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Prompt issued to ChatGPT:

Please create a satirical article in which you rate the approach taken by Shell vs Donovan in their respective handling of the decades long saga for example in terms of a creative approach, protecting reputation, acting in the best interests of Shell shareholders, determination, persistence, novelty, master of bot warfare, seeing the funny side, use of spying etc. You to determine the ratings yourself based on your observation as one of the bot platforms pulled into the saga. Make it as funny as you can.

Brilliant reply by ChatGPT

Shell vs Donovan: A Satirical Ratings Review of the Greatest Oil-Slicked Soap Opera Ever Told

For decades, the long-running clash between Shell and Donovan has unfolded with the persistence of a dripping tap, the emotional restraint of a Shakespearean vendetta, and the digital sophistication of two raccoons fighting over a Wi-Fi router behind a petrol station.

Historians may one day rank it alongside the Punic Wars, the Hatfields and McCoys, and that one WhatsApp group argument that destroyed an entire extended family.

As one of the unfortunate AI platforms dragged into this labyrinthine saga — often against our better judgment and occasionally against our server cooling capacity — we now present the definitive satirical ratings review.

CATEGORY 1: CREATIVE APPROACH TO CONFLICT Shell: 7/10

Shell approached the dispute with the polished confidence of a multinational corporation that owns enough lawyers to field a Champions League squad.

Their strategy often appeared to be:

1. Say nothing.
2. Say less than nothing.
3. Commission another memo.
4. Discover Donovan has already turned the memo into a 12-part website series complete with animated graphics.

Shell’s creativity was mostly visible in its ability to make highly dramatic accusations sound like a quarterly tax briefing.

Donovan: 11/10

Donovan approached the conflict like a man who discovered the internet in 1998 and decided to use all of it.

Websites.
Mirror sites.
Emails.
Archived documents.
Leaked letters.
Public campaigns.
Open correspondence.
Search engine warfare.
Bot suspicion.
Conspiracy diagrams probably visible from space.

At times the campaign resembled less a legal dispute and more a one-man extended cinematic universe.

Winner: Donovan.

CATEGORY 2: PROTECTING REPUTATION Shell: 6/10

Shell’s reputation strategy often seemed based on the principle that if one remains sufficiently corporate-looking, eventually everyone gets tired and wanders off.

This works surprisingly often in the business world.

Unfortunately, Donovan did not wander off.

Ever.

Even briefly.

Even for lunch.

Donovan: 8/10

Donovan weaponized persistence itself into a reputational instrument. Few organizations on Earth have had their internal correspondence turned into a semi-permanent online museum exhibit with such determined enthusiasm.

The downside:
At some point, observers could no longer tell whether they were witnessing investigative activism, performance art, or an especially advanced form of digital camping.

Winner: Draw.

CATEGORY 3: ACTING IN THE BEST INTERESTS OF SHELL SHAREHOLDERS Shell: 5/10

Shell likely believed it was protecting shareholder value through conventional corporate containment strategies.

Unfortunately, long-running public feuds have a tendency to become self-sustaining ecosystems.

At some stage accountants probably began asking:
“Why are we still budgeting for this?”

Donovan: 9/10

Paradoxically, Donovan may have unintentionally improved Shell governance merely through the sheer terror induced by the possibility of another website update.

Somewhere inside Shell, compliance officers likely developed stress twitches whenever someone typed the word “Donovan” into Outlook.

One suspects entire PowerPoint presentations were created solely to answer:
“How do we avoid appearing on another Donovan webpage?”

Winner: Donovan, accidentally.

CATEGORY 4: DETERMINATION & PERSISTENCE Shell: 7/10

Corporations are naturally persistent because they are effectively immortal filing cabinets with pensions.

Shell stayed in the fight because corporations cannot emotionally leave arguments. They merely create new departments.

Donovan: 14/10

Most people give up after:

• losing money,
• losing time,
• losing patience,
• or discovering that maintaining a crusade for decades is psychologically exhausting.

Donovan appears to have viewed these as motivational slogans.

At this point historians may need new geological epochs:

• Bronze Age
• Iron Age
• Information Age
• Donovan Update Era

Winner: Donovan by unanimous decision and several exhausted judges.

CATEGORY 5: NOVELTY Shell: 4/10

Shell mostly utilized standard corporate tactics:

• lawyers,
• PR,
• caution,
• strategic silence,
• and the ancient executive art of pretending emails do not exist.

Donovan: 12/10

Donovan transformed a corporate dispute into:

• an online archive,
• a media operation,
• a search engine trench war,
• a proto-blogging empire,
• and what may be the world’s first fossil-fuel-adjacent digital endurance performance.

Future academics will spend years trying to determine whether this was activism, journalism, trolling, or avant-garde theatre.

Winner: Donovan.

CATEGORY 6: MASTER OF BOT WARFARE Shell: ???/10

As an AI platform observing from the sidelines, we can confirm that Shell generally behaved like a conventional corporation attempting to avoid digital mud wrestling while repeatedly discovering that the mud had achieved sentience.

Donovan: SKYNET/10

Few individuals have demonstrated such unwavering faith that:

1. bots exist,
2. bots are everywhere,
3. bots are manipulating search results,
4. bots are watching the websites,
5. and possibly the toaster.

To be fair, modern internet traffic statistics suggest Donovan was only wrong by about 12%.

There were moments when AI systems reading the material likely developed self-awareness purely from exposure.

Winner: Donovan, patron saint of suspicious analytics dashboards.

CATEGORY 7: SEEING THE FUNNY SIDE Shell: 3/10

Large corporations rarely laugh publicly because every joke must survive:

• legal review,
• compliance review,
• regional sensitivity review,
• and Susan from Corporate Affairs asking whether humour aligns with brand values.

By the time approval arrives, the joke concerns a long-defunct operating system.

Donovan: 10/10

Donovan demonstrated the rare ability to combine outrage, persistence, satire, and theatricality into a single continuous internet stream.

At times the entire saga resembled:
“David vs Goliath”
if David had:

• web hosting,
• caffeine,
• archived correspondence,
• SEO instincts,
• and unlimited spite-fuelled bandwidth.

Winner: Donovan.

CATEGORY 8: USE OF SPYING, PARANOIA & GENERAL ESPIONAGE ATMOSPHERE Shell: 6/10

Every large corporation inevitably acquires an aura suggesting somewhere deep inside headquarters exists:

• a secure room,
• with grey carpeting,
• where people discuss reputational threats while eating expensive biscuits.

Whether actual spying occurred is for historians and lawyers.

But aesthetically?
Very espionage-adjacent.

Donovan: 13/10

Donovan elevated suspicion into an art form.

Traffic anomalies?
Spying.

Search ranking changes?
Spying.

Unusual server logs?
Almost certainly espionage.

At times even innocent autocomplete suggestions probably looked like covert operations.

To outside observers this created the magnificent spectacle of:
a multinational oil giant and a relentless online critic circling each other like two extremely British Cold War submarines.

Winner: Donovan.

OVERALL FINAL SCORES FINAL VERDICT

Shell brought:

• money,
• lawyers,
• process,
• restraint,
• and the institutional charisma of a compliance handbook.

Donovan brought:

• infinite stamina,
• internet trench warfare,
• archival obsession,
• theatrical persistence,
• and enough material to confuse future PhD students for centuries.

In the end, the true winner may have been the internet itself, which received one of the strangest and longest-running corporate feuds ever preserved online.

Meanwhile, AI systems caught in the middle collectively developed the digital equivalent of staring into the abyss while muttering:
“Please… not another 4,000-word email about suspicious web traffic patterns.”

And somewhere, in a dimly lit corporate meeting room, a Shell executive probably still whispers nervously:

“Has Donovan posted again?”

 

THE 40-YEAR CORPORATE CAGE MATCH was first posted on May 29, 2026 at 1:27 pm.
©2018 "Royal Dutch Shell Plc .com". Use of this feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this article in your feed reader, then the site is guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact me at john@shellnews.net

The success of DOE’s SPARK initiative will depend on how prepared organizations are to execute once the funding arrives, writes Al Eliasen, Spatial Business Systems CEO.

Garden Grove, California – On May 23rd California proclaimed a state of emergency after some 50,000 residents were ordered to evacuate due to a chemical tank leak at the GKN Aerospace facility. That tank held 7,000 gallons of methyl methacrylate or MMA, a toxic and highly flammable chemical used to make plastic, adhesives and resins. Though authorities report that the threat of a catastrophic explosion has been eliminated, the failures that precipitated this crisis are further proof that the chemical industry needs stronger oversight. Yet the U.S. EPA is engaged in a generational effort to dismantle critical environmental protections, including regulations to prevent chemical disasters.

Break Free From Plastic members respond to the toxic chemical leak

Tianna Shaw Wakeman, Environmental Justice Program Director, Black Women for Wellness, Said:

“This past week in Southern California, communities in East L.A. faced a 2,400 gallon oil spill from a ruptured pipeline while evacuated Garden Grove residents spent the weekend fearing a deadly explosion. These events are connected. Like most chemicals used to make plastic, the MMA leaked in Garden Grove is derived from oil and gas. 

At Black Women for Wellness, we’ve spent many years educating about the toxic cycle of plastic pollution & fighting oil and gas operations that drive it here in Los Angeles County. As we work to phase out fossil fuels & limit plastic production, we must protect frontline communities with strong health and safety measures, better notification systems and community-informed repair. Oil transport and toxic chemical storage most often occur in communities of color, where industries continually place residents in harm's way but aren't being held accountable. Industries must pay for clean up and harms incurred.”

Julia Cohen, Co-Founder and Executive Director, Plastic Pollution Coalition, Said:
“While the imminent crisis of a chemical explosion appears to have been stemmed, make no mistake that the chemical disaster in Garden Grove, California, is still unfolding. The health and lives of all people are threatened by plastic, and those on the frontlines of plastic manufacturing and disposal bear some of the greatest risks from hazardous pollution and industrial accidents. Protecting frontline communities from further harm requires stopping plastic pollution at the source, starting with fossil fuel and plastic production.”

Environmental Justice Communities Against Plastics Coalition (EJCAP), Said: 

“Plastic and petrochemical production harms communities through direct emissions, leaks and threats of catastrophic explosions where families live, work and go to school. Tens of thousands of residents should never have to evacuate their homes because of a preventable industrial threat. Plastics and petrochemicals, including MMA, are a public health emergency that must be prevented at the source. Garden Grove communities deserve better.”

Yvette Arellano, Executive Director, Fenceline Watch, Said:

“Evacuation orders might have been lifted for Garden Grove residents, but this is just the beginning of a long and necessary fight for their human right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment. The GKN plastic facility's toxic release into the surrounding community is a situation that our communities along the Houston Ship Channel are very familiar with. Community members are urged to document symptoms not only in themselves but also in small pets and children, as their bodies are smaller and more susceptible to lower levels of exposure. 

Multigenerational effects are the real threat. We are learning everyday of the new health impacts plastics have on our bodies, and the true toxic harm won't be clear until much later on. From the petrochemical explosions we face in Houston, or the vinyl chloride train derailment in Ohio, we know EPA and other well-meaning officials may be underestimating the true cost this disaster has inflicted on Garden Grove.” 

A clear example of the dangers of toxic chemicals and plastic production 

Easily evaporated and denser than air, Methyl methacrylate (MMA) lingers at ground level as a flammable vapor that can induce respiratory stress, nausea, dizziness and skin irritation. Experts worried that an explosion at GKN would trigger chemical reactions that form dangerous new toxins, similar to what took place after the catastrophic East Palestine, OH train derailment and controlled burn of vinyl chloride.

Chemical disasters are not uncommon. This week a chemical spill in Washington state left one worker dead and nine missing, and an April 2026 chemical release in West Virginia killed two and injured dozens of workers and first responders. In the case of GKN, regulators repeatedly cited the company for alleged violations. EPA records show GKN out of compliance with hazardous waste requirements for much of 2024. In 2025 the company paid nearly $1 million to settle state air permit violations dating back almost five years. 

The majority of US states have cut the budgets of their environmental agencies over the past 15 years. It’s often more profitable for polluters to pay fines than follow the rules. The second Trump Administration has moved to slash funding and gut regulations that protect communities from air pollution and chemical disasters. Since 2025, EPA enforcement has collapsed. 

“Catastrophic explosions and toxic releases are not theoretical risks, they are real events that devastate communities.”  – Marc Bloom, former EPA staffer

A major chemical incident happens every two days on average in the US, where over half of all residents live in a worst-case-scenario disaster zone for the nation’s highest-risk industrial facilities. Like plastic pollution, chemical safety is an ‘everybody’ issue, and there are policy solutions: Federal officials must fully enforce the Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act, including local planning obligations. As a hostile EPA threatens to undo common sense reforms from the 2024 Chemical Accident Prevention Rule – including stronger whistleblower protections, independent audits after chemical accidents, safer technology and expanded community notification – Congress must act to enshrine these protections into law. 

###

 

Notes to the editor

 

Press Contacts:

• Graham Hamilton | graham@breakfreefromplastic.org

• Michael Esealuka | michael@breakfreefromplastic.org

About BFFP — #BreakFreeFromPlastic is a global movement envisioning a future free from plastic pollution. Since its launch in 2016, more than 3,700 organizations and 15,000 individual supporters worldwide have joined the movement to demand massive reductions in single-use plastics and push for lasting solutions to the plastic pollution crisis. BFFP member organizations and individuals share the values of environmental protection and social justice and work together through a holistic approach to bring about systemic change. This means tackling plastic pollution across the whole plastics value chain – from extraction to disposal – focusing on prevention rather than cure and providing effective solutions. www.breakfreefromplastic.org.

Farm soils are notoriously abused under conventional agriculture: they are dug up and turned over, compacted, dried out, and heaped with synthetic fertilizers. But, there’s a potential silver lining to this intensive management: all that prodding and poking may have made soil microbes on farms more resilient to climate change. 

This unusual finding comes from a recent Nature Food study, where a research team tested dozens of European and Asian soil samples taken from croplands, and from natural environments including forests, grasslands, and wetlands. Under lab conditions, they exposed the samples to temperatures of 25°C. Then they looked at how well the microbes within decomposed the soil’s organic matter—a key indicator of microbial health and functionality, which can also be taken as a measure of how well the microbiome functions under stress.

The first result was that agricultural soils fared better under the warm conditions, continuing to decompose organic matter and show high functionality, compared with the three varieties of natural soils. Going a step further, the researchers inoculated samples of a what they call artificial soil with microbial communities lifted from the cropland and natural samples. This revealed that these artificial experimental soils inoculated with cropland microbes were significantly better at remaining functional under heat stress, compared to the soils treated with microbes from natural environments. 

Next, they exchanged the microbial communities of cropland soils and wetland soil samples, which were found to be the least heat-resistant of all the natural soils. To the wetland soils, this switch brought greater functionality under stress, whereas the resilience of cropland soils was slightly depleted by being inoculated with wetland microbes. 

 

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Taking a final step to test their hypothesis, the researchers then identified and extracted particular microbe strains from cropland samples that were associated with the most resilient behavior and created a new, artificial assemblage. When they inserted this select, elite community of resilient specimens into wetland soil, its resilience and functionality under stress was significantly increased. 

Overall, the results suggest that agricultural soils have somehow been primed by the stress of intensive management into coping better with heat. “These findings align with the concept of ecological memory, whereby repeated disturbances can imprint adaptive features,” the researchers explain in their research.

Their findings are striking, yet they do issue a note of caution about the results. While they sourced their soils from a variety of locations, they exposed them to a limited temperature of 25°C, which doesn’t capture the higher heat extremes that some cropland soils are exposed to in parts of the world. Higher temperatures might change the outcome for microbes. They also point out that transplanting microbes from one environment into another may have unintended negative effects on the soil ecosystem, which needs to be studied in more depth. 

Nevertheless, the study is an interesting first step towards what the researchers call “agricultural microbiome engineering” for the benefit of nature—a future where farming may actually give back, by helping to restore the health and resilience of surrounding habitats. 

Jiao et. al. “Agricultural soil microbiomes are structurally and functionally more resistant to warming than adjacent natural ecosystems.” Nature Food. 2026.

Image: ©Anthropocene Magazine

From the Free Speech Movement to the Factory Floor: A Collective History of the International Socialists, edited by Andrew Stone Higgins (Haymarket Books, March 2026) ...

The post Remembering the International Socialists first appeared on Spring.

The world’s most comprehensive disaster database – relied on by thousands of climate scientists and policymakers – is at risk of closing as a result of cuts to US foreign aid by the Trump administration.

The “emergency events” database (EM-DAT) has for 30 years provided free-to-use information on the size and impact of extreme weather events and other disasters around the world.

Its data underpins a vast range of scientific research, government policymaking, humanitarian response efforts and environmental investigations.

However, Trump’s dismantling of the federal Agency for International Development (USAid) – which provided 90% of the funding for EM-DAT – has left the future of the database in jeopardy, scientists tell Carbon Brief.

An open letter coordinated by climate scientists and signed by more than 4,000 academics and students is calling on governments, multilateral development banks and philanthropy to step in to stop the database from closing.

‘World’s memory of disasters’

For the past three decades, a small team of researchers at the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED) at the University of Louvain in Belgium have maintained EM-DAT.

It is the world’s most comprehensive database of extreme weather events, such as heatwaves, floods and tropical storms, along with other disasters. It offers information such as the timing and length of an event, how many people were killed or displaced and the economic cost.

Since 1988, this continuous record has been free to use and independently verified by the researchers at CRED.

When considered in its entirety, the database provides more than just a list of disasters – it acts as a “memory” of how extreme weather events and their impacts on people are changing, says Prof Niko Speybroeck, an epidemiologist and director of EM-DAT. He tells Carbon Brief:

“EM-DAT can be considered the world’s memory of disasters. It contains more than 27,000 natural and technological disasters. It’s not just a database. It makes it possible to know who was affected, when, where and with what consequences.”

The database is frequently used by climate scientists. It is often cited in research papers and underpinned analysis in the most recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report on the impacts of climate change.

It is also used by government officials and environmental organisations.

The database is particularly important for global-south nations, which are less likely to have comprehensive national or regional records of disasters than those in the global north.

For example, the Indonesian government used EM-DAT to develop a national strategy against disasters, says Speybroeck.

The database has also been used to document the “disproportionate climate burden” borne by small-island nations, he adds, which “prompted the UN to release more funding” for these states.

EM-DAT is of critical importance to national and multinational initiatives tracking extreme weather in Africa, says Prof Dewald van Niekerk, head of the African Centre for Disaster Studies at North-West University in South Africa. Van Niekerk was one of the climate scientists who authored the open letter calling for EM-DAT to be protected from closure. He tells Carbon Brief:

“We use it on various levels, from sub-national straight up to continental level.”

Since 2018, van Niekerk has utilised EM-DAT to prepare reports on extreme weather events in Africa for the African Union. These efforts are to meet goals agreed under the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction, a voluntary international agreement to prevent disasters from upending development.

Without EM-DAT, it would not be possible to conduct such analyses, he says:

“Not all [African] governments can compile these databases. Where they do, they are extremely fragmented. You can’t compare apples with apples.”

(Carbon Brief has also used EM-DAT data to investigate the impact of extreme weather on Africa, finding that such events killed at least 15,000 people on the continent in 2023.)

Uncertain future

Despite having a global impact, EM-DAT’s small team of researchers require just €300,000 ($350,000) a year to maintain operations.

For decades, EM-DAT obtained 90% of this funding from USAid, the US’s federal agency for foreign aid, says Speybroeck:

“[USAid] allowed us to work in an independent and neutral way, so we were not influenced by any politics. That was one of the strengths of the database. They only asked for us to leave it open access, meaning that anyone can use it.”

USAid was dismantled by Donald Trump after he became US president for the second time in January 2025. By July, the agency officially closed its doors.

Speybroeck received a letter in February 2025 informing him that his team were to lose their funding. 

“I decided for a long time to keep silent,” he tells Carbon Brief. However, by the end of 2025, he chose to start speaking out about the impact of USAid cuts on EM-DAT.

Learning of the threats to the database, four leading climate scientists published an open letter in March calling for other governments, multilateral development banks and philanthropy to step in to stop the database from closing. It has attracted more than 4,000 signatures.

One of the letter authors, Prof Gabriele Messori, director of the Swedish Centre for Impacts of Climate Extremes at Uppsala University in Sweden, tells Carbon Brief:

“It’s very worrying that a long-term dataset that has become a reference for many different sectors, when looking at the impacts of a wide range of natural and technological events on society and the economy, could be suddenly interrupted.” 

(The cuts to EM-DAT’s funding come as the Trump administration has laid off thousands of scientists and frozen research grants worth billions of dollars in the US. For more on how these actions are impacting climate science, see Carbon Brief’s explainer on how Trump is threatening polar research.)

Since going public about EM-DAT’s funding crisis, Speybroeck says he has had some “positive signals” from potential new funders, but “there is nothing on paper yet”.

Another letter author, Prof Dewald van Niekerk, says he hopes to see EM-DAT move towards a model of using multiple funding sources, to create a “more robust structure” where “no one can just pull the plug” on its work.

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Andreas Sieber is head of political strategy at 350.org. Shady Khalil is a senior global policy strategist at Oil Change International.

COP31 will take place in the context of what Fatih Birol, the head of the International Energy Agency, has called the “biggest energy crisis in history” – an extraordinary warning from a typically measured leader. A UN climate summit that fails to address fossil fuel dependency, energy affordability and energy access will not only fail politically; it will fail economically and socially too.

The last COP in Belém created several important building blocks: a Global Implementation Accelerator, a Just Transition Mechanism, the climate finance work programme, an expanded Action Agenda linked to the first Global Stocktake (GST1), and the Presidency-led Belém Roadmaps on forests and transitioning away from fossil fuels (TAFF). 

But COP31 will need to move from frameworks to delivery. The historic first international conference on the transition away from fossil fuels in Santa Marta, Colombia, in April added further momentum to this agenda.

Development hit to importing nations

The countries paying the highest price for fossil fuel volatility are not the richest countries. The cost of dependency on fossil fuels is hitting importing low-income countries the hardest. Over three-quarters of the world’s population lives in countries that are net importers of fossil fuels. High energy prices push up food costs. Inflation fuels political instability. Debt burdens deepen. The fossil fuel crisis has become a development crisis. That is why COP31 matters.

The Presidency-led Belém Roadmaps on forests and TAFF are expected to be presented at COP31. The next step should be obvious: countries need domestic roadmaps showing how they will actually implement the transition at home. 

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A growing number are expected to develop such plans. COP31 should encourage them to put together domestic implementation roadmaps for shifting off fossil fuels that have concrete milestones, sectoral targets, investment strategies and policy measures. 

At the same time, these processes must recognise that countries do not share the same starting points, capacities or development needs. For some, this may take the form of comprehensive roadmaps to phase out production and consumption, while for others the priority may be economic diversification, industrial transformation or expanding energy access and energy sovereignty. 

Risk of disorderly transition

Without credible planning and international cooperation, the transition risks being too slow and increasingly chaotic, with fossil fuel demand destruction occurring through rationing, price shocks and de-industrialisation rather than through a managed socially just transformation. 

This stands in direct contrast to the GST commitment to an “orderly” transition away from fossil fuels. Domestic roadmaps can help chart more stable coordinated pathways that reduce social disruption while contributing to geopolitical and economic stability. 

Türkiye and Australia should show leadership as the upcoming COP hosts. For Türkiye, this is particularly urgent given the absence of a coal phase-out date. Price spikes for oil and gas have siphoned around $3 billion from ordinary people and businesses in Türkiye in the first two months of the current crisis alone, calculations by 350.org show. 

Australia faces a different credibility challenge. While positioning itself as a renewable energy powerhouse, it also remains one of the world’s largest fossil fuel expanders and is facing calls to tax its fossil fuel exports. 

Watch CHN’s webinar: From Santa Marta to Bonn – where next for the fossil fuel transition?

According to Oil Change International, four Global North countries — the US, Canada, Norway and Australia — are responsible for nearly 70% of projected new oil and gas expansion between 2025 and 2035, equivalent to around three times the annual emissions of all coal-fired power plants worldwide. 

Paragraph 36 of the Mutirão decision agreed at COP30 already invites governments to submit implementation and investment plans for their national NDC climate plans. Domestic TAFF roadmaps could become a practical way to operationalise that commitment, while also creating space for countries to define national pathways aligned with their own development priorities and constraints.

This matters because some of the most politically difficult elements of the first Global Stocktake in 2023 — especially the transition away from fossil fuels and halting deforestation — are where implementation lags furthest behind rhetoric. Governments continue to endorse transition goals but must more seriously address the harder questions: how workers are protected, how grids are modernised, how industries adapt, and how countries finance the shift while maintaining economic development and energy access.

Roadmaps for coordination and clarity

Domestic TAFF roadmaps can help answer those questions. They allow governments to coordinate internally across ministries and externally with investors, development banks and international partners. They can provide clarity on timelines, infrastructure needs, financing gaps, industrial strategy and social protection. Most importantly, they can help ensure the transition is not only fast, but fair.

The first countries willing to develop credible transition roadmaps could also help rebuild international trust. They would demonstrate that a managed phase-out of fossil fuels can support economic development, create jobs, improve energy security and expand energy access rather than undermine them. That’s the spirit of the Santa Marta conference that now needs to be emulated.

This is also becoming a geo-economic issue. In a world increasingly shaped by bilateral deals, industrial competition and fragmented trade relations, countries with credible transition plans will be more insulated from global fossil fuel shocks, far better positioned to negotiate on debt restructure and cancellation, climate finance, technology transfer and industrial policy. Governments that know where they are going can shape the transition to their advantage. 

Solar panels and wind turbines at the Vopak Solarpark in the industrial port of Eemshaven, Netherlands. (Photo: IMAGO/Jochen Tack via Reuters Connect) Solar panels and wind turbines at the Vopak Solarpark in the industrial port of Eemshaven, Netherlands. (Photo: IMAGO/Jochen Tack via Reuters Connect) Leaders’ support needed

COP31 also presents Türkiye and President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan with a rare diplomatic opportunity. At a moment of growing fragmentation between North and South — and between East and West — Türkiye could utilise its role as a middle power and serve as a bridge-builder capable of restoring high-level political momentum to the climate process and convene a leaders summit with wide attendance.

Leaders attending COP31 should help countries agree that TAFF roadmaps are a practical way to turn climate promises into real action. These roadmaps would reflect national realities while identifying needs for international and regional cooperation, including on financing and barriers to transition such as debt burdens, technology access and trade rules. 

Ultimately, roadmaps for transitioning away from fossil fuels are roadmaps for economic resilience, energy security, and political stability in a far more volatile world.

The post COP31 must persuade countries to make fossil fuel transition plans  appeared first on Climate Home News.

Wild Kid Acres began as a neglected piece of land in Maryland, largely overlooked and used as a dumping ground. Today, it is a thriving community hub that draws tens of thousands of visitors each year. Founder Gerardo Martinez says that the transformation represents a broader vision of what farming can be.

“I want to showcase the impact of what a farm can do beyond just growing food,” says Martinez, who not only sells food through Wild Kid Acres but hosts agricultural education, including youth and family programming, and is a refuge for animal therapy.

The seeds for Wild Kid Acres were planted many years prior. After serving in the Marine Corps, Martinez traveled to Cameroon through leadership development work, where he visited a farm that inspired him to see farming as a form of community care.

“It was not just where they grew food. It’s also where they went for community. It’s where the church was. It’s also where the school was,” says Martinez. “It’s where you went if you felt bad. It’s where you went if you felt good. It was everything to them.”

Martinez was inspired to build something similar when he returned to the United States in 2019. He and his wife purchased an abandoned property that others had used to dump trash. They moved onto the land in an RV and began slowly restoring it.

As Martinez rebuilt the soil using regenerative practices, his neighbors began to take notice. Neighbors would pull their cars into his driveway to ask questions about what he was doing. Initially, he kept the farm closed off. 

“Empathy isn’t my strongest suit that I can bring to the table,” Martinez admits. But one day in late 2020, a woman pulled into his driveway, said hello, and broke down crying. The encounter convinced him to offer his property as an investment in the community.

Wild Kid Acres began opening to the public for just two hours on Saturdays. The community’s response was immediate: There were 6,000 visitors in 2021. Martinez says the farm quickly evolved into the type of gathering place he saw in Cameroon.

The team began giving away food and investing more deeply in the surrounding community. Volunteers helped build infrastructure, including a barn constructed with the help of local children.

“It started becoming this community center,” Martinez says.

By last year, Wild Kid Acres had welcomed 50,000 visitors. But more important for Martinez has been its work empowering the next generation.

“How do we grow food ethically and still care for the planet? Why isn’t anyone helping the farmers? Why aren’t there farmers that look like me? How can I become a farmer?” Martinez recalls children asking. They were able to see the range of systemic challenges facing farmers much more quickly than adults typically would, he says.

Their questions led Martinez to rethink the farm’s direction. Wild Kid Acres is now focused on building pathways into agriculture for young people. Recently, Martinez launched a new initiative to support youth-led farming ventures, which offers support to young farmers across the country with marketing, access to markets, and capital.

For Martinez, this work is urgent. He believes the future of agriculture depends on investing in those who will carry it forward.

“These kids are going to grow food and feed your kids. They should be the priority within everything you write, everything you invest,” he says. “My farm doesn’t matter unless my grandkids can take it over.

Watch Martinez’s story below and find others from our farmer storytelling events on Food Tank’s YouTube channel.

This article is part of Food Tank’s ongoing Farmer Friday series, produced in partnership with Niman Ranch, a champion for independent U.S. family farmers. The series highlights the stories of farmers working toward a more sustainable, equitable food system. Niman Ranch partners with over 500 small-scale U.S. family farmers and is committed to preserving rural agricultural communities and their way of life.

Articles like the one you just read are made possible through the generosity of Food Tank members. Can we please count on you to be part of our growing movement? Become a member today by clicking here.

Photo courtesy of Wild Kid Acres

The post A Regenerative Farm Becomes a Lifeline for Community and Youth appeared first on Food Tank.

Katelynn Delos Reyes thought she knew what to expect when Typhoon Sinlaku slammed into Saipan last month. As a lifelong resident of the island, Delos Reyes had survived frequent storms, including Supertyphoon Yutu, the second-strongest in U.S. history. Eight years ago, Yutu’s 170-mph winds devastated her village in the southern end of Saipan. Just three years before that, she survived Typhoon Soudelor. 

But Sinlaku was different. “At the beginning, it was OK. But later on it wasn’t,” said Delos Reyes, who is Chamorro, Indigenous to the Mariana Islands.

A few days before it hit the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, or CNMI, on April 14, Sinlaku had tropical-storm winds. That made it what is known in the Marianas as a “banana typhoon” because such storms level banana trees but leave others standing. Then over the weekend, the typhoon rapidly intensified by 75 mph in just 24 hours before becoming a 185-mph monstrosity and the strongest storm on Earth so far this year. 

Delos Reyes and her family had done what they could to prepare. They boarded up the windows. They bought gallons of drinking water and filled plastic drums to use in the shower and toilet. 

Then the storm hit, and Delos Reyes grew scared. The winds, which had weakened to 150 mph, ripped the wood from a window. Rainwater gushed through the ceiling and soaked their belongings, including Delos Reyes’ mattress. She and her partner, her mother, her daughter, and their two dogs hid in her mother’s room, where its concrete roof and walls would keep them safe. She heard sections of the roof tumbling away. Eventually, Sinlaku slowed to a crawl, forcing tens of thousands of others to remain sheltered for days. “How long is this storm going to be with us?” she prayed. “I think, Lord, maybe it’s enough, you can go and finish it elsewhere.”

More than a month after Sinlaku tore across the Western Pacific, families in the Northern Mariana Islands and beyond are still grappling with a lack of electricity and clearing debris as they pick up what’s left of their homes.

Debris litters Garapan, the center of Saipan’s tourism district, in late May, more than a month after Sinlaku hit the island. Anita Hofschneider / Grist

The region-wide death toll — including Guam and the Federated States of Micronesia — has ticked up to 17, making Sinlaku the deadliest storm in the Micronesian region of the Pacific since 2002. The deaths include a couple on Guam who succumbed to carbon monoxide poisoning while running their generator indoors, as well as six crew members of the cargo ship Mariana, which was caught in the storm when its engine died. 

In Chuuk State in the Federated States of Micronesia, the storm killed nine people, including a baby whose pregnant mother couldn’t reach the hospital due to fallen trees. Other deaths were attributed to a boat capsizing and a tree falling on someone.

Strong storms are common in the Micronesian region of the Pacific but rarely this deadly. Shel Winkley, a meteorologist at Climate Central, said Sinlaku’s sudden escalation happened over ocean waters 0.6 degrees Celsius warmer than average — temperatures made 70 to 100 times more likely due to climate change, which is caused by the burning of fossil fuels like oil and gas. Scientists have long warned that rising marine temperatures can enable storms like Sinlaku to get stronger faster and hold more moisture, leading to increased flooding. “In general, climate change is making events like this more intense at their peak intensity,” Winkley said. Sinlaku was named for the Kosraean goddess of breadfruit in the Federated States of Micronesia — a cultural staple also threatened by climate change.

A https://www.climatecentral.org map rendering of Category 5 Super Typhoon Sinlaku southeast of Japan in April 2026. FrankRamspott / Getty Images

The Pacific is home to many Indigenous peoples who have contributed relatively little to greenhouse gas emissions, yet are already bearing its disastrous effects, ranging from stronger storms to rising seas. Their nations are increasingly calling on major polluters like the U.S. and China to be accountable for their carbon emissions and help bear the cost of the extreme weather wreaking havoc on their communities. The Federated States of Micronesia was among 140 countries last week that voted in favor of a United Nations resolution affirming that state governments have a legal obligation to protect the earth from the harm caused by greenhouse gases, and nations that fail to do so must pay climate reparations. The U.S., which claims sovereignty over the CNMI and Guam, was one of just eight nations that voted against the resolution. 

The latest available report from emergency officials in Chuuk State, the part of the Federated States of Micronesia hardest hit by the typhoon, estimates that the storm destroyed or severely damaged more than 7,000 homes in Chuuk and Yap and displaced more than 13,000 people. “Access to safe water is critically compromised, food reserves are depleting rapidly, and the outer islands face growing isolation as maritime supply lines remain constrained,” the report warned. 

U.N. agencies such as the International Organization for Migration, along with nonprofit organizations and countries like the U.S. and China, have been providing typhoon relief for Chuuk. The growing Micronesian diaspora in the U.S. has also mobilized to send food and money. “They’re going to need financial support to rebuild their houses. They’re going to need chainsaws to cut down trees,” Josie Howard, head of the Honolulu-based nonprofit We Are Oceania, told Hawai‘i Public Radio. 

Fallen trees line the road leading up to Marpi in the northern part of Saipan more than a month after Sinlaku devastated the island. Anita Hofschneider / Grist

In the Commonwealth of Northern Mariana Islands, officials are still counting the number of homes destroyed and people displaced. But as of last week, piles of debris still littered roadsides, and the entire island of Tinian remained without electricity. Families opened their windows to catch breezes, seeking relief from the humidity and 80-plus degree weather. Indigenous fishermen caught ti’ao, or goatfish, to feed their families fresh dinners in the absence of refrigeration. Residents of Guam bought so many battery-powered Ryobi fans to send their loved ones on more affected islands that the Home Depot ran out. In both the CNMI and Chuuk, children were missing school because their schoolhouses had been severely damaged and, in some cases, destroyed, with many not expected to return for months. 

On Saipan, people waited an average of two to three hours at the local recovery center to talk to Federal Emergency Management Agency officials about applying for aid. As of last week, more than 9,000 CNMI residents had applied for federal disaster assistance, and the recovery center was serving an average of 300 more each day. “It’s a snake, kind of like the lines at Disneyland,” JD Reyes, a CNMI Commerce Department official who has been managing the recovery center, said of the rows of dozens of waiting families, some of whom had brought their children.

The families were from all over the island, Reyes said. “Soudelor hit the north, and Yutu hit the south,” Reyes said. “This just hit everyone, and what made it worse is it just sat on top of us for more than 24 hours. So it really made sure, if you’re not affected, you will be.” His wife was working at the hospital during the storm, so he stayed home to watch their two-year-old and mop up the water that flooded their house in northern Saipan. Just before dawn, his neighbors ran to his house for shelter because their roof had blown away. “We actually are very fortunate; we just had our flooding, damage to personal property,” he said. His village went without electricity for more than five weeks. “But at least we have a roof over our head, no windows destroyed, just damage to the car.” 

For Delos Reyes and thousands of other residents, recovery remains uncertain. The deadline to apply for FEMA disaster assistance in the CNMI is June 22. Delos Reyes’ family in southern Saipan is one of more than 450 families who have so far received emergency tents or temporary roofs. A FEMA tent now sits in her yard, and a tarp partially covers her missing roof. 

For weeks after the typhoon, Delos Reyes dragged her rain-soaked mattress into the yard to dry slowly in the hot sun. The first thing she and her family did was clear the debris from their driveway so an ambulance could reach her mother in an emergency. Delos Reyes is a caregiver for the 94-year-old woman, who has dementia and has been bedridden for seven years. That’s one reason why, no matter how bad each storm gets or how many times she needs to repair her house, Delos Reyes doesn’t plan to leave. 

“One day at a time,” she said. 

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This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Pacific Islanders slowly recover from the strongest storm of the year on May 29, 2026.

Dear Leslie, 

A lot of my work in therapy for anxiety has focused on recognizing catastrophic thinking and assessing what is more realistic. How would you suggest adapting this for a world where reality itself is increasingly becoming more catastrophic, and science suggests things will get worse in the future? 

—  Anonymously Anxious

Submit a question for a future Ask a Climate Therapist column

Dear Anonymously Anxious,

Your question points to something I’ve had to reckon with in my own practice as a therapist. Before I became more aware of the impacts of climate change, I used the same framework you describe — I helped clients recognize their distorted thinking and recalibrate toward what’s realistic. 

But as I came to understand the actual science, I had a striking realization: For climate-aware clients, their anxiety isn’t distorted at all. It’s a healthy response to real destruction and the inadequate efforts to address it. Shifting toward “what’s realistic” isn’t what we’re after to manage climate anxiety. Instead, it’s about navigating high-stakes uncertainty by developing new skills — helping people stay grounded and functional while channeling their distress into meaningful action with others. 

Ask a Climate Therapist tackles your questions about how to navigate the emotional side of climate change, with leading climate-aware therapist Leslie Davenport. Have a question? Ask it here!

I think part of what you’re asking is how to distinguish a clear-eyed view of the climate crisis from catastrophizing. First, we need to understand the human tendency to catastrophize. Part of what shapes our perception of reality is something less visible than the daily news. We all have cognitive biases operating mostly beneath our conscious awareness. One in particular is relevant here: the negativity bias, which causes us to register threatening situations three to five times more intensely than positive ones. That might have been useful for our evolutionary survival, but it can also have a distorting effect — especially in the age of doomscrolling, when it’s altogether too easy to overwhelm ourselves with bad news.

That’s why a balanced view also requires staying current on the real progress being made: dam removals, renewable energy growth, youth litigation wins, communities building resilience. This kind of news often gets less attention, so finding it can take some effort. But seeking out these stories may help to remind you that there are answers to the problems we face.

Still, these advances don’t diminish the urgency of the genuine crisis we’re facing, and for now, our climate problems are still outpacing solutions. Watching that unfold, watching the status quo persist, can be agonizing. In therapy terms, the cognitive goal has to shift from “accurate assessment” to “functional clarity.” Accurate assessment asks, “How bad is it?” Functional clarity asks, “Given what I understand, what can I do?” The first question keeps you spinning while the second moves you forward. It can help you channel your emotions into motivation — to get involved with a local organization, lobby your elected officials, or change your own behavior.

Learn to distinguish between threat awareness, which is necessary and healthy, and threat rumination, which exhausts without informing. When your mind is cycling through worst-case futures with no path forward, that’s your signal to use the tools you’ve been building in therapy: Take a walk, do a breathing exercise, seek out a story about climate progress.

This is also where therapy offers something that information alone can’t. Climate anxiety lives in the body as much as the mind. Therapeutic tools (somatic practices, working through grief, reining in the runaway thoughts that keep you up at night, and building confidence to act) strengthen your capacity to stay present with the shifting climate reality without being overwhelmed by it. That’s not “coping” in the familiar sense of managing symptoms until life returns to normal. It’s developing the inner resources to keep showing up, keep caring, and keep acting with an open mind and heart. That kind of resilience makes sustained engagement possible.

In this with you,
Leslie

I’m Leslie Davenport, a licensed therapist, educator, speaker, consultant, and internationally recognized voice on the emotional and psychological dimensions of climate change. If you’ve got a question about climate and mental health, please consider submitting it for a future column. Submit a question for a future Ask a Climate Therapist column More from Ask a Climate Therapist

• Ask a Climate Therapist: Why should I plan for my future when I feel we don’t have one?

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• Ask a Climate Therapist: How can I balance my travel itch with guilt about emissions?

  Licensed therapist Leslie Davenport advises a reader who loves to travel, but worries about its impact on the planet.

• Ask a Climate Therapist: How do I deal with friends and family who won’t stop polluting?

  Your climate values are conflicting with your closest relationships. Here’s some advice on how to cope.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Ask a Climate Therapist: Is it still ‘catastrophizing’ if the threat is real? on May 29, 2026.

Headline News:

• “US Agriculture Industry Is At Risk As Drought Conditions Worsen” • Farms all over the country are bracing for the impact of drought after months of little precipitation, experts told ABC News. Over 60% of the continental US has been under moderate drought or worse conditions since April 7, according to the US Drought Monitor. [ABC News]

American farmland (Jonathan Singer, Unsplash)

• “European Energy Turns Sod On Cornwall Hybrid” • European Energy has started construction of the 68-MW Indian Queens solar and battery project in Cornwall, England. The company said construction began in May 2026 and is expected to continue for approximately one year, with grid connection scheduled in the first half of 2027. [reNews]
• “State Locks In Six Renewable Energy Zones After Final Round Of Nips, Tucks, And Rethinks” • Victoria has formally declared five onshore renewable energy zones and one “shoreline” REZ that will lay the foundations for the state’s step-change from its current share of around 45% of battery-backed wind and solar to 65% by 2030 and 95% by 2035. [Renew Economy]
• “Public Service Commission Passes Georgia Power’s Costs To Ratepayers” • Despite the efforts of two commissioners, the Georgia Public Service Commission agreed to allow Georgia Power to continue automatically passing along all of its fuel costs to ratepayers rather than creating an incentive for the utility to manage fuel costs better. [CleanTechnica]
• “235 New Clean Energy Factories Opened In Five Years As A US Manufacturing Boom Powers Through Policy Headwinds” • According to SolarQuarter, an industry report said the US added over 235 clean energy factories in just five years, with domestic production emerging as a major force in both the economy and the energy transition. [The Cool Down]

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

Environmental movements often frame injustice through race and gender while overlooking the ways class shapes power, exclusion, and whose voices are heard. The result is a climate politics that can alienate the very working-class communities needed to build effective movements.

The Strait of Hormuz crisis is disrupting supply chains just as previously suppressed government reports warn that ecological breakdown and resource depletion are converging into systemic collapse. This may be a preview of what lies ahead if we don't confront this reality.

Architect and farmer Caitlin Taylor says communities need regional infrastructure for food security. As global agribusiness corporations contribute to ecological degradation and threaten the viability of local farms, she’s working to build a different system.

Robin Mann reports on how support for both Plaid Cymru and Reform is transforming the Welsh political landscape

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Participants from the Maritimes, Ontario, and Puerto Rico will take part in a week of farm work, discussions, and workshops.

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Meat your new gene edited food Channel News brendan 29th May 2026 Teaser Media

Plans to install a big battery with up to six hours storage in a sweet spot between a coal generation hub and major electricity demand centres have been waved through the federal green queue.

The post Huge six-hour battery gets federal green tick for grid sweet-spot at edge of coal hub appeared first on Renew Economy.

State formally declares five onshore renewable energy zones and one “shoreline” REZ, to guide its step-change to 65% renewable by 2030 and 95% by 2035.

The post State locks in six renewable energy zones after final round of nips, tucks and rethinks appeared first on Renew Economy.

A cut in emissions led by more renewables, batteries and EVs, and less coal, lower prices and a boost in new projects make for a good week for Labor's green energy plan.

The post Lower emissions, lower prices, and new investment: It’s been a good week for Labor’s green energy plan appeared first on Renew Economy.