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• “The World Lost A Stealth Eco-Monarch With The Passing Of King Harald V ” • King Harald V of Norway died after a reign of 35 years. Over three decades, a constitutionally silent monarch quietly made green the default without ever legislating a thing. For one example, his country went through the world’s fastest, most complete shift to electric mobility. [CleanTechnica]

Harald V (Sámediggi, CC BY-SA 2.0)

• “How Europe’s scorching summers are reshaping national budgets” • The true price of the European heatwaves, drought, and the wildfires they lead to only surfaces in public accounts months later. The burden of rebuilding roads and rail, propping up health services, and compensating farmers, is outpacing government revenues and reserves. [Euronews]
• “Nepal-Tibet Flood Death Toll Rises To 797, Officials Say, More Than 3,000 Missing” • The death toll from last week’s flash flood disaster in the Nepal-Tibet border region rose to nearly 800 people as of Sunday, according to the latest updates from Nepali and Chinese officials. There are at least 85 Americans still among the missing. [ABC News]
• “How The US-Israeli War On Iran Is Reshaping Global Energy Use” • Six months after US-Israeli strikes disrupted fossil fuel production in the Middle East and turned the Strait of Hormuz into a naval battleground, reports show how the conflict has also been pushing governments, companies and consumers towards renewable energy. [The Japan Times]
• “Maryland Locks In Solar Deal Officials Say Could Save $300 Million” • Governor Wes Moore and the Maryland Department of General Services announced a 20-year agreement to purchase solar energy generated in Western Maryland. State officials say the deal could save Maryland about $300 million and expand the state’s use of renewable energy. [The Cool Down]

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

On August 29, another round of “Fight Ford” protests took place across Ontario. These protests have been taking place monthly since February in response to...

The post Thousands across Ontario protest Doug Ford in support of public education first appeared on Spring.

Data center capacity continues to expand.

Secondary perils, such as severe convective storms, are becoming a primary driver of earnings volatility.

In 2024, an interdisciplinary team of social and marine scientists set out to examine whether the prevalence of marine heat waves — prolonged rises in ocean temperatures that are becoming more frequent and more intense because of climate change — has any impact on child and maternal health outcomes. “I was very ready to find nothing,” said Clark Gray, a human geographer and professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, who led the research.

The researchers published their report this month, which revealed some distressing results. The team discovered that for every standard deviation increase in the number of marine heat waves in a 24-month period — or roughly three more marine heat waves than normal — child mortality increases by 5.4 percent. Child wasting and child stunting, which can result from malnutrition, also increased — by 6.5 and 8.8 percent respectively. 

The ways in which marine heat waves might influence extreme weather on land are still being studied. This study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is not without its limitations. The authors specifically looked at health data from low- and middle-income countries. The data analysis also only demonstrates a correlation between marine heat waves and health; the authors are still not sure why or how child malnutrition and mortality spikes when oceans warm. 

For example, marine heat waves have been shown to disrupt oceanic food chains. It’s possible that these warm-water events are causing vital fish or shellfish populations to die off. However, the authors pointed out that other mechanisms — such as terrestrial heatwaves or the spread of mosquito-borne infectious diseases — cannot be ruled out as other drivers.  

Katy Seto, an associate professor of environmental studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz, called the research important nevertheless. She noted that high-level findings such as these create an opportunity for refining future research. “It is definitely like a first pass at understanding for whom this could be a big problem and what the solutions might be,” she said. 

Moreover, the report’s findings are consistent with existing research on the relationship between global warming and human health. “I’ve been doing research on the social impact of climate for a while, and I’m continuously surprised by how consistently negative the warming effect on health is,” Gray said. “It really shows up pretty much everywhere on every outcome.”

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One of the ways that Gray and the other study authors attempted to narrow their analysis was to group countries by whether they’re more or less dependent on small-scale fishing. “We do see that the negative effects are concentrated in the countries that depend on small-scale fishing, which is what you would expect,” said Gray. Industrial fishing operations are more likely to have the technology to evade heat waves; their fishing boats, for example, could move further out away from the shore. 

But that distinction still does not illuminate why, exactly, these health declines happen in more vulnerable coastal regions. 

It is not the case, for example, that all countries relying on small-scale fishing necessarily depend on those catches for their own diets, said Seto.  Those harvests could still be traded locally or regionally — meaning that maybe marine heat waves contribute to loss of income, driving malnutrition in a more roundabout way. 

Oceans absorb the majority of the planet’s excess energy, but scientists are still working to understand the full range of impacts on marine systems. Marine heat waves, which are complex, three-dimensional events, have not gotten as much attention as, say, sea-surface temperature rises or ocean acidification, said Seto. Still, this study comes at a time when ocean temperatures are the highest in recorded history, so some conclusions can be drawn. Marine heat waves are “very bad in this current moment,” said Gray, and in the broader context of global warming, they “are going to get worse.” 

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline When ocean temperatures increase, so does child malnutrition on land on Aug 31, 2026.

New York City has more than 500 miles of coastline. The city’s coastal zone is home to around 1 million people as well as billions of dollars of residential and commercial property, and no two miles of the waterfront are quite the same. The marshy areas of southern Queens, the housing projects in waterfront Brooklyn, and the towers of Manhattan’s Financial District are all vulnerable during high tides and major storm events, and each of these areas is vulnerable in a different way.

The city learned these lessons the hard way in 2012 when Superstorm Sandy sent almost 14 feet of storm surge up New York Harbor and flooded thousands of structures across the five boroughs. In the aftermath of the disaster, the city embarked on one of the most ambitious climate adaptation efforts in U.S. history. Leaders spent billions of dollars to elevate and armor the lower reaches of Manhattan with flood gates and berms, rebuild the destroyed beaches in Queens, and buy out homes in the low-lying neighborhoods of Staten Island. 

Each stage of this effort faced delay and controversy, but the post-Sandy effort is now almost complete. The elevated East River Park in Manhattan is now partly open to sunbathers and tennis players. Farther down the island, construction crews are installing rolling-track flood walls that will be deployed during major storm surge events. These flood defenses will be operational by the 2027 hurricane season, but Mayor Zohran Mamdani is already laying the groundwork for what comes next. 

Last month, the mayor announced a major expansion of the Bureau of Coastal Resilience, promising to add almost 70 new staff members to a unit that had been on a shoestring budget under prior mayor Eric Adams. The first members of this new team will deploy the flood gates and clear the coastal zone in the run-up to big storm events.

“There was this huge investment of over a billion dollars to build these gates, and once you build it, you have to maintain it,” said Lisa Garcia, the new commissioner for the Department of Environmental Protection, which will oversee the flood system. (Garcia was the director of Grist’s climate solutions lab from 2019 to 2021 and later worked as a regional administrator in the Environmental Protection Agency.)

The new bulkhead at the rebuilt East River Park in Manhattan, with the Williamsburg Bridge in the background. New York City has been working to elevate the waterfront park since Superstorm Sandy flooded thousands of homes on the Lower East Side in 2012. Jake Bittle / Grist

But managing the gates is the easy part. The harder task for Mamdani will be to decide what the city’s next big flood protection effort should be. The stakes of this decision are higher than almost anywhere else in the United States, or for any other climate adaptation in New York. While heat waves, smoke, and flash floods all pose big risks to the city, sea level rise and storm surge have the potential to wipe out huge sections of the city’s most populous areas and cripple its economy. 

“I don’t think that there’s anyone who is saying we can protect all 520 miles of coastline,” said Garcia. “So part of it is this… What lessons can we take to other boroughs or to other communities?” 

Mamdani will have to make some big decisions about where and how to spend the city’s limited capital budget. Is it better to fund marsh restoration in outer Queens, or a coastal park in Harlem, or a bulkhead in the waterfront of Brooklyn? If you want to do all of those things, which of them do you do first?

These decisions are fraught with political and economic risks. When Norfolk, Virginia, another coastal city, created its master resilience plan, city officials made the controversial decision not to build flood protections for areas that were at high risk of flooding but didn’t have the high-value property that would justify the enormous expense. Under its plan, Norfolk would instead help those residents of the “yellow zones” live with rising waters or relocate elsewhere. In other coastal areas like California and North Carolina, efforts to promote “managed retreat” from vulnerable areas have met forceful blowback from residents who want structural protections. 

For its part, New York City says it’s still in the early phases of planning for future protections. Mamdani won the mayoral election last year by assembling a coalition that spanned the lower-income neighborhoods of the outer boroughs, and he took office promising to make life more affordable for the city’s lower and middle classes. The Department of Environmental Protection said it plans to start its master plan (which Garcia wants to analyze both stormwater flooding and coastal risk) next year, with a goal of finishing by 2031. It’s too early, then, to say how Mamdani’s governing philosophy will affect the city’s approach to the risks of climate change. 

New flood walls under construction beneath an elevated highway in downtown Manhattan. New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani announced last month that he plans to hire dozens more city staffers to manage this new flood wall system and others under construction around the city. Jake Bittle / Grist

There is no shortage of underserved areas that need flood protection. Perhaps the most glaring example is the western edge of Coney Island, which faces routine “backdoor” flooding during heavy rain as the ocean rushes up through creeks and out of the drainage system. This flooding often makes it impossible for children to walk to school. Even though Coney Island was one of the neighborhoods hit hardest by Sandy in 2012, the city still hasn’t built new flood defenses there.

“After Sandy, neighborhoods in Manhattan had millions and millions of dollars invested,” said Pamela Pettyjohn, the founder of the Coney Island Beautification Project, a neighborhood group that advocates for flood protection and quality-of-life improvements. “There hasn’t been any investment at all in Coney Island other than development — a lot of new development, new buildings, but nothing for the infrastructure.” The city government is now holding meetings with Coney Island residents to decide how to reduce flood risk along local creeks.

In other areas, architects and planners have sketched out possible defenses for which there is no available money. In East Harlem, for instance, the city worked with architecture firm One Architecture to design a plan that would drain stormwater that pools in low-lying streets and elevate the esplanades along the river. The plan has been around for almost a decade, but the city has not been able to raise the money to build it.

In other cases, flood defense efforts have fallen through due to budget constraints. The city pivoted its proposed flood adaptation project in the Hunts Point neighborhood of the Bronx to a cheaper project that will provide off-grid backup power to the area’s critical food depot, said Amy Chester, the director of Rebuild by Design, the organization that led the post-Sandy adaptation effort.

“We can plan for it, but it’s all about priorities,” said Chester.

The other problem is that people often disagree about how a given area should defend against flooding, and about what counts as sufficient investment. Garcia has said that in some cases a flood gate or bulwark may be the best scenario, while in other cases home buyouts or nature-based living shorelines may work better. 

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City officials have already encountered pushback over at least one project. The city broke ground late last year on a project in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Red Hook, which was also hit hard by Sandy. The effort will elevate streets and install new bulkheads along the water, but residents and activists say it’s inadequate: it is only designed to protect against “10-year storms” that have a 1-in-10 chance of happening in a given year, not the much larger “100-year storms” that the Lower Manhattan projects will protect against. The city has said that local topography and privately owned waterfront land make a Manhattan-esque barrier impossible.

The issue of flood risk has also come up farther north in the gentrified neighborhood of Greenpoint. In that area, a real estate developer is proposing to build a large new apartment complex that will contain more than 1,300 homes. The new towers will have steel bulkheads that the developer says will protect them from flooding, but some activists have protested that the bulkheads will push water onto nearby areas. 

These two controversies highlight the extent to which the city’s current flood defenses are a patchwork of individual neighborhood projects. That approach will lead to conflict over each investment and over where the city chooses to invest, says Matthijs Bouw, an architect with the firm One Architecture who helped conceive the flood barrier project that now surrounds lower Manhattan and who has also envisioned flood protections in East Harlem and other areas.

“You can’t build this stuff in isolation; you need to find a way to make sure that you align whatever you design with the way the city changes over time,” he said.

In theory, planners could come up with a comprehensive process for deciding where and how to spend its money, but there are tough choices involved in such a process. Lower Manhattan was an easy place to start after Sandy, since it was home to both the all-important cluster of downtown skyscrapers and a dense neighborhood of vulnerable public housing. Figuring out where to go next is harder.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Manhattan’s flood walls are almost done. What will Mamdani do next? on Aug 31, 2026.

Kemp’s views on the emergence and nature of the state are debatable, but his insistence on the historical significance of the emergence of Goliaths is not.

Three emerging feminist leaders have a vision for real climate action — and it starts with centering the voices of youth, women and Indigenous people.

As authoritarianism, military tensions, and temperatures rise, it is easy to look at the end of the world as we know it and ask what the point of academia is.

Anuradha Barua, Aakriti Wanchoo and Swapan Mehra are from Iora Ecological Solutions, a New Delhi-based company focused on nature-based solutions, climate action, conservation and environmental policy.

When Rojo Neog’s village in northeast India was hit by a power cut in July, he headed out to buy candles. Three days later, his body was recovered – swept away by surging floodwaters. His niece said the water had risen from knee- to neck-level in about half an hour.

The devastating floods highlight how climate risk across India is becoming harder to confine to a season or a disaster bulletin. Just weeks before the disaster in Assam, authorities in Mumbai rationed water as reservoir storage fell to just over 10%.

India does not lack warnings about climate risk. The more difficult task is making sure money, institutions and communities are ready to act before those warnings become disasters. Adaptation should not be just an obligation once a crisis has arrived, but an investment made while there is still something to protect.

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As governments head towards COP31 in Antalya this November, India should push not only for more adaptation finance, but for finance that arrives earlier and can be traced to outcomes on the ground.

That is the gap India needs to close if we wish to become truly resilient in the face of the changing climate. Money must move with risk, institutions must know what to do before an emergency is declared, and long-term spending must reduce vulnerability before it becomes loss.

India’s adaptation disconnect

This year the disconnect has become painfully clear in Assam, where more than 100 people have died due to the flooding, with nearly 140,000 people across seven districts affected. More than 450 villages remain inundated, while some 49,000 people are taking shelter in relief camps after losing everything.

No financing mechanism can stop a river from rising. But timely measures can change what happens before it does. If forecasts and river levels triggered financing before the water arrived, authorities could position boats and stock shelters, and evacuate people where needed, while families could move cattle, seed, medicines and documents before roads disappeared.

For Indian women workers, a just transition means surviving climate impacts with dignity

India already has much of the information needed to address climate change. High-risk states and districts should agree in advance which local thresholds trigger action, who is responsible and how funds will be released, so officials do not have to negotiate responsibility and budgets from scratch once risk becomes an emergency.

Linking community know-how to financing

Our work in Majuli, a river island district in Assam, shows why this matters.

Across 64 villages, communities helped identify flood and erosion risks, assess their capacity to respond, and to develop resilience measures with indicative budgets and possible funding sources.

Communities often know what would help; the harder task is connecting that knowledge to institutions and finance that can act on it.

Extreme heat costing India’s poorest workers 2% of GDP, survey finds

Public health offers an example of how systems can adapt as risks change. In New Delhi, vector-control workers who once prepared for a defined “dengue season” now remain on alert throughout the year, using surveillance and hotspot mapping to identify risks earlier.

The next step is to make these systems more predictive by integrating climate forecasts into public health planning.

India needs sustained investment in drainage, health systems, wetlands, water security and climate-resilient agriculture. Some will remain public responsibilities; others, including water reuse, efficient irrigation, resilient cold chains and risk-proofed infrastructure, can generate savings or revenue and attract private capital if projects are prepared well.

The economic case for adaptation is not always about generating new revenue. Often, it is about avoiding future costs. Flood shelters, public-health preparedness, early-warning systems and support for the poorest households will still need public or grant finance. The point is to match the finance to the risk rather than treat adaptation as a single financing problem.

A sugarcane farmer removes weeds which have grown in floodwater in Kolhapur district, Maharashtra, India. Credit: Meenal Upreti A sugarcane farmer removes weeds which have grown in floodwater in Kolhapur district, Maharashtra, India. Credit: Meenal Upreti Rising disaster bill shows cost of inaction

India is already spending heavily on adaptation, with related expenditure reaching 5.6% of GDP in 2021-22. Yet tracked adaptation finance was only about $15 billion annually, almost entirely from domestic public sources, against estimated needs of about $100 billion a year through 2030.

Internationally, the shortfall is wider: developing countries may need $310 billion-$365 billion annually by 2035, compared with just $26 billion in international public adaptation finance in 2023.

For governments repeatedly paying for flood, droughts and heat relief, the cost of inaction can quickly exceed the cost of building resilience, though not all the costs of inaction appear neatly on a balance sheet.

In floodplain landscapes such as Assam’s Kaziranga National Park, animals move towards higher ground every monsoon as the floodplain fills, crossing roads and leaving the park in search of safety. During the 2024 floods, 215 animals died, including 13 one-horned rhinos.

Development plans in such sensitive landscapes must leave room for water, wildlife and communities to move safely. A wetland may not generate monetary revenue, but the floodwater it stores has real value. The cost of losing that capacity may only become visible when the next flood arrives.

Comment: Climate adaptation in Africa needs investment, not imported solutions

Success should not be measured only by how quickly relief follows a disaster. It should also be measured by what never had to be replaced: people and animals moved before the water rose, seeds kept dry, medicines waiting at the shelter, a wetland that still had room to hold water, and a family that could leave while the road was still open.

Adaptation becomes an investment when it preserves those choices before they disappear.

The post India needs climate adaptation cash to be an investment, not a quick fix appeared first on Climate Home News.

We support the introduction of Commercial Property Assessed Clean Energy (C-PACE) financing in Ontario. C-PACE is a proven tool to drive commercial building retrofit activity while supporting local jobs and communities. By connecting private capital...

More insane idiocy from the petty huckster clown king whose idea of governance is threatening lawsuits, trade wars, buildings that won't put his name on them; bungling war and peace; flaunting Nazi loyalty queries and sadistic images of black men in chains; and distracting from it all with the dumbass geographic circlejerk of inventing “LAKe AMeRiCA.” The Internet was born for this: Cue Donald Ducks, the Straits of Our Moose, Lake Dead Pedo Bestie, Lake Superior President Obama, and Lake Stupid Fucking Moron.

Last week, after God killed the wrong 80-year-old in the 784th year of a presidency that feels like "being in middle school when there's a substitute teacher and a student has a medical emergency," yet more banal slop issued from a needy racist sociopath so stupid he once seemingly conflated the Very Hard words "transistor" and "transgender" to claim Biden's CHIPS Act offered billions to domestic tech companies but "if you weren't transgender, (you) didn't qualify." Jesus. No wonder, à propos of nothing, the widely deemed "worst president in U.S. history" took time out from his busy mob boss schedule to declare himself the bestest - take that Honest Abe - after his faithful Human Printer dug up a similar 1948 Life Magazine chart, which is "exactly the kind of thing a healthy, high-functioning person shares."

Other things he did, abetted by a confederacy of dunces, stooges, techno-fascists, warmongers, crypto dorks, "unfuckable hate nerds" and "an actual Jewish Nazi": Having hit the six-month mark of his Iran debacle, he giddily proclaimed, "Mission Accomplished!" despite a. the only thing achieved is handing a newly empowered Iran control of the Strait of Hormuz as U.S. gas prices skyrocket and the economy implodes, b. he evidently missed the part where George W's 2003 banner aboard an aircraft carrier became a queasy punchline, c. he did so amidst reports his and Kegsbreath's said debacle has pushed the US military into a "beyond critical" shortage of money and missile interceptors in the case of an enemy attack, forcing them to shift funds around "in imaginative ways" - because everything he touches dies and we probably will too.

A fragile child, he demands fealty to even his ceaseless clusterfucks. Thus the latest inane authoritarian hokum from a Department of Homeland (sic) Security that alas hasn’t lost any of its fascist fervor since the brutal puppy-killing days of ICE Barbie. Its new, dystopian, “genuinely deranged” missive: A glowering image of Dear Dumb Leader with the dark challenge, “Did you remain loyal?”, which chillingly fails to consider just what atrocities they’re demanding allegiance to. The answer came in a post that swiftly followed: Sadistic footage of shackled Haitian immigrants, targeted after losing Temporary Protected Status for no reason but mindless, racist cruelty, being shuffled onto planes in pouring rain to the sneering tune of a Creole song about returning home - complete with fawning close-ups of the chains on their feet. Well done, sick fucks.

Meanwhile, the trail of destruction goes on apace. In D.C., after the East Wing and reflecting pool - we like the meme of him studying it with, "All I see is scum" and a lackey saying, "Well, it is a reflecting pool, sir" - we've reached the mobsters' "offer-they- can't-refuse" phase on the besieged Kennedy Center. Having repeatedly lost in court, the regime now threatens to demolish the not-long-ago-flourishing Center unless a tantrum-throwing 10-year-old gets his name "prominently added" to its exterior with "appropriate respect" of his efforts to "save” it from a fictional "death spiral" that's rendered it "dilapidated, outdated, decrepit and embarrassing to the Nation’s Capital," which is some pot/kettle. If they can't plaster his ghastly name over it - inscription, plaza et al - they'll replace it with "an outdoor amphitheater," aka a lawn.

They're also pushing to sell off part of Yosemite National Park, like everything else, to the highest bidder, though the seller is such an imbecile he still cringingly says "Yo, Semites!" He's such a petty dolt he's also skipping this year's 9/11 remembrance at Ground Zero because he wasn't allowed to give a Nazi speech there, opting to give it at the Pentagon before rushing off to the Irish Open at his crappy golf course, 'cause priorities. Having trashed jobs, health insurance, food aid, the environment and most of our global alliances, he blew up trade talks with Canada, calling its endlessly nice residents "nasty people," and holding a clownish Oval Office event to sign an idiotic executive order renaming Lake Ontario to “LAKe AMeRiCA,” which he's "been thinking about for a long time" with what's left of his tiny brain. (Here he is on trade: The stupid, it burns.)

"All it takes is a good pen and some intelligence,” he said, only batting one for two in a pretend-name-changing event labeled, "Making the Great Lakes Even Greater.” Then - what a feckin’ playacting infant - he drew a line through the doomed lake and intoned, “We have notified various people who needed to be notified...This is official.” He said he’d instructed craven lickspittle and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum to "take all appropriate actions." Burgum slavishly wrote, “We’re on it, Mr. President!”, thus becoming the only person on Planet Earth to take this puerile claptrap seriously, evidently unaware an executive order is not a law and every ship entering the Great Lakes has to go through Canada's Welland Canal, including $26 billion in U.S. trade, and it would be a shame if Canada up and supersized their tolls, and thank you for your attention to this matter.

Uncle Bernie and most of America promptly responded they'd rather have affordable health care, thanks, also housing, food, education and cancer research. Nova Scotia's Conservative premier Tim Houston, "not exactly a firebrand," opined, “We’re into some real foolishness now. It’s Lake Ontario, buddy." Canada's newly combative Prime Minister Mark Carney, out of fucks to give, noted that long before Europeans came the lake was named by Native Americans using the Huron word "Ontari’io," for, "The lake is beautiful, the lake is big." "The name is more than 400 years old," he said. "Canadians know that naming reality means calling it Lake Ontario - then, now and always." The Canadian Resistance Army, who earlier defended penguins, also chimed in, declaring, "We're going to trade war/Beavers and moose won't take it any more."

Above all, it was agreed, “LAKe AMeRiCA" is what God invented the Internet for. The names spooled out in a gleeful torrent.

Lake Release the Epstein Files. Lake Gulf of Mexico. Lake Are We Doing This Again. Lake Micropenis. Lake Natalie. Lake Huron Thin Ice with Melania. Lake Universal Healthcare. Lake Eerily Overweight Pres Dick J. McRectum. Lake Felon. Lake Not Eerie. Lake Oh Canada. Lake Small Dick Energy. Many chose Lake Obama. Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers created the politically incorrect Lake Retard: "See, I can sign napkins that say things too." One decided to "just keep calling it Lake Epstein, like the Founders wanted." Mapquest, unlike cowering Google, not only declined to change the lake's name but invited viewers to "spread some geographic joy" and "name it whatever you want." One result: Lake Who Uses Mapquest Anymore.

Many noted the traditional Great Lakes litany of "H.O.M.E.S" had entirely logically become "S.H.A.M.E." People renamed their toilet bowl to Lake Trump. The White House to Home of Diaper Butt. Mar-a-Lago to Poopy Pants Palace. The United States of America to the Epstein States of Pedophiles, or just South Canada. President Trump to President Dickhead. California to Amerifornia. Strait of Hormuz to Strait of Our Moose. People mocked his thieving choice of one of the smallest and dirtiest Great Lakes. They noted, "Nobody in Ontario gives a single solitary fuck what Assclown McCrappy-Pants says about anything." They griped the name change "really screws with the lyrics of Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald."

"What are they trying to distract us from this time?" they asked. Response: "The previous distraction." Some coddled the needy child-king: "Good for you, li'l fella." Some railed: "Jesus Christ, can somebody just get him a coloring book already?" Some were still baffled by how low we've gone: "Wait, this is real?" Some refused to go there: "Nope." Some summoned the great Talking Heads: "As things fell apart/Nobody paid much attention." And some fought back against the incessant bullying. After the Center for American Progress released a report finding billions spent on ICE thugs and National Guard swarms had no real effect on reducing violent crime, Trump threatened a $5 billion lawsuit if they didn't retract it. The center stood firm against "a transparent attempt to silence us." "We will neither cower nor bend in the face of it," they said. And, still and all, we will snark away.

Update: Talk about "Do not obey in advance": After defying the petty madness, usage of Mapquest has surged to about 50 times its usual rate, leapfrogging past Google and Apple Maps to become the most-downloaded mapping app, and the fourth most popular of all apps excluding games in the US. Along with their "spread some geographic joy" invite, they posted a mocking, all-caps retort: "OUR MAPS ARE BIG AND BEAUTIFUL. PEOPLE COME UP TO US AND SAY WE'LL GET THEM PLACES. AND WE DO!!" Lol.

Canada vs. the Epstein Statesof AmericaImage from Bluesky

“One of CESTA’s longest-running programs is sustainable waste management. We began this discussion more than 20 years ago,” explains Silvia Quiroa, director of the organization, where she has worked for 29 years on tracking, monitoring, and advocacy efforts.

Waste management is, however, only one part of a broader mission. CESTA works to build sustainable societies and links environmental defense with food sovereignty, agroecology, biodiversity protection, and community empowerment. Within this framework, the fight against plastic is taking on an increasingly important role.

Starting with Everyday Life

One of the tools CESTA uses with communities is based on something seemingly simple: identifying how much plastic is part of everyday life. The organization works with about 30 communities in different parts of the country, alongside community organizations, water and environmental committees, feminist organizations, and indigenous peoples. In these settings, they have examined the presence of plastic in kitchens, homes, and farm plots. The exercise aims to bring to light what often goes unnoticed.

“So we began talking with the communities: How can we gradually remove plastic from our lives?” says Quiroa. The answer is built on concrete actions. CESTA works, for example, with groups of women who recover recyclable materials; in addition to collecting reusable waste, they have created small businesses and campaigns to promote alternatives to plastic bags.

Cloth bags thus become a tool for raising awareness. The women take them to parks, fairs, markets, and shopping centers with a simple message: “I use cloth bags for my shopping.” Change is also being promoted among farming families and small businesses. The idea is to prevent every purchase of vegetables or legumes from automatically resulting in a new disposable bag.

For CESTA, questioning these everyday habits is part of a larger transformation: to stop accepting as normal a model based on products designed to be used for just a few minutes and then discarded.

The problem doesn’t end when the garbage truck drives by

Single-use plastics are one of the organization’s main areas of concern. They are visible not only in municipal collection systems but also on the streets and in storm drains, especially during rain. “Waste management as it is currently practiced in most municipalities is not sustainable,” says Quiroa.

For years, CESTA has challenged the linear model of producing, consuming, discarding, and transporting waste. Its approach focuses on reducing waste generation, separating materials, and processing them as close as possible to their source.

The organization has sought to demonstrate that this alternative is possible. In one of the municipalities where it carried out a pilot program, it worked with residents neighborhood by neighborhood to introduce waste separation at the source and collaborated with the municipality to prevent organic and recyclable materials from ending up mixed together.

The process included a collection center and a municipal composting facility. In addition to reducing the amount of waste sent to landfills, the experience showed that a different approach to waste management can result in lower costs for municipalities.

But for CESTA, infrastructure alone does not solve the problem. Education, organization, and political will are needed. That is why it also conducts training programs for municipal officials on sustainable waste management, plastic reduction, and public policy.

Stop Talking About Trash and Start Talking About Solutions

One of the changes Quiroa considers most significant has been bringing waste management and plastic pollution into the public discourse in El Salvador. “Before, nobody was talking about trash. As long as it got picked up, it didn’t matter,” she recalls.

The conversation has begun to shift. Some businesses have reduced the number of plastic bags they hand out or started charging for them. There’s also a greater willingness among people to ask about reusable alternatives. “People now ask, ‘Are you going to give me a disposable one or a reusable plate?’” she says.

For CESTA, these changes are important but insufficient. One of the main challenges is to dispel the notion that recycling alone can solve the plastic crisis. “Recycling isn’t the only solution,” Quiroa asserts.

The organization is committed to prioritizing reduction and reuse and to questioning the production model that generates increasing amounts of waste. CESTA has also participated in discussions about landfills and incineration, providing information to municipal governments so they can assess the impacts of different alternatives.

Advocate for decisions 

Community work is complemented by political advocacy. CESTA participated in drafting a proposal to regulate single-use plastics, which was presented to the Legislative Assembly with the support of female legislators from the previous session.

The proposal called for a five-year transition period to phase out these products and allow companies to adapt to other materials. The process stalled following political changes in the country, but for CESTA, the need for regulation remains. “A major challenge is changing the mindset of decision-makers,” notes Quiroa.

Added to this, according to the organization, is the influence of the plastics industry. “The plastics industry lobby is very strong. It wields a great deal of power in the country. It sits down with decision-makers,” she states.

In this context, CESTA seeks to challenge solutions that focus solely on recycling and to also shine a light on what happens before a product becomes waste: who produces it, how much is produced, what it is used for, and who bears the costs of its impacts.

From the Local Level to a Global Struggle

CESTA’s track record in waste management made its incorporation into BFFP a natural fit. The organization already had extensive experience in this field and ties to GAIA, and becoming part of BFFP allowed it to connect its local work with an international network of organizations that share the same concerns. The exchange of information has been one of the main benefits.;

Research on microplastics, health impacts, corporate responsibility, and alternatives to single-use products has fueled CESTA’s work in communities. So too have the campaigns and communication tools developed by the movement.

For Quiroa, BFFP offers something that goes beyond information: the certainty that Salvadoran communities are not alone. “Knowing that we are part of a global movement where we are fighting for the same cause” is, for her, one of the movement’s greatest achievements over the past 10 years.

The global dimension is especially important because plastic, too, knows no borders. Decisions made by governments and transnational corporations in other regions can have consequences in El Salvador, especially since the country is one of the region’s leading importers of plastic waste.

The connection between the local and the global thus allows us to understand that what happens in one community is part of a much broader system.

Building a Movement

As he reflects on BFFP’s first decade, Quiroa highlights the production and exchange of information, as well as the opportunity to coordinate experiences and strategies among organizations from different countries.

“I believe that the production of information is one of the most important things,” she says. For CESTA, this collaboration strengthens local advocacy and allows communities to learn about the experiences of other areas facing similar challenges.

The organization is also part of national coalitions with other organizations. Zero-waste work intersects with agendas related to environmental justice, the climate crisis, food sovereignty, and the defense of territories. “We’re just one more organization in that coalition,” says Quiroa.

A treaty that addresses the root of the problem

For CESTA, this collaboration is also essential in addressing one of the movement’s greatest challenges: securing a global treaty on plastics that is ambitious and legally binding.

The organization believes the agreement must address the entire life cycle of plastic, from its production—not just when it becomes waste. “We need an international treaty—one that regulates companies throughout the entire life cycle of plastic production, not just when waste is generated, but throughout the entire production cycle,” states Quiroa.

For her, the negotiations will put governments’ priorities to the test: “We’ll see if governments really govern for the people or for transnational corporations.”

CESTA’s position is that an effective treaty must go beyond managing existing waste. It must address production, reduce single-use plastics, promote reuse systems, and establish clear responsibilities for those who benefit from this industry.

From “Use and Discard” to “Reuse”

10 years after the creation of BFFP, CESTA believes the movement must delve deeper into alternatives to the “use and discard” model. Among these, reuse plays a central role. “We have to delve deeper into that aspect,” says Quiroa. Reuse involves more than simply substituting one material for another. It means challenging the logic of consumption that turns objects into waste after a single use and reviving practices capable of reducing waste generation at its source.

It is a transformation that begins at the local level but requires public policies and structural changes to take root. A community that sorts its waste, a family that stops burning trash, a woman who sews a reusable bag, or a municipality that changes its waste management system are all small pieces of a larger transformation.

“The fight continues. BFFP has a lot of work ahead; it’s a movement that will grow—and keep growing,” says Quiroa. “The more communities, towns, and organizations that join this effort, the more we’ll be able to stop this monster of plastic growth and create the possibility of a different world,” she concludes.

Community groups have vowed to keep fighting full-scale fracking in the Northern Territory, following an announcement from the Northern Territory Government that appraisal gas will begin flowing from Tamboran Resources’ Shenandoah South Pilot Project tomorrow. 

Starting on Monday, Aug. 31, Streetsblog USA is on hiatus for a week of internal strategy sessions, planning meetings, professional development and personal soul-searching punctuated by the occasional Martini olive.

We’ll still be publishing our daily headlines, by Blake Aued, but for the last week of August, we’re mostly just putting our heads together to soon roll out the best damned Streetsblog you’ve ever seen, with some shiny new bells, blaring new whistles … and deep investigative pieces into our nation’s ongoing struggle with car dependence.

If you are trying to reach us, please email Editor Gersh Kuntzman at gersh@streetsblog.org. We’ll all be back the day after Labor Day, when we’ll also welcome back Streetsblog USA Editor Kea Wilson.

• Amtrak has seen record ridership for two years in a row, carrying almost 24 million passengers in fiscal 2026. This is largely the result of a $22 billion investment in tracks, tunnels, stations and new trains through the Biden administration’s infrastructure law. New service on the Gulf Coast and in the Midwest has been successful. All of this means that congressional Republicans would be shortsighted to cut funding for passenger rail now. (Frontier Group)
• Climate change causes extreme heat that can damage overhead wires and warp train tracks, as well as floods that wash away tracks and inundate subways. (The Conversation)
• Motorists in states that voted for Donald Trump are feeling the most pain at the pump from the Iran War. (NOTUS)
• Even though Tesla’s Autopilot feature isn’t truly autonomous, more and more Tesla drivers are deciding to take a nap behind the wheel. (NBC News; paywall)
• People in the Sun Belt are spending way too much money on cars, according to WalletHub. In one Texas town, the median auto debt is almost equivalent to a year’s salary. Americans’ total debt from auto loans now stands at $1.7 trillion.
• The Nashville Scene goes inside the city’s Vision Zero process as it works to reverse a years-long trend of rising traffic deaths.
• A budget shortfall is leading the Jacksonville Transportation Authority to reconsider plans for autonomous shuttle buses. (Daily Record)
• A new Illinois law requires the owners of high-speed e-bikes to have a driver’s license and insurance, and to register the vehicle like a car. (NBC Chicago)
• A year after putting Hemphill Street on a road diet, Fort Worth is removing bike lanes and returning it to five car lanes. (Star-Telegram)
• I-37 split San Antonio’s Eastside and downtown in the 1960s, and now residents are thinking about how to reconnect them. (Report)
• An anti-bike Washington, D.C. official was arrested stemming from an altercation with a constituent over a bike lane project. (Reddit)
• Seattle is stepping up Vision Zero efforts as the goal of ending traffic deaths by 2030 approaches. (KUOW)
• The new Crosslake Connection in Seattle is helping University of Washington students get to class. (The Daily)
• Omaha unveiled new renderings and a name, Oscar, for the streetcar currently under construction. (WOWT)
• One big question about driverless cars has been, if they get a ticket, who pays it? China is considering a law assigning responsibility for autonomous vehicles’ traffic infractions to the manufacturer or importer. (China Daily)
• Brazil has developed a plan to improve its transit system, which has been stagnant for decades. (Transport Matters)

We have been undergoing a dramatic quest for green in the face of climate change, green in the urban, green in the rural, from greening the desert to reforestation and afforestation. These “green” solutions (afforestation, exurban tree-planting, urban forestry) are being pursued reflexively as climate mitigation even as climate change undermines the conditions that make […]

Here’s a quick update with breaking news: Prime Olympia Fields management is breaking the law — egregiously suspending nurses for organizing to protect our patients.

Trump’s repression collapses in LA, Chicago, and Minneapolis

In LA, Chicago, and Minneapolis, Trump attempted to divide and weaken the movement by securing hundreds of indictments against individual activists for interfering with an ICE agent, destroying federal property, or similar crimes.

From the beginning, the scope, size, and determination of the protests frustrated ICE’s attempt to repress them. To begin with, despite the massive deployments, ICE did not have enough agents to control the crowds, detain the immigrants, and arrest the protesters whom they claimed had violated the law. Agents, moreover, had great difficulty in identifying and recording which individual had committed which allegedly criminal act. To overcome that difficulty, the ICE agents, who were untrained, incompetent, brutal, and dishonest, arrested first and came up with charges later. Occasionally, official or cell-phone videos confirmed what the agents said, but most often they revealed that the agent had erred or lied.

The U.S. attorneys were supposed to review the charges that any officer reported, but many of those attorneys had resigned in protest. Some of the remaining U.S. attorneys dismissed dishonest or unsubstantiated charges, but under relentless pressure from above, most sought indictments from the grand juries on weak or non-existent cases. As the cases wound their way ahead, many U.S. attorneys would have been happy to proceed to trial except for the fact that the judges and, even more, the juries were increasingly skeptical of any charge that ICE had filed.

Pressure from the defendants, the defense lawyers, and the movement increased the pressure on the prosecution. Many defendants turned down plea deals despite the risk of going to trial. The defense often filed numerous motions seeking dismissal, and in many cases, members of the movement showed up in court for the crucial proceedings.

In criminal cases that do not involve ICE, 90 percent of federal indictments end up in a guilty plea or verdict. But after an extensive investigation of 400 cases in which protesters were charged with assaulting or impeding ICE agents, the New York Times found that half of those cases ended in acquittals or dismissals and that many of the others were pled down to misdemeanors. Significantly, of the 26 cases that went to trial before a jury, 22 were acquitted.

Similarly, ProPublica and Frontline reported that the federal government arrested 132 U.S. citizens in southern California for interfering with or assaulting ICE agents, but only 32 were convicted, and most of those had been convicted when they pleaded to misdemeanors. In fact, the federal defenders in Southern California won six straight acquittals—an unheard-of event—because juries simply did not believe ICE agents, including Greg Bovino. Likewise, after a jury had acquitted a professor at California State on a charge of aggravated assault against an ICE agent, the California Faculty Association reported that as of April 16, 2026, the U.S. attorney in LA had filed over a hundred charges against anti-ICE protesters and still had not convicted a single one for assaulting an ICE officer.

The same was true in Chicago. According to the same ProPublica and Frontline report, the government dropped charges in 75 of the 109 arrests of protesters against ICE.

If anything, the government did worse in Minneapolis. Early in ICE’s occupation of the city, Kristi Noem published “wanted posters” for 16 protesters who had supposedly interfered with ICE agents. But as Minnesota Public Radio reported, of the 36 protesters charged with interfering with ICE officers (including the 16 on Noem’s list), the U.S. attorney dropped 18 and offered 11 others a deal to dismiss their cases in 18 months if they had no further offenses.

While there are no official statistics, the New York Times found that of the 26 cases of ICE protesters who went to trial before a jury, the jury found 22 were not guilty.

There is also a great deal of anecdotal evidence of the juries’ opposition to ICE in the New York Times and ProPublica reports, but two cases, one from Chicago and the other from LA, express what juries thought of the ICE campaign.

In the Chicago case, a man had posted an online picture of Greg Bovino above a caption which read: “10K if U take him down.” The government charged the poster with attempted murder-for-hire and, at trial, called him “a ruthless member of the Latin Kings.” But after the jury heard the evidence, it acquitted the man. In response, Steven Miller issued a statement saying that “leftist judges and juries were empowering violent insurrection against the government,” but his racist sputtering could not reverse the verdict.

Similarly, in Los Angeles, the government charged a tow truck driver with interference with ICE officers when he mistakenly towed an ICE vehicle away from a scene where the agents were attempting to arrest an undocumented immigrant from Colombia. Once again, the jury acquitted the defendant, and once again Miller issued a public statement saying it was “another example of blatant jury nullification in a blue city.”

Even in LA, Chicago, and Minneapolis, the government obtained some convictions, although often on lesser offenses. However, even those who were ultimately exonerated suffered financial and personal harm from the prosecutions. Even so, there were so many acquittals and dismissals that the government’s prosecution of individual protesters in those cities barely made a dent in the growing movement against ICE and Trump.

Trump’s conspiracy indictments.

As stated, Bondi directed the FBI and the U.S. attorneys to consider charging anti-ICE activists with substantive offenses and conspiracy to commit those offenses because that would make it possible to prosecute those who planned the event and to double the penalties for anyone who committed an unlawful act.

From LA forward, the Justice Department was zealous in filing conspiracy charges, but almost immediately, the need to prove an “explicit or implicit” agreement to commit an unlawful act opened a weakness in those charges. If there were no electronic or other written statements suggesting such an agreement, a sympathetic jury could find defendants not guilty of the conspiracy charge if it concluded that there was either no agreement or that the agreement was limited to an agreement to carry out a lawful protest.

In the early days of the LA protests, the regime nevertheless stormed ahead with its conspiracy charges. Thus, in the first few days of the rebellion, Alex Jones (yes, that Alex Jones) provided the government with a video of a Latino man standing on the back of a truck, handing out water and face shields to crowds who had been gassed by ICE. Almost immediately, the government obtained search warrants, and ICE agents, surrounded by National Guard troops, used flash bangs to storm into his home and arrest him for conspiracy to interfere with ICE agents. When it turned out that the man was just a lone Good Samaritan, the government was forced to dismiss all charges against him and to incur months of adverse publicity

Similarly, on the first day of the occupation of LA, ICE agents arrested David Huerta, the President of California SEIU, for conspiracy to interfere with ICE agents because he had sat down by himself on a driveway outside a garment factory where ICE was conducting a raid.  Since the only agreement that he had was with himself, the government was forced to drop the conspiracy charge. Months later, it was also forced to drop the charge of interfering with an ICE officer because Huerta had not interfered with anyone.

More seriously, in Ventura County, the government brought a twelve-count conspiracy indictment against two leaders of an immigrant rights group that had allegedly built blockades on the roads leading to a marijuana farm as ICE arrested and detained 400 or so immigrants. For unstated reasons, the government later dismissed all eleven felony counts in return for the lead defendant pleading to a misdemeanor and agreeing to 24-months of probation.

In Chicago, the situation was similar. The U.S. attorney obtained an indictment against six people, most of whom were associated with the Democratic Party, who had stood in front of an ICE vehicle and banged on its hood as it attempted to leave ICE’s Broadview Detention Center just outside of Chicago. Someone broke the rear windshield wiper, and that person or someone else also inscribed the letters PIG on the side of the vehicle. Fortunately, there were no text messages or other evidence of agreement to act together, but the government claimed that by standing side by side, the protesters had reached an implicit agreement to act together.  On that basis, the government asked a grand jury to approve a two-count indictment against all six people for conspiracy to interfere with an ICE agent and conspiracy to damage federal property.1United States v. Michael Babbitt, et al., US Dist. Ct. N.D. Ill. No. 1:25-cr-00693.  A copy of the indictment and of any document filed in that case may be obtained via PACER on the website of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois.

Before the second Trump Administration, grand juries had almost never rejected an indictment requested by a U.S. attorney. But following in the footsteps of other grand juries that had rejected indictments requested by the Trump Administration, the first grand jury refused to approve the indictment against any of the six Broadview defendants. Undeterred, the U.S. attorney presented the same indictment to a second grand jury. As it turned out, a member of the first grand jury was also on the second, and when he saw the indictment, he told the U.S. attorney on the record that he thought that the first indictment was a “crock of shit” and that he had the same opinion about the second indictment.

The prosecutor then unlawfully excused him from the second grand jury and, after further unlawful acts, finally obtained a conspiracy indictment against the six defendants.2Hannah Meisel, “Crock of s—’: Transcripts show grand jurors dismissed for disagreeing with government’s case against ‘Broadview Six,’” Capitol News Illinois, June 10, 2026.  Months later, when Trump’s newly (and illegally) appointed Acting U.S. attorney learned what had happened, he dismissed the conspiracy charges in an attempt to prevent the release of the full grand jury transcript. When the judge ordered it released and learned what had happened, she dismissed the remaining misdemeanor charge, saying that the prosecutorial misconduct was the worst that she had ever seen. Undeterred, the U.S. attorney said that no “civilized society” should tolerate conduct like that of the defendants, but other than sputtering out racist nonsense, he could do nothing to reinstate the conspiracy charges.

Until the most recent indictment in Minneapolis, [the government] did not attempt to bring to trial a conspiracy indictment in any of the three cities where massive protests occurred.

The government obtained conspiracy indictments and convictions in a case in Spokane, Washington where a crowd attempted to prevent an ICE bus from moving undocumented immigrants3 In Spokane, local police arrested and confiscated the phones of 30 activists who had stood in front of an ICE bus.  After local police turned the phones over to the FBI, the federal authorities found electronic communications urging others to come to the station to “sit in front of the bus,” and “block the exits.” On that basis, the government obtained an indictment against nine protesters for conspiracy to interfere with ICE agents.  Six defendants pleaded guilty to the felony in return for an agreement that it would be converted to a plea to a misdemeanor in 18 months, and three other defendants were convicted at trial and await sentencing.  Aaron Glantz, “Federal Jury finds army veteran and two other ICE protesters guilty of conspiracy,” Guardian, May 29, 2026, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/may/28/ice-protesters-conspiracy-charges., but until the most recent indictment in Minneapolis, it did not attempt to bring to trial a conspiracy indictment in any of the three cities where massive protests occurred.

The Minneapolis indictment

On June 11, 2026, the Trump regime filed an eight-count indictment against 15 activists who had fought against ICE during its occupation of Minneapolis. Of those counts, the key one is that the activists were accused of conspiring to impede or injure ICE agents as the agents attempted to arrest immigrants and to move them to sites from which they could be deported. As this case arose in the city where the most important victory over ICE occurred, it could become the national symbol of the regime’s attempt to disband and disrupt the movement that defeated it last January.

To begin with, the Minneapolis indictment is the most dishonest and hypocritical indictment that the government has filed. For weeks, the nation saw three thousand ICE agents rampaging through the streets of Minneapolis, breaking into cars and homes, arresting anyone who “looked like” an immigrant, shooting and severely wounding Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis, and, most notoriously, shooting and killing Renee Good and Alex Pretti.  The government has investigated none of those crimes but has instead spent its time investigating the signal chats, videos, and other “evidence” of a few minor incidents where it says those named in the indictment blocked ICE vehicles or agents for short periods.

For weeks, the nation saw three thousand ICE agents rampaging through the streets of Minneapolis, breaking into cars and homes, arresting anyone who “looked like” an immigrant…

The indictment does not charge anyone affiliated with the unions, the teachers, or the neighborhood and community groups who organized the mass patrols, marches, and semi-general strike that drove ICE out of Minnesota. Instead, it charges 15 people who it says were supporters of Direct Action Minnesota (DAMN) and several smaller “direct action” organizations. The indictment says the defendants organized specific direct actions during the mass struggles, including, for example, attempts to organize “soft blockades” (i.e., pickets) or “hard blockades” (i.e., debris, trailers, etc.) around federal buildings on the day of the largest mass march and the general strike.

The indictment apparently hopes to separate “legitimate” protesters from the “troublemakers.” This is an old tactic that has long been used by governments and strike-breaking employers, but after the great mass actions in January, most of the labor and community organizations that fought ICE in the streets have rejected that tactic by joining the campaign to defend those charged in this indictment.

If this case goes as most such trials have gone, the government will call an assortment of informants, turncoats, and the like to prove its claims. In addition, however, many of the 273 paragraphs in the indictment quote from text messages, chats, Facebook posts, and other electronic communications allegedly sent by some of the defendants in which they discussed plans to take various actions. A crucial part of the defense will thus be challenging the authenticity of those messages and whether the government broke laws to obtain them.

Given all that ICE did in Minneapolis, the movement should demand that the government dismiss this indictment. If the case goes to trial, however, the government will seek, as it has in other cases, orders prohibiting defense lawyers or witnesses from saying in the trial what happened to Renee Good or Alex Pretti or what in general happened during the occupation. It will also see orders prohibiting the defense lawyers from saying or implying that the jury has the right to find the defendants not guilty because of what ICE had done in the city. If the government obtains those orders—and it has done so in other cases—it will limit the ways in which the lawyers can point out the political nature of this case in the courtroom itself.

But many of the jurors will be from Minneapolis, St. Paul, and surrounding cities, and they will know what happened. Especially with a mass defense campaign including shows of support at the court, it will be difficult for the regime to secure a conviction.

The Minneapolis trial will be a crucial battle in the fight to defend the movement and thus in the fight to stop Trump’s deportations.

If the movement can prevent a conviction on the charges in this indictment, it will be important in the region and in the country. On the other hand, even if the regime secures a conviction on one or more charges, it cannot secure Prairieland-style sentences because the charges carry far less severe penalties and the movement is much stronger. While any conviction in Minneapolis will harm the movement, it cannot disrupt or uproot the movement in Minneapolis or the region. Nevertheless, the Minneapolis trial will be a crucial battle in the fight to defend the movement and thus in the fight to stop Trump’s deportations.

The Detroit indictment

In May 2026, the government obtained an indictment charging eight people affiliated in various ways with the University of Michigan with eight counts of conspiracy to transmit threats in interstate commerce, a felony that carries a maximum sentence of five years.

In essence, the indictment alleges that in a series of separate incidents, differing combinations of the defendants spray-painted and otherwise vandalized the homes of two regents, two senior university administrators, a university police official, two businesses, and the Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Detroit. The Federation, the businesses, and the University officials had actively supported the Israeli attack on Gaza, and the spray-painted slogans included calls like “Free Palestine, “Divest Now,” “Shame, Long Live the Intifada,” and the like.  There were, however, no threats to any individual.

As in Minnesota, the Detroit indictment includes numerous seemingly incriminating statements allegedly made by defendants on Facebook pages, text messages, Signal chats, and the like. Once again, there is no reason to believe the government’s claim that the defendants made these statements or that the government obtained them by lawful means, but the fight over whether they are genuine or were lawfully obtained will be a crucial part of the defense effort.

In this case, the hypocrisy is again enormous. The U.S. supplied arms for a genocide, but instead of stopping that genocide, the Trump Administration is charging eight young people with federal felonies for alleged acts of vandalism which would have been charged, if at all, as minor misdemeanors if they had been committed during a fraternity’s pledge drive.

We must fight against this attempt to criminalize political opposition to the regime by organizing a movement to demand that these charges be dropped and that the defendants be acquitted if the case goes to trial.

Conclusion

After ten months, Trump’s campaign to “disband and uproot” the left and the movement has failed in key cities because the mass resistance in LA, Chicago, and Minneapolis and other cities sparked determined opposition among layers of the working and middle classes. In part due to the courageous defendants and an organized defense movement, that opposition reached into the court system and led to the acquittals and dismissals of hundreds of felony indictments.

The victory was not total. In Prairieland, Trump’s prosecutions led to unjust convictions and life-destroying sentences. Elsewhere, others were unjustly convicted and sentenced, although none of the other sentences were remotely comparable to those handed down after the Prairieland trial. Moreover, for every defendant, including those whose charges were dismissed, the convictions and sentences were still unjust. Even those who were exonerated suffered physical, economic, and emotional damage due to unjust arrests and prosecutions.

Even acknowledging the pain inflicted by Trump’s attack on the movement, the movement defeated Trump’s attempt to “disrupt and uproot” it. Indeed, the overall movement against ICE is stronger today than it was on the day Trump signed NPSM-7, which means that the movement can continue the fight against Trump’s deportations and other attacks. The defendants who faced down the government are now seen as heroes, and large sections of the movement see more clearly the tasks ahead and the need for a militant fight against ICE and against Trump.

Obviously, much remains to be done. Above all, the regime has found new ways to increase deportations, and the movement must find new ways to stop those deportations, because, as we have seen, the overall success of the movement is the best way to defend the movement itself.

Beyond that, we need special movements to defend against the indictments in Minneapolis and Detroit, to support the appeal from the convictions and sentences in Prairieland, and to defend against any new indictments that may be filed, including those for events that have already occurred and those for acts of resistance that will occur in the future.

We must also fight for broader political demands because the public trials and the jury system cannot prevent every unjust conviction (or prosecution) and because the current wave of popular opposition, which made it possible to defeat these prosecutions, will either grow or shrink depending upon the overall development of the struggle. We must thus link the fight against these prosecutions to the overall struggle against the regime, including the fight to drive Trump from the Presidency and the fight against fascism and for demands that will eliminate the conditions that gave birth to Trump and Trumpism.

Until we can prevail in that larger political struggle, we must also take steps to protect the movement itself. To do that, we must assess the strategic and tactical lessons of the fight against Trump’s attempt to destroy the movement.

The liberals have said or will say that the defense of the anti-ICE fighters shows that the system “worked.” But while the jury system, public trials and the media are the most important checks on state repression within the capitalist legal system, they have failed too many times—including, for example, in Prairieland—in the face of the resources and the demagogy that the regime can bring to bear. Contrary to what the liberals say, the grand juries, juries, and judges who dismissed these specific indictments did so because of action by the mass movements. The dismissals and acquittals again confirmed that the most important check on repression by the capitalist state is not the checks and balances within the State, but organization and action by the working class and the oppressed.

While a mass movement sometimes needs direct action, the struggle over the last year has decisively shown that it was mass action that slowed Trump’s deportations and his attempts to prosecute the movement.

Similarly, anarchists have said and will continue to say that the leaders of the mass movements are too weak and too bureaucratic and that we need “direct actions” to stop the deportations. But while a mass movement sometimes needs direct action, the struggle over the last year has decisively shown that it was mass action that slowed Trump’s deportations and his attempts to prosecute the movement. A mass movement must be able to defend itself, but that cannot be done by building small squads of activists who are separate from and unaccountable to the movement because they cannot defeat the state and they are extremely vulnerable to state repression. Instead, the answer is to fight to build a new, militant, and democratic movement leadership,

Finally, while only a few now say that we can defeat Trump and ICE by “civil disobedience,” the sheer brutality of the regime and the success of the mass movement have shown the utter falsity of those claims.

On a tactical level, there are a few simple and clear lessons.

First, we must take steps to ensure that no member of the movement posts any electronic communication that they do not want to see as an exhibit in a federal prosecution. While we must maintain our right to use electronic means to debate general political issues and to organize many events, we should not make any comments —however innocent they may be —which suggest that any form of “violence” may or should occur at any specific event. Those comments can survive forever, and their meaning can be twisted by Trump’s henchmen.

Second, we must consider seriously every tactical decision as to when, where, and how to conduct every demonstration, picket, or other event. In most such events, there is little if any risk, but in some cases the risk is much higher, and while we must sometimes take such risks, we should not take them without carefully evaluating and discussing whether the risk is necessary.

Third, and more specifically, while we must defend the right of armed self-defense, we must carefully consider whether and how to use it at specific events because having firearms at a protest and even loose talk about using firearms in the struggle for self-defense creates great risks.

Finally, while we must fight to build a mass movement, we cannot do that without recognizing the weaknesses in the current movement. Above all, we must recognize that even though large sections of the working class and of the Black, Latinx, and other oppressed communities adamantly oppose the deportations and Trump, the active movement is dominated by the white middle class. We must take every possible step to overcome that gap because only a movement of the multi-racial and multi-gendered working class and the oppressed can defeat Trump and Trumpism.

How to do that is far beyond the scope of this article, but the fact that it can be done is confirmed by what has been described in this article.  For many reasons, those grand juries and juries whose actions were composed of citizens from the middle class and the upper levels of the working class. But if those levels of the working and middle classes were willing, as Miller said, to “nullify” Trump’s policies, that is a signal that there is even more militant opposition to Trump among the more oppressed sections of the working class. How to turn those sentiments into active support and leadership of a movement is a complicated question, but it is what must be done if we are to eliminate horrors like NSPM-7 and the ongoing nightmare of Prairieland.

Opinions expressed in signed articles do not necessarily represent the views of the editors or the Tempest Collective. For more information, see “About Tempest Collective.”
Featured Image credit: U.S. Northern Command, Chad Davis, SwissAmish; modified by Tempest.

The post Trump’s legal conspiracy (part two) appeared first on Tempest.

THE SHELL NIGERIA FILES: 30 AUGUST 2026 Shell’s $10.9 Billion Nigeria Estimate vs Its Public Accounts: What Were Shareholders Told? An internal report sent to Shell’s CEO in early 2014 reportedly put the cost of retiring SPDC’s existing asset base at $10.9 billion. Weeks later, Royal Dutch Shell approved its 2013 Annual Report and Form 20-F. The public accounts disclosed billions in global decommissioning provisions and a strategic review of Nigerian assets — but did not separately identify the $10.9 billion Nigeria estimate. That does not establish an accounting failure. It does create a legitimate disclosure question.

The 17 August instalment of The Shell Nigeria Files examined a particular issue: whether Shell’s programme of divestment risked transferring massive decommissioning and pollution problems along with the assets. This article addresses a different question.

What did Shell’s shareholders know, from Shell’s formal financial reporting, about the scale of the Nigerian retirement problem senior management was confronting internally? (Royal Dutch Shell Plc .com)

That question matters because Nigeria: Lifting the Lid, published on 29 July 2026 by Amnesty International, HEDA Resource Centre and partner organisations, says an internal report sent to Shell’s then CEO in 2014 estimated that decommissioning all existing SPDC assets could take decades and cost $10.9 billion, apparently excluding the separate cost of cleaning historic pollution. (Amnesty International)

According to the court material traced in the report, the estimate appears in a 31 January 2014 communication identified as D1_00000870 (HB/970) and cited in paragraph 98 of solicitor Matthew Renshaw’s Tenth Witness Statement.

That date deserves attention.

The $10.9 billion estimate existed before Shell approved its 2013 accounts

Royal Dutch Shell plc’s 2013 Annual Report and Form 20-F was approved and authorised for issue by the Board on 12 March 2014. The Form 20-F was signed by Chief Executive Ben van Beurden and Chief Financial Officer Simon Henry. (Shell)

If the dating in the claimant material is correct, the $10.9 billion SPDC joint-venture asset-retirement estimate had therefore reached Shell’s CEO roughly six weeks before those accounts were approved.

That does not mean Shell was necessarily obliged to reproduce the $10.9 billion number in its Annual Report.

There are important accounting questions about what precisely the internal estimate represented, whether it was gross or discounted, how costs were allocated among joint-venture participants, which obligations already existed for accounting purposes, when expenditure was expected to occur and how much of the estimate was already reflected in Shell’s consolidated provisions.

The disclosed documents available publicly do not answer those questions.

But they make the chronology worth examining.

What Shell told investors about Nigeria in 2013

Shell did tell shareholders that Nigeria was a major problem.

Its 2013 Form 20-F reported that Shell’s share of Nigerian production had fallen from about 365,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day in 2012 to approximately 265,000 in 2013. It identified security problems and crude-oil theft in the Niger Delta as significant challenges and said force majeure had been declared several times because of security, sabotage and theft. (Shell)

More significantly for the present inquiry, Shell publicly disclosed that it had launched a “strategic portfolio review in Nigeria” considering a possible exit from interests in some eastern Niger Delta onshore leases. (Shell)

So there was no concealment of the fact that Shell was considering Nigerian divestments.

Nor did Shell hide the existence of substantial global asset-retirement obligations.

Its 2013 accounts recorded $18.425 billion of decommissioning and restoration provisions across the Shell Group, up from $16.071 billion a year earlier. Shell said its annual review of estimated decommissioning and restoration costs had increased the provision by $1.426 billion during 2013. (Shell)

What the public filing did not do, in the relevant sections reviewed for this article, was identify a Nigeria-specific $10.9 billion retirement estimate.

A full-text search of Shell’s 2013 Form 20-F produces no match for “Nigeria decommissioning”; appearances of “10.9” relate to unrelated data. (Shell)

That distinction is important.

Shell disclosed the existence of enormous group-wide decommissioning liabilities. It disclosed Nigerian difficulties. It disclosed the Nigerian portfolio review. What it did not separately disclose was the particular $10.9 billion Nigerian joint-venture estimate now emerging from the internal record.

Shell’s auditors were already treating decommissioning as a significant judgement

There is another reason this deserves serious scrutiny.

Decommissioning was not some obscure footnote buried beyond the attention of Shell’s directors and auditors.

PricewaterhouseCoopers identified decommissioning and restoration provisions as an area of audit focus in the 2013 report, stating that their calculation required significant judgement concerning such matters as asset lives, future costs and production estimates. PwC said it tested assumptions underpinning material provisions, performed sensitivity work and examined the discount rate. (Shell)

Again, that proves nothing improper.

It does, however, establish that the subject was recognised within Shell’s audited financial reporting as significant and judgement-intensive.

The unanswered factual question is therefore quite specific:

Was the $10.9 billion SPDC estimate considered in the preparation and audit of the consolidated decommissioning provision, and if so, how was it reflected?

The public documents examined here do not tell us.

Then came Shell’s 2014 accounts

The following year makes the picture even more interesting.

Royal Dutch Shell’s 2014 Form 20-F reported that SPDC remained operator of the onshore joint arrangement in which Shell held a 30% interest. It said SPDC was continuing its strategic review of eastern Niger Delta interests, had divested its interest in OML 24, had agreements to dispose of three further onshore interests and might make additional divestments.

Meanwhile, Shell’s global decommissioning and restoration provision increased substantially.

At 31 December 2014, it stood at $21.887 billion, compared with $18.425 billion a year earlier. Shell said annual reviews of estimated decommissioning costs and discount rates had produced a $4.827 billion increase during 2014.

That fact cuts strongly against any simplistic claim that Shell was ignoring asset-retirement liabilities in its accounts.

The public record demonstrates the opposite: Shell recognised very large decommissioning provisions and materially remeasured them.

But once again there is no publicly visible bridge between those group-wide numbers and the $10.9 billion SPDC joint-venture estimate that the newly released material says was before senior management.

A full-text search of the 2014 report likewise does not identify the $10.9 billion Nigerian estimate as such or a specific “Nigeria decommissioning” disclosure.

Do not compare $10.9 billion directly with $18.4 billion

This is where considerable care is required.

It would be tempting to say: Shell internally estimated Nigeria alone at $10.9 billion while publicly reporting a worldwide provision of $18.425 billion — therefore the accounts must have been understated.

The documents reviewed do not justify that conclusion.

The figures may not be calculated on comparable bases.

The $10.9 billion figure is described in the litigation material as the estimated asset-retirement obligation for the SPDC joint venture as a whole. Shell’s economic interest was 30%, but that does not automatically mean one can simply multiply $10.9 billion by 30% and arrive at the figure that ought to have appeared on Royal Dutch Shell plc’s balance sheet.

Shell’s accounting policy said decommissioning provisions were based on present obligations, current requirements, technology and price levels, with non-current amounts discounted over the useful economic lives of the assets. Actual future cash expenditure can therefore be very different from the carrying value of an accounting provision at a particular reporting date.

Nor should decommissioning automatically be confused with historic pollution remediation.

Shell’s 2013 accounts separately reported $1.341 billion of worldwide environmental provisions and said those related to a number of events in different locations, none individually significant. The coalition report, meanwhile, says the $10.9 billion SPDC estimate apparently excluded clean-up costs. They are therefore different categories of possible expenditure. (Shell)

That accounting distinction is essential.

It also makes the unanswered question more interesting rather than less.

Where is the accounting bridge?

If Shell’s position is that the Nigerian retirement problem was appropriately incorporated into its consolidated accounts, there should in principle have been an internal reconciliation between operational estimates and the provision recorded for financial-reporting purposes.

The public cannot see that reconciliation.

It would show, among other things, what the $10.9 billion consisted of; which assets it covered; the anticipated timing of retirement; the respective obligations of Shell and its joint-venture partners; the discount assumptions; how existing booked provisions compared with the new estimate; and whether any amount was excluded because Shell considered there was no present accounting obligation.

It might demonstrate that Shell’s accounting was entirely appropriate.

Equally, it might expose a significant discrepancy.

At present, we simply do not know.

That is exactly why allegations of misleading investors should not be stated as established fact — and why calls for scrutiny cannot simply be dismissed.

The campaigners are explicitly raising the shareholder question

The coalition behind Nigeria: Lifting the Lid has gone further than merely criticising pollution management.

It is calling for UK and Dutch authorities to investigate whether Shell misled shareholders, regulators and affected communities about the true condition of its Nigerian operations and liabilities. That is a demand for investigation by campaigning organisations; it is not a finding by any regulator or court that Shell did mislead anyone. (Amnesty International)

The distinction matters enormously.

Nothing in the material reviewed for this article establishes securities fraud, defective accounts, an IFRS breach, an SEC reporting violation or misconduct by Shell’s auditor.

What the documents establish is narrower.

There was reportedly a large internal SPDC asset-retirement estimate.

It reached Shell’s CEO before the 2013 accounts were approved.

Shell publicly disclosed substantial worldwide decommissioning provisions and Nigerian divestment plans.

The particular Nigerian estimate was not separately identified in the public filings examined.

Whether that was entirely proper depends on accounting and disclosure facts that are not presently public.

That is an investigation question, not a verdict.

Shell’s response

Shell rejects the overall portrayal advanced by Amnesty International, HEDA and their partners.

In its July 2026 response, Shell said the organisations had selectively quoted internal documents in a way that created a misleading impression and failed to give sufficient weight to the exceptionally difficult operating conditions in the Niger Delta, including organised crude-oil theft, sabotage and illegal refining. Shell said it remained committed to honesty, integrity, ethical conduct and transparency. (Amnesty International)

Shell’s current account of the Bille and Ogale litigation says the vast majority of relevant Niger Delta pollution was caused by large-scale oil theft, sabotage and illegal refining by organised criminal gangs. It says its former subsidiary worked with Nigerian authorities, the government-owned joint-venture partner and communities, and cleaned spills from joint-venture facilities regardless of cause as Nigerian law required. Shell says it strongly believes in its case and will vigorously defend the claims at the factual trial in 2027. (Shell)

That response must be included fairly.

It still leaves the narrower accounting question unanswered.

Shell’s public response to the coalition, so far as the material reviewed for this article shows, does not provide a reconciliation between the $10.9 billion internal SPDC estimate and the decommissioning provisions recognised in Royal Dutch Shell’s 2013 or 2014 accounts.

This is what transparency would look like

Shell has repeatedly argued that selective extracts from historic internal documents can create a misleading picture.

There is a straightforward way to address that criticism.

Publish the relevant context.

Release the complete 31 January 2014 assurance communication, including the assumptions behind the $10.9 billion number.

Explain whether that estimate was supplied to the finance function, Audit Committee or external auditors.

Show how it reconciled with the asset-retirement provisions recorded in the consolidated accounts.

Explain what portion related economically or legally to Shell, what portion belonged to joint-venture partners, how discounting affected the booked amount, and whether remediation of historic pollution was separately provided for.

Such disclosure could vindicate Shell’s accounting treatment.

But without it, shareholders are left looking at two different records.

Inside Shell: a reported $10.9 billion estimate for retiring SPDC’s existing asset base.

Outside Shell: billions of dollars of consolidated global provisions, coupled with disclosures about Nigeria’s deteriorating operating environment and contemplated divestments, but no separately identified $10.9 billion Nigerian figure.

The difference does not prove wrongdoing.

It does justify asking how the two records fit together.

The timing makes the question impossible to dismiss

The chronology is unusually tight.

The internal assurance material is dated 31 January 2014.

On 12 March 2014, Royal Dutch Shell’s Board authorised the 2013 financial statements, and Ben van Beurden and Simon Henry signed the Form 20-F. (Shell)

At that point investors were being told that Shell had launched a strategic review that could result in exits from eastern Niger Delta onshore leases. They were also being told Shell carried $18.425 billion of worldwide decommissioning and restoration provisions. (Shell)

What they apparently were not told separately was that an internal Nigerian estimate reportedly put the cost of retiring the entire SPDC joint-venture asset base at $10.9 billion.

That may have been because separate disclosure was neither required nor useful.

It may have been because Shell considered the relevant share already adequately captured within the consolidated accounts.

There may be another perfectly legitimate explanation.

But thirteen years later, with those internal documents entering the public domain and a major Niger Delta pollution trial approaching, conjecture is unnecessary.

Shell possesses the records capable of answering the question.

It should publish them.

Because the issue raised by these documents is not whether Shell recognised that decommissioning costs money. Its public accounts prove that it did.

The issue is whether investors were given a sufficiently clear picture of how extraordinary the Nigerian retirement problem had become while Shell was simultaneously considering its exit from those assets.

That is a materially different question.

And Shell’s own records have now made it one that deserves an answer.

Documentary record and direct sources

The central $10.9 billion finding is reported in Nigeria: Lifting the Lid, published 29 July 2026 by Amnesty International, HEDA Resource Centre and partner organisations, drawing on internal Shell documents and May 2026 court material. The underlying retirement estimate is identified in the report as a 31 January 2014 communication, D1_00000870 (HB/970), cited in paragraph 98 of Matthew Renshaw’s Tenth Witness Statement. HEDA’s public summary confirms that an internal report sent to Shell’s then CEO estimated decommissioning the existing SPDC asset base at $10.9 billion and that the estimate apparently excluded clean-up costs. (Amnesty International)

Shell’s own primary financial records are its 2013 Annual Report and Form 20-F and 2014 Annual Report and Form 20-F. The 2013 report disclosed the Nigeria portfolio review and $18.425 billion of global decommissioning and restoration provisions; the 2014 report disclosed continuing Nigerian divestments and $21.887 billion of global decommissioning and restoration provisions. (Shell)

For direct inspection: Nigeria: Lifting the Lid — Amnesty International report page · HEDA Resource Centre — Shell Nigeria documents and findings · Shell Annual Reports archive · Shell’s current Bille and Ogale position

Editorial note

This article does not allege that Royal Dutch Shell plc understated its provisions, breached IFRS, violated US securities law, misled its auditor, concealed a legally required disclosure or committed accounting fraud.

The currently public evidence does not establish any of those propositions.

It establishes that an internal 2014 record reportedly estimated a $10.9 billion SPDC joint-venture asset-retirement obligation; that Shell’s 2013 and 2014 public filings recognised very substantial group-wide decommissioning provisions; that the filings disclosed Nigerian operating difficulties and divestment activity; and that the specific $10.9 billion Nigerian estimate was not separately identified in the relevant public disclosures reviewed.

The relationship between the internal estimate and Shell’s audited accounting provisions cannot be determined from the presently available material. The coalition publishers’ demand that authorities investigate whether shareholders and others were misled is an allegation requiring investigation, not a judicial or regulatory finding.

Shell disputes the publishers’ broader interpretation of the internal documents and says they have been selectively presented without sufficient recognition of the severe theft, sabotage, illegal-refining and security environment in the Niger Delta. The Bille and Ogale proceedings remain contested, with the Bille factual trial expected in 2027.

THE SHELL NIGERIA FILES: 30 AUGUST 2026 was first posted on August 30, 2026 at 7:15 pm.
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