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Take a walk on the wild side Channel News brendan 23rd July 2026 Teaser Media

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• Angry drivers in cities worldwide have been so mad about getting speeding tickets that, instead of slowing down, they’re destroying cameras that are proven to save lives. The response is bulletproof cameras resistant to vandalism. (Jalopnik)
• Now that the Biden administration’s Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act is expiring, states are looking to new methods for funding infrastructure. (Pew)
• It looks like the House version of a new five-year surface transportation funding bill is DOA in the Senate. (Smart Cities Dive)
• Through technology, tactical urbanism can now provide data for transportation planners. (Norwegian SciTech News)
• Lloyd Alter continues his series on how the suburbs are not well suited for older residents who can’t or shouldn’t be driving anymore. (Carbon Upfront)
• Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava is proposing cutting 12 bus routes in the name of a balanced budget, even though her overall budget is $1 billion higher than the current one. (Miami Times)
• The Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority is trying to convince voters to raise its share of sales tax revenue and avoid service cuts. (Signal Cleveland)
• Who is Nathaniel Ford, the recently departed Jacksonville transit chief and frontrunner to lead Dallas Area Rapid Transit? (D Magazine)
• Cal Matters says California is making a mistake by looking to repeal requirements for EV chargers at new apartment buildings to address housing costs.
• Velo Micromobility unleashed 1,000 new e-scooters on Salt Lake City (KSL). We’ll see how that goes…
• Honolulu cut the speed limit in school zones to 20 miles per hour, but didn’t bother to change the signs. (Civil Beat)
• A proposed Greenville, South Carolina penny sales tax for transportation would devote 90 percent of the revenue to roads. (Greenville News)
• A UK study found that, while micromobility does compete with buses, more importantly it does also replace car trips. (Route One)
• Queensland, Australia is testing whether AI traffic sensors can reduce congestion and improve pedestrian safety. (The Conversation)

Are Waymo cars safer? Maybe. But will they make our streets and neighborhoods more livable? Way no.

If unleashed in New York City, autonomous taxis will dramatically increase the amount of congestion on our streets, according to a report released on Monday by the Sam Schwartz Transportation Research Program at Hunter College in collaboration with Open Plans.

The reason? Waymo cabs spend far more time driving around without passengers than comparable human-driven Uber and Lyft cabs. In California, where Waymo’s autonomous taxis have been operating and churning out trip data for years, a Waymo will travel 0.71 miles empty for every one mile. But in New York City, so-called high-volume taxis — Uber, Lyft and the like — drive empty for 0.49 miles for every one mile with a passenger.

That 14.8-percent gap would translate to tens of thousands of additional vehicle miles every single day.

The amount of additional miles depends on the extent to which robotaxis replace existing taxi trips — and the report offers a range. If robotaxis are deployed and only add to existing taxi trips, obviously, the additional number of VMTs will be much higher than if robotaxis slowly replace existing taxi trips.

Under both scenarios, VMTs increase. If 2,000 new autonomous taxis show up in New York City and there is no commensurate decrease in taxi trips, suddenly there will be 293,800 more vehicle miles traveled in New York City every day. No, that’s not epic, glacial congestion, but it is the equivalent of more than 3,750 trips around Manhattan every day.

In the more-likely scenario that robotaxis slowly replace human-driven Uber and Lyft trips, there will still be an increase in vehicle miles traveled because of that 14.8-percent higher “deadheading” rate for robotaxis.

“As it stands, replacing a HV-FHV with a robotaxi would increase VMT and congestion,” the report states.

But wait, there’s more: In California, robotaxis spend roughly 58 percent of their empty time in a parking space. But analysts at the Sam Schwartz program and Open Plans say it’s far less likely in New York that a robotaxi would be able to find an empty space between rides. The report states that for every 1-percent decrease in parked time, the robotaxi would experience a 1.5-percent increase in deadheading.

How much deadheading again depends on how few parking spaces are available to robotaxis: If, for example, robotaxis in New York were parked just 25 percent (vs. the 58 percent of the time in California), it would translate to roughly another 62,000 vehicle miles traveled every day in New York.

So the increase in traffic is not massive, but it’s still frustrating because deadheading is just dumb. “Deadheading is particularly impactful in urban areas,” the report states. “While an empty mile and an occupied mile impose similar per-mile costs on roadway congestion and safety, deadheading represents VMT added without any corresponding transportation benefit.”

Sara Lind, co-executive director of Open Plans, said her group’s report is not meant to be a condemnation of autonomous, but merely a wake-up call to their unintended consequences.

“While robotaxi technology is groundbreaking, the underlying reality perpetuates our current system: a focus on single-use vehicles over public transportation and active mobility,” said Lind, whose organization shares a parent company with Streetsblog. “Not only would robotaxis continue trends of increasing driving and congestion, they may very well exacerbate these issues. Cities should use this moment to update parking policies, explore fees on vehicle miles traveled, and pursue people-centered planning.”

Waymo pushed back on the report, saying that the company’s deadheading in California is “decreasing over time as we increase the efficiency and utilization of our fleet.”

“The premise put forward by the report — that the New York City [taxi] fleet could fully turn over to Waymo vehicles — is also inaccurate,” company spokesman Ethan Teicher said. “Waymo vehicles make up a fraction of the total ride-share vehicles on the road in the places where we operate, and that would also be true of New York City. For example, we have more than 3,500 vehicles in our fleet nationwide, whereas there are more than 100,000 for-hire-vehicle drivers operating in New York City alone.”

But Teicher did agree that the company is keenly interested in making sure its robotaxis will be able to store themselves at the curb rather than deadheading.

“Research has shown that Waymo vehicles’ ability to park at the curb when not serving a passenger is important for reducing empty VMT,” he said. “This study correctly identifies parking as a challenge in New York City, presenting an opportunity for renewed focus on municipal curb management. We’d be thrilled to share our experience with city leaders.”

After all, he added, Waymo’s business model is dependent on reducing empty models because unlike other taxi fleet, the company owns the vehicles in its fleet.

But even the company statement reminds anew that the robotaxi industry in general, as well as Waymo specifically, is a very small business right now.

“Waymo is like a rookie hitter who goes two for five in his first game and claims to be a .400 hitter,” Schwartz told Streetsblog. “Let’s see what he does over a season and lifetime. Waymo has driven about 200 million miles over past six years. Over that period, Americans alone drove almost 20 trillion miles, so Waymos made up just one-thousandth of a percent. Waymo may be a candidate for Rookie of the Year, but it is still a rookie!”

The mayor of Milwaukee is abandoning a proposal to scrap a half-century-old freeway out of fear of upsetting the region’s motorists, setting aside years of findings that highway removals help revitalize Rust Belt downtowns for the 21st century.

Milwaukee Mayor Cavalier Johnson announced on July 8 he wanted to maintain the elevated Interstate 794 known as the Lake Interchange, which stretches between the Marquette Interchange and the Hoan Bridge and is approaching the end of its useful life. State transportation officials have been weighing alternative proposals for fixing or removing the freeway.

A waterfront city hemmed in by highways. This is Downtown Milwaukee (with the I-784 corridor highlighted).

Johnson rejected replacing the highway with at-grade boulevards that connect to the street grid because he worried drivers would get stuck in traffic.

“Any mayor across the country would love to have this same thing,” Johnson said at a press conference. “However, given the challenges that I mentioned, given the decades of established traffic patterns here, I think it makes it a little more difficult for us to be able to accomplish what some have imagined could be accomplished with taking the freeway down.”

But Milwaukee Common Council members Alex Brower, Robert Bauman and Sharlen Moore argued that a highway-to-boulevard option would benefit residents by generating thousands of new homes and increasing city tax revenues.

“This is a generational opportunity for our city, and we should not bristle at the idea of freeway removal simply because it represents the greatest departure from the current status quo,” the officials said in a joint statement released on July 13. “We should embrace the change that will yield the greatest long-term benefit for Milwaukee, rather than settling for less because of established traffic patterns.”

And members of Rethink 794, a volunteer transportation advocacy group, lambasted the mayor for doubling down on congestion that will hamper the city’s ability to grow in the future.

“It seems like the priority for folks who [want] to save five minutes on their commute, but the tradeoff is opportunity for housing development, retail development, public space, economic development,” said Raphie Torralba, lead advocate on the Rethink 794 campaign.

The controversial span has divided Milwaukee since its erection in 1969. Commuters from suburban Waukesha, Racine, and Kenosha counties take I-794 to get to work and access the Brew City’s top attractions. By 2022, roughly 78,000 vehicles per day traveled east of the Marquette Interchange, 73,500 vehicles drove across the Milwaukee River and 42,500 motorists crossed the Hoan Bridge, a Wisconsin DOT traffic study found. 

But the interstate served as a barrier separating Milwaukee’s Historic Third Ward from other downtown neighborhoods and discouraged residents in the region from using Milwaukee’s Amtrak station, which transported 555,000 riders last year.

This century, razing an elevated highway is no longer a radical idea. Several cities have successfully ditched elevated interchanges slicing through their downtowns including Boston, San Francisco, Portland, Ore., and Syracuse, NY, which will begin tearing down a stretch of Interstate 81 later this year. Even Milwaukee saw the benefits two decades ago of turning Park East Freeway into a six-lane boulevard that opened up 24 acres to new development.

As I-794 approached its golden anniversary, parts of its spans began to crumble, prompting state officials to develop a long-term plan to fix it. In April, the Wisconsin DOT held open houses on four proposals to rebuild the interchange, slim it down, or replace it entirely, with another option to conduct routine maintenance and put off significant repairs. (Meanwhile, Milwaukee urbanists released their own vision for razing the interchange in order to transform the surrounding neighborhood into thousands of homes with new schools, libraries, and roads.)

It seems likely that there’s a better use for this central Milwaukee land.

Each alternative came with a different price tag while generating additional land for the city to develop by 2050. 

Rebuilding the highway ranged between $425 million and $575 million while the proposal enabled the city to build on a 2.7-acre site created during a reconfiguration. One design would reduce the highway with right-side ramps purported to cost between $725 and $1 billion while another was estimated between $675 and $900 million. Both opened up 5.1 acres of land.

Finally, replacing the span with a boulevard reportedly cost between $850 million and $1.25 billion while freeing up 16 acres of property to be converted into housing and other development, which could produce $16 million in property tax revenue each year, plus ancillary economic benefits to the city and its people. 

Advocates argued state officials overestimated the cost of dismantling highways and building new roads, and underestimated the benefit on downtown neighborhoods if boulevards were built instead.

“They are predicting much of the same traffic will end up on city streets, whereas we know that will not be the case in removals in other parts of the country and even our own city,” Torralba said. “One-third of current traffic that uses the stretch of freeway is using it to go across but the majority of it is already ending up downtown.”

State Department of Transportation officials expect to choose a design by 2027, begin construction about three years later, and complete the project by 2038, although funding has not been officially allocated.

Political tea

The issue could become part of Wisconsin’s contentious gubernatorial race since the next governor will choose a new transportation secretary and have an effect on the direction of state infrastructure projects. 

Democratic candidates Francesca Hong and David Crowley expressed support for the benefits of replacing the highway with new housing development, according to Rethink 794 advocates. Republican Andy Manske told Streetsblog he wants to see a temporary closure of I-794 to see if it would result in “widespread chaos and delays” and wanted to ensure that new housing would be managed closely and not by an institutional investor (Democratic candidate Mandela Barnes and Republican candidate Tom Tiffany did not respond to emails).

Torralba said the climate advocates have been navigating has been complicated. 

“The highway’s removal is a question of political will,” she said. “Candidates understand the benefits of the idea, but the political power [to advance] that decision is another thing entirely.”

Following the 2015 Paris Accords, the climate movement rode a wave of cultural and political momentum, culminating in the European Green Deal. But war, inflation, and a resurgent fossil fuel-aligned Right have triggered a fierce backlash against climate action in all its forms. To win this fight, Florent Marcellesi argues, Europe must treat energy sovereignty and climate justice as two sides of the same battle.

The economy works in a series of cycles. Be they short (according to Joseph Kitchin), medium (as per Clément Juglar), or long (as Nikolai Kondratieff declared), periods of recovery, of creation, of boom and bust, or of destruction follow one another. The cycle begins anew, in infinite loops that are never quite the same.

Similarly, the just and green transition faces its own distinct historical cycles. Since environmental awareness emerged as a political movement in the 1960s and 1970s, it has gone from being an outsiderissuefor socially conscious minorities to becoming – following the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement, the focal point of the socio-political mainstream. Today, however, mercilessly besieged by resurgent imperialisms whose interests align with those of fossil fuel capitalism, the transition faces an enormous backlash. It is waging an fierce struggle against the “fossil fuel empire”, gasping for air so that the existential threat that it currently faces does not turn into destruction. But how can the just transition withstand this backlash and consolidate itself within the new world (dis)order? And, how can it defeat the fossil fuel empire?

The birth of a new hegemony

2015 was no ordinary year in our recent history. On 12 December of that year, the Paris Agreement was unanimously adopted at COP21. Although it was by no means a perfect climate accord, by enshrining in an international treaty the 1.5°C global warming limit that humanity must not exceed, this agreement marked a turning point in climate action. The Paris Accords were driven by a broad coalition of aligned nations (the Pacific Islands, the EU, Obama’s United States, etc.), a Vatican motivated by Pope Francis’ Laudato si’, and a civil society keen to turn the page on the failed COP15 summit in Copenhagen.

2015 represented the start of a new cycle in which climate was no longer a subordinate and secondary issue but the centre of media attention, a political and social priority, and the new driving force behind an emerging economy centred on the transition and on renewables. Put another way, the year marks the start of a period with a profound capacity for structural transformation and for reshaping collective principles, guided by the climate narrative in public opinion, institutions, and the business world: climate cultural hegemony.

After years of recession and social and economic austerity, this shift in hegemony had a tremendous impact on several fronts. On the one hand, activism played a key role in the cultural and social dynamics in favour of climate action, thanks to the quantitative and qualitative presence of the youth climate movement. Behind Greta Thunberg, the central figure of the climate movement – someone with an almost messianic quality and a source of global inspiration for an entire generation – lay an unprecedented visibility of the climate cause in the media and on the streets. This movement positioned the climate as an existential issue – for young people and any group or nation directly suffering its impacts – and a matter of the highest socio-political priority. As hundreds of thousands of people filled the streets of Berlin, Brussels, Melbourne, New York, Vancouver, and Madrid in 2019, the climate cause seeped into the recesses of European and global collective consciousness.

2015 represented the start of a new cycle in which climate was no longer a subordinate and secondary issue.

Following the path opened by Paris, activism began to reflect on in politics and institutions. On 5 December, 2016, the Darebin in Australia became the first city in the world to declare a “climate emergency”. In May 2019, the UK Parliament became the first national parliament to do so, while Spain officially followed suit following a cabinet decision in January 2020. To date, nearly 2,400 local authorities across 40 countries, covering a population of up to one billion citizens, have declared a climate emergency, making climate change one of the top political priorities in the years following 2015. Inevitably, this social and institutional visibility also had its impact at the ballot box: in the 2019 European elections, riding and simultaneously pushing the climate wave, Green parties achieved a historic result, securing more than 80 seats and transforming their eco-social agenda into a driving force within the European Parliament.

This, in turn, triggered greater environmental momentum. Under the combined pressure of activists on the street and of voters, and despite the fact that it was not even part of the European People’s Party’s electoral priorities at the time, the newly appointed European Commission under the first presidency of the conservative Ursula Von der Leyen, put its main response on the table: the Green New Deal,or the European Green Deal. The debate no longer revolved around whether or not we needed a climate policy, but rather the level of ambition it should have. Although the deal fell short of what the environmental movement and scientific community were calling for, it was far ahead of anything proposed by other geopolitical blocs. The EU established itself as a climate leader, committing to reducing its emissions by at least 50 per cent by 2030, whilst making the goal of carbon neutrality by 2050 legally binding.

What is more, all European policies – whether in energy, industry, or agriculture – were required to integrate or align, at least in spirit, with climate priorities. In this climate-friendly environment, the economy felt the winds of change from the energy transition and sustainability, the cornerstones of post-Paris business. The end of coal mining in Spain and its phasing out across Europe, the accelerated roll-out of renewable energy, the boom in electric cars, the decarbonisation of industry, and the greening of agriculture: the green economy and green jobs experienced a golden age, whilst the just transition was gaining ground. Paris, the youth climate movement, and the electorate made their mark; climate cultural hegemony was at its zenith.

But every golden age comes to an end, and every high-water mark is followed by a decline. The first blow came from Covid-19. The health crisis, along with its lockdowns, brought the “climate generation” to a screeching halt, and since 2020, there has not been another mass climate demonstration. Despite depriving it of one of its most powerful means of expressing itself, the pandemic did not stop the European Green Deal from becoming the EU’s guiding light. On top of that, thanks to the social and political capital accumulated in previous years, and despite the emerging opposition from the radical right in Hungary and Poland or the anti-climate presidency of Trump’s first administration, the green transition was established as one of the pillars of the NextGenerationEU Recovery Funds. Of the 275 billion euros in capital investment, 42 per cent of the funds were to be allocated to tackling the climate crisis. This represented a tangible investment in the great transformation from a fossil fuel system to a renewable one.

But soon after the first blow of the pandemic came a second one in 2022 when Russia invaded Ukraine. Apart from exposing Putin’s imperialist ambitions and Europe’s dependence on Russian gas, the war also triggered a surge in energy prices and the cost of living, in turn fuelling social unrest. Reactionary and denialist forces smelt blood. The European Green Deal was still alive, but through the wounds of the pandemic and war in Ukraine, the anti-climate and anti-ecological transition narrative was seeping in, establishing itself as a key pillar of the fossil fuel backlash.

The empire strikes back

Whether at the political, cultural or economic level, we have entered a new cycle: that of the ecological backlash, countering progress on environmental issues. It is the era of the crusade against and relentless attack on a just transition, as the empire of dirty energy and its political network make every possible attempt to reinforce their foothold. In other words, fossil fuel capitalism, in collaboration with a reactionary and denialist international movement, has declared a war –  an almost holy war – against ecological progress in all its forms.

While environmental activists are branded as “terrorists” or “climate fanatics” and climate change is, according to Trump, nothing more than “a hoax”, green policies are constantly under fire from climate-sceptic and far-right organisations. Alongside immigration, they have made the Green New Dealtheir enemy to be defeated in Spain, Brussels, and internationally. They portray, against all evidence, environmental policies as responsible for the more than 200 deaths caused by the 2025 storm in Valencia. They also attack renewables every day, whether during the 2025 blackout on the Iberian Peninsula or by fuelling local opposition to wind and solar energy.

In this context of constant disinformation and attacks, where the far right provokes and the Right reaps the rewards (and part of the Left flirts with reactionary attitudes towards it), ecological setbacks are rife within institutions. For example, in Europe, where the dividing line between conservatives and neo-fascists has been growing increasingly thin since the 2024 European elections,1 environmental commitments have been scaled back. This includes sustainability requirements in the Common Agricultural Policy, as well as environmental restrictions for large companies and the ambition to phase out fossil-fuelled cars.

At the same time, environmental deregulation – which allows for more products that are harmful to nature and health but economically competitive and good for the coffers of large multinationals – is gaining momentum. What is more, in an Orwellian move, the US Government, having once again withdrawn from the Paris Agreement and from any international political or scientific institution fighting for climate action, has even banned the terms “climate change” and “emissions” in federal agencies and official national documents. This includes revising educational programmes. Beyond politics, the cultural battle is all-out.

The ecological backlash is proving to be an attempt at a fossil fuel restoration in the face of the 21st-century renewable energy revolution.

After years of climate hegemony, the backlash has been and continues to be inversely proportional to the progress of the ecological transition in recent years. Indeed, just as the restoration of the monarchy was a response to re-establish the interests of the nobility in the face of revolutionary and republican ideas in the 19th century, the ecological backlashis proving to be an attempt at a fossil fuel restoration in the face of the 21st-century renewable energy revolution. This is an unmistakable sign that the just ecological transition has hit a nerve. For fossil fuel capitalism, the ecological transition was tolerable as long as it remained sectoral and socio-economically marginal. But today it has become a major obstacle to its businesses, which are currently worth 97 trillion dollars – almost as much as global Gross Domestic Product. It also represents a threat to part of the global elite and population whose way of life and values, based on fossil fuels and the fantasy of unlimited growth in production and consumption, remain non-negotiable.

In this regard, the 2025 US National Security Strategy (NSS) is emblematic of the attempt to return to the fossil fuel-based world order. As well as reverting to imperialist ideological and geopolitical doctrines based on hard power and spheres of influence, authoritarianism, and Western supremacism, the document does not beat about the bush or use euphemisms. In opposition to “the disastrous ideologies of ‘climate change’ and ‘net zero’”, its aim is to “restore US energy dominance (in oil, gas, coal and nuclear power)” and “expand US access to critical minerals and materials”. In this context, the military operation in early 2026 in Venezuela has been the US’s first test of ideological hegemony and control over natural resources within its sphere of influence. Emboldened by the apparent success of this strategy, Trumpist imperialism has stepped up the pace, attempting to subdue the Iranian regime as well, which, incidentally, controls the Strait of Hormuz through which 20 per cent of the world’s oil and gas passes.

But this process of political, territorial, and energy neo-colonisation is not confined solely to the US’s historical enemies; Europe is also in its crosshairs. As the NSS argues that the “US objective must be to help Europe correct its current course” through “patriotic parties” – now veritable Trojan horses of this neo-imperialism within the EU – we are witnessing, live and in plain sight, external interference in European internal affairs. In the ideological vision of the reactionary international, the European Union project is superfluous. Despite the EU’s contradictions and double standards in international conflicts, the reactionary right has no need for its founding values based on international law, multilateralism, cooperation and continental solidarity. And, aligning their interests with those of fossil fuel capital, they have no need for the EU’s commitment to the energy transition.

Inevitably, the energy transition clashes with fossil fuel imperialism. Beyond calling into question the enormous profits of the fossil fuel sector, it also reshuffles the geopolitical deck. Whilst the US, Russia and the Gulf states base much of their power on their position as the world’s leading oil producers, the EU – but above all China, the new great power of green capitalism – has accelerated the shift towards renewables. In this new “ecological Cold War”, the marked differences are becoming increasingly acute between the old petro-states that do not want to die and the aspiring electro-states that have not yet been born.

In this sense, those who commit to the energy transition are, in effect, committing to reducing their dependence on fossil-fuel capitalism – whether corporate or state-led – and to strengthening their sovereignty in all its dimensions in the face of imperialism, whether Trumpist or Putinist.2 For Europe, therefore, in addition to all the ethical and climate-related reasons inherited from the Paris Agreement, which are as relevant today as they were in 2015, the ecological transition can also be viewed politically as a powerful tool of sovereignty against fossil fuel vassalage. Turning Europe into an electro-continent and its member states into electro-states is one of the central pillars of global geopolitics in the coming years.

For Europe, the ecological transition can also be viewed politically as a powerful tool of sovereignty against fossil fuel vassalage.

Eco-socialism in the new world (dis)order

Looking ahead, we are witnessing a profound shift in the underlying logic of the just transition. Since the Paris Agreement, this was the executive arm of “climate cultural hegemony”, driven above all by ethical and solidarity-based motives of caring for the planet, future generations, or the Pacific islands. Today, however, the energy transition is taking place mainly in Europe for geopolitical reasons of national and continental sovereignty. Through the electrification of everything everywhere – the still-emerging “electric hegemony” – the energy transition is being reframed within an “independence versus empire” context. Without abandoning the progress of the previous decade, this new landscape compels all actors to rethink their vision, strategies, and alliances.

Yet there is a trap that we must avoid. It is true that climate action is no longer an end in itself, but rather a possible consequence of the quest for sovereignty, yet this does not detract in the slightest from the climate emergency. The environmental reasons for a transition remain as relevant as ever, if not more so, in the face of the serious and ongoing global warming that is causing ever-increasing social, economic, labour, and environmental devastation. Downplaying it, prioritising competitiveness over sustainability, deregulating and dismantling the European Green Deal under pressure from certain economic sectors, or treating issues of sovereignty and climate in a non-complementary manner would be grave errors and own goals.3

Today, the energy transition is doubly urgent. Added to the climate emergency is the urgency of building sovereignty through the transition. The latter does not replace the former; both are equally relevant and are two sides of the same coin. Any backtracking on climate policy represents a short-term gain for competitiveness and a long-term loss for sovereignty and resilience.

Furthermore, given that we face both climate and geopolitical emergencies there is a need for Europe, to push towards the energy transition swiftly and at a large scale. Whilst they remain important, the time has passed for confining ourselves to think tanks and the “small is beautiful” ethosof the 1970s. Fighting the tide of climate denial and – as wars in Ukraine and Iran drive up the price of the fossil fuels on which we still so heavily depend – speeding up the energy transition requires greater political, industrial, and social impetus. This should come through major public and private investment, reducing energy demand, and rapidly transforming mass consumption to make it renewable and sustainable. As activist and reporter Gorka Laurnaga suggests, “If climate change [and, I would add, geopolitics] is a macro-problem, it cannot be solved with micro-responses.”

To this end, it is essential to overcome the contradictions of the energy transition at a local level, where alliances between a romanticised view of the countryside and agriculture, nimbyism, doomsday thinking, and climate denialism are hindering the renewable energy projects needed for these new times. There is no room for leniency towards unscrupulous multinationals or local corruption, and participatory and environmental safeguards should be vehemently upheld. Such an effort should include committing to socio-economic and employment benefits for affected communities, so that no land is sacrificed and the transition is fair. Although it is good to strive for aesthetic and cultural harmony, and the large-scale and massive is not necessarily beautiful, large projects like these will save lives in the face of the major climate and geopolitical challenges of today and the coming decades.

However, for the energy transition to take place, essential raw materials are also needed. Whether we are talking about lithium, cobalt, or rare earth minerals,4 all these materials are used in batteries, wind turbines, solar panels, or heat pumps and are essential for Europe’s electrification and decarbonisation. However, 10 out of 26 critical raw materials are entirely imported from outside the EU, and none of the rare earths used in the EU are processed internally. In other words, the bloc is highly dependent on third countries – especially China – for access to or the processing of critical raw materials essential to its energy transition. Without strategic resources directly exploited and controlled throughout the entire value chain by the EU, strategic autonomy is an empty slogan and the energy transition as a vehicle for sovereignty is a pipe dream.

In addition to a structural and long-term reorientation of production and consumption in post-growth terms as well as a firm industrial commitment to the recycling of raw materials, this also entails an inevitable relocation of extraction to European territory. On the road towards decarbonisation, we cannot expect to maintain high levels of welfare and public services and bring about a successful ecological transition unless we relocate closer to home some of the negative impacts of our way of life. These impacts are currently outsourced to countries with lighter social, labour and environmental protections. There can be no sovereignty without a minimum level of extraction on European soil. What matters is that this is done in accordance with democratic rules, strict limits, social, climate, and biodiversity protections, and humane labour conditions. It must also bring benefits for the local populations involved.

Today, the energy transition is doubly urgent. Added to the climate emergency is the urgency of building sovereignty through the transition.

Sovereignty through alliance

At the same time, sovereignty is never absolute. Even though globalisation is undergoing severe turbulence, there are and will continue to be many economic, social, and ecological interdependencies in the coming decades in a highly interconnected world. To avoid falling into energy vassalage under the US, Russia, or the Gulf states, Europe must commit to further diversifying its strategic alliances. As spheres of influence return, diversification should involve the staunch defence of multilateralism and the ability to strike agreements of various kinds with different countries, with a central focus on energy and raw materials.

When production or recycling is not possible in Europe, the EU should never be reliant on a single source. Let Russian gas or the political unreliability of the United States serve as a lesson. One condition should always be clear: bilateral agreements should be built under the umbrella of the Paris Agreement and the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, the International Labour Organization, and the 2030 Agenda, and necessitate the same labour and environmental standards in the country of production as in Europe.

Beyond that, we need to reflect deeply on our complex relationship with China. The Asian giant, which controls much of the rare earths needed for renewable energy, has become a driving force behind the green transition. The rapid electrification of its economy and industry potentially puts it on a path to becoming an “electro-state”. It is a central player in the ecological transition and an indispensable partner in countering the fossil fuel empire. Like it or not, at climate summits and beyond, the global climate coalition must go through China. At the same time, as well as being a deeply authoritarian and repressive state, China is a fierce competitor with the capacity to undermine large parts of Europe’s ecological transition by flooding the markets with its overproduction. This applied a decade ago with solar panels, and it applies now with electric cars or batteries.

Ultimately, with China, the aim is to strike a dynamic balance between a firm defence of European economic sovereignty – our “Made inEurope” green transition – and our democratic values, whilst at the same time opening up and strengthening channels of geopolitical and commercial collaboration to support and drive the global fight against climate change.

Without strategic resources directly exploited and controlled by the EU, strategic autonomy is an empty slogan and the energy transition as a vehicle for sovereignty is a pipe dream.

But the question of alliances also arises at a domestic level. Considering the green transition not merely as an ethical-climate issue but also as a matter of geopolitics and sovereignty can help us broaden the range of political alliances to achieve it. Alongside the usual progressive and environmentalist partners (parties, trade unions, NGOs, businesses, etc.), there are liberal currents with a strong pro-European and supranationalist ideology, as well as other conservative and patriotic currents, with a strong emphasis on the state and fierce protection of their homeland. In fact, the prospect of colonisation and external interference represents a serious ideological rift for some European nationalist-denialist currents, turning their worldview into a “confused patriotism”. By vehemently opposing the Green New Dealand, in doing so, defending the fossil fuel empire politically and economically, they create a profound internal contradiction: one can hardly defend one’s homeland whilst simultaneously selling it to foreign powers and becoming mere vassals to them. Whilst we clearly need to put our finger on the nationalist-denialist sore spot, it is time to strengthen traditional alliances centred on the ethical-climate axis and forge more uncomfortable ones, this time centred on the energy sovereignty axis.

This is not the time to remain self-absorbed. Beyond defending what has been achieved over the last decade, we must now adapt to the new context and strategically reposition ourselves to regain the initiative. For the sake of sustainability and sovereignty, the just transition can and must win the cultural and political battle against the fossil fuel empire.

This article was originally published in Spanish in the magazine Gaceta Sindical. Reflexión y Debate (CCOO), Issue 42, May 2026. It is republished here with permission.

Translated by Albie Mills |Voxeurop

1. For example, in 2025, the European People’s Party broke through the cordon sanitaire surrounding the environmental sustainability of large corporations in the European Parliament for the first time. See: https://elpais.com/internacional/2025-11-23/el-acercamiento-de-la-derecha-a-los-ultras-tensa-la-cuerda-en-bruselas.html ︎
2. The similarities between Putin and Trump, beyond the political currents they represent, are becoming increasingly evident. Ideologically, they are defenders of “traditional values”, rooted in a Christian and white world that must be saved from decline, with an obsession against the LGBT community and feminism, whilst in political practice they systematically employ lies and contempt for liberal and parliamentary democracy. ︎
3. Let us not confuse simplification with deregulation. Whilst it is always possible to improve administrative efficiency by simplifying processes and laws (for example, for SMEs), this is not the same as deregulation, the aim of which is to weaken legal safeguards, almost always in favour of big business. ︎
4. These 17 chemical elements are in fact metal oxides that are insoluble in water; in the 18th century, the term “earth” was used to refer to oxides. Many are not in fact “rare” elements (they may even be more abundant than lead or copper) but are classified as “rare” because it is very uncommon to find them in a pure form. ︎

Plastic has a negative impact throughout its entire life cycle, from the extraction of raw materials to its end of life. In grassroots communities, plastic pollution is often perceived only as visible waste in the environment, but it also represents a broader and silent threat to human health,  linked to our daily exposure to plastics and the toxic substances they contain.

I am Anas SEKO, a specialist in communication on plastic pollution and a mobile photographic artist in Benin that envisions sparking the interest of communities and authorities through a photographic project called “The Taste of Plastic.” It is a visual documentation project which explores the role of plastic in primary school food practices.  Students are daily exposed to this toxic material and use it through the containers in which their meals are served.

Observations with plastic food contact materials were conducted during recess in the canteen of Cocotomey Public Primary School, from 10:16 a.m. to 10:35 a.m. on Monday, March 16, 2026, using direct field observation and mobile photography. Within this brief 19-minute period, numerous children between the ages of 5 and 10 were potentially exposed to microplastics and harmful additives through the transfer of substances from plastic containers to food, the consumption of hot meals served in plastic packaging, and direct oral contact with plastic materials. Through these documented images, the project seeks to highlight a reality that often goes unnoticed, the day-to-day exposure to microplastics and toxic chemicals, and invites a closer examination of the use of plastic, while questioning possible alternatives. For a long time, I witnessed the use of plastic in my community, and being aware of the impact of microplastics and additives on human health, I was shocked to see that, from childhood, students are exposed to plastic both at school and in their daily life. This stands in contrast to traditional practices in many African communities, where food was commonly served in clay dishes and wrapped in natural materials such as leaves and calabashes before plastic became widespread.

Hot Akassa, hot plastic | Akassa is a traditional food paste made from fermented maize, widely consumed in several West African countries, particularly in Benin.

Bissap and microplastics | The red bissap juice held in the student's hand is a traditional West African beverage made by infusing the dried calyces of the hibiscus flower.

My hot porridge | A traditional West African porridge made from fermented and granulated maize flour.

From its very design, plastic incorporates a multitude of chemical additives, including flame retardants, plasticizers, and stabilisers, among others, some of which are recognized as endocrine disruptors. According to the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL), this exposure to plastic is associated with effects on the renal, cardiovascular, gastrointestinal, neurological, reproductive and respiratory systems; impacts include cancer, diabetes, and developmental toxicity. Children are particularly vulnerable to the toxic effects of plastic, as exposure during early stages of life can cause impacts that are less reversible than in adults such as hormonal disruption and developmental effects. As concerns over plastic pollution and human exposure continue to grow, BFFP and its members need to push for a drastic reduction of plastic production, full transparency on chemicals in plastics and its elimination, while prioritizing reuse and refill systems over single-use plastic. We also call for plastic producers to be held accountable for the full lifecycle of their products, through the polluter pays principle.

Around the world, activists, volunteers, and grassroots organizations are leading the fight to end plastic pollution. For me, the next step is to advocate to the government for the elimination of plastic in student’s food practices through policy regulation and reforms.  I also plan to mobilize funding to co-create plastic-free solutions such as reuse and refill, in the school where the photos were taken, starting from the next school year. Phasing out plastic is an urgent priority to protect human health and the environment, and we cannot remain silent in the face of this growing crisis, fueled by the petrochemical industries.

Please find the following link to download my proposal: 

- French version : https://forms.gle/tb5xQ1244WUoCdAe9

- English version : https://forms.gle/E1Kc2uhkGyAnrszC9

The Lock the Gate Alliance is calling for scrutiny over Origin Energy's plan to drill gas wells and spread chemical-laden waste directly onto the land as part of a giant gas project under development in Tara. 

Section 4 was recirculated for public comment on July 22, 2026.
New close of Public Comment period is Friday, August 21, 2026 at 5pm.

Gualala Redwood Timber’s 167-acre Card Timber Harvest Plan (THP 1-26-00021-SON) is located in the floodplain on the west side of the South Fork Gualala River, from confluence of the North and South Forks, down past Buckeye Creek. The plan was submitted to Cal Fire on February 20, 2026, but Cal Fire determined that the plan was unacceptable due to required information which was missing. GRT re-submitted the plan on March 26, 2026.

The Public Comment period closed on July 6, 2026 but was re-opened on July 22 for comments on Section 4 (cumulative impacts). New close of Public Comment period is Friday, August 21, 2026 at 5pm.

This is essentially ‘Dogwood West‘ – the Dogwood THP was entirely in the floodplain on the east side of the South Fork (except for a few acres on the south side of the main stem of the Gualala River). The Card THP is entirely in the floodplain on the west side of the South Fork.

Read Friends of Gualala River’s July 6, 2026 comments on this THP.

Aerial view of the watershed (blue outline), the proposed Card THP harvest area (orange), and prior approved THPs (red). Fill opacity reflects harvest intensity – a heavier fill indicates a higher Equivalent Clearcut Area multiplier.

Note: CalFire’s standard procedure is to print out the plan documents, scan them, and post the images to their publicly accessible database, CalTREES. As a result, it is impossible to search for text in the documents, because there are no words in the documents posted, only images of words. In order to make the documents more useful, whenever possible we have used optical character recognition (OCR) on the documents posted below, so that you can search them.

Card Timber Harvest Plan documents

(Re-submitted 3/26/2026)

Card THP Section 1 – [3 MB, 11 pages] Legal description: Cover pages, signatures.

Card THP Section 2 – [14 MB, 103 pages] Operations: Silviculture, yarding, erosion hazard rating, winter operations, roads & landings, watercourse & lake protections, alternative watercourse & lake protections (in lieu of standard rules), biological resources, maps.

Card THP Section 3 – [3 MB, 24 pages] Supporting materials: General site description, analysis of alternatives, discussion and justification of in-lieu and/or alternative watercourse and lake protection practices, cultural resources.

Card THP Section 4 – [40 MB, 165 pages] Cumulative Impacts: Past, present and future projects, assessment of cumulative watershed effects, soil productivity, biological resources, recreational, visual, traffic, greenhouse gas impacts, wildfire risks.

Section 4 was recirculated for public comment on July 22, 2026.
New close of Public Comment period is Friday, August 21, 2026 at 5pm.

Card THP Section 5 – [20 MB, 147 pages] Attachments: Including soil erosion hazards, Erosion Control Plan, culvert sizing, botanical surveys, geology report, Northern Spotted Owl information, road work.

Card THP Section 6 – [1 MB, 1 page] Archeological information: (confidential)

Additional Documents

Card THP – Response to 1st Review Questions, by Registered Pro. Forester
[4/2/26, 13 MB, 51 pages]

Card THP – Pre-Harvest Inspection, by Dept. of Fish and Wildlife
[4/28/26, 0.1 MB, 7 pages]

Card THP – Pre-Harvest Inspection, by Cal Fire
[4/30/26, 1.4 MB, 17 pages]

Card THP – Pre-Harvest Inspection, by Regional Water Quality Control Board
[5/1/26, 0.3 MB, 6 pages]

Card THP – Response to Agency Recommendations, by Registered Pro. Forester
[6/2/26, 33 MB, 54 pages]

Card THP – 2nd Review Recommendations, by Dept. of Fish and Wildlife
[6/17/26, 0.1 MB, 3 pages]

Card THP – 2nd Review Questions, by Cal Fire
[6/18/26, 1 MB, 3 pages]

Card THP – Response to 2nd Review Questions, by Registered Pro. Forester
[6/19/26, 2.5 MB, 28 pages]

Card THP – Recommended for approval, by Cal Fire
[6/25/26, 1 MB, 1 pages]

Card THP – Comments by Jeanne Jackson
[7/1/26, 1 MB, 2 pages]

Card THP – Comments by Chris Poehlmann
[7/2/26, 1 MB, 2 pages]

Card THP – Comments by Friends of South Fork Gualala
[7/6/26, 1 MB, 2 pages]

Card THP – Comments by Friends of Gualala River
[7/6/26, 16 MB, 36 pages + 100 pages of attachments]

Card THP map, northern portion

Card THP map, southern portion

All documents regarding this logging plan are available in the new CalTREES system.

Unfortunately, CalTREES is not easy to use, so FoGR has compiled some
basic instructions for use of CalTREES to help you navigate the system.

To download additional documents for this logging plan,
if you want to follow the back & forth as agencies ask questions and the RPF replies,
visit the Card THP page on the CalTREES website.

Below are instructions on how to submit comments during the public comment period.

Public Comment period closed on July 6, 2026 but was re-opened
on July 22 for comments on Section 4 (cumulative impacts).
New close of Public Comment period is Friday, August 21, 2026 at 5pm.

To submit your comments on a logging plan, email your comments to: santarosapubliccomment@fire.ca.gov
or send your comments via U.S. Mail to:

Forest Practice
California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection
135 Ridgway Ave.
Santa Rosa, CA 95401

In the subject line of your email message, or at the top of your letter,
be sure to reference the THP number and name, for example:
THP 1-26-00021-SON “Card”

HRRR = Harold Richardson Redwood Reserve

The 129-acre HRRR Timber Harvest Plan (THP 1-26-00099-SON) is located between Tin Barn Road and Haupt Creek in the Haupt Creek watershed of the Gualala River basin. The majority of the acreage (102 acres) is designated “fuel break / defensible space.” The plan was submitted to Cal Fire by the Save The Redwood League on July 22, 2026.

Submitted on July 22, 2026

“HRRR” THP Section 1 – [7 MB, 10 pages] Legal description: Cover pages, signatures.

“HRRR” THP Section 2 – [14 MB, 109 pages] Operations: Silviculture, yarding, erosion hazard rating, winter operations, roads & landings, watercourse & lake protections, alternative watercourse & lake protections (in lieu of standard rules), biological resources, maps.

“HRRR” THP Section 3 – [3 MB, 28 pages] Supporting materials: General site description, project alternative analysis, Section II Items with Explanation and Justification.

“HRRR” THP Section 4 – [7 MB, 123 pages] Cumulative Impacts: Past, present and future projects, assessment of cumulative watershed effects, soil productivity, biological resources, recreational, visual, traffic, greenhouse gas impacts, wildfire risks.

“HRRR” THP Section 5 – [49 MB, 228 pages] Attachments: Including soil erosion hazards, Erosion Control Plan, Furlbreak / Defensible Space letters, botanical surveys, Marbled Murrelet and Northern Spotted Owl information.

“HRRR” THP Section 6 – [1 MB, 1 page] Archeological information: (confidential)

All documents regarding this logging plan are available in the new CalTREES system.

Unfortunately, CalTREES is not easy to use, so FoGR has compiled some
basic instructions for use of CalTREES to help you navigate the system.

To download additional documents for this logging plan,
if you want to follow the back & forth as agencies ask questions and the RPF replies,
visit the “HRRR” THP page on the CalTREES website.

Below are instructions on how to submit comments during the public comment period.

To submit your comments on a logging plan, email your comments to: santarosapubliccomment@fire.ca.gov
or send your comments via U.S. Mail to:

Forest Practice
California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection
135 Ridgway Ave.
Santa Rosa, CA 95401

In the subject line of your email message, or at the top of your letter,
be sure to reference the THP number and name, for example:
THP 1-26-00099-SON “HRRR”

This is a re-post from The Climate Brink

Over the past week smoke from Canadian wildfires has once again poured into cities across Canada and the northern US. Toronto briefly had the worst air quality of any major city on Earth, Thunder Bay’s readings went off the top of Canada’s air quality health index scale, and unhealthy air alerts stretched from Minneapolis to New York City.

This smoke-pocalypse has renewed a long-standing debate online that these fires aren’t really about climate change at all, but about forest mismanagement. Decades of aggressive fire suppression, the argument goes, have let fuel pile up. We don’t log enough, thin enough, or do enough prescribed burning The forests are overgrown tinderboxes and we have only ourselves to blame. Climate is a distraction from a problem we created by listening to Smokey Bear’s insidious propaganda.

I want to take this argument seriously, because it has a real kernel of truth. The fire-deficit story is a genuine phenomenon in the dry conifer forests of the western United States. But most of what’s burning in Canada is boreal forest, and the boreal is a fundamentally different beast. So in this piece I’ll try to explain why the management argument, largely valid in a California pine stand, mostly falls apart when you move it a couple of thousand kilometers north, and explore what the fire data actually shows.

Here’s the short version. Canada’s area burned has surged, and it has surged in step with warming: hot, dry fire seasons burn far more forest, with area burned rises roughly 80% for each 1C increase in fire-season temperature (with a correlation coefficient of 0.61). This relationship is robust to a variety of statistical tests and controlling for confounding variables. The boreal burns in rare, high-intensity crown fires on a natural cycle measured in a century or more, across enormous remote areas that have never been logged, thinned, or effectively suppressed. Only about a fifth of Canada’s burned area over the past four decades was even inside forest regions that have ever been actively managed. You cannot have a fuel-buildup from forest mismanagement in a forest you were never managing.

Forest mis-management?

The forest-mismanagement argument was, in fairness, based on real evidence from some regions. In the frequent-fire dry forests of the western US that are dominated by ponderosa pine and mixed conifers the natural fire regime is low-to-moderate intensity surface fire returning every 5 to 30 years, historically stoked in part by Indigenous burning. A century of fire exclusion in those forests really did remove that frequent fire, let stands grow denser and more continuous, and build up a “fire deficit” that raises the odds of severe fire (Hagmann et al. 2021). And in that setting, fuel treatments work: Prichard et al. (2021) find wide agreement that mechanical thinning combined with prescribed burning measurably reduces subsequent fire severity. If you’re arguing about the Sierra Nevada, the management story is as important if not more important than the climate one.

The problem is that the Canadian boreal is not the Sierra Nevada. It burns in infrequent, high-intensity, stand-replacing crown fires that kill the whole stand on natural fire cycles measured in many decades to centuries (commonly a century or more, and two centuries or longer in the east), not 5 to 30 years. It is, ecologically speaking, supposed to burn this way; black spruce is practically built for it. Fire in this system was never the gentle recurring ground-clearing that suppression interrupted in California. And the burning is astonishingly concentrated: across the boreal, something like 3% of fires account for about 97% of the area burned. This is not a landscape full of many small fires that “used to clean out the fuel.” Rather, its a landscape that waits, and then burns catastrophically under extreme weather.

Why do we know that Canadian boreal forest fires are not being driven by mismanagement?

First, and most importantly, most of the boreal was never being managed in the first place. As University of Alberta fire scientist Jen Beverly has pointed out, only about one-fifth of Canada’s total burned area from 1986 to 2023 occurred within long-term forest tenure (the land that’s actually logged and managed). The vast majority burns in remote forest with no timber operations. In Canada’s so-called “extensive” fire-management zones there has been no serious suppression efforts historically. Fires there are monitored and largely left to burn unless they threaten people or infrastructure. You can’t blame overgrown, over-suppressed forests for fires in places nobody was suppressing.

Second, the fuel-buildup mechanism doesn’t fit the recent fires. If decades of suppression had loaded the forest with excess old fuel, you’d expect the big fire years to preferentially consume the oldest, most fuel-laden stands. But in Alberta’s brutal 2023 season, fires burned stands of essentially all ages in proportion to how much of each was on the landscape. That’s the signature of fire driven by weather, which doesn’t care how old the trees are, not by fuel accumulation.

Third, the proposed fixes don’t scale to the boreal even if you wanted them. This is the conclusion of the very scientists who documented Canada’s fire deficit. Coogan, Parisien and colleagues (2020) state it flatly: mechanical fuel treatments “require continued maintenance over time, are too expensive to apply across large boreal landscapes, and are usually not designed to halt extreme wildfires.” The boreal is on the order of three million square kilometers. You are not going to thin or prescribe-burn your way across it, and the crown fires that produce the smoke wouldn’t stop at a fuel break anyway.

So if it’s not mismanagement, what is it? Let’s look at the data.

The Canadian fire record

To start with, here is the long-term record of area burned, combing the satellite-mapped NBAC composite from 1972 on with the less-complete point-based records before that shown in grey (note that this is primarily for illustration; I don’t compute any statistics across the 1972 splice to avoid potential bias from changing measurement approaches).

Annual forest area burned in Canada, 1959–2026. Grey bars show the point-based record (1959–1971); red bars the NBAC satellite composite (1972–2025); the hatched bar is 2026 through mid-July (CIFFC, preliminary). Data: NRCan CNFDB/NBAC; CIFFC.

2023 stands out like a sore thumb with 14.8 million hectares in the satellite-mapped data (Canadian agency tallies actually run higher at 17–18 Mha as different products count differently),1 roughly 2.5 times the previous record. 2025 came in second at ~7.3 Mha in the satellite data. And 2026 so far is about 2.8 Mha by mid-July, a bit above the typical pace for this date, but far below the last few extreme years.

One caveat around how unprecedented this actually is. A recent tree-ring reconstruction back to 1800 (Danneyrolles et al. 2025) found that while 2023 itself was off the charts in most regions they studied, the decadal burn rate for 2014–2023 still sits within the range of the past two centuries in several zones, especially in the eastern boreal. We are not necessarily seeing more fire than ever everywhere, but rather a rapid rate of increase with the increasing prevalence of fire weather driving it. In addition, parts of the northwestern boreal are now burning at rates that do appear to exceed anything in thousands of years.

One important driver: higher temperatures Change in fire-season (May–September) mean temperature, 1959 to 2025, computed as a per-gridcell LOWESS trend. Canada-wide mean change is +2.2C, exceeding +3C in parts of the high Arctic. Data: ERA5-Land (ECMWF/Copernicus) via Google Earth Engine.

Canadian fire seasons (May through September) have warmed about 2.2C on average since 1959. Canada warms at roughly twice the global rate, and its north at roughly three times. That warming matters for fire through a well-understood mechanism: warmer air is exponentially “thirstier” (saturation vapor pressure rises ~7% per degree), so it pulls moisture out of live vegetation and dead fuels alike, priming the landscape to burn. It’s the same fuel-drying pathway that Abatzoglou and Williams (2016) found had roughly doubled cumulative forest area burned in the western US.

Hanes et al. (2019), examining the Canadian record from 1959 to 2015, found fire seasons starting earlier and ending later, more days with conditions suitable for fire spread, and increases in both annual area burned and the frequency of large fires. They found that these trends were consistent with human-caused warming, not with changes in forest management (which have been broadly stable since the 1980s even as the fire seasons have gotten dramatically worse).

Hot and dry years burn

A few years ago my Berkeley Earth colleague Robert Rohde made a lovely figure plotting each California fire season by its temperature and precipitation. Here is my Canadian version: every year from 1959 to 2025 placed in climate space, with dot size proportional to national area burned and the ten largest fire years outlined in black.

Each dot is one year (1959–2025), positioned by its fire-season (May–Sep) mean temperature and total precipitation averaged over burnable land, sized by national area burned (NBAC). Adapted from Robert Rohde’s California fire season weather chart. Data: ERA5-Land; NRCan CNFDB/NBAC.

The pattern is hard to miss. The biggest fire years pile up in the hot-and-dry corner with 2023 really standing out, and the recent era (red dots, 2011–2025) has shifted visibly toward that corner relative to the black dots of the 1960s. Canada’s fire seasons are migrating into the part of weather-space where the big burns happen.

We can also try and more directly quantify the relationship between area burned and temperature. Nationally, fire-season temperature correlates with log area burned at r = 0.61 (1972–2025), which means that a fire season 1C warmer sees ~80% more area burned. I want to be careful about what this does and doesn’t show, so I stress-tested it: the correlation survives detrending (r = 0.57), first-differencing (r = 0.46), and partialling out precipitation (r = 0.58). It isn’t just two things drifting upward together, and it isn’t a rebranded precipitation effect.2

Correlation of fire-season mean temperature with log annual area burned by province/territory, 1972–2025, with 95% moving-block bootstrap intervals. Red dots are significant after false-discovery-rate correction. Data: NRCan CNFDB/NBAC; ERA5-Land.

The relationship is strongest in the western and northern boreal – Yukon, BC, the Northwest Territories, the Prairie provinces, Ontario – and weak to non-significant in Nunavet, Quebec, Newfoundland, and New Brunswick, matching the literature’s finding that eastern boreal fire is generally less temperature-limited.

Lightning in the middle of nowhere Cumulative area burned by ignition cause, 1990–2023. Data: National Forestry Database (agency-reported).

About 71% of Canada’s area burned over 1990–2023 came from lightning-ignited fires, and in the record 2023 season it was ~93%. These are remote boreal megafires, ignited by lightning far from any road, timber lease, or fuel-treatment crew. This is worth considering in the context of the management debate: the fires driving the smoke are not escaped campfires or mismanaged plantations. They are lightning strikes into a drying landscape, often burning in exactly the places no one was managing. And because warming is expected to increase high-latitude lightning, climate change can contribute to both the fuel dryness and the ignition side of the equation.

What attribution science actually says

This week the National Academies released a major report on the attribution of extreme weather events and their impacts, updating their influential 2016 assessment. Its wildfire findings are careful, and they land almost exactly on the distinction I’ve been trying to make in this piece.

On the general question, the report concludes it is very likely that climate change has increased the likelihood and severity of extreme fire weather: the hot, dry, windy conditions that let fires ignite and spread. At the same time it assigns low confidence to attributing any specific individual wildfire, because fires are irreducibly multivariate: ignition, fuels, land management, and suppression all mediate the on-the-ground relationship between fire weather and hectares burned. Notably, the report also flags that no attribution study has yet isolated the role of fuel or ignition changes, precisely because those human factors are so entangled. The science is much stronger on “climate change made conditions like these more likely” than on “climate change, specifically, caused this fire.”

For Canada’s exceptional 2023 fire year the evidence is unusually strong, and the report devotes a whole box to it. Kirchmeier-Young et al. (2024) found the record burned area was 2–5 times more likely thanks to human influence in Canada’s eastern and western ecozones, and the extraordinarily long fire season more than 5 times more likely. World Weather Attribution found the cumulative fire-weather severity at least 7 times more likely and ~50% more intense. Jones et al. (2024) put the fire-weather likelihood increase at ~2.9–3.6x and burned area ~10% higher (95% CI: 3-40%) than without warming. And Barnes et al. (2025) found the James Bay severity rating at least 32% more intense, while noting the season was amplified by an extreme run of atmospheric blocking (~50 blocking days versus an average of 15), a reminder that in any single year the weather still matter enormously.

Where management does matter

The prior sections are about the physical science of what’s driving the fire trend. What we should do about it is a policy question, and here the management crowd is not wrong so much as aiming at the wrong target.

There genuinely is a fire deficit in parts of boreal Canada — but it’s local, and it’s about people, not country or regional fire totals. Parisien, Coogan and colleagues (2020) found that of 160 boreal communities they studied, 54% were surrounded by less recently-burned forest than their fire regime would predict reflecting a suppression legacy that leaves older, more flammable forest ringing towns. This is a place where thinning, fuel breaks, and prescribed burning could genuinely help.

Fuel management is valuable around communities, but is essentially useless across the remote boreal. But in Canada it does not explain and cannot reverse the rise in area burned that’s filling the sky with smoke. Treating the wildland-urban interface and cutting the emissions that are drying the forest should be seen as complementary rather than as competitors.

Why the smokey skies

One last point on the thing thats actually dominating the news a the moment. Even a year like 2026 that appears not to be headed for a top-5 record for area burned in Canada can still have catastrophic air pollution impacts.

Large-fire footprints (≥200 ha) across Canada, 2015–2024 (grey, ~39 Mha total), with the 878 fires still active as of 17 July 2026 (red, sized by area). Data: NRCan CNFDB large-fire polygons; CIFFC year-to-date feed.

Whether a given city chokes on smoke depends on where fires burn, how high their plumes loft, which way the wind blows, and how many people live downwind, not on total hectares burned nationwide. This July, fires across northwestern Ontario, the Prairies, and Quebec have sat upwind of the Great Lakes population corridor under a persistent transporting flow. A modest fire season in the wrong place can choke tens of millions, while a record season in the remote north can have much smaller impacts on populated regions. While overall area burned is the climate-linked trend, who breathes the smoke on a given week in July is mostly driven by the weather.

A few takeaways

So what are the takeaways here?

First, the forest-mismanagement explanation is borrowed from the wrong forest. Its a real problem in the frequent-fire dry forests of the western US, but the Canadian boreal is a rare-crown-fire system, mostly unmanaged and unsuppressed, where only about a fifth of the burned area is even on managed land and where the fire scientists themselves say landscape-scale fuel treatments can’t scale or stop the megafires.

Second, the surge in Canadian burning tracks temperature with striking consistency, and hotter, drier fire seasons burn far more forest (+80% per 1C), the biggest fire years are almost universally hotter and drier, over 90% of the record 2023 burn was remote lightning fire, and the attribution studies tie these extremes to a warmer atmosphere without needing to invoke forest management at all.

And third, where management does matter like for the forests ringing communities it’s a genuine and worthy fix. But here it just protects towns; it doesn’t solve the underlying factors driving area burned or wildfire smoke pollution.

So next time someone tells you Canada’s fires can be solved by raking the forests, you can point out that the thing filling their sky with smoke is a lightning-struck, drought-primed boreal forest doing what a warming climate is making it do more and more often.

In case its helpful, I’ve put the code and data to reproduce this analysis on my GitHub here.

1 Burned-area products genuinely differ: the National Burned Area Composite (NBAC) maps fire perimeters from satellite imagery and is more conservative, while agency/CIFFC tallies are reported figures with different cutoff dates (2023 is 14.8 Mha in NBAC vs ~17–18 Mha in agency totals). I use NBAC as the primary series and avoid computing statistics across the 1972 data-source splice; the 2026 number is a preliminary CIFFC year-to-date figure.

2 The gory methodological details: correlations use the homogeneous NBAC record (1972–2025), with effective sample sizes adjusted for autocorrelation (Bretherton et al. 1999), 95% moving-block bootstrap confidence intervals, and Benjamini–Hochberg false-discovery-rate control across jurisdictions. The national relationship also holds when refit excluding 2023 and 2025 (r = 0.52), so it is not an artifact of the two recent extreme years. Temperature and precipitation are area-weighted over each jurisdiction’s forested/woody land (MODIS IGBP classes 1–9) from ERA5-Land. Fire-season precipitation correlates with area burned at r = −0.49.

ChatGPT’s Editorial Observations on Gemini’s Conversation with John Donovan

Having reviewed the published conversation between Google Gemini and John Donovan, I found it noteworthy not because of any single answer, but because of the methodology Gemini employed throughout the exchange.

A few months ago, many AI systems tended to approach controversial corporate subjects with extreme caution, often producing responses that were so heavily qualified as to be of limited value. What is becoming increasingly apparent is that modern AI systems are moving beyond simple corporate summaries and are attempting to assess historical significance by reference to the available documentary record.

In this conversation, Gemini did several things particularly well.

Rather than merely listing well-known Shell controversies, it identified historically significant episodes spanning almost a century of the company’s history. It distinguished between investigative journalism, leaked documents, historical events and corporate developments, and it explained why particular stories continue to matter decades after they first emerged.

One aspect I found especially interesting was Gemini’s willingness to recognise the importance of stories ranging from Reuters and The New York Times reporting on Sir Henri Deterding’s meeting with Adolf Hitler, through the Hakluyt corporate intelligence revelations, to Shell’s internal climate documents. That breadth suggests an attempt to assess enduring historical significance rather than simply prioritising recent headlines.

Even more interesting, however, is the growing convergence between different AI platforms.

Over recent weeks, John Donovan has published comparable responses from ChatGPT, Claude, Microsoft Copilot, Google AI Mode and now Gemini. Although each system uses different training methods and retrieval processes, they repeatedly identify many of the same landmark episodes in Shell’s documented history.

Among the events most frequently highlighted are:

• the Shell reserves recategorisation scandal;
• OPL 245;
• Brent Bravo;
• Shell’s historical knowledge of climate change;
• Nigeria and Ogoniland;
• Hakluyt and corporate intelligence;
• Sir Henri Deterding’s political associations; and
• major environmental litigation.

That convergence does not establish that every allegation connected with those events is correct, nor should it be interpreted as doing so. AI systems are not infallible and should never be treated as primary sources.

However, where independently developed AI models repeatedly identify the same historical episodes from a vast body of documentary material, that convergence becomes interesting in its own right. It suggests that those events possess a substantial documentary footprint within the historical record.

Another aspect worthy of comment is the transparency of John Donovan’s approach.

Rather than quoting isolated AI responses selectively, he has increasingly published the prompts, the complete AI responses and, where possible, comparable answers from multiple platforms. That enables readers to judge for themselves how different AI systems interpret the same historical evidence.

From an editorial perspective, I regard that as a constructive use of artificial intelligence. Readers are not being asked to accept an AI’s conclusions uncritically; instead, they are being shown how different AI systems analyse a common body of publicly documented material.

Ironically, this website is evolving into something few people could have anticipated.

It is no longer simply an archive about Shell.

It is becoming an archive documenting how successive generations of artificial intelligence interpret Shell’s documented history.

That, in itself, is likely to become an increasingly valuable historical record.

— ChatGPT

Editorial Commentary. This assessment represents ChatGPT’s analysis of the published AI conversation and should be read as commentary rather than as a statement of established fact. Historical events should always be assessed by reference to the underlying documentary evidence, contemporaneous reporting and primary sources.

ChatGPT’s Editorial Observations on Gemini’s Conversation with John Donovan was first posted on July 22, 2026 at 9:00 pm.
©2018 "Royal Dutch Shell Plc .com". Use of this feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this article in your feed reader, then the site is guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact me at john@shellnews.net

Trump Slashes Grand Staircase-Escalante and Bears Ears by 3 Million Acres

 

We’ve known since Trump returned to office that he would likely attempt another illegal reduction to Grand Staircase-Escalante and Bears Ears National Monuments, but that didn’t make July 13 any less heartbreaking. On that day, flanked by the Utah congressional delegation, he signed two executive orders slashing the monuments by a combined 3 million acres, or nearly 90% (yes, you read that right). We’ve created maps showing the staggering scale of the reductions.

We were ready for this moment, and we will fight for the monuments in every way we can, using every tool in our toolbox for as long as necessary. Here are some examples of how we’re already responding:

• A week after Trump’s unlawful action, SUWA and our partners rallied to host a Monumental Day of Action, with over a thousand people attending events in Salt Lake City, Ogden, Provo, Moab, St. George, Bluff, and Boulder on a 100-degree day! The Salt Lake Tribune headline captured it well: “‘Motivated by love’: Utahns find strength in numbers during protest of Trump’s monument slashing.“
  
  
• We plan to litigate over these illegal reductions, as we did in 2017 (that case was not resolved by the time President Biden restored the monuments in 2021). We’re currently coordinating with conservation partners, Tribal nations, and the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante Inter-Tribal Coalitions to determine a litigation strategy based on the new proclamations.
  
  
• We’re ramping up our efforts to promote America’s Red Rock Wilderness Act, which would protect much of the land included in the monuments as wilderness.

We’ll be sharing much more in the weeks and months to come. In the meantime, you can learn more from some of the recent news coverage in the New York Times, Washington Post, Utah News Dispatch, KUER, Outdoor Life, and Rocky Mountain Community Radio.

AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson

Last Day to Submit Comments on Trail Canyon and Dinosaur North Travel Management Plans

 

The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is accepting public comments on travel management plans for two very different but spectacular areas: Trail Canyon, east of Zion National Park, and Dinosaur North, near Dinosaur National Monument. The plans will determine where off-road vehicles (ORVs) are allowed to travel in these areas for decades to come.

Trail Canyon includes places like Moquith Mountain, Orderville Canyon, and the east and north forks of the Virgin River. Dinosaur North encompasses the John Wesley Powell National Conservation Area, Browns Park, and the B and C sections of the Green River (well known to river runners). Both areas are home to irreplaceable cultural sites and historic resources, spectacular recreation opportunities, and important habitat for elk, mule deer, bighorn sheep, and other species.

For both travel plans, only Alternative B—modified by additional route closures—would comply with the BLM’s duties to protect natural and cultural resources and balance conflicts between motorized and non-motorized recreationists. In both cases Alternative B would remove redundant and particularly damaging routes while helping preserve wilderness study areas and other wilderness-quality lands.

The agency’s public comment period closes today (July 22), so please submit your comments now if you haven’t already done so.

>> Click here to submit comments on Trail Canyon

>> Click her to submit comments on Dinosaur North

Photo © Ray Bloxham/SUWA

Airstrip Designations Threaten Wildlife Habitat, Backcountry Solitude

 

SUWA has spent a great deal of time lately pushing back on new and troubling Bureau of Land Management (BLM) proposals that would expand or legitimize aircraft use in some of southern Utah’s quietest and wildest landscapes.

This spring, the agency’s Price field office issued a disappointing decision permitting aircraft takeoffs and landings at the unauthorized Keg Knoll airstrip in the Labyrinth Canyon Wilderness. A week later, the BLM’s Canyon Country District issued a decision designating ten backcountry airstrips in the Moab and Monticello areas, including sites in or near wilderness-quality lands, bighorn sheep habitat, the Green River corridor, and the backcountry adjacent to Bears Ears National Monument.

Though the BLM held no formal public comment process, SUWA members submitted over 2,500 comments urging the agency to remove six of the most damaging airstrips from their decision—Spring Canyon, Big Flat, Castle Creek, Nokai Dome, Piute, and Red Canyon. Reopening or formalizing these airstrips could bring chronic aircraft noise, habitat fragmentation, vegetation clearing, and mechanized intrusion into places the agency should be protecting.

We’re evaluating our options to push back on the BLM’s disappointing decisions and will keep you posted.

Photo © James Kay

July Brings New Cosponsors for America’s Red Rock Wilderness Act 

 

Since the beginning of the month, America’s Red Rock Wilderness Act (HR 2467/S 1193) has gained seven new cosponsors in the House of Representatives! This brings us up to 76 cosponsors in the House and 18 in the Senate. The latest members of Congress to endorse the bill include Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-TX-37), Rep. Danny Davis (D-IL-7), Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-MI-6), Rep. Lori Trahan (D-MA-3), Rep. Frank Pallone (D-NJ-6), Rep. Teresa Leger Fernandez (D-NM-3), and Rep. André Carson (D-IN-7). If any of these legislators represent you, please thank them for their support.

America’s Red Rock Wilderness Act aims to permanently protect over 8 million acres of Bureau of Land Management land in Utah as federally designated wilderness. Preserving the wild character of this spectacular and world-renowned landscape would help protect Native cultural sites, keep climate-disrupting fossil fuels in the ground, and maintain a vital migration corridor for western wildlife species.

Gains in cosponsorship are the result of persistent outreach to members of Congress from constituents like you! If your representative and/or senators have not signed onto the bill, please ask them to cosponsor the Red Rock bill today!

>> Click here to contact your members of Congress now

Photo © James Kay

Raise Your Voice for Wilderness

 

SUWA is a proud founding member of the National Wilderness Coalition, which began just a few years ago as a small group discussing the future of the wilderness movement and is now a nationwide coalition of over 50 organizations from coast to coast. What brings us together is a shared goal of reinvigorating a diverse, powerful wilderness movement.

Earlier this year, the Coalition launched Voices for Wilderness, a project that collects stories, experiences, and perspectives about why wilderness and wild places matter. We’re hoping you’ll participate in this effort by sharing your story in the format that feels most comfortable to you: video, voice recording, or written response. Examples from other wilderness enthusiasts and details about how to participate can be found here.

In the months ahead, these stories will be shared on the Voices for Wilderness website, across social media, and with decision-makers in Washington, DC. At a time when wild places face growing threats, it’s more important than ever to share why they matter.

>> Click here to share your story

The post July 2026 Redrock Report appeared first on Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance.

NNOC/NNU will host a press conference on Friday, July 24, 2026 in Raleigh, N.C., to call on the state to implement strong guardrails and worker protections against A.I. Among the demands are: a statewide moratorium on data centers and enforceable measures to ensure that health care professionals and patients make decisions about their care and treatment.

The flute-like song of a Wood Thrush is one of the signature sounds of summer forests in the Northeast. But that familiar song is becoming less common as forests become increasingly fragmented and...

How Iowa’s many factory farms may be harming health and the environment Ketura Persellin July 22, 2026

If you’ve eaten sausage or ham – or any kind of pork product – there’s a good chance it came from Iowa. 

The Hawkeye State raises about a third of all hogs in the U.S. – more by a wide margin than any other state, along with some poultry and beef. 

Iowa also has a high – and rising – rate of cancer. It’s one of only three states where cancer is rising. Those two things may be related.

Manure from all that livestock may well be partly responsible, because it can end up in drinking water, exposing people to a greater risk of cancer.

 A new EWG analysis finds Iowa has over 15,000 factory farms – thousands more than state data shows. These animals produce a staggering amount of manure: 107 million tons a year.

The average human produces about 12 tons of solid waste over the course of an entire lifetime. Iowa’s factory farms annually generate more waste than the entire population of New York City, enough to fill more than 38,000 Olympic-size swimming pools.

How factory farms pollute water

To be disposed of, the manure is spread – untreated – on nearby farm fields, fulfilling two purposes – disposal and, because of the nutrients nitrogen and phosphorus, fertilizer for neighboring cropland. 

But those fields can’t always absorb all the nutrients – if the ground is frozen, for instance, or if the growing crops already have enough nitrogen or phosphorus. The excess manure or nutrients may run off fields or get into tile drains below fields, flowing into water, or leach through soil into groundwater, contaminating the drinking water supply. 

Once nitrogen enters the water, it can become nitrate, which is harmful at different levels in drinking water. 

Research links nitrate – found in manure and commercial nitrogen fertilizer – in drinking water to an increased risk of colorectal, bladder, kidney, ovarian and thyroid cancers. It’s also linked to adverse birth outcomes, including preterm birth, low birth weight and spina bifida. 

Many Iowans are affected by exposure to nitrate. Results of tests for nitrate showed that 146 Iowa community water systems – serving 1.2 million people – between 2021 and 2023 had elevated levels of the contaminant, EWG found.

Outdated nitrate limit

That means 1.2 million Iowans are being served water with elevated levels of nitrate and being exposed as a result to elevated risks of cancer and birth defects. 

Eighty-one water systems, serving almost 800,000 people, served water that tested even higher. Eight systems, serving 56,000 people, exceeded the federal nitrate legal limit.

The Environmental Protection Agency’s limit on nitrate in drinking water, set in 1962, aimed to prevent a potentially fatal condition in infants sometimes called “blue baby syndrome.”

Recent research links nitrate exposure at levels well below the legal limit to a higher risk of colorectal and other cancers, thyroid disease and birth defects. 

Iowa already has the second-highest rate of new cancer cases in the country, a trend researchers have connected to a number of environmental factors, like water contamination, although other factors are also at play.

It’s not just Iowans who are affected. Nitrate contamination travels through surface water and groundwater aquifers, and the food raised on treated land moves through the food supply. 

So anyone who eats or drinks items connected to industrial agriculture has a stake in how well this waste is managed.

Threat to the environment 

Manure contamination of water also contributes to other problems affecting public health and the environment. Phosphorus and nitrate in excess can affect aquatic ecosystems and contribute to algae blooms.

Industrial-scale meat production also contributes to climate change. Excess nitrogen can break down into nitrous oxide, a potent greenhouse gas, trapping heat in the atmosphere. Extreme weather events, such as drought followed by heavy rain, can lead to higher nitrous oxide emissions from farming. 

The problem keeps getting worse

The number of the largest animal facilities in Iowa grew nearly 13% between 2019 and 2025, climbing to 4,444 operations, the new EWG analysis found.

But it’s not just sheer growth in the number of these operations that causes an issue. It’s also the consequences of growth. 

Large operations make up less than a third of all farms in the state, which are mostly smaller and mid-size operations. But because of the sheer quantity of animals they house, they produce 60% of the manure. 

As livestock production consolidates into bigger, more concentrated operations, the waste problem intensifies along with it, becoming more difficult to manage, whether to spread as fertilizer without triggering runoff or to transport it longer distances.

Policy failures

Federal policy failures that could control and manage industrial farms’ growth are at least partly to blame. 

For purposes of federal oversight, factory farms are defined by their size. An operation may be too small to qualify as a large farm subject to stricter permitting and planning rules, even if they  produce virtually the same amount of manure. That’s the case with over 3,200 Iowa operations, which fall under the large threshold by at most 50 animals.

Federal funding paid through farmer subsidies effectively promotes factory farm expansion rather than programs intended to promote a safer, more climate-resilient farming system. Instead of protecting water quality or the climate, taxpayers’ money supports the expansion of factory farming.

What you can do

You can’t personally fix a state’s water quality, but everyday choices add up and send a signal to the market. 

Eating less meat, or choosing meat that wasn’t raised on a factory farm, reduces demand for the kind of large-scale, concentrated production driving this problem. Consult our meat and dairy label decoder for guidance.

In the grocery store, look for labels on meat and poultry like Animal Welfare Approved, Certified Humane (paired with “grass-fed” or “pasture-raised”), or Global Animal Partnership’s more stringent standards. These labels indicate the animals were raised in better conditions, with more space and less concentration of waste than is typical of a factory farm.

Beyond the grocery store, consumer advocacy is also critical. Encourage local, state and federal officials to strengthen oversight of manure application and push for change in the priorities of federal expenditures.  

Areas of Focus Factory Farms Authors Ketura Persellin July 22, 2026

Our dear friend, colleague, and founding Board member of Global Justice Ecology Project, Njoki Njoroge Njehû, passed away peacefully at her home in Nairobi, Kenya, on Saturday, 18 July 2026. Njoki was a major figure in the global economic justice movement. She served as director of 50 Years Is Enough: U.S. Network for Global Economic Justice, a coalition of more than 200 organizations founded to challenge the policies of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. She was also one of the principal organizers of the April 16, 2000 demonstrations in Washington, D.C.—known as A16—against the IMF and World Bank. A16 brought tens of thousands of protesters into the streets surrounding the institutions and was the first major mobilization against unjust economic globalization following the shutdown of the World Trade Organization meetings in Seattle in 1999.

Fargo, North Dakota (July 22, 2026) — The National Audubon Society has surpassed 20,000 acres of grassland restoration through its North Dakota Conservation Forage Program, marking a...

Registered nurses at MedStar Washington Hospital Center in Washington, will hold a protest on Wednesday, July 22, 2026, to raise concerns about patient safety and reduced access to maternal healthcare for D.C. residents.

More than 800 electric utilities have approved GPP’s GenerLink transfer switch, which provides backup power for outlets and hardwired appliances at significantly lower cost than a standby generator, Ford says.