News Feeds

Global Tapestry of Alternatives: People’s Bandung Declaration [ English ] [ Español ] [ Français ] [ Português] [ Kurdish] Issued after the second in-person Assembly of the Global of held in Bandung, Indonesia, 11-17 April 2026 To the peoples of the world and to those struggling against any and all forms of oppression and injustices. To all of life, including all non-human species. To the nation-state governments of the world, and to international institutions.TapestryAlternativesalternativ…

If drivers of gasoline cars refrained from speeding, they would collectively save an average of 57,000 metric tons of carbon emissions every day in the United States—while spending less than a minute more behind the wheel, a new study reveals.

“We are presenting a somewhat obvious, but impactful, way to reduce energy and emissions that doesn’t require a new vehicle or new technology, just backing off the accelerator pedal,” says study team member William Northrop, professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Minnesota.

The analysis proceeds from a simple and well-known proposition: driving fast is disproportionately energy intensive, as drag force increases exponentially with speed and the engine burns more and more fuel. “That’s physics,” Northrop says.

But no one had ever added up the impact at a national scale before.

In the new study, Northrop and University of Minnesota graduate student Bharat Jayaprakash analyzed a database of more than 120 million actual trips made by light-duty vehicles such as cars, SUVs, and pickup trucks across the United States to gain insight into how often and how fast drivers speed.

They used a computer model to quantify the energy consumption, fuel cost, and carbon emissions from the actual vehicle trips. Then they modeled what would happen if those same trips had all taken place without the drivers ever exceeding posted speed limits.

Driving the speed limit would save an average of 6.7 million gallons of fuel, 57,000 metric tons of carbon emissions, and $22 million in fuel costs daily across the United States, the researchers found.

 

.IRPP_ruby , .IRPP_ruby .postImageUrl , .IRPP_ruby .centered-text-area {height: auto;position: relative;}.IRPP_ruby , .IRPP_ruby:hover , .IRPP_ruby:visited , .IRPP_ruby:active {border:0!important;}.IRPP_ruby .clearfix:after {content: "";display: table;clear: both;}.IRPP_ruby {display: block;transition: background-color 250ms;webkit-transition: background-color 250ms;width: 100%;opacity: 1;transition: opacity 250ms;webkit-transition: opacity 250ms;background-color: #eaeaea;}.IRPP_ruby:active , .IRPP_ruby:hover {opacity: 1;transition: opacity 250ms;webkit-transition: opacity 250ms;background-color: inherit;}.IRPP_ruby .postImageUrl {background-position: center;background-size: cover;float: left;margin: 0;padding: 0;width: 31.59%;position: absolute;top: 0;bottom: 0;}.IRPP_ruby .centered-text-area {float: right;width: 65.65%;padding:0;margin:0;}.IRPP_ruby .centered-text {display: table;height: 130px;left: 0;top: 0;padding:0;margin:0;padding-top: 20px;padding-bottom: 20px;}.IRPP_ruby .IRPP_ruby-content {display: table-cell;margin: 0;padding: 0 74px 0 0px;position: relative;vertical-align: middle;width: 100%;}.IRPP_ruby .ctaText {border-bottom: 0 solid #fff;color: #0099cc;font-size: 14px;font-weight: bold;letter-spacing: normal;margin: 0;padding: 0;font-family:'Arial';}.IRPP_ruby .postTitle {color: #000000;font-size: 16px;font-weight: 600;letter-spacing: normal;margin: 0;padding: 0;font-family:'Arial';}.IRPP_ruby .ctaButton {background: url(https://www.anthropocenemagazine.org/wp-content/plugins/intelly-related-posts-pro/assets/images/next-arrow.png)no-repeat;background-color: #afb4b6;background-position: center;display: inline-block;height: 100%;width: 54px;margin-left: 10px;position: absolute;bottom:0;right: 0;top: 0;}.IRPP_ruby:after {content: "";display: block;clear: both;}Recommended Reading:In a comparison of life-cycle emissions, EVs crushed combustion cars

 

Why don’t people comply with posted speed limits? Mostly, because they want to save time. But the analysis shows that slowing down would only add about 190 seconds of drive time per 100 miles traveled—which works out to about 54 seconds per day for the average driver.

“The core takeaway is that the individual time savings gained from speeding are statistically negligible, but the collective environmental and economic costs are massive,” Jayaprakash says.

Obeying the speed limit only cuts fuel consumption by about 2.4-3%, depending on the time of year. But across the United States, that all adds up to an annual fuel savings equivalent to taking about 5.5 million passenger cars off the road.

Plus, the savings estimate is likely a conservative one since the researchers only evaluated speeding on roads with posted speed limits of at least 45 miles per hour.

The team also analyzed the effect of speeding on energy use and emissions generated by EVs in California (the only state where there are enough EVs for a statistically significant analysis). This investigation showed that obeying speed limits would yield small but collectively significant savings for EV drivers too: a single day’s savings of 195 megawatt hours of electricity could power 82 EVs for an entire year.

“There is no free lunch here; no matter what vehicle you drive, speeding and aggressive driving cost energy regardless of what energy source powers it,” Northrop says; the stop-speeding strategy remains important even as the vehicle fleet goes electric.

Source: Jayaprakash B. and W. F. Northrop. et al. “Speeding incurs substantial environmental and economic costs nationwide for negligible travel time savings.” Communications Sustainability 2026.

Image: © Anthropocene Magazine.

Sixty years after surveyors first uncovered evidence of a sprawling coral reef off the West African nation of Benin, scientists have at last found the reef.

Read more on E360 →

Miatta Fahnbulleh has been appointed secretary of state for energy security and net zero in the new Andy Burnham government.

She replaces Ed Miliband, who has become foreign secretary.

Miattta Fahnbulleh. Photo: UK Government

Ms Fahnbulleh, the MP for Peckham since 2024, was previously a junior housing minister (September 2025-May 2026) and a junior minister at the department of energy security and net zero (July 2024-September 2025).

In 2024, the Guardian said of her:

“Fahnbulleh has pushed hard for serious action on the climate crisis and has advocated more urgency in the UK’s response. She is likely to be the big brain of the party’s soft left.”

She told LabourList in 2025 the route to long-term savings in energy was “weaning ourselves off fossil fuels and wholesale on the global market, which is why we are moving to deliver clean home-grown energy at such pace”.

She said:

“When we started, people were quite sceptical if we could get to clean energy by 2030. I think everyone has been staggered at the pace that we are driving through the things we need to do; removing the ban on onshore wind, the biggest ever auction that’s been delivered for renewables.

“We are absolutely driving it – and in the end, that is the way in which we will get bills down.”

Before becoming an MP, Ms Fahnbulleh was chief executive of the New Economics Foundation (2017-2023). She also worked as the director of policy and research at the Institute for Public Policy Research and was head of cities in the policy unit at the Cabinet Office (2011-2013).

She studied philosophy, politics and economics at University of Oxford and has a PhD in economic development from the London School of Economics.

She was born in Liberia and was brought to the UK in 1986 as a five-year-old by her parents fleeing the country’s civil war.

Reaction

Friends of the Earth energy lead, Imogen Dow, said:

“As someone who’s been vocal about the need to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels and did a lot to shape the government’s Warm Homes Plan under Ed Miliband, it’s encouraging that Miatta Fahnbulleh has been appointed as his successor.

“She will, of course, inherit the same challenges. She must hold the line against harmful fossil fuel expansion – including the highly contentious Jackdaw and Rosebank fields – make cheap, clean energy available to all and build on Ed Miliband’s efforts to scale up our renewable power capacity.

“Today’s announcement to cut VAT from energy bills is certainly a step in the right direction, but this should come alongside a new social tariff to help those on the lowest incomes, which will make a meaningful difference in the long-term. Insulating more homes and boosting Britain’s homegrown wind and solar power production are how we can also drive down bills and slash climate-warming emissions for good.”

Other cabinet appointments

Chancellor: John Healey, former defence secretary and treasury minister

Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster: Louise Haigh

Foreign secretary: Ed Miliband

Home secretary: Shabana Mahmood

Defence: Wes Streeting

Health and social care: Yvette Cooper

Education: Lucy Powell

Work and pensions: Pat McFadden

Housing: Angela Rayner

Business: Jonathan Reynolds

Equalities (minister): Bridget Phillipson

Culture: Lisa Nandy

Justice and Lord Chancellor: Alex Norris

Transport: Heidi Alexander

Environment: Angela Eagle

Northern Ireland: Chris Bryant

Scotland: Douglas Alexander

Wales: Stephen Kinnock

Chief secretary to the Treasury: Emma Reynolds

Chief whip: Anneliese Midgley

Attorney general: Ellie Reeves

Leader of the Commons: Alan Campbell

Leader of the Lords: Baroness Angela Smith of Basildon

Intergovernmental relations (minister): Hamish Falconer

Artificial intelligence (minister): Kanishka Narayan

Housing (minister): Matthew Pennycook

Updated 12.31 with reaction from Friends of the Earth to appointment of new energy secretary

Last night, I slept beneath the stars in the mountains and wondered. As darkness dissolved the contours of the trees into shadow, the night sky revealed itself in astonishing detail. In that vastness, my thoughts wandered between the known and the unknown.

For as long as humans have existed, we have looked toward the stars and the horizon, asking enduring questions: Where did we come from? Who are we becoming? And how do we shape what comes next?

Across cultures, answers to these questions often emerged through food and our relationships with the living world. In the origin stories of communities across Southwest China, the Himalayan foothills, and Southeast Asia, humans emerged from a gourd. In the Maya creation story, humans are formed from maize. In other traditions, people emerged from rice, yams, coconuts, animals, fertile landscapes, and the earth itself. In Abrahamic traditions, humans are created from the earth and placed within a garden, where nourishment shapes humanity’s earliest story.

Food was origin. Across cultures, humanity understood itself emerging from the living world. These origin stories explained our beginnings and expanded humanity’s sense of what was possible. Wonder has always done this. It expands the boundaries of what we believe is possible, allowing us to imagine futures that do not yet exist.

For more than 95 percent of our existence as a species, we lived within the living world by hunting, gathering, fishing, foraging, and moving with the rhythms of landscapes, seasons, and the migrations of other living beings. Then, over thousands of years, communities in different parts of the world began one of humanity’s most consequential expansions of possibility: saving seeds, domesticating plants and animals, and cultivating the landscapes that would eventually give rise to villages, civilizations, and the food systems we know today.

Agriculture emerged as people responded to changing conditions with necessity, curiosity, and imagination. The first cultivators learned by observing the living world: the relationships between seed and soil, rain and harvest, seasons and scarcity. Perhaps they noticed seeds sprouting in the disturbed soils around campsites and wondered what might happen if those seeds were planted with intention. Through generations of experimentation, gathering gradually gave rise to cultivation, one of humanity’s defining transformations.

Agriculture reshaped humanity’s relationship with food, living systems, and one another. People remained rooted in place as trade routes connected distant landscapes through the exchange of foods, seeds, knowledge, culture, and conquest. Villages and new forms of governance emerged. Communities formed around shared labor and stewardship. Farmers, seed keepers, tool makers, healers, artisans, traders, and storytellers all became part of the living web that allowed communities to flourish. Like every food systems transformation, agriculture expanded possibility while creating new responsibilities and unintended consequences.

These relationships shape food systems around the world. I have witnessed them with remarkable clarity in one of the most biodiverse and resilient food systems I have ever encountered: Akha communities in Yunnan Province in the Upper Mekong River Basin.

For the Akha, a food system is community. The food system does not create the community. Communities co-create the food system with the living world.

Over time, I asked Akha elders what makes a community. They taught me that a community is created through the relationships and elements that sustain life across generations: seeds, fire, the shaman, the knowledge of cultivation, the silversmith who forges the agricultural tools, and the tools themselves. No single element creates a community. It is the relationships among them that allow a community to emerge and flourish.

People plant trees for their grandchildren that they themselves may never harvest. In that simple act lies a profound understanding of what sustains life.

Food systems are often defined by their structures and functions: the people, places, institutions, and activities that produce, process, distribute, consume, and dispose of food. Those structures and functions matter, yet they emerge from something deeper. A food system is the living web of relationships that sustains life across generations.

The relationships we cultivate shape what becomes possible. When those relationships flourish, food systems flourish. We flourish.

Food systems transformation begins by reimagining our relationships and what we believe is possible and who are we becoming.

For millennia, stars guided humanity toward horizons it could not yet fully see, from the way finders of Polynesia to cultures around the world guided by the night sky.

Food systems transformation is much the same. We know the world we are leaving behind. There is gratitude for what has sustained us, relief for what we are ready to release, and loss for what may not come with us. While we cannot fully see what lies beyond the horizon, wonder invites us forward.

Years ago, while preparing a seminar on what I had learned throughout my career, I realized that the familiar arc of scientific discovery never captured the whole story. When I shared this with my husband, he responded, “Talk about the liminal space.” That idea stayed with me.

Derived from the Latin limen, meaning threshold, anthropologists use liminality to describe the space between one way of being and another, where familiar assumptions begin to dissolve before new ones have fully emerged.

Liminality is often mistaken for uncertainty. From the perspective of history, the liminal space is where innovations are born. Innovation is not always invention; sometimes it is the rediscovery of enduring relationships in new contexts.

As the health of people and the planet comes under increasing strain, our capacity to understand and shape the future is expanding in extraordinary ways. Just as we have long looked to the stars, we are discovering new universes closer to home, in our soils, our food, and our gut. Artificial intelligence is synthesizing relationships across ecosystems, molecules, microbes, and human biology at a scale and precision previously beyond our reach, opening new frontiers of discovery. Regenerative agriculture is restoring relationships with soil and biodiversity while drawing upon knowledge cultivated across generations.

Wonder has always expanded what we believe is possible. Now it invites us to decide what possibilities we pursue, what relationships we carry forward, what values guide us, and ultimately, who we are becoming and how we shape what comes next.

In my early years of teaching food systems, I noticed something unexpected that now seems obvious. As students moved deeper into their degree program, many began to lose hope. Complexity does not necessarily expand our sense of possibility; without hope, imagination, and resilience, it can narrow it. It made me question how we teach food systems and the stories we tell about them. In preparing food systems leaders, we need to cultivate knowledge, hope, resilience, and the capacity to imagine and co-create what comes next.

Resilient people create resilient communities, and resilient communities co-create resilient food systems with the living world. Every day, we make decisions that shape the food system that future generations will inherit, from the crops farmers plant and how they steward their land to the meals families prepare, the investments funders support, and the policies that govern our food environments.

We often search for a single innovation or policy that will transform everything. History suggests otherwise. Innovation may expand our capability, but it cannot tell us what future is worth creating. That remains profoundly human.

The most enduring transformations emerge from cultivating the relationships and values that shape what becomes possible.

Systems thinker Fritjof Capra reminds us that the horizon is not a destination but a guide. As we move toward it, it moves with us. We never fully arrive because every horizon reveals another beyond it. The same is true of food systems transformation. Every discovery reshapes our understanding. Every challenge reveals new possibilities. Every possibility reveals another horizon.

As I look back to the stars, I wonder what stories my daughter and the generations that follow will tell about who we chose to become and the relationships we chose to cultivate with the living world.

We are becoming the ancestors of future food systems.

This essay is part of Food Tank’s Flourish Series: Food and Health from Molecules to Systems, authored by Selena Ahmed, exploring how food connects us to the living world while asking what it means to flourish. For more in the series, click here. 

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

The post Op-Ed | Food Systems at the Threshold: Wonder Between What Is and What Could Be appeared first on Food Tank.

Headline News:

• “Construction Surge Pushes US Wind Outlook Higher” • The US wind industry is on track to connect more than 50 GW of capacity through 2030, Wood Mackenzie said in its US Wind Energy Monitor Q2 2026 report. The research group raised its five-year outlook, noting that construction starts increased 8% from Q1 2025 to Q1 2026. [reNews]

Wind farm (Ørsted image)

• “Deal Sealed To Unlock 3.56 GW Capacity In NSW Renewable Energy Zone” • The New South Wales government’s planned South West Renewable Energy Zone is closer to delivery after EnergyCo signed a Project Development Deed with Transgrid to upgrade a key section of the grid to support 3.56 GW of new renewable energy capacity. [pv magazine Australia]
• “Oil Prices Rise As Fighting Between US And Iran Intensifies” • Oil prices rose as fighting between the US and Iran intensified. Oil prices jumped in early trading as the US announced attacks for a ninth consecutive night. Iran responded to the strikes by targeting US allies across the Middle East. Benchmark Brent crude rose 3.2% to $90.95 per barrel. [Euronews]
• “Court Orders EPA To Implement National Soot Standard” • The US District Court for the Northern District of California ruled that the US EPA must follow the law and implement the strengthened health-based 2024 National Ambient Air Quality Standard for particulate matter (PM2.5) air pollution, commonly called soot. [CleanTechnica]
• “The US Needs 5,000 Miles Of New High-Voltage Lines Every Year. It Only Built 392” • Some transmission experts say the grid needs about 5,000 miles of new lines. The additions reached almost 4,000 miles in 2013. In 2025, the industry added 402 miles. Before we supply AI with electricity, we have to know where it will come from. [OilPrice.com]

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

The NFU believes that the NPF must prioritize five policy pillars: generational renewal; growing local markets and regional trade; food security through food sovereignty; long-term public agriculture research; and climate resilience.

The post Canada: The Next Agricultural Policy Framework Must Centre Food Sovereignty, says NFU appeared first on La Via Campesina - EN.

When the Strait of Hormuz first closed at the start of the 2026 Iran war, the world braced for the “largest energy crisis in history.” Before the conflict began, almost 20 percent of the world’s traded oil passed through the narrow waterway between the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman. Iran’s blockade of the strait effectively erased 15 million barrels per day from circulation overnight. 

Many experts and commentators predicted that the supply gap would have catastrophic consequences. Australia expected fuel rationing, the European airline industry warned of mass flight cancellations, and Goldman Sachs predicted widespread oil shortages. The International Monetary Fund warned of a potential global recession, and some traders worried that oil prices could hit $200 a barrel.

But a little over four months into the war, little of that has come to pass. 

TimelineHow the oil market has handled the Iran warFebruary 28The United States and Israel launch a joint military operation against Iran.MarchIran retaliates and announces that it has closed the Strait of Hormuz. Benchmark oil prices rise above $100 a barrel.

The International Energy Agency announces a coordinated strategic reserve release of around 400 million barrels from more than 30 countries, including the United States.

Governments across Asia introduce energy-saving measures such as remote work mandates and restrictions on who can drive.AprilThe United States and other countries increase domestic crude production and exports, filling the gap created by the closure of the strait.MayBrent crude rises toward around $120 a barrel, its highest level on the year, as traders fear a prolonged supply disruption.JuneOn June 17, the United States and Iran sign a ceasefire agreement. Commercial shipping resumes through the Strait of Hormuz, and benchmark oil prices fall back to about $70 per barrel.JulyThe ceasefire breaks down. The U.S. announces a new blockade of Iranian oil and Iran announces new transit requirements for the Strait of Hormuz. Prices rise back to about $85 per barrel.

True, oil prices have gone up around the world, and there have been critical shortages of products such as cooking oil in some places, but rationing and recession have largely not arrived. Instead, a series of emergency measures have helped avoid the predicted crises: Oil exporters including the United States stepped in to fill the gap, either by drawing down strategic petroleum reserves or increasing production. Countries that were most reliant on fossil fuel imports from the Middle East took emergency conservation measures to reduce their demand. 

Here’s how the world has averted the worst of the oil shock so far, and what experts say might happen next if the conflict continues to drag on.

Finding alternative sources of oil

In the months since Hormuz cut off access to Iran’s main oil supply, the world has scraped every corner to find substitute barrels of crude oil. Many countries had stockpiles of oil saved up for an emergency, and in March, the International Energy Agency coordinated a historic release of oil from those reserves. That put on the market more than 400 million barrels, enough to fill about 20 days’ worth of the supply from Hormuz. 

A U.S. flag flies over Marathon Petroleum Corp’s Los Angeles Refinery, one of the largest oil refineries in North America in March 2026 in Carson, California.
David McNew / Getty Images

In addition, oil producers around the world ramped up production to take advantage of elevated prices. The United States, Venezuela, and Norway all pumped out more crude in the first half of the year than they had in previous months, with those additional barrels going to countries that had previously relied on shipments from Iraq and Saudi Arabia. South Korea, for instance, doubled its oil imports from the United States between February and April of this year. Iraq and Saudi also routed more than 6 million barrels of oil per day through land pipelines that were operating below capacity, skirting the strait altogether.

China, the world’s largest oil importer, also helped stabilize the world market. It stopped buying oil for its own strategic reserve after the war began, and it also stopped purchasing crude for its own domestic refineries, shutting them down for months. To generate electricity, it pivoted to coal and solar. These measures together freed up another 5 million barrels per day for the world market.

Using less oil

Even as the world scrambled to replace Middle East oil, the Asian countries that rely on it moved aggressively to slash their usage. Many nations idled their factories and industrial facilities that use petroleum-based liquids, which shaved off a few million more barrels a day. Some increased imports of electric vehicles or accelerated plans to adopt solar and wind technology to reduce their dependence on foreign oil and gas. But the vast majority of imported oil is used for transportation and power generation, so in order to weather the crisis, countries also needed to change consumer behavior.

Read Next The Iran war is destroying oil demand. Could it also spark a shift to clean energy? Kate Yoder

More than 100 countries enacted some form of conservation measure, ranging from limits on elevator usage to outright restrictions on when people could drive. The Philippines, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka all moved to a four-day work week, and Myanmar restricted gas vehicles to driving every other day based on the number of one’s license plate. Bangladesh limited air conditioning temperatures to 77 degrees Fahrenheit and closed public university buildings. This helped reduce demand on a power grid that runs on imported oil and liquefied natural gas, much of which also comes through Hormuz.

Some wealthier countries in Europe got even more ambitious: The Netherlands, for instance, allowed citizens to trade in gas cars for electric ones, and Sweden halved the cost of public transportation fares.

Consumers wait to fill gas cylinders at the Nepal Oil Corporation depot in Kathmandu, Nepal, in March. Across much of Asia, cooking gas is in sort supply due to the Iran conflict.
Subaas Shrestha / NurPhoto via Getty Images

These conservation measures likely prevented an out-of-control price spiral, giving importers time to procure more oil from other nations. They also likely saved Asian countries from needing to impose extended periods of rationing the way the United States had to do during the oil crisis of the 1970s, the largest previous disruption to the world’s oil supply.

“There have been multiple measures taken by governments both on the supply and demand side, but mainly on the demand side for large oil importers,” said Kevin Morrison, an analyst at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis who focuses on oil and gas in Australia. “This is a trend that is likely to continue as the uncertainty around future oil supplies remains uncertain.”

How long can these tactics last?

Even though the most dire early predictions haven’t borne out, the closure has not been easy. In the early days of the crisis, before countries procured substitute fuel, price spikes and supply disruptions in Asia altered millions of lives. Taxi drivers in Myanmar lost their livelihoods and funeral homes shut cremation services for lack of fuel. A lack of fertilizer during key rice planting times in Asia will likely hamper harvests later this year, contributing to higher food prices.

Aside from crude oil, the war has caused shortages of other goods like helium and sulfur, shipments of which also pass through the Strait of Hormuz. This has contributed to broader inflation for everything from nickel to semiconductors.

A natural gas delivery worker waits at a red light with tanks of gas strapped to their motorcycle in Bangkok, Thailand, in April The cost of living in Thailand is increasing as petroleum prices skyrocket amid the U.S.-Israel war on Iran.
Matt Hunt / Anadolu via Getty Images

The market shifts of the last few months have had consequences even in places like the United States that could afford a consistent supply of oil. Refiners around the world have produced more jet fuel to keep airlines supplied, but that means they have also produced less gasoline for cars. As the U.S. heads into the peak summer driving season, its gasoline inventories are as low as they have been in a decade. Supplies could drop even lower this fall as companies perform delayed maintenance on their hard-working refineries, said Bob McNally, the founder of the analysis group Rapidan Energy Group, who also advised the administration of President George W. Bush on oil policy.

It may soon get a lot worse. Even though global oil prices have fallen from their peak, there’s still a fundamental mismatch between oil demand and oil supply. As a result, experts say the world could still experience severe economic disruption later this year if the strait remains closed. Some vessel traffic resumed through the Strait of Hormuz last month following a tentative agreement between the United States and Iran, but the ceasefire has collapsed and Iran now says the strait is closed again. 

Read Next The war in Iran could plunge the world into hunger Ayurella Horn-Muller

“The market decided at the end of Round 1 to price for perfection” in an Iran deal, McNally said. “Instead, we’re getting Round 2. We played some tricks and some cards, but all these things … are either wearing off or already known.”

Those “tricks” have run their course. Most countries’ emergency stockpiles are close to depleted, and the U.S. strategic petroleum reserve has fallen so low that its structural integrity is starting to strain. At the same time, China has ended what McNally called its “crash diet” and has started to buy oil for its refineries again. 

This leaves the world without the buffer that it had during the first round of the crisis. 

“Hormuz 1.0 was about supply and inventory,” said McNally. “In Hormuz 2.0, prices will have to do more of the work. And they have to go really high, because the problem is demand is inelastic — you’ve got to eat.”

toolTips('.classtoolTips10','A conductive and heat-resistant metal that forms a key part of many battery cathodes, which allow electric charges to flow. It is used in the lithium-ion batteries that power many EVs as well as solar energy systems and wind turbine components.');

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Why the Iran war hasn’t caused a global oil crisis — yet on Jul 21, 2026.

Low-income Indian workers, many of them migrants from rural areas hit by climate change, are paying for worsening extreme heat through lost working days and health complications, with the cost equivalent to 2% of national GDP per year, new research shows.

The International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), a London-based think-tank, worked with local organisations to survey around 540 households of informal workers in three Indian cities: Ajmer, Delhi and Agra. Most had migrated from rural areas to find work in industries such as construction, brick-making, garment manufacturing and food packaging.

The survey found them struggling through long working days with little access to shade, cooling, rest or water, as well as few toilets for women. And even when they go home, many live in makeshift shelters or airless cramped rooms with barely a single fan, bringing almost no respite.

Outdoor workers are losing about 24 days of work a year due to heat, costing them nearly a tenth of their annual earnings, while indoor workers sacrifice roughly 15 days. On top of losing income, they are also bearing the cost of health problems like heat exhaustion, psychological stress and kidney damage brought on by repeated dehydration.

If the survey’s findings are extrapolated to a national level, the IIED researchers estimate that the decline in productivity and effects of kidney disease combined add up to lost wages of $78 billion each year.

• Jul 20, 2026 Justice Flood deaths in West African cities raise fraught issue of slum evictions Deadly floods expose poor urban planning, over-population and spread of informal settlements on disaster-prone land – a problem authorities are struggling to manage Read more
• Jul 20, 2026 News Top maritime court rejects bid to halt UN deep-sea mining inquiry Two subsidiaries of The Metals Company sought to block the probe into potential contract breaches launched after the firm’s application for US-sponsored permits Read more
• Jul 17, 2026 Carbon markets Most “zombie credits” locked out of new UN carbon market after China and India snub Fears of a flood of environmentally-dubious carbon credits have faded, with most old projects not able to transition to new UN market Read more

Vishram Meena, 45, from Alwar in Rajasthan, has worked on construction sites in Ajmer for more than a decade, toiling for 10 to 12 hours a day carrying materials and mixing cement in the full sun.

In May 2024, on one of the hottest days, he collapsed after feeling dizzy and suffering a nosebleed. His wife and colleagues managed to get him to hospital where he was diagnosed with heat stroke. He has since returned to the same building work because the family needs the money.

“I went back because what else could I do? We are not machines. We are human beings. The heat is killing us slowly,” he was quoted as saying in a report on the survey’s findings.

“Victorian-era” conditions

Ritu Bharadwaj, IIED’s director of climate resilience, finance and loss and damage, described some of the stories from workers about their experiences of extreme heat as “genuinely horrifying”.

Kusum, a tailor at a garment manufacturing and export unit in Kapashera, Delhi, recounted how the machines for ironing finished garments are in the same tiny room where workers are making the clothes, with steam and hot air building up through her shift.

Fans are too far apart to move the air and nothing has changed in over a decade, she said, adding that “in summer, the unit feels like a furnace”.

“These are Victorian-era working conditions and they’re completely unacceptable in the 21st century,” said Bharadwaj. She called for stepped-up social protection from the government to pay people for days they are unable work due to heat, as well as micro-insurance schemes with payouts triggered by temperature measurements.   

This money would help families buy food and pay medical bills when their income dips if they fall ill or cannot work their usual hours due to soaring temperatures.

Climate change-driven heatwaves hit Delhi’s Red Fort market traders

The aim of the IIED study, Bharadwaj added, is to get policy-makers’ attention by showing the scale of damage extreme heat is doing to India’s GDP in an economy whose growth relies on service-led industries. “If the workers within them start falling sick, you know it’s the economic growth which is going to get impacted,” she told a webinar to present the research.

“Whether [policymakers] care about the workers or not, at least they would care about the GDP, and therefore then invest in the care that is needed for them,” she explained.

Labour code leaves out heat

However, Bharadwaj noted that a 2026 reform to India’s labour law bringing a range of regulations together in one code does not include heat-related protections for workers and only applies to businesses above a certain size. She urged the government to introduce a temperature threshold above which all workers would be able to stop their activities.

IIED and its partners have also carried out a similar study in Bangladesh which will be published later this month, showing that extreme heat is costing its workforce the equivalent of nearly 1.4% of GDP.

Shakirul Islam, chairperson of the Ovibashi Karmi Unnayan Program (OKUP) in Bangladesh, said the government had introduced stricter safety policies for garment-making companies after the Rana Plaza complex collapsed in 2013. But, he said, these rules are rarely followed by manufacturers, especially at the level of smaller subcontractors.

The workers’ welfare centres that do exist are open mainly during work hours so they are difficult to visit. Some companies also make saline water available for heat stress, which is no good for those with high blood pressure, he noted.

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

Archana Shukla Mukherjee, CEO of India’s Change Alliance, which also partnered with IIED on the survey, said it was time to hold both the government and businesses accountable for finding solutions to the intensifying problem of extreme heat’s effects on workers.

She said that employee state insurance schemes should identify heat stroke as an occupational disease while companies along the whole supply chain should start putting in place heat protection measures, including for informal workers and migrants.

If the tools and mechanisms available to help workers do not reach the most vulnerable and marginalised people, “then I think we are not doing something right,” she said.

The post Extreme heat costing India’s poorest workers 2% of GDP, survey finds appeared first on Climate Home News.

The government of French Polynesia plans to challenge an American startup’s proposal to explore the waters just beyond its maritime borders for seabed mining. 

“We were approached, but we were not consulted,” Moetai Brotherson, the territory’s president, told Grist. “We are not remaining passive while industrial activities are proposed immediately next to ecosystems that French Polynesia has chosen to protect.”

As Grist reported last week, a Bay Area investor wants the Trump administration’s approval to explore seabed mining in international waters entirely surrounded by the maritime borders of the Cook Islands, Kiribati, and French Polynesia. The company, American Deep Sea Minerals, has a permit application pending before U.S. regulators and hopes to extract minerals essential to the production of batteries and military technologies. It is one of at least a dozen applications under consideration as President Trump races to make the United States a leader in critical mineral mining. 

Negotiators from dozens of countries are meeting this month in Jamaica at the headquarters of the International Seabed Authority, where they are debating the minutiae of a regulatory framework that’s been in progress for more than a decade. Last year, the Trump administration invited companies to apply for permits to mine the high seas directly through the U.S. rather than wait for the adoption of those rules. That has prompted global outrage from countries who say it flouts international law. 

“The deep seabed belongs to no single country and no corporation; it belongs to all of us,” Letitia Carvalho, the secretary-general of the regulatory body, said in Jamaica last week. “If we lose sight of this, we risk repeating on the ocean floor the same injustices and destruction we still strive to remedy on land.” 

French Polynesia doesn’t have a seat at the authority because it remains a French territory whose Indigenous people haven’t been granted political self-determination. And until recently, when environmental nonprofit organizations extended their observer status to Indigenous advocates, the voices of French Polynesians were largely left out of the discussion. Still, Brotherson said he prefers the international regulatory process to recent U.S. actions. 

“This case therefore goes beyond one company or one licence application,” Brotherson said. It raises a fundamental question, he said, about whether an individual country can unilaterally authorize a new industry in international waters, particularly those adjacent to Pacific island nations and protected marine areas. 

According to Brotherson, American Deep Sea Minerals sent a brief introductory email to a government representative; the government replied asking for more information. “No response was received,” he said. “Thus, no consultation has taken place regarding this proposal, and the government has not been provided with sufficient information to assess the project or its potential environmental implications.” Under international law, Indigenous peoples have the right to free, prior and informed consent — and to withhold such consent — regarding development and extractive projects on their ancestral territories. 

Graham Goulet, the CEO of American Metals, told Grist the company intended to consult the governments of the Cook Islands, Kiribati, and French Polynesia “as the exploration program develops.” Those discussions will, he said, occur under U.S. oversight and in accordance with the intentions outlined in its application. The filing notes that it intends to create a benefit sharing agreement with Pacific nations and plans to avoid interfering with fishing.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the U.S. government agency overseeing seabed licenses in international waters, is still considering Goulet’s application. It is available for public comment online until August 3. 

Read Next Indigenous concerns surface as Trump calls for seabed mining in Alaskan waters Anita Hofschneider

The environmental implications of seabed mining have long concerned French Polynesia, which banned the practice in 2022, followed quickly by France in 2023. Indigenous peoples with longstanding connections to the ocean, such as for traditional navigation, account for 80 percent of the territory’s population. Studies show extraction could harm fisheries, and Indigenous Pasifika leaders from across the region have raised cultural concerns about the significance of disturbing the sea floor. 

“As if climate change wasn’t enough, the spectre of deep-sea mining threatens to strip-mine the ocean floor, our sacred place of creation,” said Hinano Murphy, an Indigenous cultural expert from Moorea and Tahiti in a TEDxTalk last year.  

Last September, Brotherson added further prohibitions on seabed mining within Tainui Atea, a marine protected area that encompasses nearly all of the islands’ exclusive waters. The preserve sustains 21 species of sharks, 176 species of coral, and more than 1,000 species of fish, according to the United Nations. One survey found more than 92 percent of French Polynesians support Tainui Atea because it honors their traditional cultural practices. 

“French Polynesia’s position is therefore not only a political statement. The protection of deep-sea ecosystems is now embedded in our domestic regulatory framework,” Brotherson said. 

The waters that American Deep Sea Minerals is eyeing, known as Eastern High Seas Pocket 3, are also a popular tuna fishing spot, as well as a potential conservation area. 

In January, the United Nations High Seas Treaty, an international law intended to protect marine ecosystems, took effect, allowing nations to create conservation areas in international waters for the first time. French Polynesia wants to use the law to protect the Eastern High Seas Pocket 3. Doing so could set an important precedent for how effective the treaty is, and how protected the world’s oceans will be in the future, Brotherson said. 

If American Deep Sea Minerals’ application proceeds, French Polynesia wants a say in what happens and a thorough environmental review. Recently, U.S. regulators fast tracked the approval process for deep-sea mining applications by halving the number of environmental reviews required for commercial permits. “We expect the interests of neighboring Pacific countries and territories to be fully taken into account through prior notification, meaningful consultation, and a comprehensive, independent and participatory environmental impact assessment,” Brotherson said.

As part of a U.S. application, American Deep Sea Minerals will need to conduct scientific studies of the area and create an environmental impact assessment. Brotherson said that his government supports independent scientific research conducted on deep-sea ecosystems.

“However, we do not regard this particular application as neutral scientific research,” he said. Although the company says it does not yet intend to apply for a commercial license, its application shows that it intends to conduct the research necessary to apply for one, as well as a mining test. “It is therefore part of a pathway towards potential commercial mining,” Brotherson said. 

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline French Polynesia objects to an American seabed mining plan made without its input on Jul 21, 2026.

This story is published through the Indigenous News Alliance.

The Arctic is warming four times faster than other regions, a trend that disproportionately harms the Indigenous Sámi people — particularly their access to vital traditional resources like reindeer and salmon, which are used for food, clothing, weapons, and more.

As northern temperatures rise, snow is melting and refreezing at an accelerating rate. That forms ice, preventing reindeer from reaching the lichen below and dramatically increasing starvation rates. “Those impacts in nature are severe for our culture and livelihoods,” said Tuomas Aslak Juuso, vice president of the Sámediggi, or Sámi Parliament, of Finland. “So survival of reindeer and then survival of our livelihoods [and] cultures is then questioned.” 

Last week, the impacts of climate change and colonialism were among the key issues raised by the hundreds of Indigenous people gathered in Geneva. They’d come from around the world to discuss these mounting threats at the United Nations Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, or EMRIP. They agreed that a multitude of crises will only grow worse unless they are given greater say in international negotiations and decision-making. That’s why in addition to pushing specific policy recommendations on conflict, AI, and other key issues, Indigenous delegates continued their decades-long demand for better representation at the U.N.

“What we are trying to do is to get some implementation resources for us to adapt to the climate change. With Finland, for example, we don’t have any adaptation resources on how to adapt to these situations,” Juuso said. “To be able to bring these issues forward to the global discussion, we would have to have the opportunity to participate.”

Member states are granted access to U.N. gatherings, where they can easily express views, determine policies, and outline their progress implementing international commitments required by the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and other agreements. But Indigenous advocates say the voices of the peoples directly impacted by such actions aren’t always heard at international forums. 

The U.N. structure requires participation through either a member state or a registered civil society agency — for instance, a non-governmental organization, academic institution, or accredited Indigenous organization. But Indigenous nations don’t fit neatly into one of those categories and are reduced to participating as NGOs. Beyond those structural barriers, Indigenous peoples also face financial and other resource challenges that compound the difficulty of making themselves heard at the international level. That’s why those attending EMRIP continued the long fight for what is called enhanced participation, which could finally give Indigenous nations and organizations the same access and power the United States and other countries enjoy.

That increased influence is especially important when many countries ignore Indigenous priorities. Throughout the week, many delegates identified climate and environmental issues as one area where national governments often have different priorities than Indigenous peoples, who consider land and ecosystems more important than economic growth — a value system they believe is at odds with the world’s best interests. 

Read Next For Indigenous peoples, conflict means so much more than war Te Aniwaniwa Paterson

“We’ve got to try and balance immediate economic interests with longer-term environmental protections,” said Kym Hamilton, who is from the tribes of Ngāti Kahungunu, Ngā Rauru, Ngāti Raukawa in Aotearoa New Zealand. “I think we’ve got a responsibility to protect our descendants.”

In U.N. lexicon, enhanced participation is the catchphrase often used for efforts to elevate Indigenous peoples’ voices. Those gathered in Geneva asserted the right to represent their communities in crucial global discussions that impact them. They are also demanding more respect from member-state governments and other policymakers, something they argue will better help them to survive conflict and other crises.

“The question before us is no longer whether Indigenous peoples should participate more fully in the Human Rights Council,” Hamilton, who spoke on behalf of the National Iwi Chairs Forum that represents 87 tribes, said. “The question now is how quickly we will implement these commitments.” 

She offered recommendations for EMRIP’s seven expert Indigenous members, including a clear timeline for creating participatory status for Indigenous peoples’ institutions and appointing Indigenous and state representatives with equal standing to lead the process. She also called for the establishment of an independent and transparent accreditation mechanism to prevent states from vetoing Indigenous representatives, and initiatives to provide predictable and sustainable funding to take part.

Hamilton said Indigenous peoples’ full participation in international deliberations includes the right to decide who represents their communities. “Governments don’t always tell the truth,” she said, citing the U.N. Human Rights Council’s Universal Periodic Review — which all 193 member states must undergo every 4.5 years — which she said revealed gaps between the reports governments submitted and the actual human rights situations within their jurisdictions.

Kenneth Deer, member of the Mohawk Nation of Kahnawà:ke and longtime international Indigenous advocate, echoed that point. “The government never speaks ill about itself,” he said. “You can’t let government speak for us.”

But the U.N.’s accreditation and recognition process can hinder progress toward collectively tackling the challenges impacting Indigenous peoples, he noted. “For us, as a representative institution, there isn’t actually any clear path to accreditate ourselves — and that leads to them trying to improvise, and try to find ways how we can accreditate ourselves.”

Read Next Indigenous cultural practices are a climate solution, report finds Joseph Lee

The National Congress of American Indians also called for increased Indigenous participation at the international level. “Recognition and participation of Indigenous peoples must accommodate the numerous ways we identify, organize, and represent ourselves,” President Mark Macarro said. “It is essential that we participate directly in matters of global concern that affect our environment, health, human rights, and unique rights as Indigenous peoples.”

Deer said he’s seen many caucuses of Indigenous delegates at the U.N. engage in important collaborations. But he wishes they could have a higher profile. “Indigenous peoples want to have a voice,” he said. “They want to be heard.”

A diversity of voices at the U.N.’s highest levels, he believes, would improve the U.N. processes and system to the benefit of all countries. “What we need is the states, now, to agree to a process that was run by Indigenous people,” he said.

Throughout the week, EMRIP delegates identified a host of other barriers to participation. For example, communications technology within remote communities presents challenges to joining global deliberations. Additionally, there are significant financial barriers for under-resourced communities when U.N. forums are held far from their homelands.

The U.N. Voluntary Fund for Indigenous Peoples, which helps finance travel to U.N. forums, is also experiencing budget shortfalls, inhibiting many delegates’ ability to attend. It is seen as an important way to increase participation among delegates from areas where governments do not recognize the Indigenous peoples within their borders. Sheryl Lightfoot, EMRIP’s North America region member, is an Anishinaabe expert in Indigenous rights, global politics, and public policy.

She said states are not involved in how EMRIP officially recognizes Indigenous peoples. “Worldwide, there’s a need — and this is especially true across Africa and Asia — of Indigenous peoples seeking just mere recognition of their existence from their governments,” she said. “States seem to be more resistant now than they were 10 years ago to recognize that peoples are Indigenous peoples and have those rights attached to them.”

Despite Hamilton’s doubts about how much change has been achieved internationally, hearing her peers from other Indigenous nations testify about how they’ve persevered inspired her and restored her hope. “I feel like there’s a real sense of … urgency and concern,” she said. “We don’t want our grandchildren’s grandchildren to have to keep coming here and doing this stuff.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline As climate change threatens their lands, Indigenous nations demand more power at the UN on Jul 21, 2026.

Environmental fallout is becoming a tangible reality for a growing number of Europeans amidst unabated climate change. While much of this harm is hard to attribute to a single cause or set of policies, there are cases where a few actors bear clear responsibility for the damage. This dynamic is visible in the Netherlands, Germany, and Italy, where voters have expressed their frustration through the ballot box.

The ground in the Dutch province of Groningen shakes more often than one might expect. More than 1,600 kilometres from the nearest active volcano, and far from any major natural fault lines, the earthquakes that trouble this region are entirely man-made.

For decades, the Netherlands extracted vast quantities of natural gas from beneath Groningen’s soil, powering homes, fuelling industry, and filling state coffers, all while quietly destabilising the earth below. What began as an economic triumph has since left a complicated legacy: thousands of small earthquakes have damaged homes, unsettled communities, and eroded public trust. Today, residents live not only with cracks in their walls, but with fractures in their confidence in the institutions that once championed the project. From compensation claims and legal battles to the ballot box, this distrust is increasingly visible today.

Gas in Groningen

Up until 1959, the North Sea area was assumed to be mostly devoid of oil and natural gas. This changed when exploratory drilling by the Dutch Petroleum Company (NAM), jointly owned by Shell and Esso, discovered a gas field in the municipality of Slochteren, in the province of Groningen. While little was known about its size at first, further drilling revealed a site large enough to be of commercial interest. After the Dutch government granted a concession in 1963, extraction began under a consortium of the state-owned mining company, NAM, Esso, and Shell.

The ensuing gas rush was further amplified by expectations that gas would lose its relevance over the following decades with the anticipated rise of nuclear energy. Consequently, there was a strong push to scale up production and sell Groningen’s gas quickly, and early concerns – particularly about possible ground subsidence – were brushed aside. Extraction ultimately peaked in 1976, at 88 billion cubic metres, roughly equivalent to Germany’s entire current annual gas consumption. Only after the oil crisis of the 1970s and growing social resistance to nuclear energy had shown that gas was here to stay did the government begin treating the Groningen field as more of a long-term reserve, slightly reducing extraction and diversifying towards smaller fields, particularly in the North Sea.

A Turning Point

Throughout the 1960s and early 1970s, the Groningen field seemed nothing short of a miracle. Gas profits flowed generously into shareholders’ pockets as well as into the treasury. The Dutch government received up to 85 per cent of gas revenues, which at times accounted for as much as a fifth of total government spending. For a small country still rebuilding after World War II, this was transformative. Roads, schools, hospitals, and social programmes were funded in no small part by the resource extracted from beneath Groningen.

Yet the benefits to the province itself proved limited. The gas sector created around 9,200 jobs – meaningful but modest for a region with a labour force of approximately 286,000. As a Dutch parliamentary inquiry concluded in 2023, only about 1 per cent of the total revenues from the gas field flowed back to Groningen. Most of the economic value flowed upwards to The Hague, to be redistributed at the national level, far from the villages that hosted the extraction sites.

National policy choices only deepened this imbalance. Unlike Norway, which established a sovereign wealth fund on its oil revenues, the Netherlands folded gas income directly into the state budget. This allowed for the rapid expansion of the Dutch welfare state, but at the cost of longer-term planning. The gas windfall also brought what The Economist would coin the “Dutch Disease” in 1977: as revenues strengthened the guilder, Dutch manufacturing lost its international competitiveness, and unemployment more than quadrupled between 1970 and 1977, rising from 1.1 per cent to 5.1 per cent. In short, the gas boom filled the treasury while hollowing out industry.

Things get shaky

For the first two decades of gas extraction, the ground beneath Groningen remained deceptively calm. Despite early concerns about subsidence, no seismic activity was officially recorded, reinforcing the belief that the risks were manageable. This confidence began to erode on Christmas Day in 1986, when a magnitude-2.8 earthquake struck near Assen. In 1991, the Dutch meteorological institute recorded the first officially recognised induced earthquake directly linked to the Groningen field, with a magnitude of 2.4. From there, seismic activity accelerated: four earthquakes in 1991, six in 1992, and 16 in 1993.

Induced earthquakes occur when human activity, most commonly hydrocarbon extraction, alters pressure levels in underground rock formations. As gas is removed, pressure drops, the surrounding rock compacts, and stress builds along geological faults until it finds sudden release. In Groningen, this process unfolded gradually but relentlessly.

By the early 2010s, the situation had escalated sharply. In 2013 alone, 133 earthquakes were confirmed across the Netherlands, 121 of them in Groningen, averaging roughly one every three days. The turning point came on 16 August 2012, with the Huizinge earthquake, measuring 3.6 on the Richter scale, the strongest ever recorded above the Groningen field.

Though most of these tremors were classified as light by seismological standards, their impact on buildings and residents was anything but negligible. Homes cracked, foundations shifted, and entire neighbourhoods began to deteriorate.

Still, the political response lagged despite the mounting evidence. In January 2013, the Minister of Economic Affairs, Henk Kamp, decided against an immediate reduction in gas extraction, against the urgent recommendation by the State Supervision of Mines, instead commissioning 14 separate investigations into the maximum credible earthquake magnitude, seismic hazard, effects on housing and infrastructure, security of supply, and the fiscal cost of a production cut. This decision came at a time when the Netherlands was in a period of fiscal austerity, and gas revenues were not easy to forgo.

The prevailing assumption was that the risks could be managed financially. A compensation scheme for earthquake damage was expanded, based on the belief that revenues could offset material losses and political fallout. Extraction would continue; damages would be paid.

It was not until 2014 that production was capped – at 42.5 billion cubic metres – for the first time explicitly due to the earthquakes. Further reductions followed, though always cautiously. Plans to phase out extraction entirely were announced, revised, and at one point delayed by the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, which briefly revived Groningen’s strategic importance. Gas extraction from the field ultimately ceased in October 2023. By then, roughly 2.3 trillion cubic metres of gas had been extracted from one of the largest gas fields ever exploited.

But even with extraction halted, the harm persists. Over 3,300 buildings were demolished in Groningen due to earthquake damage between 2012 and 2023. Furthermore, following the Huizinge quake, hundreds of thousands of damage reports have been filed. The Dutch state has paid over 1.2 billion euros in compensation, yet many residents describe the process as slow, opaque, and adversarial. Studies by researchers at the University of Groningen also link sustained exposure to the risk of earthquakes to deteriorating mental and physical health outcomes, and even to increased mortality. Entire communities lived for years in a state of permanent vigilance, unsure whether their homes were safe or whether promised repairs would ever materialise.

Shaking Up the Vote

What makes Groningen particularly distinctive is not just the scale of the damage, but its origin. The harm that people there have faced for decades is immediate, local, and unmistakably man-made. And that has had significant political consequences.

Jordan McAllister and Afiq bin Oslan tackle this topic in a recent paper titled “Shaking up the Vote: The Electoral Impact of Induced Earthquakes”. Placing the Groningen earthquakes at the centre of a broader inquiry, the authors examine how first-hand experience of the direct consequences of environmental harm has translated into changed voting behaviour.

Groningen is an unusually well-suited setting for this kind of study. Unlike pollution or an oil spill, where the distribution of harm is ultimately shaped by human decisions, induced earthquakes strike in nearby areas depending on geological factors that no one controls. They are caused by human activity (unambiguously so in Groningen, where earthquakes were virtually non-existent before drilling began), but where exactly they strike is essentially random. As a result, the researchers can reasonably associate differences in voting behaviour across polling stations with earthquake exposure rather than some pre-existing political difference between areas.

Using data on 891 earthquakes linked to the Groningen field alongside highly granular polling-station-level data across Groningen and its two neighbouring provinces, Friesland and Drenthe, McAllister and bin Oslan ask whether voter exposure to induced earthquakes increases electoral support for GroenLinks, the Dutch green party. The answer, in short, is yes. Across three elections and multiple model specifications, areas with greater earthquake exposure consistently show higher GroenLinks vote shares in subsequent elections.

The paper also finds that earthquakes are associated with a significant fall in support for the PvdA, the Dutch Labour party, consistent with the idea that earthquake exposure is prompting vote-switching towards the Greens from other parties on the left, rather than simply raising overall turnout.

Crucially, the relationship between earthquake exposure and green voting is not linear. It peaks at moderate levels of exposure and weakens at the very highest levels of impact. The authors suggest that those most severely affected may come to prioritise immediate material concerns such as compensation, repairs, and economic security over electoral environmental preferences. At the same time, those experiencing meaningful but less overwhelming exposure are most likely to translate that experience into a green vote. Environmental shocks then do not automatically and uniformly push electorates in a greener direction. How exposed they are, and what else that exposure demands of them, matter as well.

Beyond Groningen

The Groningen case is, in several respects, unusual. Induced seismicity directly linked to gas extraction in a densely populated region, with clear institutional responsibility and a single identifiable operator, is not a combination that recurs frequently elsewhere. But the broader mechanism it illustrates – locally experienced and clearly attributable environmental harm feeding back into political behaviour – is hardly confined to the Netherlands.

In the Val d’Agri valley in the southern Italian region of Basilicata, the energy giant ENI’s oil extraction operations present a comparable picture. The region hosts the largest onshore oil field in Western Europe, yet its population has seen negligible economic benefit from decades of extraction while bearing environmental costs, including contaminated water sources and elevated rates of cancer and respiratory illness.

The political response has been real: ENI executives have faced joint legal action from the regional government, municipalities, and environmental agencies. Moreover, grassroots organisations such as COVA Contro have built sustained platforms for accountability. Anti-extraction sentiment has surfaced electorally too: in the 2019 regional election, a left-wing candidate running explicitly on an anti-oil platform received 4.3 per cent of the vote, though this has remained a niche position rather than a decisive force.

Two factors may help explain the gap between Italy and the Netherlands. Firstly, economic anxiety in the Val d’Agri valley, one of Italy’s poorest regions, tends to compete with environmental grievance as a political driver. Secondly, unlike the Netherlands, Italy has no well-established Green party capable of channelling anti-extraction sentiment into parliamentary weight. While the Groningen parallel seems to hold in terms of the underlying injury and political mobilisation, the similarities are less clear when it comes to votes.

The German lignite regions offer another striking parallel. In the Rhineland and Lausitz, local communities have borne the costs of extraction in ways that are, if anything, more visible than in Groningen: more than 50 villages or parts of villages have been demolished in North Rhine-Westphalia alone to make way for expanding open-cast mines, with entire communities uprooted and resettled. The public has opposed these projects fiercely: the planned demolition of the village of Lützerath to expand RWE’s Garzweiler II mine drew thousands of protesters over years of sustained resistance; in 2023 the eventual five-day police clearance of an activist occupation of the village became a national flashpoint. But was there also a wider political response?

The vote share data from North Rhine-Westphalia is at least suggestive: the Greens rose from 6.4 per cent to 18.2 per cent in state elections between 2017 and 2022, in contrast to their more modest gains at the federal level, from 8.9 per cent in 2017 to 14.8 per cent in the 2021 Bundestag election. That rise, though, predates the party’s own turn: In October 2022, when they were in government federally and in the state, the Greens agreed to the deal with RWE that cleared Lützerath for demolition. This turn was viewed by many as a change in sides. Whether this will cost them electorally is difficult to determine.

The confounders here are too numerous to read much into either shift directly, but the broader point stands: these cases offer at least plausible instances of locally experienced environmental harm feeding back into political behaviour, in different institutional and partisan contexts. What they also reveal, by contrast, is why Groningen is such a rare analytical opportunity. Elsewhere, the harm is real enough, but the causal pathway remains tangled, and the harm harder to isolate.

The Limits of Attribution

The cases considered so far share a key feature: the source of harm is local, visible, and traceable to a specific operator or set of decisions. Where the previous section showed variation – Groningen producing a measurable electoral response, Basilicata and the lignite regions less so – the explanation lay not in attribution, but in what came after it: whether a credible electoral channel existed to convert grievance into votes. The mobilisation, in all three cases, seems real enough. But not all environmental harms afford even that starting point.

When flooding devastates a region or drought destroys harvests, the causal chain is longer and more contested. Climate change may have made the event more severe, but the link between many natural disasters and specific policy choices is harder to draw, and therefore harder to convert into electoral accountability. The devastating floods that struck Valencia in October 2024, killing over 230 people in one of the deadliest natural disasters in Spain’s recent history, illustrate this well. Scientists broadly agreed that climate change had intensified the rainfall, but the political response was far from unified. Multiple levels of government faced – and traded – blame simultaneously: regional president Carlos Mazón faced mass protests over the dismantling of an emergency unit his administration had shut down just the year before, while the national government faced accusations of insufficient coordination. Rather than producing more support for environmental protection, the debate became highly polarised, with disinformation campaigns seeking to redirect blame onto environmentalists themselves for having allegedly restricted flood-control infrastructure.

Groningen and the cases it can usefully be set alongside illustrate that the political salience of environmental harm is shaped not only by its severity, but by its legibility, by how clearly it can be traced to identifiable decisions, and how directly it is felt. As the consequences of both energy policy and climate change continue to accumulate across Europe, that kind of clarity is likely to become rarer.

Lucky Neko menjadi salah satu permainan bertema keberuntungan yang paling sering diperbincangkan oleh para penggemar game digital. Bukan hanya karena tampilannya yang penuh warna, tetapi juga berkat konsep unik yang mengusung ikon kucing pembawa keberuntungan khas budaya Jepang. Popularitasnya terus meningkat di berbagai komunitas, mulai dari media sosial hingga forum diskusi, sehingga tidak mengherankan jika banyak orang penasaran dengan daya tarik yang dimilikinya.

Lalu, apa sebenarnya yang membuat Lucky Neko saat ini sedang naik daun? Mari kita bahas dengan santai.

Desain Menarik yang Mudah Disukai

Hal pertama yang langsung mencuri perhatian adalah desain visualnya. Lucky Neko menghadirkan nuansa cerah dengan dominasi warna emas, merah, dan putih. Ikon kucing yang mengangkat satu tangan atau dikenal sebagai Maneki Neko dipercaya dalam budaya Jepang sebagai simbol keberuntungan dan kemakmuran.

Bagi banyak pemain, tampilan seperti ini memberikan pengalaman yang terasa lebih menyenangkan dibandingkan desain permainan yang terlalu gelap atau rumit. Animasi yang halus serta efek suara yang ringan juga membuat suasana bermain terasa lebih hidup tanpa berlebihan.

Gameplay yang Mudah Dipahami

Tidak semua orang menyukai permainan dengan aturan yang rumit. Di sinilah Lucky Neko memiliki keunggulan. Mekanisme permainannya relatif sederhana sehingga pemain baru pun dapat memahami cara kerjanya dalam waktu singkat.

Kesederhanaan tersebut justru menjadi nilai tambah. Pemain tidak perlu menghabiskan waktu lama untuk mempelajari berbagai fitur sebelum mulai menikmati permainannya. Hal ini membuat Lucky Neko mampu menjangkau berbagai kalangan, baik pemain berpengalaman maupun pemula.

Ramai Dibahas oleh Komunitas

Popularitas sebuah permainan biasanya tidak lepas dari peran komunitas. Saat ini, Lucky Neko cukup sering menjadi topik pembahasan di berbagai platform digital. Banyak pengguna berbagi pengalaman, membahas fitur permainan, hingga memberikan tips berdasarkan pengalaman pribadi mereka.

Fenomena ini menunjukkan bahwa sebuah permainan tidak hanya dinilai dari tampilannya saja, tetapi juga dari seberapa aktif komunitas yang mendukungnya. Semakin banyak orang membicarakannya, rasa penasaran calon pemain pun ikut meningkat.

Namun, penting untuk diingat bahwa setiap pengalaman bermain dapat berbeda. Informasi dari komunitas sebaiknya dijadikan referensi, bukan sebagai jaminan hasil tertentu.

Tema Budaya yang Memberikan Nilai Tambah

Lucky Neko tidak sekadar mengandalkan visual menarik. Permainan ini juga mengangkat unsur budaya yang cukup dikenal secara internasional. Maneki Neko telah lama menjadi simbol keberuntungan dalam tradisi Jepang dan sering ditemukan di toko, restoran, maupun tempat usaha.

Penggunaan simbol tersebut memberikan identitas yang kuat sehingga Lucky Neko lebih mudah dikenali dibandingkan banyak permainan lain dengan tema umum. Kombinasi budaya tradisional dan teknologi modern menciptakan pengalaman yang terasa unik sekaligus familiar.

Mengapa Banyak Orang Mencobanya?

Ada beberapa alasan yang membuat Lucky Neko semakin populer saat ini. Pertama, tampilannya menarik sehingga mudah memikat perhatian sejak awal. Kedua, mekanisme permainannya sederhana sehingga tidak membuat pemain merasa kesulitan. Ketiga, banyaknya pembahasan di komunitas digital ikut mendorong rasa ingin tahu masyarakat.

Selain itu, perkembangan industri hiburan digital membuat pemain semakin terbuka untuk mencoba berbagai tema baru. Lucky Neko berhasil memanfaatkan momentum tersebut dengan menghadirkan konsep yang ringan namun tetap memiliki karakter kuat.

Dari sudut pandang pengalaman pengguna, permainan yang mudah dipahami dan memiliki identitas visual yang jelas memang cenderung lebih cepat mendapatkan perhatian. Hal ini juga sejalan dengan tren industri game yang mengutamakan aksesibilitas dan pengalaman bermain yang nyaman.

Kesimpulan

Lucky Neko saat ini memang sedang naik daun berkat perpaduan antara desain yang menarik, gameplay yang sederhana, tema budaya yang ikonik, serta dukungan komunitas yang aktif. Popularitasnya bukan muncul secara kebetulan, melainkan karena mampu menghadirkan pengalaman hiburan yang mudah dinikmati oleh berbagai kalangan.

Meski demikian, setiap orang tentu memiliki preferensi yang berbeda dalam memilih permainan. Karena itu, pendekatan terbaik adalah menikmati Lucky Neko sebagai bentuk hiburan digital secara bijak dan tetap memiliki ekspektasi yang realistis. Dengan cara tersebut, pengalaman bermain akan terasa lebih menyenangkan sekaligus bertanggung jawab.

Gene editing regulations ruled unlawful Channel News brendan 21st July 2026 Teaser Media

In "almost Shakespearean grotesquery," our cringe Buffoon-In-Chief just thrust himself into the World Cup final only to be unceremoniously booed, snubbed and cropped out of team photos. Then he again assailed Canada for smoke from their wildfires, though ours are much worse and they've often helped us with them. Still, our ever-gracious northern neighbor launched a new initiative to dutifully sweep the Rockies, vacuum the forests, hand-rake pine needles. Its acronym: F.U.C.K.O.F.F.

The headlines for Trump's Sunday gatecrash of another major sports event that really, really didn't want him there tells the vainglorious and mortifying tale: "Most Universally Hated President In History Mercilessly Booed," "Crowd Boos, Player Snub and Failed Photobomb: Trump's Big World Cup Day Out," and "Confused Old Fuckwit Imagines He's Won the World Cup." The Guardian also wins a Snark of the Year Award for the caption to its photo of FIFA's Infantino deep in conversation with a clueless Trump, both men standing under a blizzard of confetti, after he literally had to drag him off-stage: "Gianni Infantino carefully explains to Donald Trump he is not part of the Spanish team."

Some of the over 82,000 fans at New Jersey's Met-Life Stadium, where Spain trounced a listless, chaotic, often-thuggish Argentina 1-0, had earlier made their feelings clear when video briefly showed Trump ensconced in his glass-encased VIP digs and scattered boos rang out. By the time he finally lumbered and waddled stoop-shouldered onto the field at the end, it sounded like all 82,000-plus had reconsidered and joined in to jeer. Trailing behind him, looking like hostages trying to keep a safe distance to not catch any cooties, were Mexico's and Canada's leaders, the tournament's purported, far-less-despised hosts. Implausibly given....everything, but thanks to Infantino's long gross obsequiousness, Trump got to hand out awards.

And he did, though not without some drama: Several players hesitated, recoiled or refused to shake his hand. Then it was time to hand out the (seductively gold) World Cup. Little needy Donnie, a malignant narcissistic lump, swooped in to awkwardly “help” Infantino carry it like a five-year-old hungry for the feckin' ice-cream cone his dad is holding, “a lonely, grasping figure refusing to release a trophy he didn’t win.” Once they handed it to Spain’s captain Rodri, Trump, “malice wrapped in vanity,” painfully lingered in the limelight - camera! also person, woman, man TV - as Infantino struggled to yank him away for the iconic team hoist photo: "OK, grandpa, time to get back to your chocolate pudding." In the end, a patient Rodri gently nudged him out of the shot, but cringingly not off the stage, where he stood dazed and wobbling, our national farce and tragedy.

Steve Schmidt noted the clumsy resulting image's era-defining power, its display of the "breathtaking psychological fragility" of a "President Norma Desmond...incapable of understanding that the greatest office in the world confers responsibility, not ownership." "The character has been devoured by the caricature," he wrote of "self-parody made flesh," the small man so consumed by the need for adulation that, "Every trophy is his trophy. Every triumph is his triumph. Every stage is his stage." Later, in photos released both by FIFA and the Spanish team, Trump had mercifully, miraculously disappeared from both shots, because this is why God and Al Gore invented photoshop.

The awkward bit of theater with Spain came, lest we forget, in the wake of Trump's weeks of vilifying the nation and their prime minister Pedro Sánchez - first, for their refusal to allow the U.S. military to use Spanish bases to help illegally bomb Iran, then for the alleged failure of "bad" and "hopeless" Spanish people to pay enough for NATO defense spending. Despite Trump's ugly threats to "cut off all trade" with a longtime ally unforgivably following the law, it all suddenly vanished before the cameras, where Trump congratulated "a great team," even though they speak Spanish, and claimed there was "no tension" with the country’s leadership. Actually, he smirked, "I have no tension with anybody."

Tell it to Canada, which Trump has been moronically berating for "Willful Negligence," aka inexplicably allowing smoke from over 800 wildfires raging across some of Canada's 347 million acres to drift over our pristine shores. A few days earlier, joined by equally stupid MAGA lackeys, he raged the U.S. "is being unnecessarily invaded by filthy, polluted, and unhealthy air" at an "incalculable" (a big word he probs didn't write) cost, and "maybe they should pay us some damages" or billions more in tariffs, and he'd call Carney "to find out what they are going to do about it." "We are holding Canada responsible," he thundered, "for the fact that they are not properly maintaining their Forests, and Brush therein."

Like his long-ago claim during California wildfires that Finland's president told him they rake their forests and have no such problems - Finland when asked: "WTF" - this is an idiot's fever dream. Facts owe: This year, America has seen over 40,000 fires burn roughly 3.9 million acres, 157% its ten-year average. There are now over 70 uncontained U.S. fires being fought by nearly 18,000 people, with much of the Northwest - Colorado, Oregon, Washington - at National Preparedness Level 5, the highest, and up to 58 new fires a day. Air quality alerts affecting a million Americans are due to those fires, to blazes across 70,000-plus acres in Minnesota, and to 3,600 fires across 1.8 million acres, below the five-year average, in Canada.

In the face of politely unnamed U.S. pols mindlessly "chirping away," notes Ontario Premier Doug Ford, he has already asked for firefighters or "anything they can send" to help fight nearly 200 fires, some of which have crossed into Canada from Minnesota, that have forced entire First Nations to evacuate and many residents to sleep in their cars. Rather than complain maybe send help, he adds, "because we have done the same thing for our American friends," again and again. Even as Canadian officials issue air quality warnings from U.S. fires drifting north, a 56-year-old Canadian helicopter pilot from B.C. just died in a crash battling a fire in Colorado, the fourth firefighter death there this summer.

Meanwhile, a mindless, science-denying MAGA has ended support for dozens of climate initiatives, dismantled our largest climate research center and pushed for more fossil fuel carnage. On Sunday, with much of his country visibly on fire, Trump attacked the National Academy of Sciences - chartered by Abe Lincoln mid-Civil War "because even a nation shooting at itself understood it needed scientists" - because it's "run by Radical Left Dumocrats” who published costly, "fraudulent," “totally discredited” climate change manuals, which he ordered "Suspension and Debarment" officials to review. Also - cue dumbest timeline ever - Repubs jumped in to decry DEI-loving advocates who (gasp) may have tried to stop blessed oil and gas projects.

Still, Canada is a tolerant, peace-loving nation that tries to accommodate all comers, even a malevolent asshole who's never gotten any closer to a "forest" than Central Park, if even there. It also values its natural resources, including a 270-million-acre boreal forest, much of it roadless, whose vast ecosystem serves as a global carbon sink to purify air and water, regulate climate and offer a safe breeding ground to billions of birds. And if some random asshole neighbor to the north chides its inadequate forest management, Canada seeks to rise to the occasion - to, as it were, Be Better. Thus was born a bold new initiative from its Department of Forest Tidiness, which is now "pleased to confirm the message has been received loud and clear."

Canada's Forest Undergrowth Clearing & Kindling Operation for Foreign Friends, aka F.U.C.K.O.F.F., renders every able-bodied person ages 16 to 65 responsible for removing leaves, twigs, moss, bark, sticks, branches, pine needles, deadfall and shrubs deemed "insufficiently tidy by Congressional observers." After receiving government-issued rakes, gloves and safety vests, they must arrange all debris "into neat bilingual piles," to be painstakingly inspected by forestry officials. Further actions may include sweeping the Rocky Mountains, power-washing the Canadian Shield, vacuuming deserts, raking California, installing smoke-detectors across the Yukon and mandating that all fires contain and respect clearly marked provincial borders.

In Ontario, workers will be assigned 6.7 acres (40 NHL hockey rinks) of dense untracked country and a 26-hour work week; elsewhere, shifts surge to a hefty 18.3 acres (110 rinks) and 70 hours a week. Morning commutes start with a three-day canoe trip and 15-km hike through swamp; on-site, workers will hand-groom 300 billion trees, hand-rake an infinity of pine needles, make local beavers submit environmental impact reports and dodge grizzlies as needed. Finally, it notes, "Canada thanks Congress for sharing their extensive knowledge of forestry, wildfire behavior, climate science, geography and upkeep of a country containing 9% of the world's forests, and looks forward to receiving further practical advice from Washington."

Online, many Americans, after reportedly snorting their coffee through their noses, thanked Canada "for being great neighbors and allies," and apologized for - hands held hopelessly wide - "all this." "We are so, so sorry," said one. Another: "We're so incredibly sorry." Canadians joined in: "I'm in Alberta - I'll send water," "In B.C., have to get my mountaineering gear first. Sorry. eh?" and a generous offer to add a new organization, Canadian Undergrowth, Nature, and Tree Services: "I believe that with your cooperation, F.U.C.K.O.F.F plus C.U.N.T.S could really show Americans we take their health and well-being seriously." Organizers estimate their work will be completed "somewhere between Thursday afternoon and the collapse of human civilization," which should be any day now.

Pictured: Entrance to the pop-up exhibition.

“Remember normal?” This is a question that resonates with many, especially those who’ve lost homes or been misplaced due to climate-related extreme weather disasters. The Museum of Unnatural Disasters pop-up exhibit, a project of the Climate Action Campaign in partnership with the Center for American Progress, Climate Power, and Extreme Weather Survivors, shares stories from families across the United States whose homes were ravaged by extreme weather events. The exhibit highlights a common recurring motif as a reason for worsening disasters, and one that environmental health researchers and scientists have been warning people about for years: Climate change is making extreme weather worse, leading to more damaging and costly disasters.

The Museum of Unnatural Disasters opened in Constitution Gardens on the National Mall from June 3rd-10th, 2026. Images on display in the pop-up museum paint a picture that people across the country are all too familiar with: the emotional and deadly toll that extreme weather events have on communities. The exhibit showcases items collected from individuals in communities ravaged by climate-related disasters, many weathered and torn apart, including street signs, asthma inhalers, and clothing pieces. Whether it be fatal flash floods in central Kansas, harrowing hurricanes on the Florida coast, or withering wildfires across California and Northern Michigan, these show the human toll that headlines often miss.

Pictured: Children’s artwork and notes after Hurricane Sandy in New Jersey.

The name of the pop-up exhibit, The Museum of Unnatural Disasters, calls attention to natural disasters and their unnatural causes. As climate change worsens year by year through global warming and extreme weather events, it’s becoming more stark the impact that fossil fuel emissions have on our deteriorating environment. According to the United Nations, fossil fuel emissions account for 68 percent of greenhouse gas emissions and 90 percent of carbon dioxide emissions, directly contributing to a warming planet and worsening extreme weather patterns.

 At the end of the exhibit, museum guests were urged to reflect on one thing they would save if a disaster hit their home today. Many responses included pets, family photo albums, or people in the home with them. To have to even reflect on such a tragic question underscores the unfortunate reality of how every region within the United States and the world is at risk.

Pictured: Wall at end of exhibit asking guests to take a card and answer one question: What would you save in the event of a natural disaster?

The Museum of Unnatural Disasters inspired museum guests to take action for a better climate. A main goal of the exhibit was to bring attention to and urge action against practices that actively harm our environment, such as continued burning of fossil fuels for energy. One action that can be taken right now is signing on to a petition to members of Congress, demanding they take urgent action to address climate change. Sign the petition here. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Author: Lauren Baldwin is a junior at the University of Central Florida majoring in Health Sciences, and is an Environmental Health undergraduate intern at ANHE.

The post Catastrophic Climates and Consequences: A Dive into the Museum of Unnatural Disasters appeared first on ANHE.

Update on EWG-sponsored California bills to boost consumer safety, choice and transparency Ketura Persellin July 20, 2026

California, the world’s fourth-largest economy, could soon prove – once again – its status as a leader in environmental and public health policy that helps reshape the U.S. marketplace. 

When Sacramento lawmakers return from recess next month, they’ll consider four EWG-sponsored bills that address key issues: energy affordability, “forever chemicals” pesticides, toxic chemicals in diapers and ultra-processed foods, or UPF. 

If enacted, these bills would help consumers lead cleaner, healthier lives through transparency, commonsense safety regulations and choice. They face further votes in the Legislature in August before being sent to Gov. Gavin Newsom for his signature. 

1. Using solar to lower sky-high electricity bills (Senate Bill 868)

The average California ratepayer faces electricity bills higher than those of most Americans. “Balcony solar” could help.

SB 868 would make it easier for everyone, including renters, apartment and condo dwellers, as well as owners of single-family homes, to plug into the sun using balcony solar systems – small, portable solar panels that can easily be set up on a patio or balcony and taken along when the owner moves. 

The systems are inexpensive enough that ratepayers can recoup their investment within a couple of years, putting solar – and savings – within reach of more people. And the costs should decline as the market grows. 

But complex rules make accessing balcony solar unnecessarily hard, if not impossible for many.

That’s why EWG is sponsoring this bill, known as the Plug and Play Solar Act, authored by state Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco). If enacted, it would ensure that balcony solar systems meet strict safety standards and remove hurdles for Californians who want to take more ownership over their utility bills.

SB 868 passed in the California Senate in May, and through the Assembly Utilities and Energy Committee in June. No major amendments have been added to this bill and the next step in the process is review by the Assembly Appropriations Committee. 

2. Widespread use of PFAS pesticides (Assembly Bill 1603)

This bill would address the use of the toxic “forever chemicals” known as PFAS that are currently being allowed to be used as pesticides in California.

Over 2.5 million pounds of these chemicals are applied to crops each year within the state, contaminating not just produce but soil and water too.

The bill follows EWG research showing state test results finding PFAS pesticides on nine in 10 California-grown samples of peaches, nectarines and plums. It’s critical to address this source of toxic pollution in the state that grows about half the country’s produce.

Our interactive map shows the California fields where PFAS pesticides are applied. 

As introduced, AB 1603, by Assemblymember Nick Schultz (D-Burbank), would have banned the use, sale and manufacture of PFAS pesticides statewide beginning in 2035. It would have also immediately paused state approvals, phased out by 2030 the PFAS pesticides not allowed in Europe, and required public disclosure of PFAS pesticide uses. 

AB 1603 passed the Assembly in May and went on to pass through two Senate policy committees in June, Environmental Quality and Agriculture, where it was heavily amended. The Senate Appropriations Committee will next review the bill, followed by a full Senate vote.

The bill has been modified to no longer prohibit the sale or use of PFAS pesticides. It requires disclosure only. Still, that’s an important first step in addressing the use of these chemicals.

AB 1603 also maintains a categorical approach – viewing PFAS as a class of chemicals, rather than regulating them one at a time. 

3. Baby diapers made of mystery chemicals (Assembly Bill 1901)

Many categories of personal care products are a virtual black box, their ingredients a mystery. 

That’s especially true for baby diapers, since infants and toddlers wear them constantly for at least a couple years. Their developing bodies make them particularly vulnerable to toxic chemical exposure. 

AB 1901, by Assemblymember Marc Berman (D-Menlo Park), would require manufacturers of children’s diapers sold, distributed or manufactured in California to fully disclose their ingredients on product packaging and online.

Recent tests have found diapers may contain phthalates, linked to hormone disruption, bleaching agents associated with skin and respiratory irritation, and volatile organic compounds, including hazardous air pollutants like toluene and xylene.

Parents and caregivers deserve to know what chemicals sit for years on their child’s body 24/7.

AB 1901 passed the California State Assembly and the Senate Environmental Quality Committee. In August, the bill heads, with no major changes, to the Senate Appropriations Committee for review. 

4. What is and isn’t ultra-processed food (Assembly Bill 2244)

UPF make up more than two-thirds of children’s diets and more than half of the typical adult diet in the U.S. 

AB 2244 addresses the confusion shoppers face in distinguishing ultra-processed from less processed food, with the intent of helping to rein in skyrocketing and harmful UPF consumption. 

If enacted, the bill would establish a system for certifying qualifying foods as free from the additives, emulsifiers, food dyes and flavors that often characterize UPF. It would tie that system to California’s first-in-the-nation definition of UPF, which was adopted last year as the result of an earlier bill, also intended to stem the consumption of UPF.

Assemblymember Jesse Gabriel (D-Encino) is the lawmaker behind this bill and several other pioneering laws addressing food safety, especially for kids. His work has helped galvanize a national movement to address food chemicals. 

AB 2244 passed the Assembly in May, when it was revised to give grocers more flexibility in how they display products sporting the UPF label. The Senate health and judiciary committees have passed the bill, and the Senate appropriations panel will consider it next.

Protein powder bill falls short

EWG also sponsored a fifth bill, which aimed to require manufacturers of protein powder and shakes to disclose levels of heavy metals in their products. 

Millions supplement their protein intake in various forms every day. But they have no way to know whether the shakes, powders and bars they consume contain concerning levels of harmful contaminants: lead, cadmium, mercury and arsenic. One recent study showed about half the products tested exceeded at least one state or federal safety limit for these contaminants.

The fifth bill, SB 1033, would have required manufacturers to disclose levels of heavy metals in their products. Its author, state Sen. Steve Padilla (D-San Diego), sought to make manufacturers accountable for a product that is under-regulated by federal standards.

This bill would have brought greater transparency to protein products, much like an earlier law, which holds producers of baby food to a safety standard for heavy metal. But the legislation did not advance out of the Senate.

Areas of Focus Ultra-Processed Foods Children’s Health Toxic Chemicals Pesticides PFAS Chemicals California July 23, 2026

Antimining Barricade Torn Down In Palawam - But Indigenous People Resistance Will Not Be Silenced

Palawan — long celebrated as the Philippines’ last ecological frontier — is now ground zero for a disturbing pattern: mining incursions advancing with impunity, and Indigenous Peoples’ rights being trampled by the very institutions mandated to protect them.

On March 26, in Sitio Linao, Barangay Ipilan, Brooke’s Point, Pala’wan communities watched in shock as two backhoes belonging to Calmia Nickel Inc. (CNI) crossed the invisible boundary that has safeguarded their upland ancestral domain for generations. For the first time, heavy machinery penetrated a landscape where selfsufficiency still thrives: forests rich with wildlife, upland rice and cassava fields, and dozens of freshwater springs sustaining entire communities.

Support the Pala’wan

What you can do: to support this struggle, please sign and send this email letter to Hon. Cesareo Benedito Jr., Mayor of Brooke’s Point, including also the other electronic addresses in Cc.

/* Contenedor */ .palawan-actions { width: 100%; padding: 30px 20px; box-sizing: border-box; } .palawan-actions-desktop, .palawan-actions-mobile { align-items: center; justify-content: center; flex-wrap: wrap; gap: 14px; } /* Botones */ .palawan-actions .palawan-button { position: static !important; display: inline-flex !important; align-items: center; justify-content: center; float: none !important; width: auto !important; min-height: 48px; margin: 0 !important; padding: 12px 22px !important; background: #94164f !important; color: #ffffff !important; border: 2px solid #94164f !important; border-radius: 4px !important; font-family: inherit; font-size: 16px !important; font-weight: 700 !important; line-height: 1.2 !important; letter-spacing: 0 !important; text-align: center; text-decoration: none !important; white-space: nowrap; cursor: pointer; box-shadow: 0 3px 8px rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.14); transition: background-color 0.2s ease, color 0.2s ease, border-color 0.2s ease, transform 0.2s ease; } /* Evita el ícono y el desplazamiento automático de Divi */ .palawan-actions .palawan-button::before, .palawan-actions .palawan-button::after { display: none !important; content: none !important; } .palawan-actions .palawan-button:hover, .palawan-actions .palawan-button:focus { padding: 12px 22px !important; background: #ffffff !important; color: #94164f !important; border-color: #ffffff !important; transform: translateY(-2px); } .palawan-actions .palawan-button:focus-visible { outline: 3px solid rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.6); outline-offset: 3px; } /* Escritorio */ .palawan-actions-desktop { display: flex; } .palawan-actions-mobile { display: none; } /* Tablet y celular */ @media only screen and (max-width: 980px) { .palawan-actions { padding: 24px 20px; } .palawan-actions-desktop { display: none !important; } .palawan-actions-mobile { display: flex !important; } } /* Celular */ @media only screen and (max-width: 480px) { .palawan-actions-mobile { flex-direction: column; gap: 12px; } .palawan-actions .palawan-button { width: 100% !important; max-width: 280px; white-space: normal; } } Send with Gmail Send with Outlook Copy letter Open email app Copy letter function getPalawanActionSubject() { if (!window.palawanSelectedSubject) { const subjects = [ "Protect Brooke's Point and Palawan's Indigenous communities", "Stand with the Indigenous communities of Palawan", "Urgent action needed to protect Brooke's Point", "Defend Palawan's forests and Indigenous rights", "Stop mining expansion in Brooke's Point", "Protect Palawan's Last Ecological Frontier", "Respect Indigenous rights in Brooke's Point", "Appeal to protect Brooke's Point from mining" ]; window.palawanSelectedSubject = subjects[Math.floor(Math.random() * subjects.length)]; } return window.palawanSelectedSubject; } function getActionEmailData() { return { to: 'brookespointmayorsoffice@gmail.com', cc: [ 'mabuhay@palawan.gov.ph', 'tjsmatta@gmail.com', 'oed@pcsd.gov.ph', 'ohea@denr.gov.ph', 'region4b@ncip.gov.ph', 'jenmarcantonjos@gmail.com', 'ich@unesco.org', 'comite.liaison.ong@unesco.org' ].join(','), subject: getPalawanActionSubject(), body: `Dear Mayor Benedito, With each passing month, I continue to receive deeply troubling reports regarding the accelerating intrusion of mining operations within Palawan, a UNESCO Man and Biosphere Reserve. Along with many concerned individuals worldwide, I am particularly alarmed by developments in the Municipality of Brooke's Point, where the mining tenements of companies such as Ipilan Nickel Corporation (INC) and Calmia-MacroAsia overlap with the Mount Mantalingahan Protected Landscape (MMPL), an area of both national and international ecological significance. Allowing further degradation in these zones risks irreversible consequences for the island's sustainable future. Public records reveal that at least 218,854 trees have already been targeted under "Special Tree Cutting and EarthBalling Permits" for mining operations in Palawan. This number is staggering - not only because of the trees themselves, but because each permit threatens watersheds, biodiversity, soil stability and the entire ecological system that sustains life on the island. It is disheartening to learn of the Municipal Government's recent endorsement of the business permit renewal for Ipilan Nickel Corporation - an action that would authorize the cutting of approximately 32,000 trees in primary forest. I sincerely hope that this decision, supported by nine members of the Sangguniang Bayan, can still be reconsidered and ultimately reversed in the interest of long-term environmental stewardship. I am equally concerned about the situation in Sitio Linao, where the barricade erected by Indigenous residents to stop Calmia's heavy equipment was dismantled on 29 June. This community has safeguarded and sustainably managed its environment for generations, and their grievances merit urgent attention and meaningful action. They are not alone in facing the impacts of mining; the livelihoods of farmers and fisherfolk across Brooke's Point are already being undermined, as seen in the experience of barangay Maasin proper. This pattern of harm cannot be allowed to continue. I respectfully urge your office not to endorse a business permit to Calmia Nickel Inc. and to ensure that existing operations - particularly those of INC - are not permitted to expand, and ideally are halted altogether. While the recent provincial moratorium on new mining applications is a welcome step, it is discouraging to learn that several officials are circumventing it with increasing ease and impunity. Please be assured that the international network of civil society organizations is closely monitoring the situation in Palawan and remains committed to supporting efforts to protect what has long been recognized as the "Philippines' Last Ecological Frontier." As Mayor, you hold the authority and responsibility to ensure that Brooke's Point remains one of the greenest and most beautiful municipalities in Palawan. I earnestly hope that you will use your mandate to safeguard the forests that Indigenous peoples have protected for centuries, so that future generations may inherit a landscape that remains intact, vibrant, and life-sustaining. Respectfully, [Your Name]` }; } function openActionEmail(type) { const data = getActionEmailData(); if (type === 'gmail') { window.open( 'https://mail.google.com/mail/?view=cm&fs=1' + '&to=' + encodeURIComponent(data.to) + '&cc=' + encodeURIComponent(data.cc) + '&su=' + encodeURIComponent(data.subject) + '&body=' + encodeURIComponent(data.body), '_blank' ); } if (type === 'outlook') { window.open( 'https://outlook.office.com/mail/deeplink/compose?' + 'to=' + encodeURIComponent(data.to) + '&cc=' + encodeURIComponent(data.cc) + '&subject=' + encodeURIComponent(data.subject) + '&body=' + encodeURIComponent(data.body), '_blank' ); } if (type === 'mailto') { window.location.href = 'mailto:' + data.to + '?cc=' + encodeURIComponent(data.cc) + '&subject=' + encodeURIComponent(data.subject) + '&body=' + encodeURIComponent(data.body); } } function copyPalawanLetter(button) { const data = getActionEmailData(); const completeText = 'TO: brookespointmayorsoffice@gmail.com\n' + 'CC: mabuhay@palawan.gov.ph, tjsmatta@gmail.com, oed@pcsd.gov.ph, ohea@denr.gov.ph, region4b@ncip.gov.ph, jenmarcantonjos@gmail.com, ich@unesco.org, comite.liaison.ong@unesco.org\n\n' + data.body; const textArea = document.createElement('textarea'); textArea.value = completeText; textArea.setAttribute('readonly', ''); textArea.style.position = 'fixed'; textArea.style.top = '0'; textArea.style.left = '0'; textArea.style.width = '1px'; textArea.style.height = '1px'; textArea.style.padding = '0'; textArea.style.border = '0'; textArea.style.fontSize = '16px'; textArea.style.opacity = '0.01'; document.body.appendChild(textArea); textArea.focus(); textArea.select(); textArea.setSelectionRange(0, completeText.length); let copied = false; try { copied = document.execCommand('copy'); } catch (error) { copied = false; } document.body.removeChild(textArea); if (copied) { showCopyConfirmation(button); return; } /* Segundo intento para navegadores compatibles */ if (navigator.clipboard && window.isSecureContext) { navigator.clipboard.writeText(completeText) .then(function () { showCopyConfirmation(button); }) .catch(function () { showManualCopy(completeText); }); } else { showManualCopy(completeText); } } function showCopyConfirmation(button) { const originalText = button.textContent; button.textContent = 'Letter copied!'; setTimeout(function () { button.textContent = originalText; }, 2000); } function showManualCopy(text) { window.prompt( 'Press and hold the text, then select Copy:', text ); }

According to tribal leader Panglima Celso Paida,

“The company entered our ancestral domain without consulting us at all. We had no choice but to act immediately and set up a community barricade to stop further intrusions. In spite of this, they’re leveling an area where they, supposedly, plan to put up their building.”

For nearly three months, indigenous residents guarded the barricade day and night. It became a living symbol of resistance – a collective assertion of ancestral rights and a civil society defense of Brooke’s Point’s watersheds, which sustain upland communities, farmers, and fisherfolk downstream.

A Brutal Dismantling — Backed by State Agencies

On June 29, this outpost of Indigenous selfdetermination was dismantled. The operation was carried out with coordination and support from the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples (NCIP), Palawan National Police (PNP), the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR), the Mining and Geoscience Bureau (MGB) and other agencies.

The order to dismantle the barricade was executed under NCIP Memorandum Order No. 1562026, based on a resolution issued by IPDOBICAMM, an organization whose legitimacy is widely contested by true Pala’wan leaders. In a striking display of bias, NCIP Provincial Director Atty. Jansen Jontilla personally served the dismantling order while wearing a mining helmet — a visual confirmation of where NCIP’s loyalties lie, and a betrayal of the very communities the agency is legally mandated to protect.

Illegitimate Leaders Elevated, True Custodians Ignored

IPDOBICAMM President Julhadi Titte, a key figure behind the dismantling, claimed the barricade violated prior agreements and breached IP rights under the Indigenous Peoples Rights Act (IPRA). But Pala’wan leaders reject this narrative outright. One of them argues: “Titte is not a legitimate Indigenous leader, he does not belong to the Pala’wan tribes and IPDOBICAMM does not represent the true custodians of the ancestral domain, across the six ‘barangays’ (administrative units)”. Yet NCIP continues to elevate such figures – a pattern that conveniently aligns with mining interests.

“IPDOBICAMM was created through collusion between mining companies and NCIP. Our legitimate leaders are reorganizing through PEKP (traditional leaders), supported by MKE (women’s groups) and SAMAKA (youth opposing mining).”

A respected Pala’wan representative

A Flawed FPIC Process — Manipulated to Favor Mining

The agreements cited by IPDOBICAMM are deeply questionable. According to legitimate Pala’wan leaders, the Free, Prior, and Informed Consent (FPIC) process was manipulated by NCIP officials. One leader explains: “NCIP validated mining approval through dubious ‘majority’ votes rather than genuine consensus, as required by IPRA.”

An indigenous woman advocate corroborates:

“Several of those consulted are not truly indigenous. They collaborate with mining companies for personal gain. They speak in our name without our consent — and NCIP validates them instead of us.”

Mining Agreements Built on Fraud and Violations

The Mineral Production Sharing Agreement (MPSA) of MacroAsia Mining Corp., implemented by Calmia Nickel Inc., allegedly received community support leading to NCIP’s issuance of a Certification Precondition (CP). But the consultations involved illegitimate leaders, not the true custodians recognized by local communities.

Indigenous leaders are now demanding an investigation into how the Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) was secured – and how mining approvals were pushed through despite widespread opposition.

“Why does NCIP follow the orders of IPDOBICAMM - a group that manages mining royalties - instead of the indigenous community who actually live within the ancestral lands to be mined?”

Victor Colili – Former Brooke’s Point Councillor and Indigenous Peoples’ leader

“NCIP was created to protect Indigenous Peoples, not undermine them. When decisions affecting ancestral domains disregard the voices of those who have long protected these lands, public trust in the institution collapses.”

Mary Jean Feliciano – Vice Mayor of Brooke’s Point

Legal Violations, Broken Promises, and a Threat to a UNESCO Landscape

MacroAsia/Calmia promised nine programs for IPs in the MOA — none have been fulfilled. Their mining tenement overlaps with the Mount Mantalingahan Protected Landscape (MMPL), a UNESCOrecognized biodiversity hotspot feeding 33 rivers and providing ecosystem services valued at US$5.5 billion, supporting 200,000 people.

The project also lacks a business permit from the Brooke’s Point Mayor and should not be allowed to push through, given the Provincial Ordinance No. 3646, which imposes a 50year mining moratorium. Yet enforcement agencies continue to ignore these violations. This reflects a familiar pattern in Philippine resource governance: corruption, clientelism, and impunity, undermining Palawan’s status as a UNESCO Man & Biosphere Reserve and threatening one of the country’s last intact forests.

IPRA Under Attack — A Dangerous Legislative Shift

The Philippines has some of Asia’s strongest Indigenous rights laws. Yet corruption hollow them out. Even the landmark Indigenous Peoples’ Rights Act (IPRA) is now under threat. Proposed laws such as House Bill 9608 and House Bill 621 seek to transfer IPRA functions from NCIP to DENR — the same agency whose Mines and Geosciences Bureau grants mining permits. If passed, Indigenous rights would fall under the authority of those who profit from their erosion. This would mark the death of IPRA.

“The destruction of the barricade will not stop us. It will only make us more determined to defend our forest and the future of the coming generations.”

Blockade participants led by Celso Paida

Indigenous Resistance Continues

Despite the dismantling, Indigenous resolve remains unbroken.

The struggle of the Pala’wan and civil society to protect Brooke’s Point’s pristine environment will continue — until mining operations retreat and ancestral domains are respected.

What you can do: To support this struggle, please sign and send this email letter to Hon. Cesareo Benedito Jr., Mayor of Brooke’s Point, including also the other electronic addresses in Cc.

/* Contenedor */ .palawan-actions { width: 100%; padding: 30px 20px; box-sizing: border-box; } .palawan-actions-desktop, .palawan-actions-mobile { align-items: center; justify-content: center; flex-wrap: wrap; gap: 14px; } /* Botones */ .palawan-actions .palawan-button { position: static !important; display: inline-flex !important; align-items: center; justify-content: center; float: none !important; width: auto !important; min-height: 48px; margin: 0 !important; padding: 12px 22px !important; background: #94164f !important; color: #ffffff !important; border: 2px solid #94164f !important; border-radius: 4px !important; font-family: inherit; font-size: 16px !important; font-weight: 700 !important; line-height: 1.2 !important; letter-spacing: 0 !important; text-align: center; text-decoration: none !important; white-space: nowrap; cursor: pointer; box-shadow: 0 3px 8px rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.14); transition: background-color 0.2s ease, color 0.2s ease, border-color 0.2s ease, transform 0.2s ease; } /* Evita el ícono y el desplazamiento automático de Divi */ .palawan-actions .palawan-button::before, .palawan-actions .palawan-button::after { display: none !important; content: none !important; } .palawan-actions .palawan-button:hover, .palawan-actions .palawan-button:focus { padding: 12px 22px !important; background: #ffffff !important; color: #94164f !important; border-color: #ffffff !important; transform: translateY(-2px); } .palawan-actions .palawan-button:focus-visible { outline: 3px solid rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.6); outline-offset: 3px; } /* Escritorio */ .palawan-actions-desktop { display: flex; } .palawan-actions-mobile { display: none; } /* Tablet y celular */ @media only screen and (max-width: 980px) { .palawan-actions { padding: 24px 20px; } .palawan-actions-desktop { display: none !important; } .palawan-actions-mobile { display: flex !important; } } /* Celular */ @media only screen and (max-width: 480px) { .palawan-actions-mobile { flex-direction: column; gap: 12px; } .palawan-actions .palawan-button { width: 100% !important; max-width: 280px; white-space: normal; } } Send with Gmail Send with Outlook Copy letter Open email app Copy letter function getPalawanActionSubject() { if (!window.palawanSelectedSubject) { const subjects = [ "Protect Brooke's Point and Palawan's Indigenous communities", "Stand with the Indigenous communities of Palawan", "Urgent action needed to protect Brooke's Point", "Defend Palawan's forests and Indigenous rights", "Stop mining expansion in Brooke's Point", "Protect Palawan's Last Ecological Frontier", "Respect Indigenous rights in Brooke's Point", "Appeal to protect Brooke's Point from mining" ]; window.palawanSelectedSubject = subjects[Math.floor(Math.random() * subjects.length)]; } return window.palawanSelectedSubject; } function getActionEmailData() { return { to: 'brookespointmayorsoffice@gmail.com', cc: [ 'mabuhay@palawan.gov.ph', 'tjsmatta@gmail.com', 'oed@pcsd.gov.ph', 'ohea@denr.gov.ph', 'region4b@ncip.gov.ph', 'jenmarcantonjos@gmail.com', 'ich@unesco.org', 'comite.liaison.ong@unesco.org' ].join(','), subject: getPalawanActionSubject(), body: `Dear Mayor Benedito, With each passing month, I continue to receive deeply troubling reports regarding the accelerating intrusion of mining operations within Palawan, a UNESCO Man and Biosphere Reserve. Along with many concerned individuals worldwide, I am particularly alarmed by developments in the Municipality of Brooke's Point, where the mining tenements of companies such as Ipilan Nickel Corporation (INC) and Calmia-MacroAsia overlap with the Mount Mantalingahan Protected Landscape (MMPL), an area of both national and international ecological significance. Allowing further degradation in these zones risks irreversible consequences for the island's sustainable future. Public records reveal that at least 218,854 trees have already been targeted under "Special Tree Cutting and EarthBalling Permits" for mining operations in Palawan. This number is staggering - not only because of the trees themselves, but because each permit threatens watersheds, biodiversity, soil stability and the entire ecological system that sustains life on the island. It is disheartening to learn of the Municipal Government's recent endorsement of the business permit renewal for Ipilan Nickel Corporation - an action that would authorize the cutting of approximately 32,000 trees in primary forest. I sincerely hope that this decision, supported by nine members of the Sangguniang Bayan, can still be reconsidered and ultimately reversed in the interest of long-term environmental stewardship. I am equally concerned about the situation in Sitio Linao, where the barricade erected by Indigenous residents to stop Calmia's heavy equipment was dismantled on 29 June. This community has safeguarded and sustainably managed its environment for generations, and their grievances merit urgent attention and meaningful action. They are not alone in facing the impacts of mining; the livelihoods of farmers and fisherfolk across Brooke's Point are already being undermined, as seen in the experience of barangay Maasin proper. This pattern of harm cannot be allowed to continue. I respectfully urge your office not to endorse a business permit to Calmia Nickel Inc. and to ensure that existing operations - particularly those of INC - are not permitted to expand, and ideally are halted altogether. While the recent provincial moratorium on new mining applications is a welcome step, it is discouraging to learn that several officials are circumventing it with increasing ease and impunity. Please be assured that the international network of civil society organizations is closely monitoring the situation in Palawan and remains committed to supporting efforts to protect what has long been recognized as the "Philippines' Last Ecological Frontier." As Mayor, you hold the authority and responsibility to ensure that Brooke's Point remains one of the greenest and most beautiful municipalities in Palawan. I earnestly hope that you will use your mandate to safeguard the forests that Indigenous peoples have protected for centuries, so that future generations may inherit a landscape that remains intact, vibrant, and life-sustaining. Respectfully, [Your Name]` }; } function openActionEmail(type) { const data = getActionEmailData(); if (type === 'gmail') { window.open( 'https://mail.google.com/mail/?view=cm&fs=1' + '&to=' + encodeURIComponent(data.to) + '&cc=' + encodeURIComponent(data.cc) + '&su=' + encodeURIComponent(data.subject) + '&body=' + encodeURIComponent(data.body), '_blank' ); } if (type === 'outlook') { window.open( 'https://outlook.office.com/mail/deeplink/compose?' + 'to=' + encodeURIComponent(data.to) + '&cc=' + encodeURIComponent(data.cc) + '&subject=' + encodeURIComponent(data.subject) + '&body=' + encodeURIComponent(data.body), '_blank' ); } if (type === 'mailto') { window.location.href = 'mailto:' + data.to + '?cc=' + encodeURIComponent(data.cc) + '&subject=' + encodeURIComponent(data.subject) + '&body=' + encodeURIComponent(data.body); } } function copyPalawanLetter(button) { const data = getActionEmailData(); const completeText = 'TO: brookespointmayorsoffice@gmail.com\n' + 'CC: mabuhay@palawan.gov.ph, tjsmatta@gmail.com, oed@pcsd.gov.ph, ohea@denr.gov.ph, region4b@ncip.gov.ph, jenmarcantonjos@gmail.com, ich@unesco.org, comite.liaison.ong@unesco.org\n\n' + data.body; const textArea = document.createElement('textarea'); textArea.value = completeText; textArea.setAttribute('readonly', ''); textArea.style.position = 'fixed'; textArea.style.top = '0'; textArea.style.left = '0'; textArea.style.width = '1px'; textArea.style.height = '1px'; textArea.style.padding = '0'; textArea.style.border = '0'; textArea.style.fontSize = '16px'; textArea.style.opacity = '0.01'; document.body.appendChild(textArea); textArea.focus(); textArea.select(); textArea.setSelectionRange(0, completeText.length); let copied = false; try { copied = document.execCommand('copy'); } catch (error) { copied = false; } document.body.removeChild(textArea); if (copied) { showCopyConfirmation(button); return; } /* Segundo intento para navegadores compatibles */ if (navigator.clipboard && window.isSecureContext) { navigator.clipboard.writeText(completeText) .then(function () { showCopyConfirmation(button); }) .catch(function () { showManualCopy(completeText); }); } else { showManualCopy(completeText); } } function showCopyConfirmation(button) { const originalText = button.textContent; button.textContent = 'Letter copied!'; setTimeout(function () { button.textContent = originalText; }, 2000); } function showManualCopy(text) { window.prompt( 'Press and hold the text, then select Copy:', text ); }

Is your community, organization, or network interested in becoming a YLNM member? Would you like to know more about us? Please send an email enquiry to membership[at]yestolifenotomining.org

Subscribe to our bi-monthly newsletter Suscríbase a nuestro boletín

Yes to Life No to Mining global solidarity network since 2012 | Contact Us

• Follow
• Follow
• Follow
• Follow

The Audubon Society has seen tremendous success across the fifteen certified Bird Cities! All across the state, communities are promoting events, education, and sustainability efforts that are...

Last week, a major trunk line ruptured in Los Angeles, sending thousands of gallons of water rushing down the Sunset Strip and into surrounding neighborhoods. Later that same week, two additional pipe failures caused flooding in Venice. In total, five water main breaks were reported within a single week, raising serious concerns about the city’s aging water infrastructure. 

These incidents are the consequences of relying on outdated infrastructure that is more than a century old. In 2019, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) reported that roughly 29% of the city’s pipes were more than 80 years old, approaching their typical 100-year lifespan.

The latest failures also echo the 2014 rupture of a trunk line on Sunset Boulevard, which released millions of gallons of water onto the UCLA campus, flooding multiple buildings and causing millions of dollars in damage. In the aftermath, the Los Angeles Times found that nearly half of the city’s water pipes had received a condition grade of “C” or lower from officials.

It remains unclear how long repairs to the damaged trunk line in West Hollywood will take. Meanwhile, utility and state leaders continue to prioritize costly projects like the Delta Tunnel rather than addressing California’s urgent need to modernize its aging water infrastructure.

These ruptures are a reminder that California must rethink its approach to water resilience. Southern California should embrace the Water Renaissance Plan by investing in sustainable, local water supplies and practical infrastructure upgrades that strengthen reliability and help prevent future disasters, rather than relying on large-scale water diversion projects.

Read more about last week’s water line breaks:

• More water pipes burst in Venice, Hollywood as Sunset Strip repairs enter Day 4. The Los Angeles Times.
• West Hollywood rupture was L.A.’s worst in years: 17 million gallons spilled, Sunset Boulevard closed for days. The Los Angeles Times.
• ‘Significant progress’ made on ruptured Sunset Strip water main. The Los Angeles Times.
• West Hollywood faces long recovery from massive water main break: ‘It was like whitewater rapids’. The Los Angeles Times.   
• 2 separate water pipe issues flood neighborhoods in Venice, damage underground parking structures. ABC 7 Los Angeles.
• Three ruptured water pipes cause flooding in Venice neighborhoods. CBS Los Angeles.
• Street, homes flooded after water pipe ruptures in Venice. KTLA.
• Two Pipe Failures Flood Venice Days After West Hollywood Water Main Rupture. Westside Current.