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Registered nurses will hold a rally and community event on Saturday, Sept. 19 in Bangor, Maine to highlight the patient care impacts of federal health care cuts on Maine hospitals. Nurses will also use the event to discuss their Vision for a Healthy Society, a set of broad political demands that require taking back health care, democracy, and society from billionaire and corporate control.

Headline News:

• “Five Takeaways From Ursula Von Der Leyen’s State Of The Union Speech” • Ursula von der Leyen gave an hour-long State of the Union speech, laying out solutions to cope with the “exceptional” challenges and the “incredible” change that Europe is undergoing. One thing that was predictable after last summer was attention to climate change. [reNews]

Ursala von der Leyen (European Parliament, CC BY-SA 4.0)

• “Sierra Club Strongly Opposes Bill To Give Legal Immunity To Fossil Fuel Companies” • Fossil fuel corporations knew they were causing climate change in the 1950s and spent millions of dollars to mislead the public. A study found that climate costs for the US economy will exceed $1 trillion this year. HR 8330 would give the companies immunity. [CleanTechnica]
• “Vineyard Wind And GE Vernova Settle Litigation” • Vineyard Wind and GE Vernova have reached an amicable settlement resolving all outstanding litigation concerning the 800-MW Vineyard Wind offshore wind project off the north-east US coast. The parties said GE Vernova withdrew its notice of termination as part of the agreement. [reNews]
• “Climate Change Was A Key Factor In Deadly Nepal-China Flood, Scientists Say” • Climate change played a significant role in last month’s deadly Himalayan disaster in Nepal, thinning glaciers and thawing mountain permafrost in ways that likely destabilized the slope before it collapsed, according to a report by World Weather Attribution. [Euronews]
• “Trump’s Slashing Of EPA Pollution Rules Will Cost Trillions” • At first glance one might think the Trump Administration’s move to reduce federal climate protection laws would be a good thing for energy stocks. The Environmental Defense Fund calculated that the move is so unhealthy it will result in between $1.5 trillion and $4.2 trillion in harm. [Yahoo]

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

After an extended period of limited deployment, renewable energy is once again gaining momentum in Ontario. Wind, solar and batteries swept the most recent, technology-neutral, procurements, outcompeting other technologies to deliver the lowest-cost...

In 2023, under the bright lights of the Expo City Dubai, almost 200 nations adopted an agreement to dramatically alter the world’s relationship with energy.

The deal at the COP28 climate summit promised to triple the amount of renewable electricity capacity to at least 11,000 gigawatts (GW) by 2030, and double the rate of energy efficiency improvements from 2% to 4%. Taken together, these two commitments have the potential to usher in a new global economy that is cleaner and smarter. 

Research suggests the world is on course to meet the renewable energy target, with an annual growth rate of nearly 30% between 2023 and 2025. The same cannot be said of energy efficiency, where growth fell to 1% in 2024, but has since climbed to 1.8%, according to estimates from the International Energy Agency (IEA).

The IEA attributes this poor performance to a number of factors: strong growth in industrial energy demand, policy gaps, greater access to inefficient air conditioners, and an overall growth in energy demand which renewables have not been able to meet. 

Air conditioning units lined up outside a building in Hong Kong. (Image: Unsplash) Air conditioning units lined up outside a building in Hong Kong. (Image: Unsplash)

Global electricity demand is predicted to grow by 3.8% in 2027, up from 3% in 2025. According to researchers, this demand is primarily being driven by heavy industries – steel, chemicals, cement – which overwhelmingly still use fossil fuels to power their energy-intensive factories. 

In addition, the explosive growth of AI has led to the development of new data centres which require huge amounts of electricity. Under conservative scenarios, data centres could double their electricity consumption by 2030, and those dedicated to servicing AI needs could see a 30% annual increase over the same period. The more these trends continue, the greater the cost of transitioning to cleaner, more efficient technologies.

Taking the right policy direction

While both old and new technologies put added pressure on the electricity system, the targets set in recent years remain the same. This presents policymakers with a challenge and an opportunity.

Policy is often designed to be responsive to the world around it. When the EU’s Energy Efficiency Directive was first adopted in 2012, the world was a very different place. That is why it has since been updated, twice, in 2018 and 2023.

Is electrification a no-brainer in the race to net-zero?

Mario Giordano, global head of public and government affairs at lighting multinational Signify, calls this piece of legislation “market transformational” as it created “long-term certainty through binding targets, energy saving obligations, and renovation requirements”. This, in turn, allowed businesses to plan investments and start to innovate with the stability the directive created. 

The legislation has been credited with improving efficiency rates across the bloc. According to Eurostat, the EU used a record low amount of energy in 2024, 20% less than in 2006, an historic high point.

One of the next steps on that journey for Europe is the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive which seeks to upgrade old buildings and introduces a zero-emissions standard for new public ones.

“It is a huge opportunity to renovate the continent’s building stock, and lighting is everywhere,” said Giordano. “There will need to be a massive overhaul from conventional lighting to LEDs, targeting the worst-performing buildings,” he added. This bold legislative approach could provide a template for other countries to develop energy policies with maximum impact on efficiency rates.

How to get to 4%

Jérôme Bilodeau, energy efficiency programme manager at the IEA, told Climate Home News “the world is not currently on track” to meet the COP28 efficiency goal but agreed it was achievable with the right policies in place.

“Nine out of 10 countries have achieved a rate of improvement of 4% at least one year over the past decade,” he said.

“There are many examples of effective energy efficiency policies across the world, and governments are introducing new ones regularly,” he added, pointing out that countries representing 85% of global energy demand had announced hundreds of new or updated policies in 2025 alone.

Signify: “We believe resilience is becoming more important to businesses right now”

In addition, the global energy crisis caused by the closure of the Strait of Hormuz has turbocharged the policy environment with a suite of new policies from dozens of countries now in place to reduce energy demand.

The IEA recommends closing policy gaps and raising the ambition of existing ones to help achieve the 4% energy efficiency improvement target. These policy gaps can be quite straightforward to address – for example, creating efficiency standards for new buildings, something the IEA says is lacking in almost half of all countries. And as technologies improve, policies need to be updated.

“In some countries, a building that meets the local efficiency standard may in fact be using three times as much energy as one in another country with a similar climate but with higher efficiency standards,” Bilodeau added. 

One integrated system

Giordano argues that a whole system view is needed: “Across different industries, there is a growing consensus that energy efficiency, electrification and renewable energy are not separate policy tracks, but one integrated system,” he said.

He believes that lighting can make a serious contribution to this system as a scalable and cost-effective efficiency measure. As lighting is a mature technology that is installed almost everywhere, from small buildings to city streets, it can be upgraded faster and provide immediate savings.

“You can reduce emissions, free up electricity for electrification purposes, and also save money that can be invested elsewhere,” he added.

Can the circular economy win over big business?

The latest figures show lighting accounts for around 8% of global electricity demand, and Signify estimates that switching to efficient LED technologies could save enough electricity to power up to 300 million heat pumps, or 400 million electric vehicles worldwide.

The focus on lighting would form part of a wider policy push to upgrade each country’s energy system where efficient appliances and processes are powered by renewables. And using energy more intelligently and flexibly, for example, by incentivising demand when renewable generation is higher, will greatly improve efficiency rates.

The English city of Liverpool is an example of one place seeking to use electricity in this way. A recent project, completed in 2026, saw the installation of ‘traffic adaptive lighting’ on key routes between a new football stadium and the city centre. The council can now respond to real-time fluctuations in demand, such as increased usage on match days, to meet people’s needs. This new approach could offer up to 30% in cost savings over the next decade, according to Signify.

Making energy work harder

An oft-repeated phrase in energy circles is that the greenest electron is the one you don’t use. The world is making steady progress on the challenge of transitioning away from fossil fuels. New wind and solar power installations continue to grow at record rates, with widespread coverage across continents. But in the headlong rush to build out capacity, governments and business may at the same time be taking a step backwards by paying insufficient attention to energy efficiency.

The positive work in renewables could easily be undone without a coordinated effort to make energy go further and work harder than it currently does. Experts in these circles agree that stronger, targeted policies are an important first step to achieving the world’s energy efficiency goals. But time is quickly running out to do so.

Adam Wentworth is a freelance writer based in Brighton, UK.

The post The overlooked shortcut to meeting the world’s energy goals appeared first on Climate Home News.

For much of his career, Carlos Santos’ job involved being stranded in the middle of the Amazon. Santos is a truck driver on the BR-319, a hazardous dirt highway in Brazil that cuts through a critical part of the rainforest. “You knew when you were going in,” he said of the road. “But you never knew when you’d come out the other side.”

It once took Santos 22 days to cross the 540-mile route. An unexpected rain pounded the highway during the dry season, leaving large pools of mud that mired convoys of trucks. “It’s a survival test in the jungle,” he said. “Time moves slowly. You have to ration food and water.” At night, Santos would hang a hammock in his truck cabin and watch as jaguars, tapirs, and snakes crossed the road in front of him. For weeks, he dug vehicles out of ditches, bathed in nearby rivers, and waited for heavy machinery to pull rigs from the mud one by one.

Carlos Santos has been driving a truck since he was 18 years old. Joaquim Salles

When he finally got home, Santos rested for a few days and then returned for another haul down the 319. “I went back because I enjoy it,” he said. “It’s one hell of a challenge.”

But there’s another reason such conditions are endured aside from a penchant for adventure. The BR-319 is the only road connecting the state of Amazonas, home to 4.2 million people and twice the size of Texas, to the rest of Brazil. Now, after decades of court battles and challenges by environmental groups and regulators, sections of the highway are being asphalted, and plans to pave the entire route are moving forward. 

Asphalting the 319 is a long-held demand of many in the region, who feel their isolation hinders economic development. “Why should we be forgotten?” Santos asked. “Why doesn’t the state of Amazonas have the right to be connected to the rest of the country?”

But the decision isn’t so straightforward. Scientists warn that paving the road will connect previously inaccessible regions of the Amazon to its most under-pressure areas, leading to a deforestation boom with dire consequences for the global climate. The biome currently holds an estimated 150 to 200 billion tons of carbon in its plants and soils, helping to offset greenhouse gas emissions from activities like burning fossil fuels. When the forest is cleared and burned, that stored carbon is released back into the atmosphere, fueling climate change. Indigenous groups that live in the area also say the project poses an existential threat to their communities. 

A sign marking the start of the unpaved section of the BR-319. Joaquim Salles

This May, before the paving went into full swing, I joined Santos on his route to observe how the 319 and the forest it traverses are already changing. We met at 3 a.m. at a distribution center on the outskirts of Manaus, the capital of Amazonas and home to over 2 million people. Despite its isolation, Manaus is a major manufacturing hub, the legacy of tax incentives that have attracted industry since the 1960s. The vast majority of goods currently enter and leave the city by boat or by air. Proponents of asphalting the 319 argue this dependence raises costs, lengthens delivery times, and leaves the region vulnerable to river-navigation interruptions brought on by severe droughts, which have become more common. 

Santos was born and raised in Manaus and has been driving a truck since he was 18 years old. “I was never a fan of being locked in a room in front of a computer,” he said. Now 45, he is affable with an easy smile. His belly comes close to touching the steering wheel, and his trimmed salt-and-pepper beard matches the remaining hair on the sides of his head. A long career driving the potholed roads of Amazonas has left him with a bad back.

Carlos Santos says he enjoys driving the BR-319, though “it’s one hell of a challenge.” Joaquim Salles

We pulled out of the distribution center in an immaculate bright blue semi-truck, smaller and more nimble than some of the larger rigs that are regularly seen stranded or capsized amid the mud of the 319. The truck belonged to Bemol, a leading retailer in the Amazon region, and carried large kitchen appliances, furniture, and medicine. Our destination was Porto Velho, the capital of Rondônia, which sits at the other end of the highway.

Santos has been driving on the 319 since 2015, when it reopened after decades of disrepair. Back then, he said, mud pools would stretch for dozens of yards during the rainy season, and potholes were the size of small craters. He was recounting this as we crossed the Rio Negro on a ferry, with dozens of other vehicles. The sun began to rise as we passed the famous meeting of the waters, where the dark, Coca-Cola-colored Rio Negro meets the murky brown Solimões, and the two rivers flow side by side without mixing. An hour later we were off the ferry and onto the highway. It would be a two-day trip with an overnight stop, but that was not guaranteed. The speed of travel on the 319 is highly dependent on the conditions of the road on any given day.

“You never know what to expect,” Santos told me.

In many ways, the history of deforestation in the Amazon is a history of road-building. 

In the 1970s, Brazil’s military dictatorship pursued an aggressive policy of constructing roads and encouraging settlement in the Amazon region. Since then, an area roughly the size of Spain has been deforested — 94 percent of which sits within 3 miles of a road. Often the mere possibility that a road will be built or paved is enough to increase deforestation in a given area.

The BR-319 was fully paved when it opened in 1976, but maintaining it proved too costly. It runs through a low-lying part of the forest and over the years, the grinding conditions of the rainy and dry seasons eroded the asphalt. Bus companies ceased service along the route, and businesses stopped using it to ship goods. The trees closed in on the highway and by 1988 it was virtually impassable, with only the ends still covered with asphalt. 

For years it was left to the forest, used only by the handful of communities that still lived along its route and the occasional adventurer passing through. The trees blocked the sky for long sections of the road, and the wood bridges rotted away. In 2015, federal regulators issued a license for the cleanup and maintenance of the roadway, though not its repaving. Crews worked to clear the trees and repair the more than 50 bridges that run along the road. Conditions remained precarious, but traffic returned. 

When Jair Bolsonaro was elected president in 2018, he gutted environmental regulations and announced he would pave the BR-319 once again. A far-right former army captain, Bolsonaro had campaigned on a platform friendly to loggers, miners, and agribusiness. The promise alone drove a 122 percent rise in deforestation in the area surrounding the highway between 2020 and 2022, greater than the already high deforestation rate for the Amazon as a whole during the same period. 

Brazil’s federal courts blocked the project due to inconsistencies in the environmental licensing process, but in 2025, years after Bolsonaro had left office, Brazil’s pro-agribusiness Congress passed a law that said work on existing roads could bypass licensing altogether. President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, or Lula, tried to veto parts of the bill but was overruled by Congress. In May, the government opened bidding for paving contracts. “By the end of June,” George Santoro, the Minister of Transportation, announced, “the entire BR-319 will be under construction.” 

After the ferry, the BR-319 continues on potholed asphalt for 120 miles, the final remnants of the original 1970s road. As we drove through the district of Careiro, the first on the 319 after Manaus, the landscape varied between forest and pasture, with modest, scattered homes on the side of the road. “Houses used to be a rare sight,” said Santos. “You’d see one here and another way off in the distance. Not anymore.”

It’s typical of a region in the early stages of deforestation. First, speculators and loggers clear public land. Once the timber is extracted, ranchers move in. They might live on the land themselves, but often they’ll hire someone to live there for them and tend the livestock. The ultimate goal is to petition the government for a formal land title which, if granted, can be resold once the road is fully paved and the land worth far more. The process of land regularization in Brazil is slow, bureaucratic, and rife with irregularities. Occupation is often a first step towards legal recognition, even when the initial clearing was illegal.

Cows in a pasture in the district of Careiro. Joaquim Salles

For three months in 2023, Manaus was shrouded in a thick cloud of smoke, ranking it among the cities with the worst air quality in the world. The governor of Amazonas at the time blamed the crisis on forest fires in the neighboring state of Pará. Research using satellite imagery and atmospheric data has since shown that while some of the smoke was indeed coming from Pará, much of it originated from forest-clearing blazes in districts at the start of the BR-319, like Careiro. 

As the old asphalt continues, the pastures become less frequent and the landscape progressively more wild. Then, all of a sudden, the asphalt turns into a reddish, iron-rich clay. It’s a surface that is rock-hard when dry and extremely slippery when wet. The rainy season brings mud and a slickness that causes trucks to glide out of control. The dry season brings clouds of dust that reduce visibility to just a few yards. This constant wetting and drying causes the dirt to form small ridges that drivers have come to call “cow ribs.” They rattle trucks like never-ending rumble strips.

Compared to what the highway was like in the recent past, this is a minor nuisance. “For the veterans around here, the road is a cakewalk now,” Santos said. The BR-319 may not be paved yet, but maintenance on the route has intensified in the past few years.

We encountered a road crew just a few miles after hitting dirt. To keep the highway passable, crews work daily on different sections, flattening uneven terrain, packing the ground, and adding gravel. Areas that easily flooded just a few years ago have been raised, bridges repaired or rebuilt entirely. (Environmentalists claim that much of this work goes beyond the maintenance license that was issued in 2015.) The road is still mostly used by trucks, but new companies can now be seen on the route, mostly transporting consumer goods, some coming from as far as São Paulo, 2,400 miles away.

A maintenance crew at work on the BR-319. Joaquim Salles

Traveling the 319 with Santos means listening to an unbroken catalogue of accidents he’s witnessed. A truck that rolled into a ravine here, dropping brand new washing machines into the river. Another that tumbled over there, spilling gallons of milk onto the road. Even today, it is not uncommon for Santos to encounter a capsized truck, sometimes more than one in a single journey. 

As we ventured deeper down the highway, lush forest occupied both sides of the road. “It’s every shade of green you could think of,” Santos remarked. He had a point. One hectare of Brazilian Amazon holds more species of trees than all of the continental United States and Canada combined.

About eight hours in, we reached the settlement of Iguapó-Açu. The town is home to some 75 families who live in stilt houses with tin roofs. It serves as a final rest stop for truck drivers before they face the BR-319’s middle stretch, where it cuts through 250 miles of dense forest with virtually nothing else around. Residents of Iguapó-Açu live on subsistence farming, fishing, and by operating a sluggish barge that drivers must take across a narrow river to continue on their way down the 319. 

While waiting for the barge, I spoke to residents who were eating freshly-caught fish stew on the porch of one of the houses. Raimunda de Sá Assunção, 53, moved to the town as a child and still remembers when the road was paved. She also remembers the years when the road fell into disrepair, many families left, and the drive to the nearest hospital could take days. Now the drive can take as little as two hours. She remains skeptical whether the road will ultimately be paved. “My hair’s turned white, and nothing’s happened. All they do is plug holes,” she said. “I’ll believe it when I see it.”

Raimunda de Sá Assunção is a long-time resident of Iguapó-Açu. Joaquim Salles​

A spot just a few miles north of Iguapó-Açu was the site of a presidential photo-op in late May. As Lula posed with a road crew working on the 319, he painted a rosy picture of the future. “We will set an example of how to build a road,” he said, adding that the paved highway would be “the most beautiful and most preserved road in the world.” 

Lula was elected in 2022 by a broad anti-Bolsonaro coalition. Among those who buoyed him to victory was Marina Silva, the politician and environmental activist who is one of the Amazon’s most respected defenders. To get her support, Lula put the environment at the forefront of his campaign, pledging to put Brazil on a road to end deforestation by 2030.

He’s had mixed results. Deforestation rates are significantly down from the Bolsonaro years, but the government has had little success in stopping a barrage of anti-environment legislation coming from Congress, including the licensing reform that cleared the path for the paving of the 319. Now running for office again, Lula has thrown his support behind the paving, knowing that not doing so will cost him votes in the Amazon region. Silva has since left the Lula government to run for Senate in the upcoming elections. She has long been seen by many in the Amazon as an obstacle to paving the BR-319. In reality, she has never opposed the road outright, only insisted that it proceed with adequate environmental safeguards in place.

The week of the photo-op, in closed meetings with environmental groups, the government said a portion of the highway’s R$1.5 billion ($300 million) construction budget would also go towards an environmental governance plan. It would involve the creation of protected areas, wildlife bridges, and a ramp-up of environmental monitoring in a 60-mile buffer zone along the entire route. The main criticism from environmental groups is that these measures should have been implemented before any paving takes place. Instead, they are still in the discussion stage while the BR-319 is actively being asphalted.

“The plan being drawn up needs to be translated into documents with feasible, credible targets,” said Suely Araújo, Public Policy Coordinator at Observatório do Clima, a coalition of Brazilian civil society organizations focused on climate. “You need structural measures that are actually implemented. Not just promised.”

On September 8, Lula announced the formal creation of four protected areas around the BR-319, encompassing 2,600 square miles, well below the nearly 14,000 square miles the government had promised in closed meetings months earlier. 

“On one side were people who thought it was off-limits to undertake a project on a road that had already been built, connecting two state capitals,” Lula said in a speech during the announcement ceremony. “On the other were people who thought we should do it haphazardly, without any environmental-preservation criteria, without properly demarcating the relevant areas, turning it into a way for a few people to get rich by buying and selling land. We insisted that it was possible … We found a way to demarcate whatever needed to be demarcated.”

As it stands, most of the land around the BR-319 remains undesignated public land, the most attractive target for land-grabbers. It’s unclear if the government plans to announce additional conservation units. There is speculation that it might do so next year if Lula wins reelection in October. Polls show him neck-and-neck with Senator Flávio Bolsonaro, the son of former president Jair Bolsonaro.

While research shows that giving an area protected status is a powerful deterrent to deforestation, it is by no means a silver bullet. “It’s far from enough. Many conservation units exist only on paper.” said Araújo. “The plan for the region hasn’t been formalized yet. What we’ve seen is a Power Point presentation.” 

The whole notion of whether the Brazilian state is capable of closely monitoring an area as large as the one impacted by the BR-319 is up for debate. Araújo told me there is no historical precedent for it in Brazil. IBAMA, the main agency responsible for environmental enforcement, is chronically understaffed. The area around the BR-319 almost entirely lacks state presence. Authorities that attempt to enforce environmental regulations in the region are often met with hostility. There are no police checkpoints and no bases for any of Brazil’s environmental monitoring agencies along the 319, though the government had pledged to establish them in the future. 

The main risk is what experts call the “fishbone phenomenon,” a pattern seen from above in many parts of the Amazon. Highways serve as a main corridor from which illegal side roads opened by loggers, land-grabbers, and wildcat miners branch out. The highways are the spine of the fish and the side roads are the ribs. It is from these unauthorized roads that much illicit activity takes place.

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The BR-319 is only in the early stages of this process, which picked up when the road reopened in 2015 and intensified during the Bolsonaro years, but it already has more miles of side roads than the length of the highway itself. Follow one of those through satellite images and inevitably you’ll find large, recently cleared areas in the middle of the rainforest. 

Phillip Fearnside, a biologist at the National Institute of Amazonian Research, or INPA, has studied the region for decades. “You have a huge area that could be deforested very quickly,” he said. 

Researchers have used complex modeling to simulate how the paving of the BR-319 and the proliferation of side roads — both legal and illegal — will impact the forest. One study, led by Britaldo Soares-Filho of the Federal University of Minas Gerais, found that if the road is asphalted, the resulting deforestation in the region would emit 8 billion tons of carbon dioxide by 2050, four times more than if the highway remained unpaved but maintained. A separate study projected that deforestation will be 60 percent greater by 2100 under a paved scenario. 

Fearnside argues the impact would extend far beyond the 60-mile buffer zone that the government has pledged to monitor because the asphalt would connect the mostly untouched central Amazon — “the last big stretch of forest,” as he described it — to deforestation hotspots in the south. “It would be enough to push climate past the tipping point where warming gets out of control,” he said.

The threat is not only theoretical or in the future. Indigenous communities in the highway’s reach are already feeling the consequences. There have been several reports of illegal side roads encroaching into Indigenous territory. The Mura people in the region of Lago Capanã Grande have been under growing threat from land-grabbers since 2020, as conditions on the 319 improved and traffic increased. There is evidence that the toxic chemical 2,4-D, one of the main components of Agent Orange, was used to deforest land the Mura use to harvest Brazil nut, a key food source in the region. The waste was then dumped into rivers relied on by the community and made 20 people ill.

In total, there are 69 Indigenous territories in the region impacted by the BR-319, including some groups living in voluntary isolation. Together, these territories are inhabited by at least 13 different ethnicities comprising over 18,000 people. Although Brazilian law requires that Indigenous groups be consulted on large infrastructure projects that could impact them, there is no evidence this has happened in this case. 

“Consultation must happen before any decision is made, with real dialogue and the possibility of influence, including the right to say ‘no.’ What is happening is the opposite,” Mariazinha Baré told the Brazilian website Nexo. Baré is a coordinator at APIAN, a coalition of Indigenous groups from Amazonas. “BR-319 is not just infrastructure; it is an instrument of death that threatens the existence of Indigenous peoples and weakens the Amazon,” she said.

The middle stretch of the BR-319, where the road cuts through 250 miles of dense forest with virtually nothing else around. Joaquim Salles

After Iguapó-Açu, the 319 enters its wildest section. We stopped so I could get an aerial view using a drone. At 400 feet, nothing but thick, impregnable forest stretched to the horizon in every direction, except for the distinct red gash of the highway.

Since there is no cell service, truckers going in opposite directions often stop to swap notes on road conditions and weather. It wasn’t long after we started driving again that a passing trucker warned of rain ahead.

It began as a soft patter but quickly turned torrential. “While it’s raining, it’s best to push on,” Santos said. It’s the hours after the downpour, when the ground is drying but still slick, that are the most dangerous for drivers. It was getting late, and we still had 100 miles to go before reaching the town of Realidade, where we’d spend the night.

Large puddles began pooling across the road, and the ground turned to sludge. A few miles later, we encountered a stranded truck, a flatbed carrying generators that had drifted to the road’s soft shoulder and listed sharply to one side. “Welcome to the BR-319!” Santos laughed.

A truck stuck in the mud in the middle stretch of the highway. Joaquim Salles

The sun set and soon we could only see what was illuminated by the headlights. The rain continued relentlessly. At times our speed was reduced to just 5 miles per hour. Santos pressed on, passing other stranded trucks and crossing rickety wooden bridges that creaked under the wheels. Many hours later, we came to a town that appeared seemingly out of nowhere. The muddy streets were deserted and dark as we pulled into a bright orange motel called La Kazita.

It was 11 p.m., 20 hours after our departure from Manaus.

The largest settlement on the unpaved part of the 319, Realidade is a dusty outpost typical of Amazonian boom towns. Its population has swelled from just 800 people in 2010 to 7,000 today. The town lives and dies by the highway.

Many of its original residents were workers who built the road in the 1970s. When the route closed in 1988, Realidade became a virtual ghost town. Landless farmers from out of state arrived in the region in 2004 and were granted settlement rights under a federal land-reform program. Since then, a steady stream of land-grabbers, loggers, and cattle-ranchers have poured in.

Exploring Realidade, the impression is that the people arrived before the government did. The town has no police station and only a small health post, but numerous cattle-ranching supply stores. The dynamic has been the same throughout the modern history of the Amazonian frontier: People come in search of land and the riches of the forest; the state then scrambles to catch up with basic services and the rule of law.

A cattle-ranching supply store in the town of Realidade. Joaquim Salles

At La Kazita, Santos and I were eating a breakfast of plain bread when the manager began telling us how two nights before he had been paid R$600 ($115) to drive some logging workers to Humaitá, a mining town southeast of the 319. They had just come out of the forest after weeks of work felling trees. Flush with cash, they wanted to party.

Data from Simex, a system that uses satellite images to monitor logging, show that 16 square miles of land were illegally logged between 2021 and 2024 in the municipality that includes Realidade.

“All the money flowing through the region is rooted in illegal logging and land grabbing,” Lucas Ferrante, a researcher at the University of São Paulo who has studied the area extensively, told me.

The scenery around Realidade is a far cry from the lush forest I had driven through the day before. Illegal side roads abound, sawmills dot the side of the highway, and native forest is interrupted by swaths of pasture. I stopped by one of the largest ranches in the region.

Eliane Jesus Pereira, 33, lives in a ramshackle wooden house at the edge of an expansive pasture. She sells cheese made out of buffalo milk while her husband tends to the cattle. The couple moved to the farm from Realidade in 2021 when her husband was hired as a ranch hand. The owner of the land lives in Manaus. Since she has been living on the farm, she’s seen a marked improvement on the road. “Sometimes my daughter couldn’t go to school because the bus got stuck in the mud,” she said. “Now it’s better.”

Eliane Jesus Pereira lives on a ranch a few miles north of Realidade. Joaquim Salles​

It’s consensus among the scientific community that paving the BR-319 without environmental safeguards will lead to drastic consequences. Realidade might well be a vision of the future of the entire highway. Beyond the immediate impacts, studies suggest that the deforestation the asphalt could trigger may disrupt key hydrological cycles within Brazil that, in the long run, will lead to severe water shortages in large cities like São Paulo. And if Amazonas, with its size and its 97 percent forest coverage, goes the way of other Brazilian states, like Rondônia, which has lost more than a third of its native vegetation, the climate implications would be global in scale.

On the local level, it is hard to begrudge the people of Amazonas for wanting a paved road connecting them to the rest of the country, particularly in a nation as rich as Brazil. A 2025 poll by the Instituto de Pesquisa do Norte showed that 9 in 10 Amazonenses were in favor of the BR-319 being asphalted. The state has the 25th lowest GDP per capita among Brazil’s 26 states and the federal district. It ranks well below the national average in most developmental metrics, including access to education and healthcare.

“We have the sense that the region is subordinate to Brazil, like an invaded territory, a colony,” said Augusto Rocha, an engineering professor and logistics expert at the Federal University of Amazonas. “Infrastructure is a way of reducing this inequality.” Rocha is in favor of the road being paved, but warns that without environmental controls, deforestation will increase.

“We don’t deny the importance of the road,” said Suely Araújo. “The problem is building it without the necessary social and environmental conditions in place.”

Whether environmental governance is possible along the BR-319 is an open question. In the spectrum of opinions surrounding the road and development in the Amazon as a whole, there are those who would just shut it all down and leave the forest intact. On the other end, there are those who believe the forest is there to be exploited, and that the preservationist approach is to blame for the economic woes of the region. In the middle, there are those who believe that sustainability with development is possible, even if the history of the Brazilian Amazon has not yet provided a large-scale model to follow. And there are the Indigenous peoples who are too often an afterthought.

As we grew closer to Porto Velho, the dirt turned to asphalt again. I was relieved to finally be on a smooth surface after two days of bumpy, uneven terrain. The truck, now caked in dried mud from top to bottom, picked up speed for the first time since the previous morning. During the whole ride I had not seen a single instance of roadkill. But just minutes into the asphalt I did — a bright green snake and a few miles later an anteater strewn across the highway.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline A trip down the road that will determine the fate of the Amazon on Sep 17, 2026.

In this keynote address, Indigenous activist Sammy Gensaw shares his experiences working for ecological and cultural revival along the Klamath River, central to his people’s identity and livelihood.

It’s referred to as Unit 346 in the Twin Mountain II timber sale. On the ground, it’s some of the most spectacular old-growth we’ve ever witnessed, and it’s marked for clearcutting.

The catastrophic flood that killed hundreds of people in Nepal in August shows the ways rising temperatures, thawing permafrost and melting ice are increasing the risk of destructive floods in the Himalayas and other regions around the world.

As researchers around the world begin work on the next U.N. climate assessment, fears are growing that the Trump administration could meddle with critical U.S. climate data. In response, scientists are preparing to transfer vast troves of that data to repositories in Germany.

Read more on E360 →

The most comprehensive archive that exists of Survivor testimony is set to be destroyed next year … .and a lot of people don’t know that these records are about to be destroyed1. – Connie Walker

CANADIANS AND INDIGENOUS PEOPLE alike, have the right to know the truth about what happened at Indian Residential Schools. This right to know the truth is an internationally recognized legal right for victims, families, affected communities and society as a whole. The right to know the truth places a corresponding obligation on the state to protect the truth. Yet, in Canada, this is not the case. In 2017, a Supreme Court ruling authorized the destruction of 38,000 Indian Residential School Survivor’s records, including their testimonies2. This destruction is set to occur after September 19, 2027. To circumvent the destruction of their records and testimonies, Survivors can provide consent to have their files transferred to the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation (NCTR) – an archive housed at the University of Manitoba3. But this process has not been made clear to Survivors and only a small fraction have done so.

How, then, do we protect the right to truth?

Confidentiality and the
Independent Assessment Process

As part of the Indian Residential School Settlement Agreement, the Independent Assessment Process (IAP)4 was created; an adjudicative process whereby Survivors who had experienced sexual or physical abuse, or any other wrongful acts that resulted in serious psychological consequences, could seek redress. As part of this process, more than 38,000 Survivors participated, providing documentary and oral evidence about the abuses they endured, largely at the hands of those in charge of their care. Prior to testifying at their hearings, Survivors were promised confidentiality over what they shared. This promise of confidentiality was later interpreted by the courts to mean that their records and testimonies should be destroyed, unless Survivors choose to preserve them at the NCTR. Contained in these records and testimonies are individual and collective truths about: the extent and nature of physical and sexual abuse5 perpetrated on children; the names of perpetrators and officials that permitted these abuses to occur; in depth first-hand accounts of the daily occurrences of neglect, cruelty and wrongdoings within the institutions, and possibly the deaths and burials of the children that died. All these truths are evidence of the genocide and crimes against humanity, that today, a growing group of Canadians deny occurred. 

Following the Supreme Court decision in 2017, the records and testimonies of Survivors were to be retained for a specified number of years to allow for the development and implementation of a notice program to advise Survivors of their rights regarding their IAP records and testimony.

To date, less than 100 files have been transferred to the NCTR, raising questions regarding the adequacy and effectiveness of the court-monitored notice program. Protecting the Truth

Since the Supreme Court of Canada decision, new information continues to emerge about missing and disappeared Indigenous children, unmarked graves and burial sites. In my report as Independent Special Interlocutor for Missing Children and Unmarked Graves and Burial Sites Associated with Indian Residential Schools6, I expressed my concerns that Canada is failing to comply with its international obligations by allowing the impending destruction of the IAP records to occur. This concern was echoed by the Permanent People’s Tribunal7 and several First Nations leaders across Canada have also called for a postponement of the destruction to allow for a more robust, accessible, and Indigenous-led notice program8.

For years prior to the signing of the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement (IRSSA)9, thousands of lawsuits were filed against the federal government and the church entities that operated the institutions. These lawsuits were filed in courts across the country, in every province and territory and most were finally resolved through the national IRSSA. These court files contain documents such as statements of claim and defence, transcripts of testimony in civil and criminal trials, affidavits of Survivors, and expert reports – all of which shed further light on what occurred behind the closed doors of Indian Residential Schools. These records are also evidence of Survivor resistance and agency. They are public (unless the court issued a sealing order) and are stored within court records centres until they will be destroyed, pursuant to provincial and territorial government disposition policies. 

The Indian Residential Schools Records Project

With support from the Law Foundation of Ontario (LFO),the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), and Yellowhead Institute, the Indian Residential School Records Project: Legal and Investigative Research for Justice (IRSRP) is a response to the need to protect the truth. Co-led by Pulitzer Prize-winning Cree journalist Connie Walker and Mohawk Lawyer, Kimberly Murray, the project responds to the pending destruction of the thousands of Survivor’s records and testimonies .

The project is a continuation of the work that Connie Walker undertook in Stolen: Surviving St. Michael’s10, an investigative podcast exploring the Indian Residential School where her father was taken in Duck Lake, Saskatchewan. During Connie’s investigation, she was able to access over 400 statements of claim that revealed important truths of Survivors. 

The IRSRP has two interrelated goals. The first is to find, gather, and protect the thousands of lawsuits filed by Survivors against the federal government and church entities across the country to create an Indigenous-led archive. This archive will support Indigenous Peoples’ efforts to obtain accountability, further Indigenous data sovereignty, and breathe life into the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples’ rights to truth, justice, redress, access to information, and the right to maintain, control, and protect their knowledge and historical records. The second is to produce an investigative national podcast to help raise awareness about and inform Survivors, their families and Indigenous communities of the pending destruction of 38,000 accounts of abuse collected through the Independent Assessment Process and of Survivors’ rights to have their records preserved at the NCTR. 

The IRSRP will be a five-year investigation, and will work closely with Survivors, their families and communities. 

Combatting Denialism 

The scheduled destruction of IAP records is occurring while Indian Residential School denialism is on the rise. In my Final Report as the Independent Special Interlocutor for Missing Children and Unmarked Graves, it is pointed out that:

It is not the existence of the Indian Residential School System that is being denied: it is the intent, outcomes, and impacts of that System.

Denialism relies on rejecting or misrepresenting the well-established facts about the Indian Residential School System. It relies on the techniques of historical research and analysis and falsely presents itself as a correction of the historical record.

Denialism is not a simple misunderstanding of the facts; whether consciously or unconsciously, denialists are working towards the accomplishment of psychological, practical, or political goals.

Indian Residential School denialism must be taken seriously because it puts at risk the important work of truth and reconciliation. It should not be dismissed as a harmless fringe phenomenon.11

When people dispute documented histories of abuse, question Survivors’ accounts, or demand documentary proof while records containing that proof are being destroyed, protecting whatever we can becomes especially urgent. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission wrote that there was an urgent need to develop “historically literate citizens who understand why and how the past is relevant to their own lives and the future of the country”12 while “examin(ing) concrete examples of historical injustice to learn from the past in order to prevent repetition in the present and future.”13 This, along with the preservation of records, can combat denialism.

Conclusion

The Indian Residential School Records Project: Legal and Investigative Research for Justice (IRSRP) and its efforts to preserve Indian Residential School litigation records and testimonies cannot replace the Survivors’ accounts that will be destroyed with the IAP records. But it can ensure that another significant body of Survivors’ truths is not also lost.

The lawsuits filed by Survivors are more than court records. They not only document what happened inside Indian Residentials Schools, but they also document Survivor resistance.

Long before the Settlement Agreement was reached, Survivors went to court, told their truths, named those responsible, demanded accountability, and forced the government and churches to respond. Protecting these records is more than preserving evidence. It is about protecting the historical record created by Survivors themselves and ensuring that Survivors, families, Indigenous Nations and future generations can continue to access these truths. As September 2027 approaches, we must ask ourselves, what truths must we protect to ensure that the gross violations of human rights and other atrocities that occurred against Indigenous children never happen again?

Learn more.

Register today for our September 30th event, The Right To Truth: Protecting Indian Residential School Records (in-person & online) featuring Kimberly Murray, Connie Walker, Marie Wilson and Stephen Kakfwi.

Endnotes

1Testimony of Connie Walker before the Permanent Peoples Tribunal on Missing and Disappeared Indigenous Children and Unmarked Graves in Canada, May 27, 2026.

2Canada (Attorney General) v. Fontaine, 2017 SCC 47, [2017] 2 S.C.R. 205

3National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation. “IAP/ADR Records.” 2026. https://nctr.ca/archives-and-collections/iap-adr-records/

4Indian Residential School Settlement. “Court Official Notice.” n.d. https://www.residentialschoolsettlement.ca/settlement.html; Indian Residential Schools Adjudication Secretariat. “The IAP Story.” n.d. https://www.iap-pei.ca/story-eng.php.

5Indian Residential Schools Adjudication Secretariat. “The IAP Story.” n.d. https://www.iap-pei.ca/story-eng.php; National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation. “IAP/ADR Records.” 2026. https://nctr.ca/archives-and-collections/iap-adr-records.

6Office of the Independent Special Interlocutor for Missing Children and Unmarked Graves and Burial Sites Associated with Indian Residential Schools. Sacred Responsibility: Searching for the Missing Children and Unmarked Burials, Interim Report Findings June 2023. https://osi-bis.ca/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/OSI_InterimReport_FINDINGS_June-2023_web.pdf. ; Office of the Independent Special Interlocutor for Missing Children and Unmarked Graves and Burial Sites Associated with Indian Residential Schools. Final Report October 2024. https://osi-bis.ca/report/final-report-october-2024-2/.

7Permanent People’s Tribunal. “PPT Preliminary Statement: 57th Session on Missing and Disappeared Indigenous Children and Unmarked Graves in Canada.” May 31, 2026. https://permanentpeoplestribunal.org/ppt-preliminary-declaration-57th-session-on-missing-and-disappeared-children-and-unmarked-graves-in-canada/?lang=en.

8https://www.cbc.ca/news/indigenous/petition-residential-school-files-9.7114976

9Explain plaintiffs could opt out of IRSSA and continue their actions.

10Walker, Connie. 2024. “Stolen: Surviving St. Michael’s.” Gimlet Media. https://open.spotify.com/episode/2BllRP1ZQRKq2lxfpLUhzA.

11Upholding Sacred Obligation: Reparations for Missing and Disappeared Indigenous Children and Unmarked Burials in Canada, v 2, p. 1099. (Office of the Independent Special Interlocutor for Missing Children and Unmarked Graves and Burial Sites Associated with Indian Residential Schools, 2024)

12TRC Reconciliation Volume p. 137.

13Upholding Sacred Obligations, p.1098.

Citation:

Murray, Kimberly. “Protecting the Record: Indian Residential School Litigation and the Right to Truth,” Yellowhead Institute. Sept 17 2026. https://yellowheadinstitute.org/2026/protecting-the-record-indian-residential-school-litigation-and-the-right-to-truth

Photo by Yumi Numata

 

The post Protecting the Record: Indian Residential School Litigation and the Right to Truth appeared first on Yellowhead Institute.

Scientists push for fungi protection Channel News Catherine Early 17th September 2026 Teaser Media

Ask people across Canada about this summer’s wildfire season and they will tell you how the resulting smoke affected their daily lives. This underscores the urgency of getting our country on a credible path to net-zero by 2050. I’d like to think this...

• Some House Republicans are pushing to suspend the federal gas tax in hopes of improving their re-election chances, even though it would only save drivers a few pennies per gallon, but so far Speaker Mike Johnson has refused (Politico).
• GOP governors are divided on the issue, too. Gov. Mike Braun suspended Indiana’s gas tax, but has had to pay out $139 million to local communities to make up for the lost revenue (WISH). South Carolina’s Henry McMaster remains opposed (Go Upstate).
• Amtrak has settled a longstanding dispute over crossings with freight company Canadian National. (Trains)
• The new CEO of the Metro Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority joined other municipal transit officials in asking Washington for more funding for security and to prevent fare-jumping. (AJC)
• Atlanta’s Downtown Connector is the busiest freeway in the U.S., carrying an average of 405,000 cars a day. (World Atlas)
• Facing drastic budget cuts, the Milwaukee County Transit System is choosing between bus route maps that preserve coverage or preserve service on the most-used routes. (Urban Milwaukee)
• Divvy bikeshare in Chicago had a record 3.5 million users this summer. (Block Club)
• The 2034 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City could provide the impetus to bring Amtrak service back to Boise. (Idaho Statesman)
• Lexington is about to start fining drivers $50 for blocking bike lanes. (Herald-Leader)
• The Mobile city council approved an application for a $1 million federal grant to purchase five trolley-style buses. (Fox 10)
• Ontario is proceeding to tear up 12 miles of Toronto bike lanes. (The Cool Down)
• European bikeshare nextbike saw a 9 percent increase in users last year. (Smart Cities World)

Ask a street safety advocate why we should slow cars down, and you will get a solid answer about reducing crashes. Ask why we should cut traffic volumes on a residential street, and you will get another one about congestion. 

Both answers are right — but both leave out a health effect that has been rampant on those same streets the entire time, and that no federal agency in this country has measured since 1982.

I spent the past year putting a number on it, and the study came out in June. 

Why traffic noise kills — and how big the death toll is 

Road, rail and aircraft noise is linked to about 6,330 premature cardiovascular deaths across the contiguous United States every year. That’s because around 94.5 million Americans, or close to one in three, live in places where transportation noise runs at or above 45 decibels. 

Those deaths tend to come from the louder end of that range — above roughly 50 decibels. But the impact is still staggering. On average, a person who dies of a cardiovascular disease linked to transportation noise will lose 14.5 years from their projected lifespan. Another 13,600 cases of type 2 diabetes a year are attributable to the sounds of cars, trains, and planes, along with 3.3 million people whose sleep is regularly broken.

Recommended THUNDER ROAD: Car Noise Stokes Heart Attacks, Study Finds Eve Kessler May 4, 2022

To understand why these numbers are so high, it’s important to understand that transportation noise does not have to wake you to hurt you. It sets off a stress response, and over years, that shows up as vascular inflammation and cardiac events. Your sleep fragments whether or not you remember it in the morning. 

The World Health Organization built guidelines on noise in 2018, and the method I used to estimate the impact of noise exposure on deaths and disease is the same one WHO already uses for air pollution in more than a hundred countries. Moreover, the studies underlying that methodology adjusted for air pollution, and the noise effect remained.

Put another way: the danger of noise pollution is not just the danger of traffic exhaust wearing a different label. Transportation noise is harmful all on its own. 

Quieter save lives

Here’s the good news: we already know how to reduce traffic noise, and doing it would save siginficant lives.  

If we made every neighborhood in the country five decibels quieter, that one change would spare Americans about 106,500 years of healthy life every year, using a measure researchers call “disability-adjusted life years.” Think of it as a running tally across the whole population: every year someone spends with noise-broken sleep, chronic stress, or a heart condition that noise helped cause counts as part of a healthy year lost, and every year cut from the life of someone who dies early from it counts as a full year lost. Add that up across the millions of people affected and you get the total.

About a third of those 106,500 years comes from those roughly 6,330 early deaths; the rest comes from people living with the harmful health effects of noise pollution. Moreover, just those five decibels would be enough to erase 39 percent of the damage to our collective health caused by our current traffic noise levels.

The share of the total years of healthy life that transportation noise costs the contiguous US each year that a uniform five decibel reduction would remove. Harm covers the seven outcomes assessed, and premature cardiovascular deaths account for about a third of it. Source: Rojas-Rueda 2026, Environmental Research, Section 3.5.

Decreasing traffic noise by five decibels is not out of the question. The levers to accomplish it are the ones already on the agenda of transportation reform advocates: addressing what the road surface is made of, how fast cars travel over it, how many cars there are, and how many trips happen by foot, bike or transit instead. 

Rolling noise rises with speed, and automobile volume matters because noise is energy and energy adds up. A repaving contract, a speed limit, a road diet, a bus lane: each of these is also a noise decision, whether or not anyone at the meeting says the word “noise.”

Recommended Car Noise Pollution is Worse in Redlined Neighborhoods — And Not Just for Humans Kea Wilson December 6, 2023

I should be straight about what my study does not do. It does not tell you which combination of those measures gets a specific corridor to five decibels, or what that would cost. Nobody has done that at city scale in the US, partly because we do not have source-specific noise maps to work from. That work is still waiting.

But we do know that harmful transportation noise is not distributed equally. In the most socially vulnerable fifth of American communities, 1,940 deaths related to it happen each year. In the least vulnerable fifth, 849. 

Exposure drives the gap: 45 percent of residents in the most vulnerable communities live with traffic noise above 45 decibels, compared to 20 percent in the least. The communities enduring the most noise endure more of the disease that noise aggravates.

Who’s listening

None of this appears in your agency’s dashboard because nobody reports it.  

Congress defunded the EPA’s noise office in 1982. The Noise Control Act of 1972 is still law, but it has gone unenforced for four decades. HUD’s noise standards for federally supported housing were written in 1979 and have not been revised since.

The European Union, by contrast, has required its member states to map noise since 2002 and now ranks it among the top three environmental health risks on the continent.

Recommended The Other Type of Car Pollution That Harms Us All Kea Wilson September 14, 2020

Still, it’s important to note that the U.S. is not short on data about transportation noise. Two researchers at the University of Washington built a national transportation noise exposure map from federal data, which is what made my study possible in the first place. What is missing is anyone with a mandate to publish that data on a schedule, and say what it means for health. 

That fix needs no new legislation. The Bureau of Transportation Statistics already holds the inputs. That is the federal ask, and right now, the federal government is slow to answer. 

The nearer-term move is smaller and it belongs to the people who are likely reading this: everyday advocates and policymakers. When you write the memo for a road diet, a pavement specification, a speed limit change or a transit priority project, the crash numbers are already in it. Put the noise numbers in the same paragraph. Every state in the contiguous US has its own figure now.

We have spent forty years treating traffic noise as a complaint to be filed. But it is a health exposure that is killing us — and we can make better decisions now. 

Betraying MAHA, Senate GOP farm bill would erase progress on regenerative agriculture Anthony Lacey September 17, 2026 Anne Schechinger, M.S. September 17, 2026 Overview

• Regenerative agriculture is part of the Make America Healthy Again agenda that top Trump administration officials often tout.
• Conservation funding for regenerative practices from one program decreased by over $400 million in 2025.
• House and Senate Republicans are trying to cut conservation funding in the farm bill, which would lead to even less money for regenerative agriculture.

Leaders in the Make America Healthy Again movement like to tout their support for regenerative agriculture as a way to cut farm pollution and pesticide use, among other benefits. 

But Senate Republicans’ farm bill includes drastic funding cuts that would stall progress made by farmers adopting regenerative agriculture practices, undermining MAHA’s goal.

The practices include cover crops and riparian buffers. These efforts can help decrease air pollution, including nitrous oxide emissions, and increase farm resilience and profitability, while also improving the environment. Although they need reform, these programs help reduce agriculture’s climate emissions and water pollution, add to farm resilience and improve food safety.

Considerable progress had been made in farmers adopting regenerative agriculture practices, thanks to increased funding from the Inflation Reduction Act, or IRA. But that progress had already started to slide backward when conservation funding for regenerative practices from just one program decreased by over $400 million between 2024 and 2025. 

The Senate bill would make a bad situation even worse. The bill cuts over $2 billion from two of the nation’s most widely used conservation programs – the Agriculture Department’s Environmental Quality Incentives Program, or EQIP, and the Conservation Stewardship Program, or CSP. The programs give farmers and ranchers incentives to implement conservation practices on their land, including regenerative practices.

Last year, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., leader of the MAHA movement, announced the administration’s MAHA plan, which laid out a clear vision for EQIP and CSP. The plan pointed to efforts aimed at “empowering farmers and keeping solutions voluntary by expanding programs like” the two conservation programs. 

Kennedy continues to highlight the benefits of regenerative agriculture and why these conservation programs are successful.

Instead, Senate Republicans’ farm bill joins the House counterpart in committing to cuts in funding for these programs – despite their growing popularity.

If the cuts became law, there would be considerably fewer regenerative practices on farms and fewer environmental and climate benefits – and thousands of farmers would be turned away from conservation funding. 

Progress is being undone

Much more funding went to farmers for regenerative practices in 2023 and 2024, thanks to the IRA. But that decreased substantially in 2025, during the Trump administration, and will continue to go down if the farm bill cuts are adopted. 

The 2022 IRA established almost $20 billion in new funding for farmers through multiple conservation programs. This conservation funding was required to go to farmers for regenerative agriculture. Because of the additional funding, total EQIP obligations to farmers went up, from $1.1 billion in 2022 to $1.5 billion in 2023, and then even higher, to $2.5 billion in 2024. 

Many of the climate-smart practices that farmers received IRA funding for in 2023 and 2024 were regenerative agriculture practices like cover crops, reduced or no tillage, and nutrient management. 

EWG has identified a list of 43 regenerative agriculture EQIP practices that lessen climate emissions from farming and help farmers become more resilient to extreme weather. 

In the 2025 One Big Beautiful Bill Act, congressional Republicans retained the extra conservation funding from the IRA, but removed the requirement that it be spent on regenerative practices. Now lawmakers are going back on this promise and attempting to cut conservation funding. 

EQIP obligations for regenerative practices on EWG’s list went up in 2023 and 2024 but then dropped in 2025. The USDA under the Trump administration designated significantly less total EQIP money in 2025 at $1.8 billion. 

Obligations for regenerative practices went from $415.9 million in 2022 to $546.0 million in 2023 then all the way to $1.18 billion in 2024, before decreasing to $773.6 million in 2025. That means regenerative funding fell over $400 million between 2024 and 2025. (See Figure 1.)

Figure 1. EQIP funding for regenerative practices went up in 2023 and 2024 before decreasing in 2025. 

Image

Source: EWG, from USDA, Natural Resources Conservation Service, or NRCS, Financial Assistance Program Data

Additionally, the number of regenerative practices that were among the top 10 that received the most money went up in 2023 and 2024 but down in 2025. Four of the top 10 practices were regenerative in 2023, while five were regenerative in 2024, and only four were regenerative in 2025. 

Farmers received more funding in 2023 than they did in 2022 for 29 of the regenerative practices on EWG’s list. Then in 2024, farmers received more money for 33 practices than they had in 2023. But that dropped in 2025 – farmers only collected more money for 16 of the practices in 2025 than in 2024, meaning that 60% of the regenerative practices lost money in 2025 compared to 2024. 

Funding for some of the regenerative practices declined steeply in 2025. Cover crops were the top paid EQIP practice every year from 2022 through 2025. But spending for cover crops went down by half, from $352.7 million in 2024 to $176.3 million in 2025. 

There were also three regenerative practices that didn’t get any funding at all in 2025: strip cropping, contour buffer strips, and herbaceous wind barriers. And four other practices got less than $100,000 each nationally: contour orchard and other perennial crops, filter strips, riparian herbaceous cover, and salinity and sodic soil management. 

As EWG has found, among all conservation practices, some of these unfunded and low-funded practices have the biggest potential for reducing climate emissions. 

The majority of states also lost money for regenerative EQIP practices in 2025. There were 54 states and territories that got payments for regenerative practices in 2025, but of those, 43 had less funding for regenerative practices in 2025 than in 2024. Only 11 states had more money in 2025 than in 2024. (See Figure 2.)

Figure 2. The 10 states with the biggest losses in regenerative EQIP funding between 2024 and 2025.

Image

Source: EWG, from USDA, NRCS Financial Assistance Program Data

MAHA’s pilot program won’t have much of an impact

While the Trump administration claims to care about regenerative agriculture, this analysis shows that funding for regenerative practices actually went down during the first year of the administration. 

The administration’s only real action to support regenerative agriculture was establishing the Regenerative Pilot Program, or RPP. But the program prioritizes a small amount of conservation funding to regenerative practices, without providing any new funding for them. 

The RPP prioritizes EQIP and CSP funding for regenerative practices, with $400 million going to regenerative practices through EQIP and $300 million through CSP. However, RPP only includes 15 primary regenerative practices funded through EQIP, which is much fewer than the 43 practices on EWG’s regenerative list.  

And $400 million for regenerative practices may not actually change how any of the EQIP funding is spent. Over $400 million already went to farmers for these practices in previous years: $775.9 million for the 15 primary RPP practices in 2024, and $470.8 million for those practices in 2025. 

Assigning $400 million to a list of practices that were already receiving over $400 million a year means the program won’t increase funding for these practices at all. 

The House and Senate Republican farm bills even block the implementation of the RPP as it was designed by prohibiting funding from going to testing soil health or whole-farm planning. Farmers and ranchers looking to access the regenerative market would have to pay for their own testing, rather than get help from the federal government.

USDA conservation funding must be protected

When federal conservation programs have adequate funding, more farmers sign up and put the money toward the most environmentally beneficial and cost-effective regenerative agriculture practices. But the House and Senate Republican farm bill proposals would further reduce funding for the EQIP and CSP.

The Senate Republican farm bill, which recently passed out of the Agriculture Committee along party lines, would leave more than 56,500 valid farmer applications unfunded by EQIP over the next few fiscal years. Many of those unfunded applications would be for regenerative practices. 

The bill would undermine efforts to advance regenerative agriculture, running counter to the MAHA agenda.

The farm bill instead must maintain conservation funding, especially for regenerative practices. Farmers and ranchers have been promised this money – Congress shouldn’t take it away. 

Restoring funding for EQIP and CSP would not only reduce agriculture’s environmental and climate impact. It would also provide reliable support to tens of thousands of farmers and potentially reduce the costs of ad hoc disaster assistance and crop insurance payouts covered by American taxpayers. 

Big tobacco made Lunchables to hook kids on highly processed food Anthony Lacey September 16, 2026

Lunchables have been popular since the 1980s, giving kids a quick meal on the go. 

But most parents don’t know who had a hand in creating them and getting kids hooked: Big Tobacco. The make-your-own lunch kits were developed by Kraft General Foods, then owned by Philip Morris. And Philip Morris brought more than money to the table. 

The tobacco giant also brought the insight and strategies it had used to sell cigarettes, according to recent research. And it applied the marketing tools and formulation savvy it had developed over decades to making food more enticing.

Tobacco expands into the food industry

The tobacco industry consolidated in the 1980s through a series of strategic mergers and acquisitions of huge food companies. 

In 1985, Philip Morris purchased General Foods. Three years later, it acquired Kraft. And in 1989, the two companies were merged into Kraft General Foods. Around the same time, R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company acquired Nabisco.

In a recent study in the American Journal of Public Health, previously undisclosed internal Philip Morris documents revealed the purpose of the company’s food acquisitions: to create new ways to profit in the food business using classic tobacco industry tactics.

Creating products with pleasure and appeal

According to researchers, Philip Morris focused on two specific ideas.

The first was prioritizing products for consumer pleasure and appeal. The company called this “consumer-driven product development.” 

To sell cigarettes, the company used consumer research to refine their taste, sensation and delivery – and make them so enjoyable people would want to buy them again and again. 

When it came to selling food, the brand’s product developers started by asking what consumers wanted most. Focus groups found that kids wanted “control over their lunch” and “permission to play with their food,” while busy parents wanted a “last-minute lunch” that was “better than junk food.” Lunchables checked all the boxes. 

Over time, new product lines like “Lunchables with Pizza” were engineered to maximize pleasure, novelty and overall appeal. 

Providing options for health-conscious consumers

Philip Morris’ second idea was what study authors described as a “better for you” strategy.

In 1964, cigarette sales dropped after the surgeon general linked smoking to lung cancer, chronic bronchitis and emphysema. 

In response, Philip Morris introduced filtered and lower-tar cigarettes. The goal was to regain public trust by providing a product that spoke to consumer concerns about health and made some cigarettes seem safer than they actually were.

The company later applied the same playbook to Lunchables. In 1995, the company introduced Low-Fat Lunchables and marketed them as a “healthier” choice to consumers who were concerned about childhood obesity. Parents who may have said no to regular Lunchables suddenly had fewer reasons to turn them down.

But making Low-Fat Lunchables wasn’t as simple as removing fat. To preserve the flavor kids expected, Philip Morris added artificial chemicals – and an “all natural” label to ease any concerns. 

The company also enlisted tobacco scientists with expertise in flavor and consumer research and used sophisticated brain-wave testing, called electroencephalography, to study how people responded to different foods. 

As one researcher put it, Philip Morris used “cigarette science” to design its foods. 

Same playbook, different industry

Eventually, Big Tobacco faced lawsuits and public scrutiny over the harms caused by cigarettes. But by then, researchers say, its product development and marketing strategies had already helped shape today’s ultra-processed food, or UPF, landscape.  

Today, evidence linking UPF to poor health continues to grow. Studies have linked diets high in these foods to conditions including Type 2 diabetes, heart disease, cancer and even dementia. 

With UPF making up an estimated 73% of the food supply, they are not easy to avoid. And the food industry has only become more advanced in creating and marketing products with appeal. Research shows that some UPF even have addictive properties. 

This puts parents in a tough spot at the grocery store – especially when they’re tempted to reach for convenient options they know their kids will actually eat.

Policies are needed to protect public health

Public attitudes toward UPF have begun to shift, much as attitudes toward cigarettes did decades ago.

Yet the Food and Drug Administration continues to delay releasing its definition of UPF, due in part to industry pressure. A legal definition would open the door for policies like front-of-package labels or school nutrition standards that could help people eat healthier.

In the absence of federal action, states are stepping up.

Last year, California enacted a landmark law removing the most harmful UPF from school meals. Now a bill awaits the governor’s signature that would create a non-ultra-processed-certified seal to help shoppers spot less-processed foods at the grocery store.

What you can do now

Avoiding UPF altogether isn’t realistic for most people – the food industry has made sure of that. But it can help to understand what’s behind the marketing so you can make informed choices for your family.

Labels like “low-fat” or “all natural” don't always tell the full story. Check ingredient lists and nutrition facts, usually found on the back of food packages. Look for more whole foods and avoid longer lists of additives and chemicals you probably wouldn’t find in a home kitchen.

EWG’s Food Scores can help make that easier. The database lets you compare more than 150,000 foods and beverages using ratings based on nutrition, ingredient concerns and degree of processing. If you’re on the go, you can use EWG’s Healthy Living™ App.

Nicole Pajer is a freelance journalist.

Areas of Focus Food Ultra-Processed Foods Children’s Health Food Chemicals Guest Authors Nicole Pager (for EWG) September 17, 2026

There is very little authorities in Nepal could have done to prevent the deaths and devastation caused by the flash flood on its border with Tibet in late August, scientists with the World Weather Attribution (WWA) group have said.

Launching a study that highlighted the role of climate change in causing the glacial rock and ice collapse that triggered the Himalayan flood, WWA co-founder Friederike Otto told reporters that “no amount of local adaptation can fully shield vulnerable people downstream from this scale of destruction”.

The findings released on Thursday are likely to strengthen Nepal’s case for emergency support from the UN’s Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage. Its board members met informally on Wednesday to discuss whether to grant the country a maximum of $20 million towards its estimated $4.8 billion cost of recovery and reconstruction, but no decision has yet been taken.

Nepal’s foreign minister Shisir Khanal told Climate Home News last week that the destructive flood was “exactly the kind of climate-driven catastrophe the Fund was created to address”.

Hard to predict

The WWA study found that rock-ice avalanches are very hard to predict and that moving people out of areas vulnerable to such floods is difficult as their livelihoods revolve around the rivers along which the floods travel.

The recent disaster began on the morning of August 26, when an avalanche started falling beneath a glacier. This caused huge amounts of rocks and glacier ice to fall over a kilometre to a valley floor, where they then picked up more rock and ice and became a flood of debris heading downhill and downstream along the border of Nepal and Tibet.

The torrent entered the narrow Lhende Khola gorge and crashed through the busy Gyirong port border crossing at 170 kilometres an hour. It continued many kilometres downstream before eventually turning from rock and ice to water and slowing down.

The flood swept through villages, roads, bridges and hydropower stations, killing over 1,300 people in Nepal with more than 5,000 still missing. The flood also killed at least 40 people in Chinese-run Tibet.

Those on higher ground away from the river mainly survived but the flood’s speed meant that many people received no warning to seek higher ground or shelter.

While Nepal has early warning systems for flooding caused by rain and glacial lake outbursts, the WWA study noted that rock-ice avalanches are complex and understudied, with methods to monitor them still being explored.

Co-author Walter Immerzeel, mountain hydrology professor at Utrecht University, told journalists that with current methods, the disaster could not have been predicted.

But, he said, in the future it may be possible to use remote sensing techniques to analyse glaciers and rocks to generate a warning before a collapse occurs.

A technique called radar interferometry can detect hotspots which should be monitored with field-based sensors and drones, he said, adding that early warning systems could be installed in these areas using seismometers, water-level measurements and CCTV.

Because doing this for thousands of glaciers across the Himalayas would be difficult, authorities could monitor only the rock and ice faces that are a danger to the river valleys with the most people and infrastructure in them, he added. But this would still require lots of investment together with international collaboration and coordination, he warned.

The study found that another potential adaptation strategy – restricting development in flood-prone river valleys – is socially, economically and politically difficult.

The scientists said habitable land is scarce in these steep river valleys and economic activities like transport and hydropower generation are dependent on the river itself.

Madhab Uprety, a Nepali scientist from the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre, said that, while new development should assess the risks of floods, many existing communities and buildings are already at risk.

Loss and damage

Otto said the flood should be discussed in the context of loss and damage as “there is no doubt that climate change is one of the drivers” and “it’s also one of the types of events that are absolutely outside of the limits we can possibly adapt to”.

As well as the deaths, a Nepali government’s assessment has found that a large amount of infrastructure was damaged, including more than 7,500 homes, 105 bridges, 48 public buildings, 47 cultural heritage assets, 18 schools, 13 hydropower facilities, seven health facilities, and numerous shops, hotels, restaurants, irrigation systems and farms. Over 30,000 people were affected.

Developing countries have called for the loss and damage fund’s board to hold an emergency meeting to discuss how to respond to Nepal’s request for funding. Instead of a full board meeting though, board members met only informally and online on Wednesday, Climate Home News understands. A source with knowledge of discussions said the informal nature of the meeting meant they were not able to take decisions or agree on next steps, which have been left up to the board’s co-chairs.

• Sep 9, 2026 Finance Foreign minister: Nepal needs “meaningful” international support to face climate threats Following its recent Himalayan flooding disaster, the South Asian nation is seeking urgent help from a new UN climate fund, appealing for “stronger global solidarity” Read more
• Sep 2, 2026 Finance Loss and damage fund urged to hold crisis meeting on Nepal The new fund is coming under pressure from developing nations to respond quickly to climate disasters rather than just financing longer-term projects Read more
• Apr 2, 2026 News Nepal’s EV revolution pays off as oil crisis causes pain at the pumps Import subsidies, abundant hydropower and charging investments have spurred EV adoption, with electric vehicles now making up about three-quarters of new car sales Read more

Speaking before that meeting started, Nepali climate negotiator Manjeet Dhakal said he had “heard of an extremely positive response” to Nepal’s request from board members. “Hopefully there will be something – a decision that the fund will do for exactly the reason that the fund was established,” he said.

Ajay Mathur, former Indian climate negotiator and now head of The Energy and Resources Institute in New Delhi, told a separate press briefing on Wednesday that the Nepal flood disaster would push loss and damage higher up the agenda of international climate talks, particularly if the United Nations Secretary-General decides to champion the cause at the UN General Assembly in New York next week.

Murat Kurum, Turkish environment minister and president-designate of COP31, told Climate Home News last week that he would be “pleased” if the fund could support Nepal and that he will keep calling in every speech for countries to give money to the loss and damage fund.

Jennifer Morgan, former German climate envoy and now a senior fellow at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, called for the loss and damage fund – which currently has around $630 million in contributions – to be topped up with new pledges from governments as well as solidarity levies on things like luxury air travel, super-rich individuals and fossil fuel firms’ windfall profits.

The post Nepal flood destruction shows “limits to adaptation”, scientists say appeared first on Climate Home News.

Print article Share Article Contents Expand menu

• Flatlining fossils
• Clean-energy growth matches power demand
• Which states led the clean-power shift?
• Fall in oil and gas consumption continues
• Rapid emission growth from heavy industry continues
• New investments in coal 
• Outlook for India’s emissions
• About the data

A surge in clean energy has kept carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in check across India’s power sector, with no growth from the first half of 2024 to the same period in 2026.

This guest post is by:

Lauri Myllyvirta, lead analyst at Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA) 

Anubha Aggarwal, India analyst at CREA

This is the first time in more than 50 years that there has been no growth in India’s coal power over a two-year period, even as electricity demand grew overall.

At the same time, both oil and gas consumption have fallen across the nation for two years in a row, helping alleviate the shock of the Hormuz crisis.

Nevertheless, the new six-monthly analysis for Carbon Brief shows that India’s emissions grew by 3.7% year-on-year in the first half of 2026, due to increases from steel, cement and other sectors.

Other key findings for the first half of 2026 include:

• India’s power-sector emissions flatlined at 2024 levels, after a 2.2% decline in the first half of 2025 and a 2.3% rise in the same period this year.
• Clean energy met all of the 7% rise in India’s electricity demand over the two years, adding 63 terawatt hours (TWh), equivalent to the total demand of Switzerland.
• India has added 77 gigawatts (GW) of solar in this two-year period, helping meet 60% of the rise in electricity demand overall.
• While fossil-fuel generation stagnated, generators added 8.5GW of new coal capacity, leading to fewer running hours and increased costs to electricity consumers.
• CO2 emissions from oil and gas fell by 7% year-on-year, extending a reduction that began in 2025, despite higher demand for road transport fuels.
• Steel and cement emissions grew by 8% year-on-year, reaching a 23% share of India’s total CO2 in the first half of 2026. 

If the pace of India’s clean-energy expansion is to continue, it will need to upgrade its electricity grid, rapidly build out energy storage and boost the flexibility of coal power.

While clean-energy expansion is covering most or all of India’s power-demand growth, the fossil-fuel industry continues to pursue major capital investments.

This includes large amounts of new coal-power capacity, ambitious plans for the conversion of coal-to-chemicals and efforts to boost domestic coking coal production for the steel sector.

While CO2 output from the power sector is flat, with oil and gas in decline, India’s emissions still went up due to the contribution from industry.

India lags behind its competitors – including most large emerging economies – when it comes to electrifying its industrial sector.

Faster progress would enable clean electricity to substitute for fossil fuels in industry, as well as for power, offering the potential for India to cut its emissions overall.

Flatlining fossils

Last year, India’s CO2 emissions from fossil fuels and cement grew at their slowest pace in two decades, according to previous analysis for Carbon Brief.

This sharp slowdown was due to rapid clean-energy growth and flat oil demand, combined with rising emissions from steel and cement.

The first half of 2026 marks a continuation of these trends.

Most strikingly, the ongoing surge in clean-energy generation means that emissions have flatlined in India’s power sector for two years, as shown in the figure below.

Power-sector CO2 was the same in the first half of 2026 as two years earlier, with a small decline in 2025 having been reversed over the same period this year.

For further details, see: About the data.

Beyond electricity generation, India’s key emitting sectors continued to see divergent trends in the first half of 2026, as some saw ongoing decline while others reached new heights.

This is shown in the figure below, which compares year-on-year changes in emissions during the first half of 2026 with the same periods in 2025, 2024 and the average for 2021-23.

Specifically, emissions grew by 2.3% in the power sector, reversing last year’s decline, while demand for gas and oil products fell for another year.

The biggest increases were for steel and cement, where emissions growth accelerated to 8% year-on-year in the first half of 2026, well above the recent trend.

For further details, see: About the data. Clean-energy growth matches power demand

The period from the first half of 2024 to the first half of 2026 saw the largest increase in non-fossil power generation on record in India.

This enabled fossil-fuel consumption and CO2 emissions from the sector to stay flat, even as electricity consumption increased.

Indeed, this is the first time in more than 50 years that there has been no growth in coal power over a two-year period, even as electricity demand grew overall, as shown below.

For further details, see: About the data.

Over this two-year period, India’s total power generation increased by 7%, some 63TWh, equal to the total consumption of Singapore or Switzerland.

The additional power requirement of 63TWh was met entirely by clean energy. Solar grew by 44TWh, alongside growth from wind (13TWh), nuclear (7TWh) and hydro (8TWh).

Together, clean-energy sources added 70TWh over two years, more than the net increase in demand.

(For comparison, China’s nuclear, wind and solar output increased by 485TWh in 2025.)

The figure below shows that new investments are more than sufficient to maintain this trend, as added power generation from new clean power capacity has stayed above average demand growth for the past 18 months.

For further details, see: About the data.

Over the past two years, India added 77GW of new solar capacity, 11GW of wind, 5GW of hydro and 0.6GW of nuclear capacity.

Solar power continues to dominate clean-energy growth, but, collectively, the other non-fossil sources still contributed 40% of the overall increase in generation. 

One factor in electricity demand growth in 2026 is the El Niño, which delayed the monsoon and intensified heatwaves, driving up cooling demand.  

India is accelerating investment in energy storage, which will support further growth in clean power. The National Electricity Plan projected a requirement of 82 gigawatt-hours (GWh) of energy storage capacity by 2026-27 and 411GWh by 2031-32.

As of May 2026, the government has issued tenders for around 272GWh of energy storage capacity, including 142GWh of pumped hydro and 133GWh of battery storage systems. Current capacity is 7.5GWh of battery storage and around 60GWh of pumped hydro.

Which states led the clean-power shift?

The fall in power generation from fossil fuels from the first half of 2024 to the same period in 2026 was concentrated in a few states.

Gujarat saw both the largest reduction in fossil-fuel generation and the largest expansion in clean power, as shown in the figure below.

For further details, see: About the data.

After Gujarat, the largest increases in clean-power generation were seen in Rajasthan and Tamil Nadu, which also saw reductions in power generation from fossil fuels.

Several other states saw declines in fossil-fuel generation due to higher net imports, rather than local clean power. These included Madhya Pradesh, West Bengal and Punjab. 

Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh also succeeded in increasing clean-power generation faster than power demand, thereby contributing to keeping fossil fuel-based power generation stable nationwide across the two-year period. However, they exported much of the increase and consequently saw local increases in power generation from fossil fuels.

The two states with the largest increases in power demand, Maharashtra and Telangana, managed to almost match the rise with growth in clean-power generation.

Fall in oil and gas consumption continues

India’s oil consumption continued to fall during the first half of 2026, dropping 1.3% year-on-year, a slight acceleration from the 0.7% reduction in the same period last year.

While diesel and petrol consumption continued to grow, oil consumption was pulled down overall by declines in liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), petcoke (a solid derivative of oil used in the cement industry) and industrial feedstocks. Growth of aviation fuel use eased.

Diesel consumption growth accelerated from 1.8% to 4.1% in the first half of the year, supported by higher freight movement and increased agricultural demand, as the delayed monsoon led to greater use of diesel-powered irrigation.

Petrol consumption returned to growth, increasing 6.9% year-on-year after zero growth in the same period in 2025, reflecting sustained growth in passenger and two-wheeler mobility.

A significant increase in ethanol blending shaved a full percentage point off the growth of petrol consumption. India achieved its 20% ethanol blending target five years ahead of schedule in 2025-26. (Ethanol blending has faced public opposition.)

Electric vehicle (EV) adoption in India is also gaining momentum, with EVs adopted in a widening range of categories.

In Delhi, an EV policy was launched to accelerate electrification of the vehicle fleet, with a particular focus on two-wheelers, three-wheelers (auto rickshaws), commercial vehicles and high-mileage segments, alongside expanded charging infrastructure. Higher EV adoption rates will moderate the growth in emissions from petrol consumption in India. 

In contrast, aviation fuel demand growth slowed down from 5% to 2%. The slowdown coincided with the strait of Hormuz and wider crisis, which disrupted international aviation through temporary airspace closures and flight cancellations to several Middle Eastern destinations. Elevated aviation fuel prices also increased airline operating costs, contributing to lower fuel demand. 

LPG consumption contracted by 7%, after 5.7% growth in the same period last year, amid disruptions in global LPG markets following the Hormuz crisis.

Petcoke consumption fell 9.9%, more than reversing a 9.3% increase in the same period last year. Rising petcoke prices encouraged cement manufacturers to switch to coal.

Consumption of other petroleum products continued to drop, although the pace of decline moderated from 14% in 2025 to 9% in 2026. 

Industrial feedstock use was affected by shortages and price increases.

Naphtha demand contracted as import prices nearly doubled and domestic prices increased by around 60%, prompting petrochemical manufacturers to reduce operating rates and suppress demand for imported naphtha.

Bitumen consumption remained subdued due to slower road construction, driven by persistent land acquisition challenges and higher bitumen costs.

Meanwhile, higher light diesel oil (LDO) prices and shortage of LPG led some industrial consumers to switch back to furnace oil in boilers and heaters, despite the higher air pollutant emissions. Supply of fuel oil to industry increased for the same reason.

Rapid emission growth from heavy industry continues

Steel and cement output in India grew by 8% and 9%, respectively, year-on-year in the first half of 2026, despite rising input prices and weakening profitability.

The growth in steel and cement was supported in part by increased investment in India’s real estate sector, especially in the second quarter. Steel consumption growth outpaced production, implying that inventories built up last year were tapped.

Despite domestic demand growth, profit margins of Indian steel and cement manufacturers remained under pressure for much of the period due to elevated raw material costs – particularly imported coking coal – and higher freight costs stemming from the Hormuz crisis.  

The pressure on prices could dampen growth. Cement prices are expected to rise to levels last seen in the 2021-22 financial year, when Russia’s decision to cut back gas exports to Europe drove a sharp increase in fossil-fuel prices.

Outside the steel, cement and power sectors, coal-consumption growth accelerated to 14% in the first half of 2026, up from 3% last year, as the LPG shortage prompted a shift to coal.

Gas shortages resulted in some additional burning of coal for cooking in March and April. The government officially authorised the hospitality industry to use coal, refuse-derived fuel pellets, biomass and kerosene for one month.

The ceramic and tile industry also requested that the government allow the use of coal gasifiers amid the gas shortage. State governments including Delhi NCR, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat and Maharashtra also allowed industries to temporarily use alternative fuels, including coal. 

India’s industrial energy use is dominated by fossil fuels, particularly coal. Indian industry has the second-lowest electrification rate in the G20, as shown in the figure below. The share of electricity in total energy consumption in the sector also lags the world average, in terms of both current levels and the rate of increase.

For further details, see: About the data.

The current low rates of electricity use in Indian industry imply that there is major potential for electrification, using technologies and processes already in place in other countries.

New investments in coal 

While the clean-power expansion is starting to meet most or all of India’s electricity demand growth, there are still large investment plans across the coal supply chain.

Some 43GW of coal-power capacity was under construction at the end of June. Additional coal-power capacity is seen as necessary to meet increasing peak loads, even as solar power and energy storage are already playing a role in covering daytime and evening peak demand, respectively. The expansion of energy storage will increase this contribution.

Outside the power sector, India has major ambitions to produce chemical-industry products, such as fertiliser and plastic feedstock, from coal through coal gasification, in pursuit of energy security.

The government is targeting a capacity to process 100m tonnes of coal per year in the next four years, despite the technology for coal gasification still being nascent in India. At present, the only operational use of coal gasification is at Jindal Steel Limited, which is reportedly using syngas in its steel-making process. 

Meanwhile, India plans to reduce its average CO2 emissions per tonne of steel by 25% by 2025-26, mainly by reducing the share of coal-based steelmaking.

At the same time, the government is aiming to increase the use of domestic coking coal, which it notified in January this year as a “critical and strategic mineral”. Coal miners and steel companies are reportedly planning to establish additional washeries for coking coal to make it suitable for blending with imported coal for use in steel production. 

India is also looking to invest in new coal mines in the near future. 

These continued investments in coal gasification, domestic coking coal and new coal mining capacity could lock in coal use across industry for several decades.  

Outlook for India’s emissions

Over the two-year period from the first half of 2024 to the same period in 2026, India has achieved its largest clean-energy expansion on record.

As a result, power-demand growth has been met entirely by clean electricity and CO2 emissions in the sector have flatlined.

This expansion of clean energy also allowed a reduction in fossil-fuel imports for power generation, with the use of imported coal falling 38% and the use of gas by 35%, supporting the energy security aims of the government and reducing exposure to the Hormuz shock.

In order to keep the clean-energy growth going, India would need to overcome multiple obstacles, including expansion of the electricity transmission network, improvements in grid flexibility to accommodate variable renewables and the timely completion of new projects. 

For example, renewable power projects totalling 5.3GW missed completion deadlines and are having to pay penalties to the grid operator in order to retain network access.

Curtailment has emerged as an issue, particularly for projects relying on interstate power transmission, pointing to the need to upgrade the network. (Curtailment refers to electricity generation that is “wasted” because it cannot be accommodated by the power network.)

Another obstacle to be overcome if clean energy is to keep growing will be making coal-power plants more flexible, so they can ramp down during high renewable output.

A flexibility plan for coal-power plants has been delayed by more than a year due to persistent regulatory bottlenecks, contributing to the curtailment of renewable energy. 

Expanding energy storage has the potential to ease grid and flexibility constraints, while reducing or eliminating the need for adding thermal-power capacity to meet peak loads.

The Central Electricity Authority has proposed that, after June 2027, all new government-owned solar and wind projects would have “mandatory” two-hour battery storage. (This mirrors a policy that was in place in China until early 2025 and was subsequently scrapped, in favour of more market-based approaches.)

For oil and gas, India’s consumption has been flatlining for the past two years, after half a century of continuous growth that was only briefly interrupted by Covid-19.

This has reduced the impacts of the Hormuz crisis on the country’s trade balance, helping close the gap between supply and consumption. But it has entailed disruptive shifts in many oil-dependent sectors.

For example, high prices and fuel shortages due to the Hormuz crisis led state governments to reverse their orders banning the use of dirtier fuels such as fuel oil, kerosene and coal in industries and commercial establishments.

Meanwhile, EV adoption has also begun to influence oil consumption. 

Despite the progress in the power sector and reductions in oil consumption, India’s total emissions went up over the past two years due to a major increase in industrial emissions.

Low levels of electricity use in industry mean that growing industrial output results in increasing direct fossil-fuel use and emissions.

Unless the rate of industrial electrification picks up, increases in heavy industry output will continue to translate into increases in fossil-fuel consumption and CO2 emissions.

About the data

This analysis is based on official monthly data for fuel consumption, industrial production and power generation from different ministries and government institutes. 

Coal-power emissions are estimated by combining plant-level coal consumption from the Central Electricity Authority’s (CEA) monthly coal reports with data on the calorific value and emission factors of coal used at different power plants from the CEA’s CO2 baseline database.

For each station and month, total coal consumption is split into domestic and imported coal using the imported share of coal receipts over a trailing two-month window, found to best reproduce the actual split in data available for 2023.

Consumption is converted to CO2 using each plant’s station-specific gross calorific value from the CEA database and IPCC emission factors for domestic coal, imported coal and lignite. The national-average calorific value is used for recently added plants, for which data is not available in the baseline database. 

Coal use at steel and cement plants, as well as process emissions from cement production, are estimated using production indices from the index of eight core industries released monthly by the Office of Economic Adviser, assuming that changes in total fossil-fuel use follow production volumes. These production indices were used to scale fuel use by the sectors in 2022.

To form a basis for using the indices, monthly coal-consumption data for 2022 was constructed for the sectors by combining the annual total coal and petcoke consumption reported in IEA World Energy Balances with monthly production data. This work was set out in a paper by Robbie Andrew, a researcher at Norwegian research institute CICERO, on monthly CO2 emission accounting for India. Monthly petcoke consumption was available from the Petroleum Planning and Analysis Cell, while coal consumption by the cement industry was calculated by subtracting petcoke use from total fossil-fuel use.

Annual cement-process emissions up to 2025 were also taken from Andrew’s work and scaled using the production indices. This approach better approximated changes in energy use and emissions reported in the IEA World Energy Balances, than did the amounts of coal reported to have been dispatched to the sectors, showing that production volumes are the dominant driver of short-term changes in emissions.

For other sectors – including aluminium, auto, chemical and petrochemical, paper and plywood, pharmaceutical, graphite electrode, sugar, textile, mining, traders and others – coal consumption is estimated based on data on despatch of domestic and imported coal to end users from statistical reports and monthly reports by the Ministry of Coal, as consumption data is not available.

Coal consumption by “captive” coal-power plants – those supplying power to industrial sites, not to the public electricity network – was calculated based on capacity changes from Global Energy Monitor, assuming constant utilisation, as utilisation has been very stable year-to-year, as calculated from Central Electricity Authority data.

The difference between coal consumption and dispatch is stock changes, which are estimated by assuming that the changes in the amount of coal stored at end-user facilities mirror those at coal mines, with end-user inventories excluding power, steel and cement assumed to be 70% of those at coal mines, based on comparisons between our data and the IEA World Energy Balances.

Stock changes at mines are estimated as the difference between production at and dispatch from coal mines, as reported by the Ministry of Coal.

Coal consumption is estimated in two ways for sectors beyond power, steel and cement. Consumption of domestic coal in these other sectors is taken from the monthly reports by the Ministry of Coal. Their consumption of imported coal is estimated from the total imports of thermal coal reported by consultancy Kpler, by subtracting demand for imports at coal-power plants. The basis for this assumption is that steel and cement industries use little imported thermal coal, according to Ministry of Coal data.

Product-by-product consumption data for petroleum products, as well as gas use by sector, is from the Petroleum Planning and Analysis Cell of the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas.

As the fuel dispatch and consumption data is reported as physical volumes – such as tonnes or litres – calorific values are taken from IEA’s World Energy Balance and CO2 emission factors from 2006 IPCC Guidelines for National Greenhouse Gas Inventories.

The emissions factor for motor oil or petrol was updated, based on the blending percentage of ethanol each year. The ethanol-blending percentage is as reported by the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas. 

Calorific values are assigned separately to different fuel types, including domestic and imported coal, anthracite and coke, as well as to petrol, diesel and several other oil products.

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The post Analysis: India’s power-sector emissions flat for two years due to clean-energy surge appeared first on Carbon Brief.

This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Sanket Jain

Extreme heat and widespread drought related to climate change have been in the headlines this summer everywhere from Europe to the Colorado River Basin to Puerto Rico and Bangladesh. But drought is only the beginning of the problem for drinking water. Scientists say the depleted groundwater supplies that remain will warm by 2.1 degrees C globally by the end of this century – changing their chemistry and leading to contamination. 

And heat is just one concern. Droughts and fluctuating rainfall patterns are also altering groundwater quality. The good news is that around the world, local and regional authorities are experimenting with ways to replenish groundwater, including methods for collecting excess rainfall or surface runoff and channeling it to replenish aquifers. The work is in early stages, but some methods already are showing promise.

Warming water, changing chemistry 

As groundwater warms, dissolved gases become less soluble, while organisms underground can consume oxygen more rapidly. Because many aquifers already contain little oxygen, modest warming could make them even more oxygen-poor. 

In some aquifers, this shift can mobilize naturally occurring contaminants such as arsenic, manganese, and phosphorus from surrounding rocks into groundwater, making it less safe to drink. The extra phosphorus can fuel harmful algal blooms when groundwater eventually flows into rivers and lakes. Warmer groundwater may also favor pathogens linked to waterborne diseases.

Under a stable climate, Earth gets warmer deeper underground because heat from the Earth’s core moves toward the cooler land surface, explained Barret Kurylyk, a professor of civil and resource engineering at Dalhousie University and Canada Research Chair in Coastal Water Resources. 

“In the past few decades, the land surface has warmed due to climate change,” he said. 

As the surface becomes warmer than shallow aquifers, the usual temperature difference reverses, causing heat to move downward toward groundwater. Movement of rain or snow downward can also transfer heat into groundwater, exacerbating the change in groundwater chemistry. 

This heat transfer matters because groundwater accounts for 99% of the Earth’s liquid freshwater, provides about half the world’s drinking water, and supplies nearly 40% of the water used for irrigation. By 2100, an estimated 77-188 million people are expected to live in areas where groundwater exceeds the highest drinking-water temperature acceptable threshold adopted by any country.

What happens after a drought

In the remote Kasanal village in Southern India’s Karnataka state, Santosh Naik says the annual monsoon is no longer enough to fill his two wells. The 38-year-old farmer said that by August 2026, his 60-foot wells were 90% empty, even though they would normally fill within a month of the rains. 

Naik has spent over a decade drilling deeper in search of water. Since 2011, he has dug 14 borewells – narrow, machine-drilled shafts – across his five-acre farm, each about 300 feet underground. Now only three are functioning. But he is not just worried about declining levels. The water quality is changing too, he says.

“Earlier, we used to drink water from borewells and wells, but if you drink that water now, you will definitely fall ill,” he said. 

He added that the entire village has stopped drinking water from its wells. 

Naik grows sugarcane, soybean, peanuts and sorghum, but his harvests have been falling as his water supply has gotten saltier. Since 2020, his annual sugarcane production has been about 80,000 kilograms lower, costing him about 280,000 Indian rupees ($2,935). 

His experience illustrates a broader problem across India. An analysis of 20,994 groundwater observations estimated that about 29% of the study area, including 25% of cropland, had elevated groundwater salinity. 

Changing contaminants 

Scientists confirm that climate extremes can change how water moves through the soil and what it carries. One team monitored 13 groundwater wells across three aquifer systems in Germany for up to eight years. As groundwater levels declined, its molecular composition increasingly resembled that of water draining through the soil. 

Senior study author Gerd Gleixner, a biogeochemist and professor at the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry, said that during drought, larger pores open up in soils. When heavy rain follows, these pores can carry water rapidly toward groundwater instead of allowing it to move slowly through the upper soil. 

“The problem is that this water that comes down is not supposed to go down directly. It is supposed to go more slowly, so that there is more time for progressive processing in the upper part,” Gleixner said. 

The upper soil normally acts as a kind of “main bioreactor,” processing substances before they reach the groundwater. But rapid flow through these pores can bypass some of this processing, allowing substances from the surface to reach groundwater more directly.

Gleixner said this rapid downward movement can carry unwanted substances from the surface into groundwater, including antibiotics and, potentially, microplastics. 

Scientists are also investigating what happens to groundwater when it is pumped more heavily during droughts. Researchers in California’s San Joaquin Valley analyzed water-quality records from over 3,000 public drinking-water wells over the 2012-2016 drought and the recovery that followed. During the drought, nitrate and total dissolved solids increased in many wells. As pumping intensified, wells drew a larger share of modern-aged groundwater, which was more likely to contain contaminants linked to human activities, such as nitrate. As wetter conditions returned and groundwater levels recovered, many of these changes reversed.

The water people once trusted

Farmer Shivaji Tasgave, 83, no longer trusts the water from a 200-year-old well that served his family for generations after it turned blackish and foul-smelling. 

But when the rains failed to arrive as expected, he was forced to rely on this water to irrigate his crops. Half his peanut and sugarcane failed to grow. 

In his remote Jambhali village in Western India, Tasgave said that almost 150 wells in his neighborhood have become unusable because of deteriorating groundwater quality.

Along coastlines, groundwater quality can change when the balance between freshwater flowing toward the sea and seawater moving inland is disturbed. Under natural conditions, groundwater flows from land toward the sea, creating a pressure that helps keep seawater from moving inland. When that freshwater pressure weakens, seawater can move farther inland into freshwater aquifers.

A team of scientists in Germany found many coastal groundwater systems are vulnerable to this shift. Between 1990 and 2024, they analyzed about 480,000 coastal groundwater monitoring locations worldwide. They found statistically significant groundwater-level changes in 28% of observations over nine-year windows, and 21% over 19-year windows. Declines became more frequent in the last nine years. 

“These declines may reflect a combination of causes, including lower rainfall, drought and reduced groundwater recharge, but also potentially unsustainable groundwater abstraction that exceeds groundwater recharge,” said Annika Nolte, an environmental and data scientist at the University of Bremen, Germany, who led the study.

“Seawater intrusion can make groundwater less suitable or unsuitable for human consumption and may ultimately threaten reliable drinking-water supplies from wells,” she added. 

When saline groundwater is used for irrigation, it can also reduce soil fertility and crop yields. A global meta-analysis found that irrigation with salty water reduced crop yields by 17.3% compared with freshwater irrigation.

Giving groundwater a chance to recover

In many parts of the world, researchers are experimenting with different ways to help aquifers recover. Monitoring groundwater levels and salinity, and improving estimates of present and future groundwater recharge, are essential to determine how much water can be withdrawn without weakening freshwater heads, Nolte said.

In the Netherlands, a solution named "Water Battery" has been operating near the village of Epe since 2015. Water from natural springs is collected in a human-made reservoir and then pumped to infiltration ponds, where it seeps into the groundwater. The water is stored underground, while natural biogeochemical processes improve its quality before the groundwater is extracted.

California has been adopting a similar strategy. Excess surface water can be diverted onto selected farm fields to replenish depleted aquifers, increasing groundwater storage and improving water availability during dry periods. Separate field studies in California almond orchards have also shown that flooding fields during the trees’ dormant winter period, in moderately drained to well-drained soils, has little effect on root production or crop yields. 

Cities are also finding ways to use stormwater effectively. In the Argentine coastal city of Pinamar, researchers evaluated rain gardens, which are shallow, planted areas designed to collect stormwater and let it soak into the ground. Gardens improved groundwater recharge, particularly during low-intensity rains, where recharge efficiency increased more than sixfold. 

Although the approaches differ, the idea remains the same: Instead of moving excess water away, let the ground hold on to it. 

This article first appeared on Yale Climate Connections and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

 

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This article is part of Food Tank’s primer series, “Food Tank Explains.” Each installment unpacks the ideas, innovations, and challenges shaping today’s food and agriculture systems, offering clear insights into complex topics. To explore more articles in the series, click here.

The H-2A program allows United States agricultural employers to hire foreign workers temporarily or seasonally when there are insufficient qualified and available U.S. workers.

Since its inception, the H-2A program has grown exponentially. The U.S. Department of State (DOS) issued 44 H-2A visas in the program’s first year in 1987. It has become the nation’s largest temporary visa program, with more than 315,000 visas issued in 2024.

The U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) certified 48,000 H-2A positions in 2005 and more than 398,000 in 2025. H-2A workers now are one sixth of the U.S. agricultural labor force, and data suggest H-2A growth is continuing. In the first half of 2026, DOL certified 17 percent more positions than it did during the same period in 2025.

According to the American Farm Bureau Federation (AFBF), increasing H-2A demand is a direct reflection of the U.S. labor force. H-2A jobs arise from a proven lack of domestic interest in seasonal work, the organization says.

In 2025, U.S. workers applied for less than 0.04 percent of requested positions. “The lack of available labor is among the largest limiting factors of American agriculture,” says Zippy Duvall, AFBF President. “Most Americans don’t want to work on farms.”

To qualify for the H-2A program, agricultural employers must have a temporary or seasonal need for full-time labor. Employers apply for certification from DOL while recruiting U.S. workers for the positions. The employer must demonstrate that enough able, willing, qualified, and available U.S. workers cannot be found and that employing H-2A workers will not adversely affect the wages and working conditions of similarly employed U.S. workers.

The employer then petitions U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). Once approved, prospective workers may apply to DOS for H-2A visas. Employers must provide workers with housing, three meals per day, and convenient cooking facilities, and provide or pay for required transportation and travel expenses.

The program’s growth has occurred alongside widespread reports of fraud, labor violations, and worker exploitation. From 2018 through 2023, DOL investigated 2,857 H-2A employers. 84 percent uncovered at least one violation.

Though charging a fee for recruitment is illegal recruiters have charged workers thousands of dollars to secure H-2A jobs. Other schemes have collected money for jobs that do not exist. Documented on-farm violations range from wage theft and inadequate housing to retaliation and dangerous working conditions. Polaris’s Trafficking Hotline identified 2,841 H-2A visa holders who were victims of labor trafficking.

H-2A workers often live in remote camps with limited digital connectivity, Stacy Rhodes of the Agricultural Workers Advocacy Coalition (AWAC), tells Food Tank. This seclusion, coupled with language barriers, and limited access to legal assistance makes reporting abuses difficult.

Workers risk losing employment, immigration status, or future job opportunities if they assert their rights, Maggie Gray, Adelphi University Professor and Author of Labor and the Locavore: The Making of a Comprehensive Food Ethic, tells Food Tank. As a result, H-2A workers are unlikely to advocate for themselves.

The Economic Policy Institute (EPI) reports that DOL’s Wage and Hour Division (WHD), tasked with federal enforcement, is “underfunded and understaffed,” with 800 WHD investigators monitoring 165 million workers. DOS describes oversight of temporary worker programs as “weak,” while EPI calls it “woefully inadequate.”

Stakeholders broadly agree that the H-2A program needs reform but differ over what those reforms should address. The United Food and Commercial Workers International Union opposes any increase in the program, while some farmers, worried for their labor supply amid a labor shortage, have sought to expand H-2A. House Agriculture Chair G.T. Thompson, alongside organizations including the American Dairy Coalition, Dairy Business Milk Marketing Cooperative, and the CATO institute, have proposed legislation extending the program to jobs that aren’t seasonal or temporary, like dairy, cattle, and pork producers.

United Farm Workers (UFW) has taken DOL to court, asserting that a rule reducing wages for U.S. farm workers and H-2A workers is unlawful. Meanwhile, other organizations and farmers complain that the cost of H-2A wages, transportation, and housing are too expensive. Increasing fees have hit farmer’s margins in nearly every step of the H-2A filing process, the AFBF describes.

The Equitable Food Initiative (EFI) and UFW focus on changing labor practices within the existing system. EFI certifies farms that meet standards for worker treatment and safety, while UFW has supported policies that would allow H-2A workers greater freedom to change employers without losing legal status.

Others organizations advocate community action. “we need to see more and more communities organizing,” says Gerardo Reyes Chavez of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers. Rather than settle, he continued, workers and organizers should “set examples with things that actually work through the market.”

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