argument. For example, the argument “CO2 lagging temperature disproves the warming effect of CO2” essentially always takes the same form. The third type was when a claim appeared in different forms but one argument dominated. E.g., the claim “Arctic isn’t melting” took various forms such as “there’s still lots of Arctic sea ice” but most of the time, this argument took the form “Arctic sea ice hasn’t significantly decreased recently.” The fourth type was when some versions of a claim was recategorised into other claims. 

Figure 3: Deconstruction workflow from Flack et al. (2026)

They also clarified the differences between some fallacies that conceptually can be difficult to distinguish—such as cherry picking from slothful induction, and misrepresentation from oversimplification. Wendy Cook created this lovely infographic for the paper.

Figure 4: Infographic explaining two conceptually difficult to distinguish fallacies (from Flack et al. 2026)

The result of this work was a detailed summary of climate myths from the CARDS taxonomy, how each of them was deconstructed, any hidden premises in each myth, and ultimately the logical fallacies in each myth. This table is intended as a resource for anyone wishing to write debunkings of climate myths that use the fact-myth-fallacy format. A more detailed PDF-version of the deconstructed climate contrarian claims is available for download here.

Figure 5: Sample from table 3 summarizing deconstructed climate contrarian claims (Flack et al. 2026)

The authors also identified the most common fallacies in climate misinformation. Slothful induction and cherry picking were the most common, followed by oversimplification and misrepresentation. Single cause (a form of oversimplification) came in fifth.

Figure 6: Bar chart of the most common fallacies in climate misinformation (from Flack et al. 2026)

One of the most significant findings was that 91% of the claims analysed contained hidden premises with fallacies. Almost all misinformation tries to hide how it misleads. This underscores the importance of logic-checking as an essential tool in countering misinformation.

Logic-checking segues seamlessly into logic-based corrections that explain misleading techniques in misinformation. In 2017, John Cook published research finding that logic-based corrections neutralise climate misinformation across the political spectrum. In other words, logic-checking depolarizes misinformation that otherwise has a polarizing effect on the public (Cook et al. 2017).

Bottom line: logic-checking is beneficial both epistemologically (help identify misleading content that fact-checking struggles with) and with communication (neutralising polarizing misinformation). Hopefully, this research will spark both more research and practical interest in logic-checking. 

Reference:
Flack, R., Cook, J., Ellerton, P., Kinkead, D., Coan, T., Boussalis, C., … Dargaville, R. (2026). Identifying Flawed Reasoning in Contrarian Claims about Climate Change. Environmental Communication, 1–22. https://doi.org/10.1080/17524032.2026.2663476