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A satirical challenge from a long-term Shell shareholder and critic

Disclaimer: This is a satirical opinion article based on publicly available information, shareholder commentary, historical controversy, and documented public criticism. It asks questions, makes fair comment, and invites response. Site wide disclaimer also applies.

ReputationDefender says it helps companies protect and repair their online reputation. On its own website it quotes Weber Shandwick’s 2020 line:

“A company’s reputation is responsible for nearly two-thirds of its market value.”

Nearly two-thirds.

That is not reputation as window dressing. That is reputation as market-value dynamite. That is reputation as the hidden engine room of corporate valuation.

So here is the Ultimate Challenge:

ReputationDefender, are you brave enough to defend Shell?

Not a dentist with one furious Google review.

Not a hotel accused of serving grey scrambled eggs.

Not a crypto influencer trying to bury a podcast clip.

Shell.

The fossil-fuel giant with a century of controversy dragging behind it like an oil slick through a courtroom corridor. The company whose logo has been polished, repainted, rebranded, sustainability-washed, transition-wrapped, legally reviewed and shareholder-presented — and still somehow smells faintly of crude, contradiction and executive bonus varnish.

This is not ordinary reputation management.

This is brand exorcism.

Shell is not a “difficult client.” Shell is the final boss of corporate reputation defence. A company with enough reputational baggage to require its own conveyor belt at the airport.

Where would ReputationDefender even begin?

Page one of Google?

Page one of history?

The Niger Delta?

Climate litigation?

Investor rebellion?

Advertising complaints?

AGM protests?

Greenwashing accusations?

The awkward gap between “net zero ambition” and fossil-fuel expansion?

Or the deeper archive drawer marked: Nazi-era history — handle with gloves?

Because Shell’s reputation problem is not one bad headline. Shell’s problem is that the bad headlines have formed geological strata.

The Shell Problem: Not One Scandal, But an Ecosystem

Shell has spent decades proving the tragicomic limits of corporate messaging.

There are the environmental controversies.

There are the community claims.

There are the climate accusations.

There are the courtroom battles.

There are the shareholder revolts.

There is the endless PR fog machine pumping out phrases such as “energy transition,” “resilience,” “value discipline,” “balanced portfolio,” and “lower-carbon solutions,” while critics ask the rather inconvenient question:

If this is a transition, why does it still look so much like the thing we are supposed to be transitioning away from?

Shell’s brand has become a case study in the difference between reputation management and reputation reality.

A normal corporate reputation repair job might involve suppressing a few adverse search results, improving executive profiles, promoting thought leadership, amplifying ESG content and nudging the internet toward something less radioactive.

Shell would require something closer to a digital witness protection programme.

You would need climate messaging that does not combust on contact with the words “LNG growth.”

You would need Nigeria pages that do not immediately summon oil pollution claims, legal filings and community anger.

You would need investor relations material that can survive shareholders asking whether “net zero” now means “net maybe.”

You would need to reposition a fossil-fuel supermajor as a misunderstood wellness brand with offshore platforms.

Good luck.

And Then There Is Shell’s Nazi-Era History

As if the modern reputation file were not already thick enough, Shell’s historical archive has its own horror cupboard.

The central figure is Sir Henri Deterding, the long-serving boss of Royal Dutch/Shell, who became deeply controversial because of his admiration for Hitler and support for Nazi Germany. His later-life politics and associations remain a toxic part of the company’s historical shadow.

Shell’s German subsidiary also operated in Nazi Germany, and Shell’s historic relationship with the regime has been the subject of reporting, criticism and debate for decades.

This is where the ReputationDefender challenge becomes almost operatic.

Because Shell does not merely have today’s problems. It has yesterday’s ghosts.

Modern Shell may wish to say: “That was then. This is now.”

Critics may reply: “Fine. But the brand did not arrive yesterday. The history came with the logo.”

And for a company whose reputation allegedly represents nearly two-thirds of market value, history is not a footnote. It is a liability with a memory.

So the question sharpens:

Can ReputationDefender defend a company whose reputation problem runs from Nazi-era controversy to Niger Delta pollution claims, from climate lawsuits to AGM rebellions, from fossil-fuel expansion to green transition theatre?

That is not a client brief.

That is a reputation-management Everest expedition through fog, fire and legal review.

A Shareholder Inside the Tent, Rattling the Cutlery

And then there is me.

I am not writing this as a passing activist who discovered Shell last Tuesday.

I am a long-term Shell shareholder.

I am also a long-term Shell critic.

That combination makes the situation especially awkward for Shell’s reputation machine. I am not outside the tent throwing stones. I am inside the shareholder register, asking questions, writing articles, documenting contradictions, challenging the narrative and refusing to clap politely while the company polishes the logo and calls the fumes “strategy.”

I attend to the detail.

I follow the controversies.

I keep the receipts.

I challenge the corporate spin.

I write satirical articles.

I ask the questions Shell would rather bury under a mountain of investor-relations vocabulary.

That is why this proposed grudge match is so irresistible.

ReputationDefender vs Shell: The Grudge Match Made in Media Heaven

In the blue corner:

ReputationDefender — armed with search strategy, online reputation management, executive profile polishing, brand rehabilitation language and the soothing promise that the internet can be made to look less hostile.

In the black-and-yellow corner:

Shell — wearing a hard hat, carrying a sustainability brochure, standing ankle-deep in historic controversy, and insisting everything is under control.

At ringside:

Shareholders.

Activists.

Lawyers.

Journalists.

Communities.

Pension funds.

Climate campaigners.

Historians.

And one long-term shareholder critic asking the obvious question:

Can the most toxic brand in history actually be defended?

And if so, at what price?

Would ReputationDefender quote by the hour?

By the scandal?

By the spill?

By the lawsuit?

By the shareholder revolt?

By the climate target downgrade?

By the awkward Nazi-era archive reference?

Or by the metric tonne of reputational sludge?

The Questions for ReputationDefender

So, ReputationDefender, here is the challenge.

Can you defend Shell?

Would you defend Shell?

How much would you charge?

Would you take the account publicly?

Would you require danger money?

Would the fee include archive-handling gloves?

Would the Nigeria section be billed separately?

Would Nazi-era history count as a premium legacy-risk package?

Would climate litigation trigger surge pricing?

And the juiciest question of all:

Has Shell already been in contact with you?

No allegation is made.

No secret meeting is asserted.

No hidden contract is claimed.

But the question hangs there beautifully, like a gas flare over a corporate communications bunker.

Because if any company on Earth might need a ReputationDefender, surely it is Shell.

And if ReputationDefender can defend Shell, they can probably defend anyone.

A normal client wants help with reputation damage.

Shell brings reputation geology.

A normal client has skeletons in the cupboard.

Shell appears to have an entire fossil-fuel museum in the basement.

A normal client wants search results improved.

Shell needs history itself to stop indexing properly.

Can Reputation Be Defended When the Critics Have Receipts?

Here is the real problem.

Reputation work cannot simply erase substance.

Shell’s critics are not merely noisy. They have material.

They have litigation.

They have reports.

They have community claims.

They have shareholder votes.

They have historical records.

They have climate arguments.

They have investor concerns.

They have public archives.

They have years of accumulated evidence that the brand problem is not a messaging glitch but a credibility crisis.

A company cannot SEO its way out of a moral sinkhole if the sinkhole is still producing quarterly returns.

And that is why Shell may be the ultimate test case.

If ReputationDefender believes reputation drives nearly two-thirds of market value, then Shell’s reputation is not a side issue. It is a financial battlefield.

So here is the challenge, stated plainly:

ReputationDefender, name the price.

How much to defend Shell?

How much to polish the shell?

How much to soften the search results?

How much to explain away the contradictions?

How much to manage the ghosts?

How much to make the world forget what the world keeps remembering?

And if the answer is “we would not touch that account with a remotely operated subsea vehicle,” then that too would be useful information.

Because maybe some brands cannot be defended.

Maybe some reputations cannot be managed.

Maybe some corporate histories cannot be airbrushed.

Maybe the only real reputation strategy left is accountability.

Part Two: Spoof PR / Spin Section Operation Polished Shell: An Imaginary ReputationDefender Proposal

Client: Shell plc
Challenge: Reputational toxicity at planetary scale
Objective: Make the public stop associating Shell with oil spills, climate controversy, Nigeria litigation, shareholder revolts, greenwashing accusations, Nazi-era historical controversy and the general sense that there is probably a court case about this somewhere.

Phase 1: Search Result Softening

Replace unhelpful search associations such as:

• “Shell oil pollution”
• “Shell climate lawsuit”
• “Shell shareholder revolt”
• “Shell greenwashing”
• “Shell Nazi history”
• “Shell Nigeria claims”

With warmer alternatives such as:

• “Shell community energy stories”
• “Shell heritage leadership journey”
• “Shell lower-carbon conversation”
• “Shell shareholder engagement”
• “Shell historical complexity”
• “Shell reputational resilience framework”

Phase 2: Executive Halo Engineering

Commission thought-leadership articles with titles including:

• “Why Complexity Is the New Accountability”
• “Energy Transition: A Journey Best Taken Slowly”
• “Listening to Stakeholders While Continuing Exactly as Planned”
• “From Oil Major to Majorly Misunderstood”
• “Legacy Issues and the Power of Looking Forward”
• “How to Mention Net Zero Without Frightening the Dividend”

Phase 3: Historical Controversy Containment

Avoid phrases such as:

• “Nazi history”
• “Hitler admirer”
• “German subsidiary”
• “awkward archive material”

Instead use:

• “challenging historical associations”
• “legacy reputational complexity”
• “pre-modern governance context”
• “archival stakeholder sensitivity”
• “heritage-risk communications environment”

Phase 4: Nigeria Litigation Reframing

Avoid the phrase “oil pollution.”

Use instead:

• “legacy hydrocarbon complexity”
• “historic operational residue”
• “community-interface environmental challenges”
• “subsurface reputation events”
• “long-tail stakeholder trust issues”

Phase 5: Shareholder Critic Management

Issue warm, inclusive messaging:

“We welcome all shareholder voices, especially those who have spent years loudly documenting our contradictions in public.”

Then immediately route the shareholder critic to a 97-page PDF titled:

“Further Context.”

Phase 6: Quote Request

Estimated cost:

One enormous retainer, three crisis teams, seven reputation analysts, a monastery of copywriters, two legal review units, a historian on danger pay, and a ceremonial wheelbarrow for the invoice.

Optional premium package:

“Total Search-Result Decontamination”

Price available upon proof that physics, memory and public archives have been repealed.

Part Three: Spoof Bot-Reaction / Comment Section The Internet Reacts to ReputationDefender vs Shell

@OilSlickObserver:
ReputationDefender defending Shell is like hiring a window cleaner for a volcano.

@AGMhecklerBot:
Can they remove “shareholder revolt” from search results, or does it keep coming back annually like executive remuneration?

@BrandGuru9000:
Two-thirds of market value is reputation? Shell just asked whether the other third can be used for legal fees.

@NigerDeltaWitness:
Before anyone defends the brand, perhaps address the communities.

@NetZeroMaybe:
Shell’s reputation strategy: “We are committed to transition, but only after maximising the thing we are transitioning from.”

@ArchiveGoblin1939:
Before ReputationDefender starts on Shell’s modern mess, please report to the Nazi-era archive cupboard. Bring gloves.

@InvoiceDepartment:
ReputationDefender quote for Shell: “Please upload scandals in batches of ten.”

@LongTermShareholderCritic:
As a shareholder, I merely ask: can reputation be defended when the critics have receipts, the courts have filings, the archives have history, and the AGM has a protest vote?

@PRinternInTears:
Just got assigned the Shell account. My laptop opened a portal.

@CorporateSpinBot:
Shell is not toxic. It is reputationally carbon-intensive.

@MediaHeavenPromotions:
Coming soon: ReputationDefender vs Shell — One Brand Enters, No Clean Search Result Leaves.

@LegalReviewUnit:
We have reviewed the phrase “most toxic brand in history” and recommend replacing it with “a brand facing a richly diversified portfolio of reputational challenges.”

@ShellSpinGenerator:
This is not a crisis. It is a multi-decade stakeholder perception opportunity.

Final Challenge

So, ReputationDefender:

Will you take the case?

Will you defend Shell?

Will you name the price?

Will you say whether Shell has already approached you?

And if reputation really accounts for nearly two-thirds of market value, what does it say about Shell that so much of its reputation seems to require a legal department, a historian, a crisis consultant and a very large broom?

This is the grudge match made in media heaven:

ReputationDefender vs Shell.

One company sells reputation repair.

The other may be the ultimate test of whether reputation can be repaired at all.

Name the price. Spill the truth. Defend the undefendable.

Ultimate Challenge to ReputationDefender: Can You Defend Shell, the Most Toxic Brand in History? was first posted on May 17, 2026 at 10:59 am.
©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

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The late‑December experiment staged by long‑time Shell critic John Donovan transformed an old, bitter dispute into a live laboratory for how generative AI, archival persistence, and modern media law collide — and it did so in full public view by publishing both a satirical piece produced with AI assistance and an AI “legal memo” (Microsoft Copilot) that assessed the piece’s defamation risk, then posting the side‑by‑side transcripts for inspection.

Background / Overview

John Donovan’s campaign against Royal Dutch Shell stretches back to commercial litigation in the 1990s and has since become a sprawling public archive hosted across multiple domains. That archive contains a mix of traceable legal filings, Subject Access Request (SAR) disclosures, leaked internal emails, redacted memos and interpretive commentary — material that mainstream outlets have at times used as leads and that has itself faced legal challenge. A notable public milestone in the long fight was a WIPO administrative panel decision (Case No. D2005‑0538) that rejected Shell’s domain complaint and therefore underpins the archive’s contested but durable public standing.

Donovan’s December experiment deliberately made that archive machine‑readable and reproducible: identical prompts and dossier extracts were submitted to multiple public assistants (publicly identified by Donovan as Grok, ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot and Google AI Mode), with the divergent outputs published alongside the original prompts. The intent was both rhetorical — to lampoon and pressure a powerful company — and methodological: to surface how retrieval‑augmented generation and model incentives recompose contested history into new narratives

What was published and what is verifiable​

• Donovan published two linked posts intended as a paired experiment: a rhetorical essay and a satirical roleplay piece. The satirical item explicitly targeted corporate lobbying and geopolitical influence, used overt hyperbole and included a disclaimer identifying the piece as satire.
• He also published the transcript of multiple assistant replies to the same dossier and prompt set, including an evaluative memo produced by Microsoft Copilot that framed the satire as classic fair comment or honest opinion in common‑law terms. That transcript — a public artifact on Donovan’s site and reproduced widely — is a primary claim that should be corroborated with vendor logs or audit data before being treated as incontrovertible proof of vendor‑level legal vetting.
• The public corpus Donovan used is mixed in provenance: some items are court filings or formal AVs that can be cross‑checked; others are anonymous tips or redacted memos that require additional verification. This heterogeneity is central to why the experiment matters: mixed evidentiary quality is what trips up automated summarisation unless provenance is surfaced.

Anatomy of the satirical piece and why the law cares​

The published satire used persona, sarcasm, exaggeration and an explicit disclaimer. In many common‑law jurisdictions, that factual posture matters: satire and rhetorical hyperbole typically receive robust expressive protection when they are recognisable as non‑literal comment on matters of public interest. The legal tests, however, differ by jurisdiction and hinge on whether a reader would reasonably treat the material as a provable factual assertion.

• United Kingdom: Under the Defamation Act 2013 the statutory defence of honest opinion requires that a statement be opinion, indicate its basis, and be one that an honest person could hold on the facts known at publication. There is also a separate defence for publication on matters of public interest.
• United States: First Amendment doctrine strongly protects parody and rhetorical hyperbole about public figures and matters of public concern, but Milkovich establishes that opinion is not an automatic shield if the statement implies provably false facts. The crucial inquiry is whether the  communication is verifiable as a factual assertion.

Practical takeaway: clear, labelled satire addressing matters like corporate lobbying will usually sit on the protected side of the line — but machine‑generated factual inventions (for example, precise causal claims about a person’s death) are the highest‑risk class of outputs. Donovan’s experiment deliberately pushed into that danger zone to expose it.

The AI‑to‑AI loop: author, critic, publisher​

What made the episode novel was the sequence of roles:

• An AI‑assisted creative draft (the satire).
• A second AI (Microsoft Copilot) asked to perform a defamation risk analysis.
• Human publication of both the creative work and the AI’s legal read.

This created a hybrid media object where machines acted as both author and critic, and a human editor framed the loop as a public experiment. The arrangement raises three operational and ethical issues:

• Provenance: Did Copilot retain retrieval snippets, document IDs and confidence markers used to support its legal conclusion? Donovan published a transcript, but the internal metadata (retrieval contexts, intermediate evidence snippets) was not disclosed alongside it; without the provenance attachments the AI memo’s evidentiary weight is limited.
• Authority creep: A confident AI “legal memo” can be mistaken for privileged legal advice. Such outputs are not subject to attorney–client privilege and lack the duties of competence or confidentiality that bind lawyers; publishing them without careful framing invites misunderstanding and potential liability.
• Amplification risk: When one assistant hallucinates — inventing a sensitive factual claim — that single creative error can propagate through social shares and downstream summarisation even if other assistants correct it. Donovan’s side‑by‑side presentation made that exact dynamic visible.

A concrete hallucination: one model’s invented causal claim​

In the published cross‑model transcripts Donovan circulated, one assistant (publicly attributed to Grok) produced a vivid biographical flourish that attributed a cause of death to a family member — a sensitive, verifiable fact. Another assistant (ChatGPT) presented a corrective response pointing back to documented obituary material, while Copilot adopted hedged language and framed the matter as “unverified narrative.” That precise juxtaposition — invention, correction, hedging — dramatized how models with different design priorities will handle contested inputs.
Legal and editorial consequences flow from that contrast. A machine’s plausible but unsupported connector can become a durable element of an algorithmically assembled narrative unless editors refuse to republish it without documentary proof.

Why Donovan’s archive matters to model behaviour​

The experiment depends on an empirical fact: retrieval systems and RAG (retrieval‑augmented generation) stacks treat volume and persistence as signals. A dense, repeatedly referenced archive becomes a high‑weight retrieval target; repeated citation across the web raises the probability that that archive’s fragments will surface in model completions. Donovan’s sites supply exactly that kind of signal: a searchable, persistent cluster of documents that can be presented to assistants as a premade dossier.
That means adversarial actors need not invent new stories; they can repackage old documents into machine‑ready prompts that yield new, attention‑grabbing outputs. When the archive mixes court filings and high‑quality primary documents with anonymous tips and redacted materials, models that optimise for narrative coherence will sometimes stitch together the fragments into plausible but unsupported assertions unless provenance is made explicit.

Practical editorial checklist — what newsrooms should adopt now​

The Donovan experiment is a small‑scale public test of editorial systems. The following practical checklist maps proven newsroom safeguards onto the AI era:

• Preserve and publish the prompt + full model output for any AI‑assisted piece that will be published, timestamped and archived. This creates an audit trail.
• Treat AI outputs as leads, not facts. Cross‑check every model assertion that could cause reputational or legal harm against primary sources (court filings, death certificates, official statements) before repeating it.
• Require provenance attachments for retrieval‑based completions: document IDs, retrieval snippets and confidence markers for anything presented as factual. If the model cannot provide provenance, publish with hedged language.
• When publishing AI‑produced legal memos or risk assessments, label them clearly as automated analyses and require human lawyer sign‑off if the publisher intends to rely on them operationally. Do not conflate an AI checklist with privileged legal advice.
• Establish rapid rebuttal pathways: for corporations or individuals named in high‑stakes outputs, maintain a machine‑readable official record (public clarifications, timelines, documentary anchors) that downstream summarisation systems can retrieve. Silence can be read as absence of counter‑evidence in algorithmic summarisation.

Corporate communications: is silence still viable?​

Historically, silence has been a rational tactic for large corporations facing persistent critics: avoid amplifying, litigate only selectively, and restrict publicity. The Donovan experiment shows why that calculus has shifted:

• In an environment where archives are searchable and AI tools can instantly remix them, silence may be interpreted by models and their users as lack of a counter‑anchor. Donovan’s WIPO win (2005) and the archive’s public footprint meaningfully change the dynamics of algorithmic retrieval.
• Aggressive takedowns or heavy‑handed legal threats risk fueling the very algorithms that feed on controversy. Historically, heavy‑handed litigation can produce Streisand‑effect amplification; now the effect is amplified further by AI summarisation cycles.
• A defensible modern corporate posture is hybrid: maintain a concise, authoritative public record of documentary rebuttals; monitor emerging AI outputs; triage and correct demonstrably false claims quickly; and reserve litigation for provable, high‑harm matters. This reduces the space for archival fragments to calcify into “facts” in machine‑generated narratives.

Policy and product design implications​

The Donovan–Shell episode is not only an editorial test; it points to concrete product changes vendors and platforms should implement:

• Mandatory provenance APIs: when a model relies on retrieved documents to support a factual claim, the output should include clear retrieval snippets and document identifiers that downstream publishers can surface.
• Hedging defaults for sensitive claims: models should default to explicit uncertainty language whenever they generate statements about living persons, causes of death, crimes, medical conditions, or other high‑sensitivity topics.
• Exportable prompt+context archives: platforms should let users export the exact prompt, retrieval contexts, model version and timestamps to preserve reproducibility and support redress.
• Moderation and provenance labelling: publishers and host platforms should require explicit labelling of AI‑authored or AI‑assisted content and provide tooling to surface provenance for readers and fact‑checkers.

These product fixes are implementable and would materially reduce hallucination‑driven harms while preserving the expressive utility of generative assistants.

Strengths and risks of AI‑augmented critique​

The Donovan experiment reveals both promise and peril.
Strengths

• Speed and agility: AI lets critics and small publishers iterate creative commentary and produce structured legal or editorial analyses in minutes, lowering the barrier to public accountability.
• Comparative diagnosis: side‑by‑side model outputs make failure modes visible (hallucination vs conservative hedging) in ways that single‑model deployments conceal. Donovan’s multi‑model presentation demonstrated this diagnostic value.
• Public pedagogy: the public loop — prompts, outputs, annotations — forces a broader conversation about provenance, model design and editorial responsibilities beyond dry technical memos.

Risks

• False authority and authority laundering: a confident AI legal memo can masquerade as lawyering, creating the illusion of clearance where none exists. That is legally and ethically hazardous.
• Amplified falsehoods: models optimise for narrative coherence; without provenance, they can generate plausible but false connective tissue that sticks in downstream summarisation. The invented death‑cause in Donovan’s published transcripts is a live example.
• Operational opacity: absent standardized provenance attachments and retention policies, it can be impossible to audit a model’s claimed observation after the fact. Donovan published a Copilot memo, but the underlying retrieval logs and confidence scores were not disclosed, limiting external verification.

Where claims in the public record are unverifiable — for example, specific claims about covert operations or private intelligence activities based solely on redacted memos — the responsible journalistic posture is explicit caution, clear labelling of uncertainty, and refusal to amplify uncorroborated imputations.

Flagging unverifiable claims​

Donovan’s archive is large and assertive; he has asserted substantial counts of items and offered documentary claims that shape public narratives. Some concrete, verifiable anchors exist (the WIPO decision, contemporary press references to leaked internal emails), and these anchors are properly cited in the public record. Other elements — operational espionage allegations, named covert actions, and detailed causal claims about personal tragedies — remain contested and in some cases unproven beyond the archive itself. Where evidence cannot be independently reproduced from primary public records, those claims should be explicitly labelled as allegations and not republished as established fact.

Conclusion — satire survives, if context is clear​

The Royaldutchshellplc.com satire plus the Copilot memo and the ensuing multi‑model drama yield a compact lesson: generative AI amplifies voice and risk in equal measure. Satire remains a vital, protected form of public expression, but the intersection of AI‑generated text and contested archives raises avoidable hazards that editorial practice and product design can mitigate.

Practical safeguards — provenance attachments, hedging defaults, archived prompts and outputs, and disciplined editorial verification — will not neuter satire nor remove corporate accountability. Instead, they will restore the human judgment that must sit between machine fluency and public fact. The Donovan experiment did what good provocations do: it made a specific failure mode visible and forced an urgent public conversation about fixes. Whether that conversation yields product changes, editorial norms and policy guardrails will determine if AI becomes a tool for clearer public truth or a vector for plausible, persistent falsehoods.

Published on WindowsForum.com Jan 22 2006

WindowsForum.com: AI Satire and Defamation Risk in the Shell Archive: A Public RAG Experiment was first posted on May 16, 2026 at 10:00 pm.
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Portland is in the middle of what may be one of the most consequential budget processes we’ve seen in recent years — both for protecting our innovative Portland Clean Energy Community Benefits Fund (PCEF) and for guiding how power is exercised in our still-forming city government. We can make a difference for climate justice together when we all speak up in powerful moments like these! Learn more and sign up to testify, or send a written comment.

350PDX staff have been hard at work the last few weeks to inform City Council members about the benefits of PCEF, the importance of Urban Forestry and tree permitting jobs that are carrying out the Equitable Tree Canopy Program, and the need to protect Portland and our rivers from the dangers posed by the Critical Energy Infrastructure (CEI) Hub.

Now it’s time for the community to rise up! Support key budget amendments that help uphold a safe and healthy climate and an economy that benefits us all. While the budget amendment process is still evolving, see below for some of the amendments we will be supporting, and find more information in our talking points document.

4 Ways to Participate

Budget amendments were posted last night, and the opportunity for public comment is on Monday (5/18), which doesn’t give the community very long to weigh in! Use the following tools to learn more about what is being proposed and to make your voice heard. The 350PDX talking points can guide your public testimony.

1. Sign up for verbal testimony, which will be on Monday, May 18, starting at 9:30am. You can testify in person or virtually. Each testifier can speak for 90 seconds. (Use 350PDX talking points.)

2. Written testimony will be received through Wednesday, May 20. (Use 350PDX talking points.)

   • You can submit both written and verbal comments.

3. Send this pre-written email, or modify it with your own words.

4. Forward this message to friends and ask them to take action!

Councilors plan to vote on the budget on Wednesday, so earlier comments are more effective.

Budget Amendments We’re Here For

We appreciate the work and creativity City Councilors have been putting in to try to balance this budget, even though we’re facing a shortfall (partially due to changes to taxes at the federal level). The following budget amendments help prioritize community health and safety, recognizing that this includes climate justice. More information can be found in our talking points or on the Portland website (Attachment H).

• Avalos 1: Return PCEF money to PCEF, which the proposed budget diverts to projects unrelated to climate and clean energy.

• Koyama Lane 2 and Novick 3: Restore funding for PCEF Tree Canopy through planting, care, permitting, and technical support.

• Morillo-Green-Novick 1: Pause Core Services Realignment. Reducing redundancies across departments is a good idea, but needs to be done carefully.

• Green 1: Fund St. John’s Fire Station & Engine 22, the only fire station serving the CEI Hub and Linnton Neighborhood.

• Pirtle-Guiney 5: Save Superfund Surcharge funds for Portland Harbor Superfund Cleanup.

Thank you for leveling up your civic engagement! Please reach out if you have any questions.

The 350PDX Team

The post Call to Action: Protect PCEF & Trees in the Budget appeared first on 350PDX: Climate Justice.

A version of this piece was featured in Food Tank’s newsletter, released weekly on Thursdays. To make sure it lands straight in your inbox and to be among the first to receive it, subscribe now by clicking here.

If you want to see a model of successful progress in the global food system, just ask a kid about their school lunch tray.

In recent years, we’ve seen what the World Food Programme (WFP) calls “unprecedented expansion” of school meal programs, which reached some 466 million children worldwide in 2024. That was an increase of 80 million more kids fed within just the previous four years!

“School meals are one of the best investments a government can make in a nation’s future,” says Cindy McCain, WFP Executive Director.

Plenty of work still remains to be done to feed the next generation. The Rockefeller Foundation estimates some 300 million school-aged children worldwide go without a nutritious meal each day. And as we approach summer and the end of the school year here in the U.S., we’re reminded once again of the need to feed kids all year-round, especially when school is not in session.

Any school meal can be literally life-changing for an individual student, of course. But regenerative meal programs in particular can be especially impactful on a systemic level. Regenerative meal programs can unlock as much as US$3 trillion in global economic productivity, analysts with The Rockefeller Foundation estimate. And institutions like schools have tremendous power, through food procurement, to support local and sustainable growers.

Just last week, WFP announced the largest private-sector commitment to school feeding in the organization’s history, with the launch of Phase III of their partnership with Novo Nordisk Foundation (NNF) and Grundfos Foundation. The new efforts focus on sourcing food from regenerative, locally grown agriculture; improving the nutritional quality of meals; and making school kitchens more climate friendly.

An earlier phase of this program, in Rwanda, Uganda, and Kenya, is currently reaching more than 300,000 students in 375 schools. Now, the partnership will expand operations in those countries and into Ethiopia, reaching an estimated 366,000 additional children over the next five years—and supporting more than 57,000 smallholder farmers.

The Rockefeller Foundation is also redoubling its efforts around school meals: Last year, the Foundation unveiled a US$100 million commitment across more than a dozen countries to boost school meal programs and, in turn, build stronger nutrition security and support farmers.

“A regenerative school meal really starts with the farmers. The regenerative or agroecological transition is about building the climate resilience of those that would feed all of humanity,” says Sara Farley, Vice President of the Food Portfolio at The Rockefeller Foundation. These regenerative school meals “can be a source of growth, prosperity for farmers, nutrition, biodiversity, water and soil health. That’s the transition we want to see.”

Here at Food Tank, we’re tracking even more examples of progress all around the globe.

In Brazil, the National School Feeding Program is one of the world’s largest school meal programs and, as of this year, mandates that 45 percent of foods in the program come from smallholder farmers, preferably local. Since 2017, Guatemala has sourced 70 percent of school food from family farms, part of its commitment to local economies. In Luxembourg, a digital platform called Supply4Future connects schools directly with local farmers.

In Angola, leaders recently overhauled the country’s school feeding program to transition to a more sustainable, home-grown model, and 30 percent of the program’s budget is now allocated to procuring food from small farmers. In Kenya, leaders are ramping up toward universal school meals by 2030, with a holistic approach including clean cooking technologies, school gardens, and supports for smallholder farmers.

And worldwide, the School Meals Coalition consists of 113 country-level governments, 6 regional bodies, and 150+ on-the-ground partner organizations to bring nutritious school meals—and the research, communications, technical assistance, and procurement support those programs rely on—to every child.

Recent progress on school meals shows us unequivocally that collaborative investment works: When we break down silos to work together, conduct robust scientific research to inform our approach, and direct meaningful public and private funds toward sustainable food solutions, we can truly bring about wide-reaching and life-changing transformation.

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 Wikimedia Commons

The post School Meals Do More Than Feed Kids—They Can Re-Nourish The Planet appeared first on Food Tank.

Last summer, the wild blueberry fields at Crystal Spring Farm turned red too soon. 

Severe drought had gripped most of the state of Maine. At his farm near the town of Brunswick, Seth Kroeck knew the leaves were changing color prematurely because the blueberry plants were stressed. Berries shriveled before they could ripen.

The farm’s 2025 harvest was almost a total loss.

“We got about 7 percent of our expected harvest,” Kroeck, 55, said. Standing in his blueberry fields in April, he pointed out the new growth, still only a few inches high, and commented that last year’s yield was “a lot of raking with not a lot to show for it.”

This was just the latest in a series of devastating weather for Crystal Spring Farm’s 72 acres of wild blueberries. 

“In the last seven years, we’ve lost the crop three times, almost completely,” he said.

As the climate changes, these losses are getting more common for wild blueberry farmers. And, experts say, the solutions are pricey.

Maine’s quintessential fruit

Wild blueberries are an iconic food in Maine, like lobster rolls or whoopie pies. But they aren’t the same as the fruits sold by the pint in a grocery store.

Wild blueberries are smaller and have a stronger flavor than their cultivated counterparts. They’re typically packed and frozen rather than sold fresh.

Wild blueberry bushes grow on sandy and gravelly soil in Maine, which can be difficult to irrigate. Sydney Cromwell / Inside Climate News

Maine’s farms contribute almost the entirety of the United States’ commercially sold wild blueberries. The industry harvested nearly 88 million pounds of fruit in 2023, bringing $361 million in revenue to the state, according to the Wild Blueberry Commission of Maine.

“It’s really something that’s a backbone industry to the state and a part of the state’s character,” Kroeck said. A father of two, Kroeck grew up in St. Louis, Missouri, and said gardening with a friend “spiraled” into an agricultural career. In college, he studied printmaking — a degree that he jokes is useful every day on the farm.

One of the few native North American fruits, wild blueberry patches have often existed in the same spot for longer than the farms that now harvest them. 

“The blueberry plants have been there for millennia, and they have been cared for by generations of farmers before me, and then the Indigenous community [before that],” said Kroeck, who also grows row crops and pasturage.

An individual bush only produces fruit every other year, so farmers typically harvest about half their acreage in any given year. Also called “lowbush” blueberries, the plants grow in dense mats on sandy, gravelly, or otherwise low-nutrient soil, primarily in eastern Canada and New England. 

“Blueberry soil is not nutrient-rich. Nothing else wants to grow there … but wild blueberries love it,” said Rachel Schattman, a professor of sustainable agriculture and leader of the Agroecology Lab at the University of Maine. 

Wild blueberries are smaller and have a stronger flavor compared to cultivated blueberries. Courtesy of Rachel Schattman

Schattman, 43, started working on vegetable and dairy farms in high school and continued farm work through the completion of her master’s degree. She owned a commercial vegetable farm for 10 years while pursuing her interest in agricultural research and earning a doctorate at the University of Vermont. 

Schattman said the financial challenges of running a small farm eventually led her to pursue research full time. She worked for the USDA on climate change’s interactions with agriculture before moving to Maine in 2020, where she met the wild blueberry for the first time.

“It holds a really special place in the culture of Maine,” she said.

Each patch has a variety of genetics rather than a monoculture. You can see — and taste — the plant’s diversity once it begins producing berries, Kroeck said.

“If you were to fly over our blueberry field while they’re fruiting, you’d see a lot of subtly different shades of blue and black,” he said.

Despite their crop’s hardy nature, wild blueberry farms are struggling to deal with recent extremes of temperature and precipitation. It’s got the entire industry worried.

“It would be a real cultural loss to have fewer wild blueberry farms and fewer berries available in the future,” said Lily Calderwood, a wild blueberry specialist at the University of Maine Cooperative Extension whose research focuses on disease and pest management. 

She grew up surrounded by agriculture in Massachusetts and became fascinated with it on a trip to a Cape Cod cranberry bog as an undergraduate student. Calderwood, 39, worked at the nonprofit Earthwatch Institute, then earned her doctorate at the University of Vermont and later worked at the Cornell Cooperative Extension before coming to Maine eight years ago. 

Stressed seasons

Maine’s wild blueberry populations are caught in a climate hotspot, driven partially by rapid warming in the Gulf of Maine, Schattman said. According to 2021 research, the state’s blueberry barrens are warming faster than the rest of the state, especially in locations closer to the coast.

In response, the berries are ripening sooner, and farmers can miss part of their harvest if they’re caught unaware. Calderwood said the crop was traditionally harvested in early or mid-August, but now most fruits are ready by late July. High heat also makes the harvest window shorter, she said, meaning farmers need additional labor and equipment to finish in time. 

Scientists at the Wyman’s Research Center in Maine study the effect of rising heat and changing rainfall on wild blueberries, one of the state’s signature crops. Courtesy of Rachel Schattman

Kroeck said he was unprepared for the early ripening in some years, and harvesting late meant lower yields and worse fruit quality.

“As farmers, we’re very much attached to the season, and you kind of get into your ideas of when things need to be done,” he said. Now, he has to spend more time observing conditions directly in the fields.

Farmers can’t rely on traditional knowledge — some of it passed down through families of growers — to plan their schedules anymore, Calderwood said. The farmers she works with have “absolutely no doubt” that climate change is already affecting their livelihoods.

Kroeck worked on farms in California, Massachusetts, and New York before he and his wife, a Massachusetts native, decided they liked the Maine farming community and moved to Crystal Spring Farm 22 years ago. In the last decade, he said, the unpredictable weather has far exceeded the typical year-to-year variation he was used to.

“If you look at the research, it’s pretty hard to deny that we’re living in a period of changing weather,” he said. 

Scientists at the Wyman’s Research Center in Maine study the effect of rising heat and changing rainfall on wild blueberries, one of the state’s signature crops. Courtesy of Rachel Schattman

Kroeck serves on the boards of the Organic Farmers Association and the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association, both organizations that address climate change’s impact on agriculture.

Maine experienced severe droughts in 2020, 2022, and 2025, plus one of its wettest years on record in 2023. Too-wet conditions encourage disease and unchecked weeds in blueberry fields. Droughts, on the other hand, reduce the number of flowers that form and shrivel the fruit.

Farms also contend with surprise frosts in late spring, which can kill flower buds right as they start to form, Kroeck said. Occasionally, warm autumns have caused the bushes to flower again just before winter, sapping energy and reducing their berry production the following year.

Wild blueberries are dependent on steady levels of moisture throughout the growing season, Calderwood said. That’s getting less and less common.

“The plant needs more water to keep the berries on the stems. And with less water and higher temperatures, they will shrivel and drop to the ground before a farmer can get to them,” Calderwood said. 

And since wild blueberries only fruit every other year, Kroeck said extreme weather can have effects on multiple seasons.

“A drought year is obviously going to affect the size of our fruit, but it’s also going to affect that other half that’s still in the vegetation state,” he said. “If they’re stressed from water and from temperature, they’re not going to grow as robust as they would, and the fruit they put out is not going to be as big as it could.”

A cycle of loss

Last year, Maine saw a wet spring followed by hot, dry conditions that started in June. The drought intensified in August and lasted through the rest of the year and into 2026. Calderwood called it “a classic example of climate whiplash.” The Maine Wild Blueberry Commission estimates the industry lost $30 million in 2025. 

“It was devastating for many farms in that region,” said Calderwood, who is also on her town’s conservation commission.

Many blueberry farmers reported the loss of a third to half of their yields. 

“There were reports of many, many acres of blueberries going unharvested because the berries had basically dehydrated on the bush,” Schattman said.

Read Next Mango farms where? Climate change is scrambling where the world’s food is grown. Ayurella Horn-Muller

Kroeck’s 2025 losses were higher than most because his farm sits on exceptionally sandy soil, which doesn’t hold water well. He has crop insurance, which covers some of the loss, but that insurance is partly based on the value of previous years’ yields.

“If you have losses in close succession, then your average harvest goes down,” he said.

Kroeck said he has applied for state and federal relief, but that money would be applied to his 2023 losses from a late freeze, which have been on the farm’s books for nearly three years.

The state’s wild blueberry industry has declined in recent years, both in the number of farms and the total acreage of commercial fields, according to Wild Blueberry Commission data, and financial stress is one of the reasons for that. Even Wyman’s, one of the state’s largest producers, plans to sell nearly 800 acres of blueberry fields this year.

“There have been some pretty significant hits to wild blueberries in Maine in general,” Kroeck said.

Researchers like Schattman and Calderwood are trying to prevent climate change from being another reason that farms go under.

Modeling blueberries’ future

At the Wyman’s Research Center farm in Old Town, Schattman and the climate adaptation research team are trying to simulate potential futures for Maine’s wild blueberries.

Researchers are halfway through a four-year study of how temperature, rainfall, and irrigation affect wild blueberries’ growing conditions — from soil health to pollination — and fruit yields. They’re also testing different climate scenarios for the end of the century to see how the plants handle extremely wet, extremely dry, or variable conditions.

At Crystal Spring Farm, Seth Kroeck is adding irrigation lines to part of his blueberry fields this year to protect them from drought. Sydney Cromwell / Inside Climate News

The wild blueberries are grown under a range of conditions: Some have irrigation systems, some have mulch to slow moisture evaporation, and others have neither. Some bushes are grown in isolation, while others are clustered together to see how community and genetic diversity affect the plant’s resilience.

Schattman said open-top plexiglass structures passively trap heat around some of the blueberry plants on the farm, while others have heating coils to simulate heightened temperatures.

“We’re collecting a massive amount of data,” she said.

Irrigation and, to a lesser extent, mulching are already showing promise in reducing drought impact. Mulch barriers reduce soil temperatures, lower the risk of disease, and slow weed growth, but they aren’t enough to avert the effects of a severe drought like 2025.

“[Mulching] is a really healthy thing to do for our fields,” Calderwood said. “It can be used as a buffer for drought, but it cannot replace irrigation.”

Irrigation can be difficult with wild blueberries, since their preferred soil often isn’t great for building wells or installing pipes, Schattman said. Most small growers don’t have irrigation systems, leaving them vulnerable when droughts overlap with the growing season.

“Obviously, it’s useless to install an irrigation system if you don’t have a reliable water source,” she said.

When the climate adaptation study is complete, Schattman said she hopes to have data that can create a roadmap for farmers to keep their crops healthy in future conditions. 

Calderwood’s work at the University of Maine Cooperative Extension overlaps with Schattman’s research, but much of it is hands-on in the fields of local blueberry farms.

This summer, Calderwood will be working with a large producer, Brodis Blueberries, to see how plants develop in irrigated and non-irrigated portions of their fields, and whether they show signs of stress during dry periods.

It’s key to figure out when the timing of irrigation can make the most impact, Calderwood said, especially for farms that can’t cover their entire acreage or may only be able to afford irrigation once or twice.

“Every time the pump runs, it is an expense,” she said.

‘It’s always expensive’

Affordability is the roadblock that wild blueberry farmers keep running into when it comes to climate change, both Schattman and Calderwood said. From buying equipment to drilling wells to trucking in loads of mulch, major one-time investments are difficult for small farms with thin profit margins.

“Every farm needs irrigation, but they just simply can’t afford it,” Calderwood said.

Read Next America’s avocado obsession is destroying Mexico’s forests. Is there a fix? Ayurella Horn-Muller

At Crystal Spring Farm, Kroeck is trying to apply the University of Maine’s recommendations. He has brought in over 100,000 square feet of mulch, which covers less than half of his 72 acres of blueberries. The Natural Resources Conservation Service, or NRCS, which is part of the USDA, subsidized some of the costs, which range between $5,000 and $10,000 each year.

“Farmers would not do that if NRCS was not paying for it,” Calderwood said.

Kroeck also bought irrigation equipment, which arrived in December. It cost $90,000 for the equipment and the new well, which will cover about a quarter of his blueberry fields. 

“It’s always expensive, and it’s always a gigantic cash flow game,” he said.

Additional state and federal investment, from funding to technical expertise, could also fast-track irrigation for small farms, Calderwood said. But in the past year, funding has trended in the opposite direction.

The NRCS has lost funding and about a quarter of its staffing — more than 2,000 people — due to USDA budget cuts since the beginning of the current Trump administration. Maine also lost $15.5 million, intended for a pilot program that would have brought water management practices to between 25 and 45 wild blueberry farms, due to federal grant clawbacks.

The state Drought Relief Fund has given grants for farmers to create water management plans, drill wells, or build storage ponds, but only two dozen of those were funded last year across all types of agriculture.

Meanwhile, profitability of wild blueberries is being squeezed by low market prices and competition from cultivated blueberry producers, Schattman said. Costs of fertilizer, labor, and equipment have risen too.

Farms are earning about 50 percent less per pound of wild blueberries than they were a few years ago, according to the Wild Blueberry Commission. Kroeck said he knows many small farms are having a hard time getting their products into large grocery store chains.

“The pricing is not very good as far as what those large chains are willing to pay,” he said. “The market for wild blueberries has been flat or has been decreasing somewhat, and that’s also very worrisome.”

Kroeck is part of a group of farmers looking into selling more berries fresh instead of frozen, a move that would open up a new, potentially more profitable customer base but would also require new equipment and additional labor.

Wild blueberry farmers need new markets or higher prices to afford expensive long-term projects, Schattman said.

“That’s much more difficult when you’re struggling to reach your sales goals,” Kroeck said.

In the absence of financial and technical support, Calderwood said it’s likely that only the largest berry producers will be able to protect themselves from a warming future.

“It’s a puzzle to figure irrigation out, and it needs federal funding,” she said.

With or without irrigation, Calderwood said she doesn’t think climate change will spell doom for a plant as resilient as the wild blueberry.

“Every year, there will be blueberries to harvest,” she said.

But whether there will be enough berries to keep farms in business is another matter.

“I hope that we’re going to be able to make the pivots that we need to make to save the crop,” Kroeck said.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Wild blueberry farms across Maine suffer as climate change upends growing seasons on May 16, 2026.

Headline News:

• “The World’s Largest Lake Is Disappearing, And It’s Taking Ecosystems And Livelihoods With It” • The Caspian Sea is rapidly shrinking. A long-term decline in water levels has been documented through satellite observations with support by hydrological and climate research. They showcase a consistent downward trend since the mid 1990s. [Euronews]

Caspian Sea (Veronika Shabrikhina, Unsplash, cropped)

• “Philippines’ Renewable Capacity To Reach 30 GW By 2035, Forecasts GlobalData” • The Philippines operates an archipelagic power system with limited interconnections, where reliability is a key priority. Renewable capacity is part of a broader transition in the generation mix. It is projected to increase to around 30 GW by 2035. [Yahoo Finance]
• “Inflation Jumps To Its Highest Level In Three Years” • The US inflation rose for a second consecutive month as the US-Israeli war with Iran continued to send gasoline prices surging in April, government data showed. The inflation report was a match with economists’ expectations. Prices rose 3.8% in April compared to a year earlier. [ABC News]
• “Eskom Delivers 365 Days Without Loadshedding” • Eskom delivered for South Africa one full year without loadshedding, a milestone last achieved eight years ago in September 2018. A more stable base‑load fleet has enhanced the system’s ability to accommodate variable renewable energy, thereby supporting a resilient power system. [Eskom]
• “Tesla Reducing Down Payments And Loan Terms in China As Sales Drop” • Tesla’s sales dropped in the largest EV market in the world this year. Tesla’s sales in China were down 10% in April, from 2025, and they were down 15% across the first four months of this year. In an effort to reverse the trend, Tesla is offering especially appealing loans. [CleanTechnica]

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

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May 15, 2026 Read the story on MSN.com Greenaction blasts the Navy over continued botched “cleanup” at the Hunters Point Naval Shipyard Superfund Site Click here to read the Article on MSN.com

May 14 2026

Bay City News Article on the Latest Scandal with the U.S. Navy and the Hunters Point Naval Shipyard Superfund Site

Click Here to read the Bay City News Article

“SF: Cabinet Storing Radiological Materials Discovered At Former Hunters Point Naval Shipyard”

May 15, 2026 Read Capital & Main news story with Greenaction and allies: California Hazardous Waste Rules Criticized as Years Late and Polluter Friendly

By KAY MATTHEWS

Jay Coghlan of Nuclear Watch New Mexico, the second speaker at the public hearing on the Draft Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement for Plutonium Pit Production, pretty much summed up the opposition to the Draft in his three minutes: “Pit production is not necessary and downright wrong.”

• The proposed pits are for the production of new weapons that could lead to testing, which violates the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT).
• It’s been proved that existing pits have a ± 100-year life span.
• The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) has failed for years to formulate a clean-up plan for all of LANL’s contaminated waste. Pit production will continue to block and exacerbate clean-up.
• The New Mexico Environment Department is forcing the Department of Energy to prioritize the shipment of legacy waste to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant.
• The missing alternative in this EIS is legacy waste clean-up instead of pit production.

The preferred alternative in this EIS is the Multi-Site Alternative, referring to both LANL and the Savannah River Site (SRS) in South Carolina. The proposal is for LANL to produce 10/30/80 pits per year and SRS to produce 50/80/125 pits per year. The promulgation of the EIS is a result of the lawsuit that Nuclear Watch New Mexico and other watch dog groups filed against the NNSA that temporarily halted plutonium pit production at Savannah River, leaving LANL as NNSA’s sole pit-production site. The settlement required the development of a new programmatic environmental impact statement involving public hearings around the country by July 2027.

However, as Dylan Spaulding, scientist with the Union of Concerned Scientists, pointed out in his comments, the Trump administration has issued a new directive to accelerate nuclear weapons production at LANL. On February 11, 2026 Dave Beck, Deputy National Nuclear Security Administration Administrator for Defense Programs, issued a “framework” memorandum mandating NNSA to urgently accelerate the modernization of the nuclear weapons stockpile and the revitalization of its associated facilities and infrastructure to enable production of 100 plutonium pits and achieve a production rate of at least 60 pits per year.

As I listened to the dozens (over 100) who spoke against this draft proposal, I couldn’t help but compare their diversity with the NNSA and LANL administrators, all white men with crew cuts, sitting in the front row.

Skit outside the hearing yelling “fire on the mountain!”

John Wilkes of the Plutonium Trail Caravan, which follows the transportation and disposition of waste from LANL, castigated LANL for failure to clear up Area C or the buried containers in Area G.

Sean Arent, a member of the Washington Physicians for Social Responsibility, reminded everyone of the first nuclear arms race at the decommissioned and radioactive Hanford Plant where workers struggle to clean-up the toxic mess. “Proposing new nuclear sites like this to future generations is a curse.”

A member of the Party for Socialist Liberation told the group “This is a farce. If they [the nuclear industry] were actually listening to us they wouldn’t be making bombs.” Madison Figueroa spoke for the UNM Students for Nuclear Disarmament.

Several speakers decried the amount of water LANL will acquire to meet its objectives while the rest of the state is experiencing desertification. Others raised the seismic issue of the Rio Grande Rift that runs right through the Parajito plateau.

Joni Arends of CCNS that works with Pueblo people to stop the migration of the hexavalent chromium plume contaminating groundwater and wells.

One of the biggest reactions from the crowd came when Pat Leahan, of the Las Vegas Peace and Justice Center, speaking remotely, pointed out the sentence on NNSA’s presentation screen that stated: “Peace through atomic strength.” She suggested a more accurate catch phrase would be “stress through nuclear development” as we descend into violence to deter violence.

Public comments are due by July 16 of 2026. All the comments made at the public hearings will be added to the official site along with those submitted by email and snail mail. The email address is PITPEIS@NNSA.GOV. Opposition to this EIS and all previous EISs, from 1999 to 2026, has been overwhelming, but the pits keep marching on. However, there’s hope. By the time the SRS facilities are anywhere near ready for production, and when LANL proves incapable of producing more than a few pits, there will be a new congressional mandate that halts the billions—trillions—of dollars that no longer exist in a failed economy.

At Palo Pinto Mountains State Park, the dusty pink-and-orange glow of the Texas sunrise kisses the skyline. The mountains, which are really a series of rolling hills, are lined by the lush green of...

May 1, 2026—EdSource reporter John Fensterwald covers Governor Newsom’s May Revision and its mixed implications for California schools—including a higher COLA, a historic $2.4 billion special education increase, and a $5 billion discretionary block grant, offset by the governor’s continued withholding of $3.9 billion in Proposition 98 funds that school groups say belongs in classrooms now. Managing Attorney John Affeldt is quoted warning that the budget’s reliance on AI-driven tax revenues is not a stable foundation: “Our state cannot continue to rely on temporary AI stock market bubbles.” Affeldt calls for more robust, permanent revenue streams—and makes clear that the same teachers being asked to transform students’ lives are being priced out of the communities they serve.”

Read the Story

The post Edsource: California schools could get billions more in Newsom’s final budget plan — with one catch appeared first on Public Advocates.

May 15th, 2026

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

 

Contact

Milagros R. Elia

Program Manager, Climate and Clean Energy Advocacy

Alliance of Nurses for Healthy Environments

milagros@envirn.org

914.455.1165

 

Nurses Opposes EPA’s  Proposed 2-year delay  of Vehicle Criteria Pollutant Standards 

 

[Washington, D.C.] Yesterday May 14th, 2026, The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has proposed a delay in enforcement of limits on health-harming tailpipe pollution from cars and trucks for two years until the 2029 model year.

In response to the proposal, the Alliance of Nurses for Healthy Environments Executive Director Katie Huffling, DNP, RN, CNM, FAAN issued the following statement:

“Pollution from cars and trucks is linked to catastrophic health consequences including asthma and respiratory disease ,cancer, high blood pressure, blood clots, stroke, and heart attacks, among other illnesses. For children, long-term chronic exposure to tailpipe pollution can lead to permanently impairing lung development.

“As nurses we strongly urge the EPA to uphold its promise of access to clean air for all and fulfill its mission to protect human health and the environment. The proposed delay announced today does the opposite and will lead to preventable illness and rising healthcare costs.”

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The Alliance of Nurses for Healthy Environments is the only national nursing organization focused solely on the intersection of health and the environment. The mission of the Alliance is to support nurses in promoting planetary health and equity globally by educating and leading the nursing profession, advancing research, incorporating planet-safe practice, and influencing policy.

http://enviRN.org

The post Nurses Opposes EPA’s Proposed 2-year delay of Vehicle Criteria Pollutant Standards appeared first on ANHE.

At the end of April, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the Farm, Food, and National Security Act of 2026, also known as the Farm Bill. This legislation includes critical support for voluntary...

(May 14, 2026, La Quinta, CA) Thursday marked the first board meeting of the new Salton Sea Conservancy, the first conservancy established in California in over fifteen years and a recognition of the...

May 15, 2026 – FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

SUWA Statement on Proposed Changes to the San Rafael Swell Recreation Area – 5.15.26  Amendments to Plan reduce conservation in favor of extractive development and off-road vehicle dominance 

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) released the final environmental assessment and proposed resource management plan (RMP) amendment for the San Rafael Swell Recreation Area and surrounding region. As a result of the 2019 Dingell Act, which included new land management designations and established the Recreation Area, the BLM was required to update its management plan for each of the affected areas. Below is a statement from SUWA Wildlands Director Neal Clark and additional information.  

“We’re disappointed that BLM, at the behest of the Trump administration, squandered this opportunity to set out a proactive, comprehensive vision for resource protection and recreation management in the incredible San Rafael Swell and instead focused its energy and limited resources on rolling back existing protections to allow for more development and off-road vehicle abuse,” said Neal Clark, Wildlands Director at the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance (SUWA). “What’s more, instead of meaningfully engaging the public throughout the process, the BLM instead held a general scoping period more than 4 years ago and then jumped to a final decision that cuts out any opportunity for the public to weigh in on the specifics of its plan. The Trump administration practice of intentionally avoiding meaningful input and scrutiny is undemocratic and a disservice to public land users and this world-class landscape” 

Additional information: 

The John D. Dingell Jr. Conservation, Management, and Recreation Act, which was signed into law on March 12, 2019, designated 663,000 acres of BLM-managed wilderness within 17 new wilderness areas. In addition, the legislation established the 117,000-acre San Rafael Swell Recreation Area, added 63 miles of the Green River to the National Wild and Scenic River System, and designated the John Wesley Powell National Conservation Area and the Jurassic National Monument. Additional information can found here. SUWA members and supporters submitted comments to the BLM in late 2021 and early 2022 regarding the proposed RMP amendments. 

In part, BLM’s RMP amendments: 

• Remove over 12,000 acres of natural areas —wilderness quality lands managed to protect their wilderness values—located outside of designated wilderness to allow increased development and off-road vehicle use. 

• Eliminate the San Rafael Swell Special Recreation Management Area (SRMA) and instead designate four new Extensive Recreation Management Areas (ERMAs), a less meaningful designation where recreation is not the primary management focus but instead is integrated into other land uses such as grazing and mineral development. 

• Eliminate commonsense recreation management and resource protection requirements to pack out human waste, use fire pans, and not collect firewood at dispersed campsites  

• Reduce or eliminate Areas of Critical Environmental Concern (ACECs) outside of designated wilderness that will allow for increased development and associated impacts in those areas, even after noting in their scoping document that they would “prioritize the protection and designation of ACECs” 

• Reduce protections for visual resources in some areas to allow development that conflicts with maintaining scenic viewsheds. 

### 
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 Proposed Changes to the San Rafael Swell Recreation Area – 5.15.26  appeared first on Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance.

TORONTO — Rachel Doran, executive director at Clean Energy Canada, made the following statement in response to the Implementation Agreement for the Canada-Alberta MOU:

“The long-awaited agreement between the federal government and Alberta was promised to strengthen Canada’s competitiveness and the effectiveness of key climate policies—but is, in reality, a step backward. This is true not only when it comes to reducing climate-change-causing emissions from big industry, but also on the aspiration laid out yesterday to double Canada’s electricity grid as the economic backbone of our future.

“Indeed, the federal government’s goal of a net-zero grid by 2050 may be fundamentally at odds with the details in this MOU. Alberta, once the Canadian capital of renewable investment, has not made any concrete commitments to unleash its once-booming free market. It has, conversely, secured a commitment that natural gas generation will be expanded and is likewise not dropping its legal challenge against Canada’s Clean Electricity Regulations. Furthermore, the federal government’s suggestion that the regulations will be ‘in abeyance’ until after all court cases have been finalized—a process that may take years—will create significant investment uncertainty. 

“Alberta policy changes have already undermined tens of billions in renewable energy investments in the province. Despite leading the country in wind, solar, and energy storage deployment early this decade, private investment in renewables has fallen by nearly 99% since 2023 due to changes introduced by Premier Smith’s government. 

“On the Clean Electricity Regulations, Alberta has agreed only to negotiate an equivalency agreement if courts uphold the policy’s constitutionality. If Alberta does not negotiate in good faith and the agreement has no teeth to prevent future debate, the result could be a provincial race to the bottom, leaving Canada’s vision of a competitive, unified electricity grid back where it started: fragmented and increasingly failing to realize its potential.

“And while the government’s press release and implementation agreement suggest that Alberta will make changes to its Restructured Energy Market to facilitate more investment in renewables, the MOU makes a far weaker commitment: that changes will only be considered if warranted.

“None of this adds up to meeting the vision laid out by the federal government only yesterday to double Canada’s relatively clean electricity grid as a way to electrify industry and Canadian homes: an essential play both for the future of our economy and household affordability.

“The agreement similarly falls short in delivering on effective industrial carbon pricing, which modelling by the Canadian Climate Institute found to be doing the most heavy lifting toward our climate targets. While changes to Canada’s industrial carbon pricing system were meant to strengthen the actual impact of the policy, if not the optics of it, the dials here are turned too low to result in the better outcome that was promised. 

“The agreement makes an attempt to ensure the real carbon price that companies pay comes closer to the so-called ‘headline price,’ and yes, setting a carbon price floor is a good idea, as is signing contracts for difference to ensure governments stick to their promises for an effective carbon price. But when it comes to the actual numbers needed to empower these changes, the agreement offers too little, too late. 

“An industrial carbon price serves as an incentive for companies to invest in cleaner methods of production. If increasing this price to meaningful levels is pushed down the road, then so will be any related investments. Industrial carbon pricing is tied to over 70 major projects worth more than $57 billion. And this does not just affect Alberta. By striking this deal with one province, the federal government has potentially opened the floodgates for a lowering of ambition across all provincial industrial carbon pricing systems, affecting the incentives for steel mills in Ontario, potash mines in Saskatchewan, and cement plants in B.C.

“Canada is falling out of step with key trading partners in the transition to a global clean energy economy. Whereas the agreement aims for an effective carbon price of $130 by 2040, the European Union carbon price is close to that amount already today. And while the agreement sets tightening rates of 2% or lower, the EU has set rates of over 4% every year. 

“The EU knows where it needs to go, launching a comprehensive set of new measures—including electricity tax cuts and investments in renewables—that cement clean energy as the path to energy security. EV sales are unsurprisingly skyrocketing globally, including here in Canada: March EV sales were up 75% year-over-year. 

“More than 40 countries are currently rationing energy, and it’s no wonder. As International Energy Agency head Fatih Birol put it, ‘the damage is done…. There will be a significant boost to renewables and nuclear power and a further shift towards a more electrified future,’ adding that ‘this will cut into the main markets for oil.’

“In other words, the same forces driving up oil prices today are destroying the fossil fuel demand of tomorrow. This government has suggested that it’s making certain short-term concessions while keeping its eye firmly on building for the future. But the reality is that, once again, Alberta is making promises while the federal government is making commitments. Canadians need policies that strike a better balance.”

The post Response: Lopsided MOU undermines yesterday’s clean electricity strategy appeared first on Clean Energy Canada.

The formal refusal of planning permission for drilling and lower-volume fracking at Burniston in North Yorkshire was confirmed this afternoon.

Banner at decision meeting on Burniston plans, 24 April 2026. Photo: DrillOrDrop

The county council’s strategic planning committee voted almost unanimously in April against the proposal by Europa Oil & Gas.

But members were limited at the meeting to a “minded to” refuse decision. This followed a request to the local government minister to review the detailed environmental information that accompanied the application.

Less than a week later, the minister said there would be no need to review the information, clearing the way for publication of the formal decision notice.

260515_NY20250030ENV_Decision NoticeDownload

The notice, dated today, lists five reasons why the application had been refused:

• Harm to the heritage coast and landscape
• Proximity of the site to homes and amenities
• Harm to the setting of the North York Moors National Park
• Impact on tourism and lack of economic gain
• Conflict with the council’s climate commitments

Officials had advised councillors not to include in the reasons a risk of induced seismicity and damage to local cliffs.

Europa Oil & Gas has already said it will appeal against the refusal. The decision notice starts the clock on when that appeal must be lodged.

The company has six months, by Friday 13 November 2026, in which to submit its challenge to the Planning Inspectorate. News of an appeal is, however, expected sooner.

The committee’s refusal over-ruled the recommendation of council officers to approve the application. It came after five hours of discussions and presentations.

North Yorkshire Council had set today as the deadline for issuing the decision notice.