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Oregon's Climate Protection Program moves one step closer to delivering community investments Nora Apter Fri, 07/17/2026 - 9:36 am

Bike lanes are unsafe. Speed cameras cause crashes. Safety redesigns cause congestion and injuries.

Or, as Big Brother said, freedom is slavery, war is peace, ignorance is strength.

President Trump and federal Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy have made it clear for more than a year that they object to bike lanes, automated enforcement cameras and other proven safety measures — with Duffy going so far as to say that bike lanes are just government “DEI” activism — but neither man went out of their way say that such safety measures were, in fact, unsafe. Until now.

Sometime between June 30 and July 10, the Trump-run Federal Highway Administration changed its web page of “Proven Safety Countermeasures” to eliminate safety strategies that, before President Trump’s second term began, the agency had long supported, including protected bike lanes, speed cameras and road diets:

The previous safety page had proven infrastructure and enforcement strategies (top, circled) that President Trump and Sean Duffy have deleted (bottom).

The administration had previously criticized road diets — the removal of a lane of traffic to make room for bike lanes or pedestrian safety measures, or also to improve flow with turning bays — by claiming without evidence that they cause traffic congestion. The agency has also canceled grants for projects that it deemed hostile to cars.

But the changes to the web page reflect the administration’s new contention that safety measures are not merely annoying to drivers, but unsafe.

Activists can’t believe it.

“Bike lanes and road diets are still legitimate safety measures,” said Ken McLeod, policy director at the League of American Bicyclists. “Absolutely nothing has changed about their effectiveness or the data that led them to be placed on the Proven Safety Countermeasures list in the first place.”

And until July, the FHWA certainly agreed. On the archived web page, the agency said protected bike lanes “can mitigate or prevent interactions, conflicts, and crashes between bicyclists and motor vehicles, and create a network of safer roadways for bicycling. … State and local agencies should consider installing bicycle lanes.”

Bicycle lanes align with the Safe System Approach principle of recognizing human vulnerability — where separating users in space can enhance safety for all road users,” added the web page (which, ironically, was illustrated with a protected bike lane in Washington, D.C. that the president sought to remove earlier this year).

The agency said that creating separated bicycle lane to protect cyclists from car traffic “reduces crashes up to 53 percent.”

And on road diets, the FHWA (at least until July) said they “can improve safety, calm traffic, provide better mobility and access for all road users, and enhance overall quality of life.” The agency said conversions of roadways from four lanes to two (plus a turning bay) lead to:

• Reduction of rear-end and left-turn crashes due to the dedicated left-turn lane.
• Reduced right-angle crashes as side street motorists cross three versus four travel lanes.
• Fewer lanes for pedestrians to cross.
• Opportunity to install pedestrian refuge islands, bicycle lanes, on-street parking, or transit stops.
• Traffic calming and more consistent speeds.
• A more community-focused, Complete Streets environment that better accommodates the needs of all road users.

It promised a 19- to 47-percent reduction in crashes.

And on speed cameras, the agency’s archived page boasted that can reduce crashes by 54 percent. In New York City, which has the nation’s largest speed- and red-light camera enforcement program, officials reported a 95-percent drop in speeding at locations with cameras, and that locations with cameras experienced 14 percent fewer injuries and
fatalities compared to control corridors without cameras.

But as of July 10, those measures are no longer considered safe by the federal government. In a statement, an FHWA spokesperson did not address Streetsblog’s questions about why the agency now considered its own safety countermeasures to be unsafe.

“The Federal Highway Administration is conducting an ongoing administrative review of its ‘Proven Safety Countermeasures’ to ensure they align with US DOT policies and the Administration’s priorities,” the statement read. “The Department is taking action to reverse the last administration’s policies that decreased lane capacity and increased congestion. Drivers paying taxes and vehicle fees expect their dollars to be reinvested into our roads, not social initiatives that burden their commutes.

“Under Secretary Duffy, the Department is getting back to basics and putting safety first,” the statement concluded.

The agency did not respond to a follow up question: “We understand the administration’s position on road capacity, but are bike lanes and road diets now considered unsafe?”

Clearly, bike lanes, road diets, speed cameras are just as safe now as they were a month ago, when they were promoted on the very same agency’s site, advocates said.

“Nothing has changed; no new evidence has emerged to indicate that separating cyclists from motor traffic or slowing and better ordering motor traffic with fewer lanes are anything but tremendously successful street safety measures,” said Jon Orcutt, a former top official with the New York City Department of Transportation under then-Mayor Mike Bloomberg, a Republican, and Mayor Bill de Blasio, a Democrat. “Their removal from FHWA’s proven safety list is the latest step in Sean Duffy’s intentional infusion of stupidity into US DOT policy.”

Orcutt included in that list Duffy’s war on congestion pricing, which also ended up being a stunning safety and traffic-reduction success.

Orcutt added that FHWA’s action “could be harmful” because there are many places in the country “where the efficacy of bike lanes or road diets is contested, or state or city officials are still foot-dragging over them.”

“In places smart enough to already implement such measures — like the 80 cities that are members of NACTO — [the FHWA change] will be rightly ignored,” he added. “If FHWA tries to use the change to interfere with specific projects, local and state agencies should take their cues from New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority and sue the Trump DOT early and often.”

The irony, of course, is that until very recently, federal officials did not dare to testify under oath that bike lanes are unsafe. In ruling earlier this year against the Trump administration’s attempt to remove the 15th Street bike lane in Washington, the court wrote, “The government does not dispute, and it did not submit any data that would contradict, plaintiff’s contention that the dedicated bike lanes reduce collisions. As counsel for defendants acknowledged at the motions hearing, “[t]here is information in the record that says as a general principle, protected bike lanes prevent collision.” 

One former FHWA administrator said there’s a reason that even the Trump administration didn’t put on the record that bike lanes are unsafe — because they remain safe.

“We should be making decisions about safety based on evidence,” Stephanie Pollack, the former acting administrator of the FHWA under President Joe Biden, told NPR. “It’s hard for me to understand how you could say you’re putting safety first, and then make arbitrary decisions about what does and doesn’t improve safety.”

The biggest game in soccer is set for Sunday, when Argentina and Spain will meet in the World Cup final, held just outside of New York City. There’s just one problem — wildfire smoke now threatens the match and FIFA, the sport’s governing body, doesn’t appear to have any plan in place to protect player or fan health. 

Wildfire smoke blowing from Canada has blanketed large swaths of the Midwest and East Coast in recent days, impacting more than a dozen states, with some of the worst-hit cities facing air quality in ranges considered hazardous. New Yorkers are among those who have been watching their air turn orange and hazy this week. On Thursday, the state issued an alert as the air quality index climbed to “unhealthy” and “very unhealthy” levels. “Avoid spending time outdoors, if possible,” officials advised.

As of Friday morning, air quality near the stadium remained in the unhealthy range, and while it’s forecast to improve to “moderate” by Sunday’s kickoff, smoke patterns could still change. If concerns continue during the finals, there’s no way to close off the open-air stadium where stars Lionel Messi and Lamine Yamal are slated to square off. That means fans and players would almost certainly be exposed to smoke, which could lead to symptoms such as a burning throat, coughing, or headache, among others. This can be particularly dangerous for sensitive groups, including children, older individuals, and people with respiratory conditions such as asthma. 

Players have also practiced outdoors during air quality events in the lead up to the game — the Spanish team held a practice Thursday in New Jersey. “These are high-level athletes who are moving a lot of air through their lungs,” Dr. Courtney Howard, an emergency room physician and Global Climate and Health Alliance official, told the Associated Press. “They shouldn’t be practicing outside if the air quality levels are at hazardous sort of ranges for wildfire-related air pollution.”

World Cup organizer FIFA does not appear to have any contingency plans in place for wildfire smoke. Neither FIFA nor New York City Department of Health officials immediately responded to Grist’s request for comment. In a previous statement to Grist, FIFA detailed extensive protocols related to extreme heat, including mandatory water breaks for players, but didn’t mention air quality. 

“Climate-related risks,” the organization wrote last month, “are assessed as part of overall tournament planning and managed in close coordination with host cities, stadium authorities, and national agencies.” 

Unlike FIFA, a number of other leagues implement standardized adjustments triggered by air quality warnings. Per National Women’s Soccer League policy, for instance, a women’s soccer game at Citi Field in New York on Thursday had additional hydration breaks for safety. NWSL policy adds hydration breaks at an air quality index of 101 (“unhealthy for sensitive groups”) and cancels or postpones games when the AQI tops 200 (“very unhealthy”). Major League Baseball rescheduled one game this week in Philadelphia, and Major League Soccer canceled a game in Chicago due to smoke.

The World Cup is in its fifth and final week, and despite the games taking place across multiple wildfire-prone regions, so far FIFA’s bet that the air would stay clear has paid off. It may get lucky again this weekend, says Nicholas Watanabe, a professor of sport and entertainment management at the University of South Carolina, but that doesn’t excuse not being ready.

“FIFA seems unprepared for these wildfires,” said Watanabe. “At the same time, it looks like the worst of the pollution will dissipate before the World Cup Final, so FIFA will dodge a bullet and likely push forward with the match.”

Some, however, question whether enough is being done, both by FIFA and other outdoor sports leagues facing these and other climate threats. FIFA has already been criticized this year for its policies regarding extreme heat.”If we have to have a hydration break every 15 minutes, then we shouldn’t be playing the game,” said Trinity Rodman, who played in the smoke-affected NWSL soccer game in New York. 

One professional cyclist recently questioned whether the Tour de France should be held in the summer, as this year’s iteration of the iconic event has been plagued by wildfires, smoke, and extreme heat. “I would change the whole calendar,” said yellow jersey holder Tadej Pogačar earlier this month. “It’s not something I can do.”

The power to make changes generally rests with a sport’s governing body, rather than athletes, and Watanabe thinks climate issues should be taken more seriously. Even if the World Cup final is spared any impacts, he said this close call should serve as a warning.

“Hopefully,” he said, “this is a wakeup call to FIFA and all other sport leagues and competitions of the need for regulations and a comprehensive plan to deal with climate risks.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Wildfire smoke threatens the World Cup final. FIFA still doesn’t have a plan. on Jul 17, 2026.

The Aral Sea sits between Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan and was once the fourth-largest inland body of water on Earth. For the past 60 years, though, humans have bled it nearly dry irrigating cotton crops, leaving behind a salty plain the size of Ireland. Its loss has long been seen as an ecological and humanitarian problem, but new research shows that it has also been a significant driver of climate change.

Read more on E360 →

“The Hub” is a weekly round-up of transportation related news in the Philadelphia area and beyond. Check back weekly to keep up-to-date on the issues Clean Air Council’s transportation staff finds important.

As exciting events continue in Philadelphia, learn how you can get around to major summer 2026 events without a car, or being stuck in traffic with GoPhillyGo: Car-Free Routes Map!

Attention Lehigh Valley and Lancaster Transit Workers! Transit For All PA needs your help to improve public transit by taking these surveys. Link to the Lehigh Valley Survey and link to the Lancaster Survey.

Image Source: The Inquirer

WHYY: Pa. Gov. Shapiro signs ‘compromise’ state budget shortly after passage on Sunday – The 2026-2027 PA State Budget passed on Sunday, with Republicans and Democrats calling it a compromise. The budget comes two weeks after the state constitution-mandated deadline, late for the fifth year in a row. The $50.8 billion budget was signed by the Governor, with approval from 211 of the General Assembly’s 252 lawmakers. The budget leaves out several critical issues, such as transit, raising minimum wage, and affordable housing. Shapiro stated that there is still work to do, including addressing the lack of funding for mass transit that millions of Pennsylvanians rely on every day.

Image Source: NBC Philadelphia

NBC Philadelphia: SEPTA is spending millions to stop fare evasion. Is it paying off? – Current fare evasion programs cost around $30 million a year, according to SEPTA. Some of the fare evasion measures include full-length gates at 10 stations, that cost around $400,000 each. The gates are intended to stop riders from jumping the turnstile. At the 10 stations with full-length gates, fare evasion has been cut in half, reducing it from one in two riders not paying to one in four. SEPTA expects the machines to pay for themselves over the next few years, and has plans to expand the fare-evasion programs at more stations over the next several years.

Image Source: Philly Voice

Philly Voice: Uber is offering free rides to older adults in West and Southwest Philly – ACHIEVEability, a Philadelphia social services organization, is running a program for older adults living in West and Southwest Philly. Codes are available for people aged 60+ for a one-time $50 voucher to access healthcare, buy groceries, or meet other critical needs. The program will run until the $10,000 budget is spent. For more information about the program, text ACHIEVEability at (215) 748-8817 or call (215) 879-6625. Clean Air Council also runs an Uber voucher program servicing the 110, 111, 114, & 117 SEPTA lines. Find more information or to register visit here.

Other Stories

The Inquirer: Here’s what’s in — and not in — Pennsylvania’s $50.8 billion state budget

NBC Philadelphia: Falls Bridge to close to cars on weekday overnights for inspection: Officials

BillyPenn: Westbound I-76 in West Philly to close at night for bridge construction

Philly Voice: Amtrak trains to run at reduced speeds due to heat wave

Mass Transit Magazine: SEPTA launches bike parking lockers at Fox Chase station

Philadelphia Today: Inside the Bitter Political Fight That Nearly Made the Ben Franklin Bridge Free

City of Philadelphia: The Streets Department of Transportation Announces Construction of New Pedestrian Refuge Islands Along Chestnut Street

Bank of America analysts project data center demand will outpace planned utility capacity additions by more than 100 GW through 2030, increasing reliance on on-site gas generation and battery storage.

At its monthly meeting, FERC set data center reliability standard deadlines, ordered CAISO and SPP to report on “seams” issues and advanced a complaint over cost recovery for a New Jersey power line.

Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed. 
An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change.

This week Heat and firewaves

‘FIREWAVE’: Wildfires ravaged Europe and North America this week. France utilised water-dumping planes collecting from the Seine to contain a fire in the Fontainebleau forest near Paris, according to the Associated Press. The Financial Times reported that the UK has had “25 non-consecutive days with temperatures of 30C or more, including nine days above 34C”, creating a “firewave” and putting pressure on emergency services. Meanwhile, an “orange haze from Canada wildfires” could be “seen in Ontario and northern US”, said BBC News. 

‘NEW NORMAL’: Climate events previously seen as extreme are becoming the “new ‘normal’”, said the Met Office, in a report on the UK’s climate. While last year was the UK’s hottest on record, rising temperatures mean it is expected to be surpassed in the next few years, reported Reuters. Liz Bentley, head of the Royal Meteorological Society, told the Guardian that “climate change has been described by scientists for many years but is now increasingly being felt by the UK population in their own homes and communities”. 

Around the world

• ELECTRIFYING PUSH: The European Commission has announced a target for electricity to account for 46% of energy consumption across the bloc by 2040, reported Carbon Pulse. The commission has also made plans to adapt its emissions trading system to “bring relief to industry”, it said.
• FALLING OIL: The International Energy Agency said that global oil demand is expected to decline this year for the first time since 2020, reported the Associated Press.
• US ROLLBACKS: Trump cuts to clean energy support “led to the cancellation ​or delay of $83bn in investment across hundreds of projects”, reported Reuters. The Trump administration has also changed environmental law to allow development in the habitats of endangered species, according to CNN. 
• BURNHAM BEGINS: Incoming UK prime minister Andy Burnham is preparing to announce new North Sea drilling “within days of taking office”, said Bloomberg. Carbon Brief looked at 28 statements that Burnham has made about climate change and fossil fuels.
• DRY JULY: Drought in Uganda led to significant crop losses and at least 16 deaths from starvation, said BBC News. 
• ON AI: Australia planned to implement restrictions on energy and water usage for datacentres “amid [an] AI boom”, said the New York Times. 

38%

The drop in Brazilian Amazon deforestation in the first half of 2026, compared to last year, reported Al Jazeera.

Latest climate research

• The area of land burned by wildfires in Africa each year has reduced due to a shrinking dry season | Geophysical Research Letters
• Most people do not distinguish between climate adaptation and mitigation when thinking about tackling climate change | Climate Outreach
• An “effort-sharing framework” has been developed to support progress towards the Paris Agreement | npj Climate Action

(For more, see Carbon Brief’s in-depth daily summaries of the top climate news stories on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.)

Captured

Carbon Brief explained how more than 1,000 heat-related deaths in England and Wales during May and June were attributed to climate change, accounting for almost half of all heat-related deaths experienced during those months. The article also unpacked the different methods for estimating heat deaths around the world.

Spotlight Natural History Museum exhibits climate change

This week, Carbon Brief interviews Meaghan Macdonald, senior project and programme manager for London’s Natural History Museum, about their first permanent climate-themed exhibition, Fixing Our Broken Planet.

Carbon Brief: Why are programmes such as Fixing Our Broken Planet so important?

Meaghan Macdonald: One of the main things we’re trying to achieve with Fixing Our Broken Planet is to place the museum as a convener of conversations around the planetary emergency…trying to bring together the different groups of people who need to be involved in this conversation in order to work together to find a solution. 

And we find that a lot of the people who come into the gallery weren’t necessarily coming here to see it; they come across it, which is a really great way to engage people who may not have been engaged in that discussion previously.

CB: How does the exhibition engage and inspire visitors?

MM: A driving force for this exhibition is that you are dealing with a subject matter that can be quite disheartening, and one of the things that we were very careful about is to try to make sure that woven throughout the scientific data… is a sense of hope… to enable people to feel empowered to make a difference. 

We were able to do things like our “what you can do” labels, which give an example that people can take away with them. We also have “conversation starters”, which is a digital screen that asks people a series of questions related to the planetary emergency. Things like: “Should we mine the deep sea to power the green economy?”…And there’s no right or wrong answer. 

We [also] set out very specifically to…forefront the science that’s happening here. We know from multiple studies from thinktanks and organisations that people actually trust our scientists the most. 

Natural History Museum’s Fixing Our Broken Planet exhibition. Credit: Micheal Melia / Alamy Stock Photo

CB: The museum has set out a goal to “create advocates for the planet”. What does this mean? How does it relate to the exhibition and the museum’s wider climate action?

MM: The aim of the museum is to get to a place where both people and the planet thrive. Being a library of the natural world, it is our duty to be standing up for it and to help people find their way, fighting for nature’s side. 

In order to create those advocates, the aim of the [exhibition] and the wider advocacy programmes at the museum is to try to find ways to bring all these people [individuals, policymakers, industry, scientists] together. 

We have the wider programme with Fixing Our Broken Planet. We have Generation Hope…a free graphic panel version of our display in the gallery that we have been able to get into a number of venues in Bangalore…the very long-standing and beloved wildlife photographer of the year [exhibition]…our urban nature movement…[and] an initiative that we are doing with the Department for Education called the National Education Nature Park.

Watch, read, listen

STUBBORN HOPE: For the Conversation, climate scientist Prof Peter Stott argued that researchers need to “talk more about the very worst-case scenarios” and the possibility for action. 

EXTREME: Vox’s the Gray Area podcast spoke to New York Times journalist David Wallace-Wells about the possibility of a “Godzilla” El Niño.

RESPONSIBILITY: For Climate Home News, two researchers from the Center for International Environmental Law explored how “major emitting countries knew of climate risks decades earlier than claimed”.

Coming up

• 13-31 July: Meeting of the International Seabed Authority assembly and council, Kingston, Jamaica
• 17-19 July: 3rd International Conference on Environment and Sustainable Development, London
• 19 July: Presidential election, São Tomé and Príncipe

Pick of the jobs

• Zero Carbon Analytics, research lead | Salary: Unknown. Location: Remote
• Met Office, ocean climate scientific manager | Salary: £54,515-£58,582. Location: Exeter
• National Trust, land use and nature delivery partner | Salary: £44,499. Location: Newcastle or York

DeBriefed is edited by Daisy Dunne. Please send any tips or feedback to debriefed@carbonbrief.org.

This is an online version of Carbon Brief’s weekly DeBriefed email newsletter. Subscribe for free here.

DeBriefed 10 July 2026: Deadly Europe heat | EU electrification leak | COP31 president interview

DeBriefed

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10.07.26

DeBriefed 3 July 2026: US faces scorching Independence Day | Record ocean temperatures | Vietnam’s EV surge

DeBriefed

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03.07.26

DeBriefed 26 June 2026: Heat records broken across Europe | London climate action week | Introducing ‘Project Cosmos’

DeBriefed

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26.06.26

DeBriefed 19 June 2026: Bonn talks end in ‘gridlock’ | Energy’s ‘new era’ | Oceans in climate negotiations

DeBriefed

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19.06.26

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The post Debriefed 17 July 2026: UK ‘firewave’ | Fossil-fuelled heat deaths | London’s Natural History Museum spotlights climate appeared first on Carbon Brief.

We occasionally use flowers to decorate food, but few people would think of flowers themselves as food. Now a new study challenges that, finding that the common marigold contains protein levels similar to other plant-based sources.

This potentially opens up a new sustainable protein alternative to meat, especially as the new research finds that these flowers could have diverse uses in food.

For their experiments the researchers sourced an abundant supply of dried marigold flowers, and then set about extracting protein from their petals. First they blitzed these into a powder, creating a mixture that was distilled, centrifuged, and filtered. Next, they applied different chemical compounds including alcohol and sodium chloride to separate and extract ingredients from the mix. Among these were four types of protein: albumin, globulin, glutelin and prolamin. In each case the researchers measured how much protein they had extracted, and examined its structural composition. 

From this, they found they could extract almost 9 grams of protein per every 100 grams. These levels make marigolds nutritionally similar, in protein terms, to other edible flowers like the banana flower, which is commonly used in South Asian cuisine. Perhaps more familiar to many people is quinoa, a grain valued for its relatively high protein content: marigolds had similar protein levels to this popular foodstuff, too.  

This means marigolds could add to the increasing array of plant-based proteins, perhaps diversifying the options to attract people away from meat. But it wasn’t just the nutritional content that struck the researchers: they found that marigolds contained other properties which could make them a valuable additive for the food industry. 

 

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For example, the experiments showed that some proteins in marigolds have a low pH which make them a good emulsifying agent. This would be useful for making foods like mayonnaise and salad dressings where oil needs to be mixed into water. Other marigold proteins were found to remain stable at high temperatures of up to 105 °C—making them more reliable under heat pressure than other plant proteins like chickpeas—suggesting that it could be useful in baking applications. The researchers also highlight that the high globulin content in marigolds gives them a good foaming capacity, which is valuable for making aerated ingredients like whipped toppings for baked goods. 

Finding markets for this food stuff could be a challenge, as with any relatively new and unfamiliar food. But something that drove the researchers’ original interest in marigolds is the ready and abundant supply: huge quantities of these flowers end up as waste each year, especially in India and Mexico where millions of decorative marigolds are used in events and festivals. The researchers estimate that roughly 40% of used marigolds end up being thrown away. 

This is potentially a huge untapped supply of sustainable protein. “People are increasingly aware of food waste and are seeking innovative solutions,” says study lead author Anand Mohan, associate professor of food science and technology at the University of Georgia.

“Demonstrating that something as common and overlooked as a flower can be transformed into a valuable food ingredient makes science both relatable and impactful.”

Mohan et. al. “Assessing Structural, Thermal, and Functional Characteristics of Marigold Flower Protein as a Sustainable Food Ingredient.” ACS Food Science & Technology. 2026. 

Image: ©Anthropocene Magazine

Recent weeks have seen a flurry of reports from public health authorities and scientists that estimate the deaths caused by Europe’s record-breaking summer heatwaves. 

In France, the national public health agency reported 2,025 excess deaths over the week where the heatwave peaked in June. 

Authorities in Germany and Netherlands put the excess death toll during the same seven-day period at 5,753 and 533, respectively.

An analysis from climate scientists in Carbon Brief found that France saw more than 2,700 heat-related deaths over 17 days in June.

Separate research estimated there had been 2,700 heat-related deaths in the UK’s May and June heatwaves – 42% of which had been caused by human-caused climate change.

There are a number of methods for how academics and governments tally deaths caused by extreme heat, each with their own advantages and drawbacks.

Here, Carbon Brief looks at the different ways scientists and public health authorities have calculated the death toll of Europe’s record-breaking summer heat. 

• How established is the science of calculating heat deaths?
• What are the different approaches to counting heat deaths?
• What do the latest figures show for Europe’s May and June heatwaves?
• What are the pros and cons of the ‘excess deaths’ method?
• What are the pros and cons of the ‘statistical modelling’ method?

How established is the science of calculating heat deaths?

Economists and epidemiologists have been studying the relationship between heat and mortality for nearly a century. 

A pioneering study published in 1923 by geographer Ellsworth Huntington and economist Margaret Justin that looked at mortality data for New York City over 1882-88 found that deaths increased rapidly as temperatures rose above 17C. 

As global temperatures have risen in response to human-caused carbon emissions, scientists have increasingly sought to understand how warming could impact mortality. 

The study of mortality caused by specific heatwave events dates back a few decades, with a 1995 heatwave in Chicago among the earliest events to be studied in detail.

Over the past decade, a growing number of studies have gone a step further, by estimating the number of deaths caused by a specific heatwave event and then attributing a percentage or number of those deaths to human-caused climate change. 

Carbon Brief covered the first study of this type, which was published in Environmental Research Letters in 2016 and focused on a 2003 summer heatwave that caused tens of thousands of deaths across Europe.

The study estimated that 506 of the 735 summer fatalities in Paris and 64 of the 315 in London were a result of human influence on the climate.

More recently, a study in Climatic Change found that 27% of deaths in a 2018 heatwave in Zurich, Switzerland were linked to human-caused climate change and a paper in Science Advances estimated that 11-15% of deaths in a 2021 heatwave in British Columbia were attributable to global warming. 

Dr Christopher Callahan, assistant professor at the O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs at Indiana University, tells Carbon Brief this type of “two-step” study has “really exploded” in recent years:

“It is really only in the last five to 10 years that we have seen this, partly because it does require interdisciplinary expertise. You need people who know how to run the epidemiological models and you need a climate analysis of the counterfactual [world] without climate change, which is its own effort.” 

What are the different approaches to counting heat deaths?

A central challenge in estimating deaths from a heatwave is that heat is rarely recorded as the primary cause of death on death certificates.

However, exposure to high temperatures has wide-ranging effects on the human body, including the strain of keeping cool. This effort places pressure on the heart and kidneys.

As a result, heat extremes can worsen health risks from chronic conditions and cause acute kidney injury. Researchers have linked heat to increased mortality from respiratory and cardiovascular diseases, as well as dementia and Alzheimer’s. 

As a result, public health authorities and scientists cannot depend on death certificates for a full count of heat-related deaths. They instead estimate heat deaths using a number of different approaches, each with assumptions baked into their calculations. 

Dr Garyfallos Konstantinoudis, who researches methods for calculating excess mortality due to extreme events at the Grantham Institute for Climate Change and the Environment at Imperial College, tells Carbon Brief there is “no ground truth” when it comes to tallying heat-related deaths: 

“We don’t know what the heat-related deaths are, so we rely on different models to describe the picture.”

This makes the study of deaths from heatwaves similar to those from air pollution, he says:

“This sort of health-impact assessment has been done for years on studies related to deaths from air pollution, which have the same problem. Air pollution, until very recently, was not recorded on death certificates. 

“[However], for air pollution, the [scientific] literature is much larger, so no one questions that air pollution is toxic and kills. This sort of messaging for heat is more recent.”

There are, broadly speaking, two approaches to calculating deaths during a heatwave. 

The first involves counting the number of excess deaths relative to a period in the past. 

This method – often referred to as an “excess deaths” approach – looks at how many people died during a particular time period compared to a baseline period where there was no heatwave. 

To do this, public health authorities and researchers rely on official death figures reported by country authorities. 

The heat death tolls published in recent weeks by public health agencies in Belgium, France, Germany and the Netherlands relied on this approach. 

(For more, see: What are the pros and cons of the ‘excess deaths’ method?)

The second method uses long-term mortality data to understand the statistical relationship between temperature and mortality in a given place. The model that emerges can be used to infer the number of deaths from a heatwave in that place. 

In a rapid analysis published this week, researchers at Imperial College London, the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) and the Met Office used this approach to estimate that the May and June heatwaves in the UK caused the deaths of 2,700 people.

Dr Callahan – working with Prof Andrew Dessler, director of the Texas Center for Extreme Weather at Texas A&M University – used this method to estimate that more than 2,700 people had died in France over a 17-day period in June in an analysis for Carbon Brief. 

(For more: see: What are the pros and cons of the ‘statistical modelling’ method?)

The majority of the figures released in the wake of Europe’s June heatwave have relied on these two methods.

There is a third way to calculate heat deaths, which is to look at official counts of deaths attributed on death certificates to heatstroke.

Callahan tells Carbon Brief that the “death-certificate coding” appears to have fallen out of favour in Europe – which he says is a “smart move” given that it does not provide a “full accounting”. 

Nevertheless, some public health authorities are still using this method. For example, in the wake of the heatwave in the US earlier this month, public health data showed 29 people in New Jersey and three people in New York had died from “heat-related illnesses”.

Scientists tell Carbon Brief the excess deaths and statistical modelling approaches both have advantages and drawbacks. These are explored below.

What do the latest figures show for Europe’s May and June heatwaves?

The table below shows the death numbers that have been reported by governments and researchers for Europe’s May and June heatwaves, including the approach used to reach the figures.

It suggests that multiple countries in Europe experienced more than 1,000 heat-related deaths during the late June heatwave, with authorities in Germany counting more than 5,000.

Meanwhile, the EuroMoMo mortality monitoring system estimated there were more than 10,500 excess deaths across 27 countries during the June heatwave. 

ReportedSourceCountry / regionDatesDaysDeathsLinkApproach 28/06/2026Public Health France ​France22-27 June61,000santepubliquefrance.fr Excess deaths 29/06/2026World Health OrganizationEurope21-28 June81,300x.com/DrTedros/status Excess deaths 01/07/2026Carlos III Health Institute (MoMo)Spain1-30 June301,033dw.com Excess deaths (all-cause and temperature-attributable) 02/07/2026National Institute for Public Health and the EnvironmentNetherlands22-28 June7480rivm.nl
Excess deaths 03/07/2026Public Health France ​France22-28 June72,025santepubliquefrance.fr Excess deaths 07/07/2026Chris Callahan/Andrew DesslerFrance12-29 June182,766carbonbrief.org Statistical modelling 08/07/2026Chris CallahanEurope15-28 June1413,975zenodo.org Statistical modelling 08/07/2026SciensanoBelgium18 June - 1 July141,747brusselstimes.com

Excess deaths 09/07/2026Robert Koch InstituteGermany22-28 June75,120rki.de Statistical modelling 13/07/2026Met Office/LSHTM/ImperialEngland and Wales22-27 June62,183drive.google.com Statistical modelling 13/07/2026Met Office/LSHTM/ImperialEngland and Wales24-26 May3553drive.google.com

Statistical modelling 13/07/2026EURO Mo/Mo27 European countries22-28 June710,650reuters.com Excess deaths 07/07/2025National Institute for Public Health and the EnvironmentNetherlands22-28 June7577archive.ph

Excess deaths 14/07/2026Germany Federal Statistical Office (Destatis)Germany22-28 June75,753destatis.de
Excess deaths

In most instances, Carbon Brief has linked to the figures published by public health authorities, where numbers were first reported. In some instances, figures were released on dashboards or webpages that are updated weekly. In these cases, Carbon Brief has linked to media reports or archived web content. 

What are the pros and cons of the ‘excess deaths’ method?

The excess deaths approach looks at how many more people died during a particular time period compared to a baseline period of the same length. 

For instance, on 14 July, Germany’s federal statistics agency, Destatis, published figures showing Germany saw 32% more deaths than the average in the week of 22-28 June, which was dominated by the heatwave.

Specifically, the agency said that 23,932 deaths had been recorded that week, compared to an average of 18,179 in that calendar week across the years 2022-25.

This suggests there were 5,753 excess deaths during the heatwave week. (This was a slight increase from preliminary Destatis figures released a week earlier, covered by Bloomberg.)

The Netherlands similarly calculates excess deaths by comparing death figures against an average of deaths in a similar period during unspecified “previous years”.

Data published by the country’s National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (RIVM) shows that, during the week of 22-28 June, an estimated 3,626 people died in total in the northern European country. 

This is 577 more deaths than the 3,049 expected at that time of year, it said. (This is a slight revision upwards from the 480 excess deaths reported on 4 July by NL Times based on preliminary figures from NVIM.)

Callahan says that the excess deaths approach has the benefit of being rapid and relatively uncomplicated:

“It is something that public health authorities can put out fairly quickly without having to run a fancy model and do coding like the academic scientists do. It is a short-term, high-impact, rapid estimate of mortality.” 

The drawback to the approach is that it is impossible to decipher what percentage of these “all-mortality” excess deaths are, in fact, heat-related. 

Imperial College’s Konstantinoudis notes that the public often “feels more comfortable” with the excess deaths approach over the statistical modelling approach because the data it is using – the official death numbers – is based on real-world data. 

However, he stresses that excess deaths figures are based on a series of assumptions, including the reference period picked by researchers and how the numbers are interpreted.

Statisticians and researchers have to make a series of decisions, including what period to use as a comparative baseline. For example, the baseline period could be the week before a heatwave, the same week a year before – or an average of the same week across multiple years in the past. If averaging mortality of a similar period across a number of previous years, they must decide how much “weight”, or influence, each year should have.

They must also decide how to account for spikes in deaths during the Covid-19 pandemic years, as well as the gradual rise in average temperatures due to global warming.

During the pandemic, many governments and the World Health Organization (WHO) used the excess deaths approach to count deaths. The WHO said this metric was more “comparable” and “objective” than relying on national reports of Covid-19 deaths, given that different countries used different criteria for this classification.

A notable example of how assumptions can skew excess death figures came during this period, when the WHO estimated in 2022 that Germany had seen 195,000 excess deaths over two years of pandemic. 

However, after statisticians and epidemiologists pointed out the assumptions in the model were not suited to Germany’s demographics, the WHO retracted the figure and eventually reduced it to 122,000 and then later to 102,000.

Konstantinoudis explains:

“Covid taught us that it is complicated. Depending on the different assumptions used in the excess-mortality approach, you get different results…There is a scientific basis, but we should acknowledge the assumptions.” 

What are the pros and cons of the ‘statistical modelling’ method?

In the statistical modelling approach, researchers use models to determine the specific relationship between mortality and temperature for a particular location and then apply it to temperatures observed during a heatwave. 

This allows them to estimate the overall number of deaths that were caused by a heatwave. 

Previous research has revealed that, in most places of the world, there is a U-shaped response of mortality to temperature – where deaths increase rapidly in cold or hot conditions as daily maximum temperatures depart further from an “optimum temperature”.

For example, research published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in 2025 found that mortality rates in France rise as daily maximum temperatures move away from approximately 20C. This is shown in the chart below.

Relationship between daily high temperature and all-cause mortality rates in France, estimated using data over 2004-19. Credit: Dr Christopher Callahan, based on data and methods in Callahan et al. (2025)

Indiana University’s Callahan say this approach allows scientists to “formally establish a relationship between the temperature and the mortality”, adding:

“If you do these calculations right, you can credibly say your entire estimate of mortality is heat-related.”

Prof Antonio Gasparrini, biostatistician and epidemiologist at LSHTM, explains the method relies on “timeseries models that apply relatively sophisticated statistical methods in which you ‘smooth’ trends occurring in time, so you control for long-term trends and seasonality”. 

He says that these models also allow researchers to “remove” trends affecting mortality that are unrelated to heat – for instance, the impacts of the pandemic. They can also “add” other information, such as around how air pollution combines with heat to threaten vulnerable populations.  

Gasparrini adds:

“What statistical modelling can bring is that it is more refined. It can link specific temperatures to specific impacts rather than just looking at the event [in the whole]. And also, it can be localised – [data] can be stratified at a fine scale and we can look at impacts at different scales.

“So, it is more informative. But, at the same time, of course, it’s based on more assumptions than the [excess deaths approach] and, of course, needs to be checked and compared.” 

The approach depends on a number of judgment calls from scientists and statisticians, including the years picked to underpin the model and how to capture the lag in deaths in the days and weeks after a heatwave event. 

They must also decide at what threshold to start counting deaths – in other words, whether to count all deaths above the “optimum temperature” or set a higher, more extreme value – and whether and how to account for any adaptation to heat extremes that may have been put in place in the study area.

A benefit of the statistical modelling approach is that it opens the door for being able to attribute a specific number of deaths to human-caused climate change. 

By applying the temperature-mortality curve to both the temperatures of the recent heatwave and a counterfactual world without climate change, scientists can estimate what proportion of estimated deaths only occurred because the world is warming.

For instance, Imperial College, LSHTM and Met Office researchers found that 59% and 38% of heat-related deaths in the UK’s May and June heatwaves, respectively, could be attributed to climate change. Their findings are shown in the chart below.

Number of heat deaths in England and Wales over 21-29 May and 18-28 June attributable to climate change. Source: Barnes et al (2026).

Some climate-sceptic commentators have argued that modelled estimates are hypotheses and should therefore be treated with caution.

On 13 July, climate-sceptic news website GB News covered a blog post by Oxford academics that argued the figure that 2,700 people had died in the UK’s May and June heatwaves was not reflected in the provisional “all-mortality” data put out by the UK’s Office for National Statistics (ONS). Quoting the blog, GB News said:

“Modelling tells us nothing. Models explore possibilities; surveillance tells us what happened. When the two disagree, our instinct should be to investigate the data rather than simply trust the model.”

However, Imperial’s Konstantinoudis – who worked on the models behind the 2,700 figure – says it is important to await the UK Health and Security Agency (UKHSA)’s annual heat mortality report before arriving at any conclusions. He explains:

“While we are entirely clear that our current findings are modelled estimates, this methodology has consistently delivered comparable results to the UKHSA’s own official analyses of observed deaths for past heat events.”

(The UKHSA report will include updated figures and estimate excess deaths from heat based on specific periods of heat in different regions, whereas the provisional ONS figures cover all national deaths during a full-week period.)

Konstantinoudis says both the excess deaths and statistical modelling approaches have been the subject of extensive peer-reviewed scientific study and can provide a “holistic view of what is happening” when used together. 

Studies that have compared statistical modelling approaches for estimating heatwave deaths with excess death figures in the UK have found they yield broadly similar results. 

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The post Q&A: Europe’s May and June heatwave deaths – and how they were counted appeared first on Carbon Brief.

sejumlah komunitas online ramai membahas platform yang disebut-sebut sebagai salah satu yang paling gacor di Indonesia. Percakapan tersebut tidak hanya muncul di media sosial, tetapi juga di berbagai forum komunitas yang secara rutin membagikan pengalaman, ulasan, hingga pembaruan mengenai tren permainan digital. Tingginya intensitas diskusi ini menunjukkan bahwa rekomendasi dari sesama pengguna masih menjadi salah satu sumber informasi yang paling berpengaruh.

Pengamat industri digital menilai bahwa popularitas sebuah platform tidak muncul secara instan. Reputasi biasanya dibangun melalui konsistensi layanan, kemudahan akses, performa sistem yang stabil, serta pengalaman pengguna yang positif dalam jangka waktu tertentu. Faktor-faktor tersebut sering kali menjadi alasan mengapa suatu platform memperoleh perhatian lebih besar dibandingkan kompetitornya.

Selain itu, perkembangan teknologi juga memberikan kontribusi signifikan terhadap meningkatnya kualitas layanan digital. Infrastruktur server yang lebih baik, optimalisasi antarmuka pengguna, serta kecepatan pemrosesan data menjadi aspek penting yang secara langsung memengaruhi kenyamanan pengguna. Ketika seluruh elemen tersebut berjalan selaras, tingkat kepuasan pengguna cenderung meningkat dan mendorong munculnya ulasan positif secara organik.

Dari sudut pandang pengalaman pengguna, banyak anggota komunitas menyampaikan bahwa mereka lebih mengutamakan stabilitas layanan dibandingkan sekadar mengikuti tren yang sedang viral. Mereka cenderung memilih platform yang mampu memberikan performa konsisten dalam berbagai kondisi. Pengalaman tersebut kemudian dibagikan kepada pengguna lain melalui ulasan, diskusi, maupun rekomendasi, sehingga membentuk persepsi kolektif mengenai kualitas sebuah platform.

Meski demikian, para pemerhati industri mengingatkan bahwa setiap pengalaman bersifat subjektif. Hasil yang diperoleh oleh satu pengguna belum tentu sama dengan pengguna lainnya karena dipengaruhi oleh banyak faktor, termasuk kondisi perangkat, kualitas jaringan internet, serta pola penggunaan masing-masing individu. Oleh karena itu, masyarakat disarankan untuk tidak hanya mengandalkan satu sumber informasi sebelum menarik kesimpulan.

Kepercayaan publik terhadap sebuah platform juga dipengaruhi oleh transparansi informasi dan kredibilitas layanan yang diberikan. Platform yang mampu menghadirkan informasi secara jelas, menyediakan dukungan pelanggan yang responsif, serta menjaga kualitas operasional secara konsisten umumnya lebih mudah memperoleh loyalitas pengguna. Dalam ekosistem digital yang semakin kompetitif, kepercayaan menjadi aset yang memiliki nilai sangat tinggi.

Fenomena munculnya predikat “Terbukti Paling Gacor SE-Indonesia” pada akhirnya mencerminkan bagaimana opini komunitas dapat berkembang menjadi sebuah reputasi yang dikenal luas. Namun, di balik berbagai klaim yang beredar, masyarakat tetap perlu bersikap kritis, mengutamakan informasi yang dapat dipertanggungjawabkan, serta memahami bahwa pengalaman setiap pengguna dapat berbeda. Dengan pendekatan tersebut, keputusan yang diambil akan lebih rasional dan didasarkan pada informasi yang seimbang, bukan semata-mata mengikuti tren yang sedang populer.

Headline News:

• “Six Records Solar And Storage Have Crushed In The First Half Of 2026” • Electricity demand is rising, and America needs more power, fast. But solar and storage are delivering. Across the US, the industry is breaking records at a pace that might have been unimaginable just a few years ago. For starters, 91% of new grid capacity in Q1 was solar and storage. [CleanTechnica]

Solar array (Dad Hotel, Unsplash, cropped)

• “Europe’s Booming Solar Fleet Has Saved €20 Billion In Gas Imports Since Iran War, Analysis Shows” • SolarPower Europe analysis shows that solar power saved Europe €20 billion over the time between 1 March and 15 July by lowering demand for gas imports. Over the 137-day period, solar delivered average daily savings of €146 million. [Euronews]
• “What It’s Like Living In One Of The World’s Hottest Towns” • In May, temperatures in the North Indian town of Banda hit a blistering 48.2°C (118.8°F). It was one of several times this year that the town recorded India’s highest temperature. It is called the hottest town on Earth. People work there. And they care for the animals that live there. [Euronews]
• “Cadeler Strengthens Its Hand With Delivery Of Wind Ace” • Cadeler has taken delivery of its eleventh wind installation vessel, Wind Ace. The vessel was built at the COSCO Shipping Offshore shipyard in Qidong, China, and was delivered on schedule and within budget after more than 3.5 million working hours. It will be deployed initially in the UK. [reNews]
• “Science Panel Backs Climate Research, Diverging From The Administration’s View” • A report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine backs research finding how much climate change may contribute to extreme weather events. The report could play a role in lawsuits seeking billions of dollars from fossil fuel companies. [MSN]

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

If you wanted to save some money by learning how to check your home for air leaks, poor insulation, and power-hungry lightbulbs, the Department of Energy’s website was ready to help. And if you needed an expert, the site guided you to another page for help lining up a professional energy assessment, a well-established first step to cut utility bills and curb pollution at the same time. 

That is, until this summer, when both of those resources vanished from the agency’s site, each now redirecting to “Page not found.” They were taken down by July 3, around the same time that the Department of Energy deleted more than 1,600 pages from the Energy Saver section of its site, gutting a resource for people looking to conserve energy and lower bills.

“I can’t remember another time that, with DOE specifically, we’ve seen an entire domain go down the way that [it] has been reported on now,” said Izzy Pacenza, who monitors government websites for the Environmental Data and Governance Initiative. Over a 30-day span this summer, as swaths of the country suffered under heat waves, more than 300 of the webpages had received 160,000 page views, according to an analysis from The Guardian.

The news coverage of the missing websites has focused on the disappearance of one recommendation in particular. Ahead of a heat wave that roasted New York City with 100-degree temperatures earlier this month, Mayor Zohran Mamdani asked businesses and residents to set their AC to 78 degrees to conserve energy, drawing the ire of Republicans who mocked the restrictions as “socialism.” Internet sleuths were quick to notice that similar guidance had vanished from the Department of Energy’s website, which used to direct people to keep their thermostat between 75 and 78 degrees. The timing suggested that the agency might have removed the pages as a rebuke to Mamdani’s advice.

The purge looked suspiciously timed for another reason:  On July 2, the Energy Department announced a proposed rule to make it harder for future administrations to approve energy efficiency standards for household appliances, saying it would “permanently end Green New Scam appliance mandates.” The move was part of the Trump administration’s broader attack on energy efficiency requirements.

The Environmental Data and Governance Initiative has argued that Trump’s federal agencies tend to remove information from their websites related to regulatory changes they just announced, which limits access to information people could use to oppose agency proposals during the legally required public comment period. But the facts that would be most relevant here — the agency’s information about its Appliance and Equipment Standards Program — remain on the site, pointed out Andrew deLaski, the executive director of the Appliance Standards Awareness Project. “I haven’t seen things come down that are directly related to the appliance standards program,” he said.

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The Department of Energy did not respond to questions about why it removed the webpages. But the purge could be understood as part of a broader pattern of removing the most accessible, actionable public information about climate change from federal government websites. Last summer brought an abrupt end to the government website that hosted the National Climate Assessment, a series of congressionally mandated reports that broke down how climate change affects the regions where people live. Around the same time, Climate.gov, the widely used site that translated the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s research into easy-to-understand resources, vanished too.

Energy Saver provided a similar service, distilling technical knowledge about conserving energy into advice for ordinary people: shopping for efficient appliances, installing “cool roofs,” and do-it-yourself guides to saving energy and money. 

“These things are seen as authoritative resources and tools given to us by the government for us to think about how climate change interacts with our daily lives,” Pacenza said. “And now that interaction, and that relationship, is being broken or interrupted.”

This kind of consumer advice on how to save energy clashes with President Donald Trump’s “energy dominance” framing. The administration has promoted a narrative that energy use, powered by fossil fuels, “is a tenet of American values and of our identity,” Pacenza said. Telling people to be aware of their energy use is in tension with this narrative. Even if the DOE’s website purge wasn’t driven by Mamdani’s statements about conserving energy, a similar impulse may lie behind the decision.

The debate over asking Americans to adjust their thermostats to save energy is actually decades old: During a fuel shortage in the summer of 1979, President Jimmy Carter required retail stores, restaurants, and other public and commercial buildings to keep the thermostat no warmer than 65 degrees in winter and no cooler than 78 degrees in summer (sound familiar?). President Ronald Reagan reversed those restrictions in 1981, calling them “an excessive regulatory burden.” 

In general, though, energy efficiency measures used to be in the realm of bipartisan agreement. Reagan went on to sign the National Appliance Energy Conservation Act of 1987 into law, establishing minimum efficiency standards for refrigerators, freezers, and other household equipment. But recent years have seen air conditioners, laundry machines, shower heads, and other items get roped into the culture wars. Republicans have argued that government efficiency standards interfere with “consumer choice” and have been undoing regulations passed by Democratic administrations.

“This administration isn’t doing anything to improve efficiency standards — they’re only trying to go backwards,” deLaski said.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Why did energy-saving tips disappear from the Energy Department website? on Jul 17, 2026.

Michigan regulatory officials on Wednesday issued several key permits for the construction of a tunnel to replace an aging section of the Line 5 pipeline in the Straits of Mackinac, the waterways that straddle the state’s Upper and Lower peninsulas. Officials said that the necessity of the project in preventing an oil spill in the Great Lakes outweighed other public interests.

The controversial plan by Enbridge Energy would replace a dual segment of the crude oil and natural gas liquids pipeline that runs through the environmentally sensitive straits, with one buried beneath the lakebed between lakes Michigan and Huron. For more than 73 years, Line 5 has transported oil and natural gas liquids 645 miles from Superior, Wisconsin, to Sarnia, Ontario. 

The Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy, or EGLE, approved a construction permit on lake bottomlands “following comprehensive review.” The agency said in a news release that the permit requires Enbridge to minimize damage to surrounding wetlands.

Despite acknowledging that construction would “adversely impact” rare plants and animals in the area, the state Department of Natural Resources still issued a permit to Enbridge. By state law, the permit also requires the company to “lessen impacts” with measures such as collecting seeds for later restoration or only clearing trees in the winter to protect bats.

Enbridge spokesperson Ryan Duffy said the permits are “an important step forward” for the project that will “ensure the uninterrupted flow of energy that supports Michigan and the region.” Products from Line 5 are used in Canada and Michigan for propane or at oil refineries. Enbridge is currently reviewing the permits “to assess any impacts to tunnel construction,” Duffy said.

Line 5 opponents slammed the decisions by state regulators. “The bigger picture is that there should be no destruction, no wetlands destruction, there should be no forest destruction for a project that is not needed,” said David Holtz, coalition coordinator for anti-Line 5 group Oil & Water Don’t Mix.

Enbridge maintains that the tunnel project will protect the Great Lakes, and that Line 5 continues to operate “safely and reliably” under federal standards. 

Holtz said the news is especially ironic given the thick smoke currently blanketing the Great Lakes region from wildfires burning in Canada. He called out Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer’s administration for approving a project that would lock in fossil fuel use for decades, worsening climate change. Hotter average temperatures around the U.S. and Canada are making the conditions that can cause fires to ignite and burn more common.

Tribal nations across the state also denounced the permit approvals. EGLE’s permit acknowledged that destruction or removal of historic and cultural resources is likely — including the remains of tribal ancestors — and requires Enbridge to submit a plan that would mitigate impacts.

But Whitney Gravelle, president of the Bay Mills Indian Community, said any such plan is a “false penitence.”

“Tribes have had so much taken away from them. We have had our land taken, we have had our rights taken, we have had our language taken, we have had our children taken,” Gravelle said. “To now have our ancestors taken and dug up, and moved, and not respected when doing all of that is disgusting.” 

The Bay Mills Indian Community, whose treaty lands the tunnel project would cross, is exploring its legal options for challenging the permits issued this week, such as initiating a contested case hearing for the EGLE permit.

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Enbridge is still waiting for additional permits from state and federal regulators, plus a court decision over a previously issued state permit, before it can begin construction. Wednesday’s decisions signal a favorable path ahead for the tunnel project, according to opposition groups.

A pending state permit would allow Enbridge to discharge about 5 million gallons of treated wastewater a day during construction. Enbridge received this permit in 2021, but it has since expired. 

Environmental groups and tribal nations brought their challenge of a permit issued by the Public Service Commission in 2023 to the Michigan Supreme Court. Oral arguments were in March, and a decision from the court is expected before the end of summer.

Wednesday’s decision from EGLE also includes a certification under the Clean Water Act that allows the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to move forward with issuing its own permit. The Trump administration declared a national energy emergency last year, fast-tracking review processes for energy projects including Line 5. Holtz, with the Oil & Water Don’t Mix Coalition, said it’s highly likely the federal agency will issue its permit to Enbridge.

Separate from the tunnel project, Line 5 faces legal challenges from groups that have fought to shut down the pipeline for years, including the Whitmer administration’s own litigation against Enbridge. This spring, a unanimous ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court paved the way for state court proceedings on whether the aging pipeline can continue operating in the Straits of Mackinac.

And in northern Wisconsin, the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa and environmental groups are challenging the ongoing construction of a new Line 5 segment that crosses the tribe’s watershed. Last month, crews spilled about 1,900 gallons of drilling fluid into surrounding wetlands.

Gravelle said the permit decisions are a setback. “But we have been trying to protect these things since time immemorial,” she said, “and we cannot abandon that sacred duty to do so because our children and future generations depend on that.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Line 5 tunnel in Michigan clears major permitting hurdle, in blow to opposition on Jul 17, 2026.

In the face of the intersecting crises of demography, technology and economic insecurity, finding solidarity in the care we give each other offers a path to a more optimistic future. But working towards this requires us to challenge the foundational assumptions of the economy that surrounds us, one that devalues rather than celebrates the care we give each other.

The language of crisis defines our collective experience of the 21st century. As our attention is pulled from one emergency to another, we risk overlooking the mindsets that enable these shocks – not only the pursuit of extraction, growth, and profit, but also our collective relationship with care.  

Care shows up in all our lives – in parenting, foster care and paid care work; in receiving care, or being part of communities. At some point, we all need to care for others and be cared for ourselves. Yet care has been systematically undervalued and under-resourced as a result of those dominant mindsets.  

This isn’t a new issue. Unpaid care labour – particularly the assumption that it is labour carried out by women – is a foundational premise of our modern economy. While more women than ever taking up paid labour is a positive outcome of changing social norms, little has been done to reckon with the implications this has for unpaid care. Particularly as people live longer and Europe’s population shifts, the need for change becomes ever more pressing.  

That care has traditionally been women’s work only compounds the perception that it lacks value and due attention.

But doing so is at odds with an economy that only rewards profit and productivity as, statistically speaking, so much of the care we give to each other counts as neither. Social security systems and wider public services that sustain care have seen weakened investment and wealth extraction through privatisation.  

In England and Wales, research shows that those with a closer relationship to care – whether they receive or give, caring services more than the average person – are more at risk of experiencing poverty: children (31 per cent versus 21 per cent for the rest of the population), larger families (44 per cent of children in large families) disabled people (28 per cent, compared to 20 per cent for able-bodied people) and unpaid carers (23 per cent).  

Where the language of crisis sets off panic, solutions are presented in the form of quick fixes like further investment in AI and technology. From managing workflow to increasing accessibility and translations, predicting future need and remotely monitoring vital signs, there are clear uses for technological innovations across social care settings. But additional research shows that both the public and workers are wary of the impact of less human connection in care and healthcare settings. Whilst inserting new technology for the sake of productivity may in fact achieve the opposite – open up more time for human-led care – there is also a risk that this motivation reinforces existing attempts to minimise investment in human care and ignores the role of unpaid care in our lives. 

Rather than seeing care as another crisis to tackle at surface level, it should be seen as the driver of a shift for our economic model. Facing up to this reality will require us to reckon with the importance of care in our lives and to acknowledge  different experiences of care as separate as having more in common than divides them.  

How did we get here? 

Although European countries invest in care to differing degrees, the Europe-wide approach  is rooted in a shared ideology that sees care as either a burden or a deficit. Feminist economics shows that this ideology is inseparable from the logics of neoliberalism. As writer and academic Emma Dowling articulates, “care… is a cost to capital”, and it follows that this cost must be minimised. When economic success is measured according to GDP growth, any such cost is at odds with ideas of economic progress. Feminist economist Emma Holten lays bare the extent to which measures of economic progress and care are in conflict with one another: “[In] the eyes of GDP, taking care of a flock of kids and taking a nap are equivalent. Either way you are unproductive.” 

Whilst some argue we should factor care into GDP calculations in order to appreciate its value, this would merely align care with capitalism rather than engage with the bigger question of whether capitalism will enhance or degrade the quality of care. With a growing number of economists identifying GDP’s dominance over the economy as detrimental to wellbeing, greater ambition over the scale of change needed is essential. 

That care has traditionally been women’s work only compounds the perception that it lacks value and due attention. This gendered divide endures: women, for example, take on at least two and a half times more housework and care work than men globally – despite this being a socially created and maintained inequality. 

Overcoming these gendered and capitalist mindsets will require action across multiple fronts. Our research with grassroots activists whose work spans different relationships with care identified a range of opportunities to act in solidarity towards a more caring economy: in our communities, in the ways we work, and through the welfare state. 

Communities: Care by design 

In our communities, resisting capitalist framings requires us to work together to create a culture that celebrates care and enables it by design. How we design the places we live is one element of this. Conventionally, care is compartmentalised into specific policy spaces; often this means it is squeezed into the remit of health and social care systems. But for many people, care intersects with their lives in a much more comprehensive way.  

In Barcelona, care blocks offer an alternative way of thinking about how the places in which  we live influence our care for one another. The city has applied to care the principles of the commons (the idea that resources are shared and co-governed by their user community), and emboldened them with material resources and participatory local democratic processes in a municipalist approach. 

These care blocks sprang from Barcelona en Comu (BComu), a political platform that centred feminist economic thinking, reframing care as a public responsibility as opposed to a private issue. They started from a place whereby care is foundational and where those who are the providers of care are centred in policy decisions. Bringing together the many policy threads that impact those who undertake care labour at a local level moved the approach to care – crucially, by foregrounding its place in the city’s economy. 

BComu approached care holistically rather than in a compartmentalised way. Despite bureaucratic barriers, they supported care workers to set up cooperatives and worked to create the abovementioned care blocks whose goal was to enable small teams of workers to support a defined number of people in a fixed geographic location. Workers use a self-managing team model; they also have full-time contracts (as opposed to the more common zero-hours contracts, thereby mitigating economic insecurity), and a space to meet and plan their work. The intention is to improve labour conditions (including travel time between clients), improve the experience of beneficiaries of care, and create a more integrated service with wider health and social services. 

In addition, BComu is creating Centres of Care in these neighbourhoods bringing together a range of services for care workers and those undertaking unpaid care in a range of forms. It expanded its municipal children’s services to enable more women from low income families to undertake paid work. 

Whilst many of Barcelona’s individual initiatives may be familiar to other countries, their political philosophy of bringing different groups together, placing resources in one place, and using a local approach sets BComu’s work apart. By centring inequality and the recognition that “care work is everyone’s responsibility”, they have taken steps to address the devaluing of care in all its forms. 

Work: Rebalancing time 

How we spend our time also significantly impacts our ability to take on different caring relationships. The norms governing paid labour contain fertile ground for change. Across Europe, paid work is failing people with a relationship to care, from disabled people to unpaid carers and parents. The EU’s disability employment gap sat at 24 per cent in 2024, whilst in the UK it’s at around 30 per cent. Meanwhile, some 600 unpaid carers leave paid work every day in the UK alone. Our recent research into unpaid carers’ experiences of poverty exemplifies this, with one unpaid carer telling us, “I was a teacher, but [care] was taking all my evenings… so I’ve got a new job but it’s paying a lot less.” 

Discussions around paid work tend to converge on a vague commitment to flexible working or access to unpaid or low-paid leave for specific groups. Yet such targeted reforms do little to engage with the systems that have led to the norms we have today. Here, solidarity across caring experiences has the potential to embolden campaigns to drive care’s recognition as a collective experience that are currently compartmentalised. Take paid leave. In the UK, different campaigners are working to increase paid sick leave, statutory paternity leave, and paid carers leave. Each of these is an act of rebalancing our paid labour with our wider lives, and any such campaign must speak to the underlying mindsets that devalue care for ourselves and each other.  

Moving from compartmentalised action to transformative change speaks to the increasing recognition in new economic thinking, rooted in feminist economics, that we must recognise the role unpaid care plays in our economy and the need to shift our paid labour model to value and enable care. A more systemic rebalancing of time is needed. 

This year will mark a century since the five-day work week was adopted by the Ford Motor Company, a significant win after a long campaign by unions. A decade prior to this, the average work week was between 50 and 60 hours. Since 1926, average working hours have plateaued, currently standing at 37.5 for women and 39 for men. 

There is growing interest and evidence for a move to a four-day work week, with pilots undertaken globally. Rebalancing the amount of time we spend in paid labour, without loss of pay, is a crucial way to centre care in our lives. In Poland, the government announced a pilot for a shorter working week in 2025 to address some of the longest working hours in Europe. Employers can voluntarily test a flexible approach to shorter working hours, either by reducing daily working hours, increasing the weekend by one day, or providing more annual leave, all whilst maintaining salaries. The pilot received four times the anticipated sign-ups from employers, with over 2000 companies currently undertaking a trial. 

In Germany, 45 organisations were recruited for a two-year pilot to trial a four-day work week, whilst in the UK, a further 61 trialled the same over six months. Across different contexts, results show that productivity improves (an obvious priority for employers), opening space for a better relationship with care. Improvements in wellbeing are also significant, with sick days declining and employees reporting a reduction in stress. 

Social security: Towards universalism 

The social security system is another essential pillar for a more flexible approach to paid work. For those whose caring role means that paid work is not possible, or is limited, the system should provide enough support to live well without having to minimise that care. 

In Europe, improvements in living conditions, shifting attitudes to illness and disability, and innovations in healthcare have meant more of us live longer. Countries have responded to this in different ways, with different degrees of investment in social security and social care. However, the vast majority of care is still provided by family and friends, much of it unpaid. 

In the 1970s, the UK introduced the Invalid Care Allowance (now Carer’s Allowance) for single people caring for a disabled family member. The allowance is now available to all people over 18 who are not in full-time education and are providing care for 35 hours or more a week. There are challenges with the UK model, not least its low payment level, but we can look to it as a starting point for considering how we value and enable those providing unpaid care.  

The idea that our social security systems are there to support our different relationships with care opens up the possibility of more universal provision too. Whilst payments for unpaid carers – and for disabled people who face extra costs – are essential to ensure everyone is able to live well, there is also a case to be made for a universal basic income (UBI) that overcomes the need for boundaries and thresholds around what counts as care. Any model would need to account for the additional costs faced by disabled people in an ableist society, but a foundation of UBI could go some way to enabling care in all our lives. 

Moving from compartmentalised action to transformative change speaks to the increasing recognition in new economic thinking, rooted in feminist economics…

A long road ahead 

Whilst UBI is a longer road, we are seeing early shifts across Europe towards a rebalancing of paid and unpaid labour, towards places designed around care that could enable us all to live well. As a care-experienced collaborator told us of a caring future, it “is imbued with the principles of love, care and freedom for all…we have an obligation to keep that alive and flourishing, to demand a multitude of futures that aren’t eschatological and annihilistic.” Embracing that care is a collective experience, and using that knowledge to act together, in solidarity, to change the mindsets that shape our economy is a source of hope. 

As storms intensify in our warming world, recovery no longer feels permanent in places at risk of disasters. Instead, it’s too often a temporary reprieve before the next disaster hits. Recognizing community disaster fatigue is an important step toward building resilient recovery systems.

The Public Lands Action Network is a free tool that finds every public lands decision open for comment and helps you write the one comment the law makes them answer.

Sowing flowers in spring may have a surprising effect on the inner lives of bees.

The Inflation Reduction Act, which became law in 2022, was the first and largest climate bill in the history of the United States. It was also the cornerstone of President Joe Biden’s economic agenda. The bill offered billions of dollars in tax credits for companies that built solar and wind farms or electric vehicle battery factories, and to consumers who purchased electric cars and heat pumps. These incentives led developers to build enough solar and wind to power millions of homes and spurred the construction of hundreds of new factories, helping trigger a surge of new American manufacturing investment for the first time in decades.

The law lasted less than three years. Last July, President Donald Trump signed what he called the “Big Beautiful Bill,” a sweeping tax reform that repealed almost all the main subsidies of the Inflation Reduction Act, or IRA. Even though around two dozen Republicans in Congress said they wanted to preserve clean energy incentives, almost all of them voted to pass the law. In signing the bill, Trump said it would end what he called the “Green New Scam.” 

A year after the repeal, the outlook for the climate is mixed. Most significantly, the IRA’s path toward sharply lowering emissions has been derailed. The IRA would have led the U.S. to cut its carbon emissions 50 percent from peak levels by 2035, but that goal is now out of reach. A series of studies have found that the repeal puts the U.S. back on track for the 30 percent reduction it was on track to achieve even before the IRA, and that emissions will likely remain more or less flat through the end of the decade. The repeal has also succeeded in slowing the clean energy buildout. Manufacturers and energy developers have scrapped dozens of solar farms and battery plants.

But the transition has not come to a complete halt. Most solar and wind projects that relied on Biden-era tax credits are still moving forward because they can make a profit even without subsidies. The electricity sector in particular is edging away from fossil fuels as renewables offer a cheap and fast alternative in many parts of the country. And some nixed projects may make a comeback despite Trump’s efforts to kill them.

Even now, a year after the repeal, its full effects are difficult to measure. It’s also hard to separate the effect of the IRA repeal from the Trump administration’s other policies. The president has canceled federal grants for clean energy projects, blocked the development of offshore wind, used executive authority to prevent the retirement of coal plants, and repealed dozens of agency rules that were meant to crack down on emissions. It’s unclear how many of these efforts will survive in court or how long they will last, which also makes it difficult to know how damaging the loss of tax credits for renewable energy and electric vehicles might be. That’s all without factoring in the AI boom, which has triggered more development of renewable energy and fossil fuels.

“There are all of these broader uncertainties and heterogeneity as well, where it’s really hard to be definitive about what are the effects of the repeal,” said Erin Mayfield, a climate modeling expert at Dartmouth who also served as a climate consultant to the Biden administration. She added, though, that the transition is likely to be rockier without the IRA. “With the Inflation Reduction Act, the idea was that you’re building this kind of foundation for future change, you’re trying to structurally change our economy,” she said. That foundation is now gone.

Then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and other Democratic lawmakers hold up the Inflation Reduction Act during a signing ceremony at the Capitol in August 2022. The bill was the largest climate investment in U.S. history. Bill Clark / CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images

A report released earlier this month by the pro-climate business group E2 found that the Big Beautiful Bill and other Trump actions have caused an economic downturn in the clean energy sector. The group’s analysis found that the IRA repeal likely wiped out some $53 billion in wages and $20 billion in tax revenue that would have come from construction of new energy projects alone. That doesn’t even account for the annual revenue and wages that battery factories and other projects would have produced every year. These projects would have created around $55 billion in annual output, larger than the gross domestic product of the entire state of Vermont.

“Businesses rely on market certainty, and the clean energy industry had that until the Big Beautiful Bill, and it doesn’t anymore,” said Bob Keefe, the executive director of E2, which produced the report.

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The economic carnage is worst in the electric vehicle industry. Even before the Big Beautiful Bill became law, major auto manufacturers pulled back on their plans to build new electric vehicle factories across the United States, and many startups that were planning large EV battery plants scrapped those proposals as well. The automakers cited soft demand for electric cars among American consumers, but many experts believe that the contraction was also driven by an expectation that Trump would repeal the EV credits in the IRA. (E2’s analysis considers cancellations beginning on January 1, 2025, before Trump even took office.)

“This didn’t start with the bill,” said Keefe. “It started with the raft of executive orders that the president issued the day he took office. It started probably actually on the campaign trail. It’s been pretty clear where the market has been headed.”

The wave of closures and cancellations has erased more than 250,000 jobs in the electric vehicle sector, according to the analysis from E2, accounting for around half of all job losses from the repeal. These high-wage manufacturing jobs would have been long-term jobs, not temporary construction roles. Even so, not every canceled project on E2’s list is gone for good. Last year, Ford closed down an electric vehicle battery plant it owned with the company BlueOvalSK. A few months ago, it began retooling the plant to create utility-scale batteries that can store solar energy during times when the sun isn’t shining.

An aerial view of the Ford BlueOval Battery Park under construction in Marshall, Michigan. The plant was built to produce lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles. Jim West / UCG / Universal Images Group via Getty Images

But when it comes to the electricity that lights our homes and buildings, other experts argue that the picture is not as dire. The IRA provided a rebate to developers who built new solar and wind farms, but losing that rebate hasn’t destroyed the clean power sector altogether. A new paper from Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research, published last week, argues that “the glass is half full” when it comes to solar and wind. By comparing two models of the power grid, one from before the repeal and one from after, the paper concludes that around 75 percent of new clean power expected under the IRA will still come online despite the loss of the tax credits.

“The wind and solar tax credits … certainly accelerated deployments and investments when they were in place,” said Lily Bermel, the author of the report, who is now a visiting fellow at Columbia University’s Center for Global Energy Policy. “But without them, what you see is the baseline of market momentum that is still adding this energy to the grid.”

Solar has proven especially resilient, according to Bermel. More than 80 percent of large-scale solar power plants and almost all rooftop solar that were projected under the IRA will still come online. The picture is much worse for onshore wind farms, which are more expensive and take longer to build. These projects are also facing roadblocks from Trump’s Pentagon. Roughly 50 percent of those projects will vanish without tax credits to support them. 

In an ironic twist, the boom in artificial intelligence data centers could blunt the economic impact of these losses, even as their power usage encourages further consumption of coal and natural gas. While Trump’s repeal has wiped out an estimated 125,000 construction jobs in clean energy, the data center boom has created tens of thousands of jobs that no one was expecting when the bill became law. As of late last year, the construction industry was short almost half a million workers. By the same token, tech giants are now paying top dollar for renewable energy to power data centers. Despite the broader struggles in the onshore wind industry, Google just inked a billion-dollar deal to build around 1.4 gigawatts of wind power in Minnesota, enough for around half a million homes. Tech companies also promise investments in transmission and batteries, which will make it easier to build more renewables that can displace legacy coal and gas.

“Demand being that big sends a huge signal to investors and developers to do more in this space,” said Ray Long, the president of the American Council on Renewable Energy, which represents solar and wind developers. “There still remains a lot of interest in investing in clean energy infrastructure in the United States.”

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In addition to her argument that clean energy has survived the repeal of the IRA tax credits, Bermel’s paper makes another provocative argument. She writes that Biden’s climate subsidies weren’t working all that well even before they were repealed. That’s because there were still constraints to building the amount of solar and wind that the market was demanding — the U.S. has a shortage of transmission lines that carry power from region to region, and federal law requires lengthy environmental and historic preservation reviews for new construction projects.  

Even when the Inflation Reduction Act passed, many experts warned that it would fail unless the United States built more new transmission: A projection from the REPEAT Project at Princeton University found that 80 percent of the law’s potential climate benefits depended on that. Yet those lines never appeared. 

Congress has been trying this year to pass a “permitting reform” law that would incentivize new transmission lines and cut down on environmental reviews. The idea has bipartisan support in the House and the Senate because it would boost clean energy while also cutting down on regulations. Bermel argues that passing this package would be better for the climate than restoring the energy tax credits that Trump repealed, as Democrats and even some Republicans have proposed to do after the midterms.

“The point of the IRA was that it made clean [energy] cheaper, and in being successful at doing that, what we did was reveal how big and how scary a monster under the bed permitting is,” said Bermel. 

Solar panels and wind turbines in southern Arizona generate electricity for the city of Tucson. Both solar and wind have seen continued investment despite the repeal of the Inflation Reduction Act. Getty Images

The clean energy industry is trying to look beyond the Inflation Reduction Act and the subsidies that came with it. Long of the American Council on Renewable Energy was lukewarm about restoring the tax credits. He instead focused on permitting reform and the need to liberate wind and solar projects that the Trump administration is blocking.

“What we’ve got out there, irrespective of policy, is a functioning market,” he said. “The holdup is action and inaction by government. If we’re going to have a discussion about tax credits … we need to have durability, it really needs to be bipartisan.” 

Even so, there are roadblocks: The lead Democrats behind the effort have said they won’t endorse a deal until the Trump administration stops using executive authority to block solar and wind projects on federal lands and waters. And not everyone wants to weaken environmental laws — many climate nonprofits, community groups, and tribal nations say that rolling them back to simplify and speed up permitting would allow developers to bulldoze sensitive species and sacred territory.

A case in point for both sides is SunZia, a 550-mile transmission line that carries electricity from a wind farm in New Mexico to the cities of Southern California. The new electricity from this $11 billion project will help the metropolis plug in more electric vehicles and wean itself off gasoline. It is the largest wind project in the United States, and it only happened thanks to the wind tax credits, which provide a rebate for every watt of electricity that the project’s wind turbines generate. But despite these incentives, the line still took more than a decade to build. First, it had to go through multiple state regulatory approvals, and it had to be rerouted to avoid a wildlife refuge and a missile testing site. Then, in 2024, the Tohono O’odham and San Carlos Apache tribal nations sued to stop the project, arguing that the government had failed to account for its impacts on important ancestral territory and a pristine desert valley. 

Even if Congress passes a permitting reform bill, that won’t set the United States on a path toward meeting the goals of the Paris Agreement, the worldwide pact that sought to limit climate change to 2 degrees Celsius. But the Inflation Reduction Act didn’t either. The Biden-era law made it more lucrative to build solar panels, manufacture high-powered batteries, and buy electric vehicles, but it didn’t make it easier to do those things. The law didn’t provide for power lines that could carry that new electricity around, and it didn’t clear legal hurdles for companies that wanted to build large-scale clean power.

The best that climate advocates can hope for out of the Trump administration is an inversion of that reality. If Trump presides over the repeal of the IRA and the passage of a major permitting package, he will have made all the above climate actions easier but less lucrative.

The hope in that case is that clean power and gas-free cars will become cheap and reliable enough to outcompete fossil fuels on their own merits. The question is how long that will take. We don’t know how long it would have taken if Trump had not repealed the Inflation Reduction Act, but we know it will take longer now.

Correction: An earlier version of this story gave an incorrect title for Dartmouth.

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This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Biden’s climate law is dead. The energy transition might not be. on Jul 17, 2026.

'Cosy games' have grown in popularity in recent years but can they be more than mere escapism? Dr Stephanie Farnsworth investigates

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