Green News

Open data from sources such as the US Geological Survey are an essential scientific resource for understanding our environment in a warming world.

A new study led by researchers at the University of South Florida shines light on the environmental drivers of red tide blooms.

By 2050, sea levels along the United States coast are expected to rise by 0.25 to 0.30 meters, increasing flooding in low-lying areas. 

People over 50 who recently experienced an extreme weather event far more likely to express concern about the effects of climate change on their health.

A groundbreaking study led by Li Yi, professor at the School of Life Sciences, was published in Nature on March 12, titled “Perception of viral infections and initiation of antiviral defence in rice”, uncovering a molecular mechanism by which rice cells perceive viral infections and initiate antiviral response, which significantly contributes to understanding of virus-host interactions for further disease resistance breeding.

Scientists have discovered vibrant communities of ancient sponges and corals on the newly exposed seafloor following the calving of the giant A-84 iceberg.

Beyond creating a serene and open atmosphere in urban areas, trees and parks also contribute to human well-being.

New research finds that microalgae in northern peat bogs will absorb more carbon dioxide as the planet warms, helping to take a bite out of emissions.

A jury in North Dakota ordered Greenpeace to pay more than $660 million in damages to Energy Transfer, the company behind the Dakota Access Pipeline. Energy Transfer sued Greenpeace in 2019, alleging that it had orchestrated a vast conspiracy against the company by organizing historic protests on the Standing Rock Sioux reservation in 2016 and 2017. 

In its lawsuit, Energy Transfer Partners accused three Greenpeace entities — two in the U.S. and one based in Amsterdam — of violating North Dakota trespassing and defamation laws, and of coordinating protests aimed to stop the 1,172-mile pipeline from transporting oil from North Dakota’s Bakken oil fields to a terminal in Illinois. Greenpeace maintained it played only a minor supporting role in the Indigenous-led movement. 

“This was obviously a test case meant to scare others from exercising their First Amendment rights to free speech and peaceful protest,” said Deepa Padmanabha, a senior legal adviser for Greenpeace USA. “They’re trying to buy silence; that silence is not for sale.”

Legal and Indigenous experts said the lawsuit was a“textbook” example of a “strategic lawsuit against public participation,” known colloquially as a SLAPP suit, a tactic used by corporations and wealthy individuals to drown their critics in legal fees. They also criticized Energy Transfer for using the lawsuit to undermine tribes’ treaty rights by exaggerating the role of out-of-state agitators.

The three Greenpeace entities named in the lawsuit — Greenpeace Inc., a U.S.-based advocacy arm; Greenpeace Funds, which raises money and is also based in the U.S.; and Greenpeace International, based in the Netherlands — are now planning their next moves, including an appeal to the North Dakota Supreme Court and a separate countersuit in the European Union. 

As part of a previous appeal to move the trial more impartial court, Greenpeace submitted a 33-page document to the state Supreme Court explaining that the jurors in Morton County, North Dakota — where the trial occurred — would likely be biased against the defendants, since they were drawn from the same area where the anti-pipeline protests had taken place and disrupted daily life.

The request included results from a 2022 survey of 150 potential jurors in Morton County conducted by the National Jury Project, a litigation consulting company, which found 97 percent of residents said they could not be a fair or impartial juror in the lawsuit. Greenpeace also pointed out that nine of the 20 final jurors had either “direct personal experience” with the protests, or a friend or family member with direct personal experience.

Deepa Padmanabha, a Greenpeace staff attorney, outside the Morton County Memorial Courthouse in North Dakota. Stephanie Keith / Greenpeace

Pat Parenteau, an emeritus professor at the Vermont Law and Graduate School, said the chances that the North Dakota Supreme Court will overturn the lower court’s verdict are “probably less than 50 percent.” What may be more likely, he said, is that the Supreme Court will reduce the “outrageous” amount of money charged by the Morton County jury, which includes various penalties that doubled the $300 million in damages that Energy Transfer had originally claimed.

“The court does have a lot of discretion in reducing the amount of damages,” he said. He called the Morton County verdict “beyond punitive. This is scorched Earth, what we’re seeing here.”

Depending on what happens at the North Dakota Supreme Court, Parenteau also said there’s a basis for appealing the case to the U.S. Supreme Court, based on the First Amendment free speech issues involved. But, he added, the move could be “a really dangerous proposition,” with the court’s conservative supermajority and the precedent such a case could set. A federal decision in favor of Energy Transfer could limit any organizations’ ability to protest nationwide — and not just against pipelines. 

Amsterdam-based Greenpeace International, which coordinates 24 independent Greenpeace chapters around the world but is legally separate from them, is also fighting back. It countersued Energy Partners in the Netherlands in February, making use of a new anti-SLAPP directive in the EU that went into effect in May 2024.

Greenpeace International is only on the hook for a portion of the more than $600 million charged against the three Greenpeace bodies by the Morton County jury. Its countersuit in the EU wouldn’t change what has happened in U.S. courts. Instead, it seeks to recover costs incurred by the Amsterdam-based branch during its years-long fights against the Morton County lawsuit and an earlier, federal case in 2017 that was eventually dismissed. 

Greenpeace International’s trial will begin in Dutch courts in July and is the first test of the EU’s anti-SLAPP directive. According to Kristen Casper, general counsel for Greenpeace International, the branch in the EU has a strong case because the only action it took in support of the anti-pipeline protests was to sign an open letter — what she described as a clear case of protected public participation. Eric Heinze, a free speech expert and professor of law and humanities at Queen Mary University of London, said the case appeared “black and white.” 

“Normally I don’t like to predict,” he said, “but if I had to put money on this I would bet for Greenpeace to win.”

While Greenpeace’s various entities may have to pay damages as ordered by U.S. courts, the result of the case in the EU, Casper said a victory would send an international message against “corporate bullying and weaponization of the law.” Padmanabha said that regardless of the damages that the Greenpeace USA incurs, the organization isn’t going away any time soon. “You can’t bankrupt the movement,” she said. “What we work on, our campaigns and our commitments — that is not going to change.”

In response to request for comment, Energy Transfer said the Morton County jury’s decision was a victory for the people of Mandan and “for all law-abiding Americans who understand the difference between the right to free speech and breaking the law. That Greenpeace has been held responsible is a win for all of us.”

Nick Estes, an assistant professor of American Indian studies at the University of Minnesota and member of the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe who wrote a book about the Dakota Access Pipeline protests, said the case was about more than just punishing Greenpeace — it was a proxy attack on the water protectors at Standing Rock and the broader environmental justice movement. He said it showed what could happen “if you step outside the path of what they consider as an acceptable form of protest.”

“They had to sidestep the actual context of the entire movement, around treaty rights, land rights, water rights, and tribal sovereignty because they couldn’t win that fight,” he said. “They had to go a circuitous route, and find a sympathetic court to attack the environmental movement.”

Janet Alkire, the chair of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, said in a March 3 statement that the Morton County case was “frivolously alleging defamation and seeking money damages, designed to shut down all voices supporting Standing Rock.” She said the company also used propaganda to discredit the tribe during and after the protests.

“Part of the attack on our tribe is to attack our allies,” Alkire wrote. “The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe will not be silenced.”

This story has been updated.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline A court ordered Greenpeace to pay a pipeline company $660M. What happens next? on Mar 21, 2025.

Organisations and campaigners across the climate justice movement are joining forces to counter the wider chilling effect of a major legal blow that could bankrupt one of its largest players.  

Earlier this week, a jury in the US state of North Dakota found Greenpeace International and its US bodies guilty of a mix of defamation, trespass, nuisance and conspiracy – and ordered them to pay more than US$660 million in damages to oil pipeline company Energy Transfer.  

The lawsuit related to protests against the Dakota Access pipeline in 2016 and 2017. These actions, centered around the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation, brought Indigenous activists fighting for water rights together with climate campaigners challenging the company’s planned transmission of oil from North Dakota to Illinois. They did not stop the pipeline from being completed, but caused major disruption. 

People hold signs in support of the Standing Rock Sioux outside U.S. District Court where the tribe is seeking an injunction to permanently stop the Dakota Access Pipeline.

Energy Transfer had previously sought damages against Greenpeace and others in a federal lawsuit that was dismissed in 2019.  

But this time the claim was successful. Energy Transfer’s legal team successfully argued during the court proceedings that Greenpeace had “incited” the disruption. Greenpeace contended that its US bodies only played a small role, and the international group itself merely signed a letter opposing the project.

Greenpeace planning fight-back

Energy Transfer called it “a resounding verdict”, declaring Greenpeace’s actions “wrong, unlawful, and unacceptable by societal standards”, adding that it “is a day of reckoning and accountability for Greenpeace”. But Greenpeace US bodies have said they will appeal and Greenpeace International is “weighing all legal options”.

Greenpeace, which has campaigned on a wide range of environmental matters since the 1970s, acknowledges there is a risk of bankruptcy due to the damages awarded against it. However, it maintains this is “very remote” for its international arm whose assets are located in the Netherlands, where the verdict is “very unlikely to be recognised by Dutch courts”. Greenpeace’s 25 other branches around the world are expected to keep functioning as normal.  

The case has been classified as a strategic lawsuit against public participation (SLAPP). These cases, which arose in the United States in the 1970s and ’80s, can take various forms across different jurisdictions. But legal experts say they are an increasingly popular “lawfare” tactic used by powerful companies and individuals around the world – and many cases relate to the environment. 

Clean hydrogen hype fades as high costs dampen demand

Sushma Raman, the interim executive director of Greenpeace’s US-based organisations Greenpeace Inc and Greenpeace Fund, said the ruling was part of a “renewed push by corporations to weaponise our courts to silence dissent”. She added that lawsuits like this are aimed at “destroying our rights to peaceful protest and free speech”.  

“Deeply flawed trial”

Some concerns have centred around the legal proceedings themselves. A trial monitoring committee of independent lawyers concluded that it had been “a deeply flawed trial with multiple due process violations that denied Greenpeace the ability to present anything close to a full defense”. It claims the jury was “patently biased” because many members work in the fossil fuel industry and the judge lacked knowledge on the complex constitutional issues at the heart of the case. 

Speaking in a personal capacity, Charlie Holt, European lead at Global Climate Legal Defense and a former legal advisor for Greenpeace International, told Climate Home the decision was shocking, if not surprising. “There’s still an understandable desire to trust in the judicial system. But I think we could see how urgent a threat [the lawsuit] was,” he said.  

“This kind of activity is becoming increasingly common across climate action, with fossil fuel actors undermining progress wherever possible,” said Brice Böhmer, climate and environment lead at non-profit Transparency International. 

SLAPP lawsuits proliferate

Holt agreed, warning of copycat cases. “The big fear is that this will embolden other fossil fuel companies to try their luck with these large-scale SLAPPS as a means of shutting down criticism,” he said.   

SLAPPs are on the rise in Europe too, but as a jurisdiction it is generally less sympathetic to such claims. 

In December, Greenpeace UK and Greenpeace International reached an out-of-court settlement in a legal dispute centered on the environmental group’s activism on an off-shore oil production vessel. It was one of the biggest ever legal threats against Greenpeace. 

Food systems are the missing ingredient from the COP30 menu

Last March, oil and gas company TotalEnergies was ordered to pay €15,000 ($16,200) in costs to Greenpeace France after failing to sue the NGO over a report claiming that the energy giant massively underestimated its 2019 greenhouse gas emissions. 

Emboldened by decisions like this, Greenpeace International is counter-suing Energy Transfer in the Netherlands, seeking to recover all costs and damages. If successful, it would be the first application of a new EU anti-SLAPP Directive. 

Counter-suit in Dutch court

Kristin Casper, Greenpeace International’s general counsel, said the organisation is “just getting started” and would see Energy Transfer in court in Amsterdam this July. “We will not back down,” she said. “We will not be silenced.” 

As part of a Global Week of Action, Greenpeace East Asia Taipei office’s activists join the widespread solidarity of the global Greenpeace network to send the message to Energy Transfer: “We will not be silenced”. (Greenpeace/Yves Chiu)

Anne Jellema, chief executive of climate campaign group 350.org, said the judgment should serve as a “wake-up call” to the entire climate movement, coming alongside a potential unleashing of new fossil fuel production and rollback of environmental protection in the US. 

“The ruling sends a dangerous message to environmental organisations worldwide: that corporate polluters can weaponise the courts to silence opposition,” said Jellema, adding that it is “especially concerning” for smaller, frontline groups operating in regions without strong legal protections.

“If one of the world’s most prominent environmental organisations can face financial ruin for speaking out, smaller movements with fewer resources are even more vulnerable,” she said. 

Holt said Greenpeace has been mobilising civil society organisations behind US and European anti-SLAPP coalitions since the first claim over the Dakota Access Pipeline in 2017. An open letter to Energy Transfer expressing solidarity with Greenpeace was signed by 450 organisations around the world.

The post Greenpeace’s $660m damages ruling a ‘wake-up call’ to climate movement appeared first on Climate Home News.

Mario Boccucci is head of the UN Collaborative Programme on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries (UN-REDD).

This year will present us with a unique opportunity to put forests at the forefront of climate implementation. As one of the most effective solutions we have to climate change, forests can be a game-changer, and we should seize the moment to ramp up investments.  

Strengthening international cooperation and unlocking finance for forests will enable forest-based mitigation to reach its potential and also make a real difference to the planet’s health and people’s lives.  

Forests are more than a network of trees. Covering a third of the world’s land mass, they are vital carbon sinks, helping to avert major climate change impacts. The conditions must be put in place to enable this to continue. Forests also provide food security and sustainable livelihoods for more than 1.6 billion people – from Indigenous Peoples in the Amazon to herders in the Sahel.   

Destroying forests also hurts economies. With an estimated economic value of US$150 trillion and contributing directly to the livelihoods of 90 percent of more than 1 billion people living in extreme poverty, forests can support more than 86 million jobs. Investments in forests will create even more jobs and support livelihoods. Furthermore, every $1 spent on forests returns an investment of $9. 

UN biodiversity talks agree finance roadmap, postponing decision on a new fund

We have already seen that forest-based mitigation is impactful. Processes like REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation) have demonstrated that investing in forests delivers real emissions reductions, strengthens economies, and secures livelihoods.

In Ghana, farmers growing sustainable cocoa earn more while keeping forests intact. In Indonesia, restoring mangroves helps fishing communities thrive while protecting them from storms. Costa Rica and Viet Nam have proven that sustainable forestry and ecotourism can lift people out of poverty and contribute to local economies. 

UN-REDD Programme gets results

Globally, over 20 countries have reported a reduction of almost 14 billion tons of carbon dioxide – real progress. The UN-REDD Programme has directly provided support to these countries, mobilizing $1 billion in REDD+ financing since inception, including $350 million in results-based payments, proving that forest protection is practical, effective, and scalable.   

Over time, we’ve also seen progress in REDD+ efforts to ensure that everyone – including Indigenous Peoples, local communities, women and youths – have a stake and role in forest protection under more equitable and fair terms. In addition, we have seen improvements in integrity, transparency,  accountability, and carbon monitoring.

At least a quarter of the world’s land area is owned, managed, used or occupied by Indigenous Peoples and local communities, and they must be helped to become effective stewards of forestland. Indigenous Peoples and local communities are our real partners in achieving climate goals and curbing deforestation long-term.   

But if we fail to drastically scale-up financing and support for forests, this golden opportunity 2025 presents us with will stall. A UN Environment Programme report published late last year estimated that restoration finance needs to quadruple from 2022 levels of $64 billion to $296 billion by 2030 to reach global restoration targets while contributing to climate and biodiversity goals. Meanwhile, harmful subsidies for industries driving deforestation continue to flow.   

Funding through carbon markets – with improved transparency, human rights protections, and environmental integrity – will be part of broader elements and finance to enable countries to deliver on their specific climate goals and ensure transformational change that limits the risk of reversals, with significant additional benefits. Along with collective action, this will support decarbonization efforts and make a real difference, allowing us to change the course of the next ten years. 

COP30 turning point in the Amazon

This year’s COP climate conference will take place at the heart of the Amazon, a region that symbolizes both the promise and peril of our moment. It’s a turning point.  

Governments, businesses, financial institutions, and multilateral organizations must scale up forest finance, phase out harmful subsidies, and put forests at the center of climate action, and of economic and security strategies.  

“Not silver bullets”: COP30 CEO downplays impact of yearly climate summits

Having worked on forest conservation across the globe for 30 years, it has been a privilege to work alongside so many forest and climate champions – including UN-REDD Programme partners – who have devoted all their time and efforts to protecting forests. We have unprecedented opportunities and challenges ahead of us – and I hope this short reflection is useful to see the forests and the trees.

It is especially relevant on the International Day of Forests, which may enable people new to the forest agenda to understand and engage. 

Forest solutions are real and there is evidence they deliver. They provide multiple benefits thanks to a massively growing movement of champions across all stakeholders. REDD+ has been tested and proven to work. We now have a global mechanism for forest and climate action, finance and results that works.  

Our collective effort should now focus on massively scaling up implementation and finance. 

The post 2025 is the year to invest in forests – and the people who depend on them  appeared first on Climate Home News.

Back in 2021, the CEO of BlackRock – which manages $10 trillion of assets – took to a stage in Riyadh to predict that the next 1,000 billion-dollar startups would not be media companies or search engines but businesses developing “green hydrogen, green agriculture, green steel and green cement”.

Fast forward four years, and Larry Fink has changed his tune, telling an audience of oil and gas executives in Houston last week: “Everyone talks about the opportunity with hydrogen. Well, we can have green hydrogen and blue hydrogen, but is anybody willing to pay the cost?”

Other speakers at the “CERAWeek by S&P Global” conference in Texas were similarly down on the prospects for clean hydrogen, a gas that can replace fossil fuels in sectors that are hard to otherwise clean up, like shipping, aviation, chemicals, steel and cement.

The CEO of oil company Saudi Aramco, Amin Nasser, pointed to the high cost of green hydrogen compared to fossil fuels as a demonstration of “the fiction that critical transition technologies are genuinely competitive and being rapidly deployed”.

“Many were aiming for $1 per kilogram [for green hydrogen] by 2030. Yet production costs alone currently range wildly from almost $4 per kilogram to $12,” he said, comparing International Energy Agency (IEA) figures on the cost today with the Biden administration’s targeted cost for 2030.

Even sellers of clean hydrogen accepted that mood has shifted down a gear. David Burns, vice-president of global clean energy at industrial gases multinational Linde, said there’s now “more a sense of realism, a more kind of pragmatic approach to what’s going to work”. But, he added, viable projects which “meet the willingness to pay for customers in different sectors” are still moving forward.

Green hydrogen costs more

According to the IEA, producing green hydrogen – which is made with renewable energy – is between 1.5 and 6 times more expensive than the traditional, most common and polluting way of making it, with unabated fossil fuels.

But this could change, the IEA says. The price of fossil gas could rise or carbon pricing could make fossil fuel-based hydrogen more expensive. Or large-scale deployment of green hydrogen could bring the cost per kilo down from the $4-$12 Aramco’s Nasser cited to $2-$9 by 2030. It could go even lower in parts of China, the IEA says, where abundant solar meets cheaper electrolysers – the equipment that turns water into hydrogen.

Carbon colonialism? Malaysia and Indonesia plan storage hubs for Asian emissions

“The future cost evolution will depend on numerous factors, such as technology development, and particularly on the level and pace of deployment,” the IEA said in its latest global hydrogen review.

But as BlackRock’s Fink noted, high prices are proving a barrier to deployment. Companies like BP and Ørsted have cancelled or delayed green hydrogen production projects in recent months, citing unfavourable economics.

Governments boost hydrogen demand

Some governments have stepped in to try and increase demand. The European Union, for example, has set a mandate that synthetic fuels, including those based on green hydrogen, must make up 1.2% of all the plane fuel at its airports by 2030 and 35% by 2050.

The EU has similar measures for shipping, while a German government programme aims to cover the extra cost of buying clean hydrogen in industries like steel, cement, paper and glass, so that it is not a financial risk.

Canada’s new leader culls carbon tax seen as burden on voters

These policies have helped, the IEA says – but “the overall scale of these efforts remains inadequate for hydrogen to contribute to meeting climate goals”. In October, the Paris-based analysts revised their forecast for 2030 hydrogen demand down by about a fifth compared to the previous year.

Green hydrogen’s supply problems

Estimates of supplies of green hydrogen also look likely to have been overstated. Experts told Climate Home recently that a planned pipeline to bring hydrogen from North Africa to Europe will struggle to deliver the quantities the European Union is hoping for.

Adrian Odenweller, a researcher at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), warned that the EU should “certainly not count on the delivery” of green hydrogen from Algeria and Tunisia any time soon.

“Green hydrogen production projects have a poor track record and often get delayed. I would expect this to be even worse for massive infrastructure projects such as pipelines that require international coordination,” he said.

The SoutH2 pipeline and production facilities face opposition from campaigners too. Shereen Talaat, director of MENAFem Movement, a North African feminist justice network, said in a statement by nearly 90 NGOs criticising the huge project that it “exploits African land, water, and labour to feed Europe’s energy needs, while women – especially in rural and frontline communities – bear the brunt of water scarcity, land dispossession, and energy poverty”.

EU backs North Africa hydrogen pipeline, but is it a green dream?

Green hydrogen projects require land to build facilities and water and renewable electricity to produce the hydrogen. Areas with a lot of sun – which helps produce green hydrogen cheaply – often don’t have much water. The IEA says that 40% of green hydrogen projects are in water-stressed areas like those around the Mediterranean, Mexico and Northern India.

To address this issue, many developers in dry countries like Saudi Arabia, Australia and Mauritania are developing desalination plants to supply their green hydrogen facilities with water so they do not take it away from locals.

For all its challenges, Wood Mackenzie analyst Hector Arreola believes clean hydrogen is the “most viable pathway to deep decarbonisation” in steel, cement, chemicals and heavy transport – and the only green solution for emissions of ammonia, methanol and refining.

“While hydrogen’s broader adoption may take longer to materialise due to current cost barriers, the path to cost reduction is well-established,” he said. “As technology scales, electrolyser efficiency improves, and renewable energy costs continue to fall, production costs are expected to decline – following a trajectory similar to that of solar and wind.”

The post Clean hydrogen hype fades as high costs dampen demand appeared first on Climate Home News.

A little past 4 a.m. on June 21, 2019, workers at the Philadelphia Energy Solutions oil refinery in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, noticed a leak from a corroded pipe, and were immediately on high alert. The leak had originated in Unit 433, known among workers as the “bogeyman” because it contained the highly explosive chemical hydrofluoric acid, or HF. When released in large quantities, the chemical can form a dense, toxic vapor cloud that hugs the ground and can travel many miles. Contact with this cloud can be deadly; if it ignites, it could cause a massive explosion.

Sure enough, a vapor cloud materialized and ignited, causing three large explosions and a massive fire that sent smoke “pouring into the sky.” Pieces of equipment the size of cars flew through the air, miraculously landing in the Schuylkill River without hitting any homes. The force of the explosions threw workers back, injuring five, but ultimately did not cause any fatalities. Workers remembering the incident years later agreed that it could have been much worse. 

“You figure you ain’t going home,” one former worker told Grist of the moment he saw the fire in Unit 433. “You figure this is it.” 

Shortly after the incident, the company filed for bankruptcy and shut down, leaving around 1,000 workers jobless and without severance pay.

Refineries that use HF are regulated under the EPA’s Risk Management Program, or RMP, a regulation designed to improve chemical accident prevention at large petrochemical facilities — but for reasons that have little to do with knowhow and capacity, RMP regulations have been glaringly ineffective. Indeed, few regulations have been subject to the yo-yo of successive presidential administrations, and their political whims, like the RMP. 

The RMP program was established in 1990 following a series of infamous chemical disasters in the 1980s, most notably the chemical leak at Union Carbide’s plant in Bhopal, India which poisoned roughly 500,000 people, around 20,000 of whom died in the hours and years afterwards due to health complications from the exposure. Another leak at a Union Carbide facility in West Virginia the following year caused eye, throat, and lung irritation for at least 135 residents.

The first iteration of the rule came into effect in 1994, during the Clinton administration, but lacked several important protections such as independent auditing for regulated facilities, public information provisions, and the requirement that companies complete a “safer technology and alternatives analysis” to determine whether there are any safer ways to conduct their operation. A series of chemical disasters in 2013 — including a massive explosion at the West Fertilizer Company in West, Texas that killed 15 people and damaged 350 homes — brought these deficiencies to the attention of regulators. 

Read Next ‘Caught off guard’: EPA proposes to fire hundreds of scientists Naveena Sadasivam & Tik Root

In January 2017, the Obama EPA finalized amendments to the Accidental Release Prevention Requirements of the RMP, which included measures to enhance emergency preparedness requirements and ensure that local emergency response officials and residents had access to information to better prepare for potential chemical disasters. But the provisions never went into full effect: In May 2018, the Trump EPA proposed amendments to remove third-party audits and incident investigations, among other protections. The Trump rule was finalized in December of 2019 — six months before the explosion at the Pennsylvania refinery. 

When Biden took office, in 2021, the EPA began working on a new set of amendments for the RMP rule. Unions like U.S. Steelworkers and advocates at organizations like the Union of Concerned Scientists pushed for better public disclosure provisions, the inclusion of more types of facilities in the safer technologies alternatives assessment requirements, and the freedom for workers to stop work that they deem unsafe. 

“Many communities that are vulnerable to chemical accidents are in overburdened and underserved areas of the country,” said former EPA Administrator Michael Regan in a statement announcing the final rule last March. It was slated to go into effect in 2027.

In the past few years, several chemical disasters have disrupted life in the country’s industrial corridors. In August 2023, a large fire at Marathon Petroleum’s refinery in St. John the Baptist Parish, Louisiana in August 2023 burned for seven hours, causing residents to flee for safety. But in the days following the incident, neither the company nor state and federal environmental regulators responded to locals’ questions about what chemicals the air was being tested for. And in 2024, a hydrogen sulfide leak at Pemex’s refinery in Deer Park, Texas killed two contract workers and injured 35 others. 

EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images

In January, a group of industry trade associations sent Lee Zeldin a letter congratulating him on his appointment to the position of EPA Administrator and asking him to take swift action against the “misguided and illegal new requirements” of Biden’s RMP rule. In their letter, the trade groups argued that the new rule represents an overextension of the EPA’s authority and fails to provide a durable solution to facility safety, though they did not explain how the rule falls short in this regard. They singled out an interactive map that the agency published last year separate from the rulemaking process showing where RMP facilities are located around the country, along with other basic public information such as compliance history and the types of chemicals stored onsite. 

In a statement announcing the EPA’s decision to revisit the RMP rule earlier this month, Zeldin seemed to buy industry’s argument.

“The Biden EPA’s costly Risk Management Plan rule ignored recommendations from national security experts on how their rule makes chemical and other sensitive facilities in America more vulnerable to attack,” Zeldin said. The press release also notes that Biden’s RMP rule makes domestic oil refineries and chemical facilities less competitive. 

“It took years to come to the rule that was finalized last year,” said Darya Minovi, a senior analyst at the Union of Concerned Scientists. “To see that rolled back simply because of a letter sent by industry trade associations is really frustrating and shows what little regard this administration has for communities they say they care about.”

Minovi told Grist that the rhetoric about national security is overblown. The public data tool does not contain sensitive information, she said, and when the Department of Homeland Security reviewed the rule last year, they flagged no concerns with the public information disclosure requirements. 

“We’re not happy about it,” the U.S. Steelworkers representative told Grist about the Trump administration’s reconsideration of the RMP rule. As for Zeldin’s concerns about making domestic oil and gas companies competitive, “I think that putting workers and communities at greater risk of catastrophic injuries is not good for the economy.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline The EPA wants to roll back a rule that’s essential for protecting you from chemical disasters on Mar 21, 2025.

This coverage is made possible through a partnership between Grist, BPR, a public radio station serving western North Carolina, WABE, Atlanta’s NPR station, WBEZ, a public radio station serving the Chicago metropolitan region, and Interlochen Public Radio in Northern Michigan.

The Trump administration’s freeze on funding from the Inflation Reduction Act, the landmark climate law from the Biden era, has left farmers and rural businesses across the country on the hook for costly energy efficiency upgrades and renewable energy installations.

The grants are part of the Rural Energy for America Program, or REAP, originally created in the 2008 farm bill and supercharged by funding from the IRA. It provides farmers and other businesses in rural areas with relatively small grants and loans to help lower their energy bills by investing, say,  in more energy-efficient farming equipment or installing small solar arrays. 

By November 2024, the IRA had awarded more than $1 billion for nearly 7,000 REAP projects, which help rural businesses in low-income communities reduce the up-front costs of clean energy and save thousands on utility costs each year. 

But now, that funding is in limbo. Under the current freeze, some farmers have already spent tens of thousands of dollars on projects and are waiting for the promised reimbursement. Others have had to delay work they were counting on to support their businesses, unsure when their funding will come through — or if it will.

REAP is administered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Secretary Brooke Rollins said the agency is “coming to the tail end of the review process” of evaluating grants awarded under the Biden administration.

“If our farmers and ranchers especially have already spent money under a commitment that was made, the goal is to make sure they are made whole,” Rollins told reporters in Atlanta last week.

But it’s not clear when the funds might be released, or whether all the farmers and business owners awaiting their money will receive it. 

For Joshua Snedden, a REAP grant was the key to making his 10-acre farm in Monee, Illinois, more affordable and environmentally sustainable. But months after installing a pricey solar array, he’s still waiting on a reimbursement from the federal government — and the delay is threatening his bottom line. 

“I’m holding out hope,” said Snedden, a first-generation farmer in northeast Illinois. “I’m trying to do everything within my power to make sure the funding is released.”

In December, his five-year old operation, Fox at the Fork, began sourcing its power from a new 18.48 kilowatt solar array which cost Snedden $86,364. The system currently offsets all the farm’s electricity use and then some.

REAP offers grants for up to half of a project like this, and loan guarantees for up to 75 percent of the cost. For Snedden, a $19,784 REAP reimbursement grant made this solar array possible. But the reimbursement, critical to Snedden’s cash flow, was frozen by Trump as part of a broader review of the USDA’s Biden-era commitments.

Joshua Snedden is a first-generation farmer who said he will continue whether or not he gets the federal funding for solar. Courtesy of Joshua Snedden

Snedden grows the produce he takes to market — everything from tomatoes to garlic to potatoes — on about an acre of his farm. He also plans to transform the rest of his land into a perennial crop system, which would include fruit trees like pears, plums, and apples planted alongside native flowers and grasses to support wildlife. 

A solar array was always part of his plans, “but seemed like a pie in the sky” kind of project, he said, adding he thought it might take him a decade to afford such an investment.

The REAP program has been a lifeline for Illinois communities struggling with aging infrastructure and growing energy costs, according to Amanda Pankau with the Prairie Rivers Network, an organization advocating for environmental protection and climate change mitigation across Illinois. 

“By lowering their electricity costs, rural small businesses and agricultural producers can put that money back into their business,” said Pankau. 

That’s exactly what Snedden envisioned from his investment in the solar power system. The new solar array wouldn’t just make his farm more resilient to climate change, but also more financially viable, “because we could shift expenses from paying for energy to paying for more impactful inputs for the farm,” he said. 

He anticipates that by switching to solar, Fox at the Fork will save close to $3,200 dollars a year on electric bills. 

Now, Snedden is waiting for the USDA to hold up their end of the deal. 

“The financial strain hurts,” said Snedden. “But I’m still planning to move forward growing crops and fighting for these funds.”

Jon and Brittany Klimstra are both scientists who are originally from western North Carolina. They returned to the area to start a farm and an orchard and are waiting for solar funds they were promised. Courtesy of Jon Klimstra

At the start of the year, Jon and Brittany Klimstra were nearly ready to install a solar array on their Polk County, North Carolina farm after being awarded a REAP grant in 2024.

As two former scientists who had moved back to western North Carolina 10 years ago to grow apples and be close to their families, it felt like a chance to both save money and live their values.

“We’ve certainly been interested in wanting to do something like this, whether it be for our personal home or for our farm buildings for a while,” said Jon. “It just was cost prohibitive up to this point without some type of funding.”

That funding came when they were awarded $12,590 from REAP for the installation. But, after the Trump administration’s funding freeze, the money never came. 

“We were several site visits in, several engineering conversations. We’ve had electricians, the solar company,” said Brittany . “It’s been a very involved process.”

Since the grant is reimbursement-based, the Klimstras have already paid out-of-pocket for some costs related to the project. Plus, the farm had been banking on saving $1,300 in utilities expenses per year. In a given month, their electricity bill is $300-$400.

Apples from the orchard run by Jon and Brittany Klimstra. They were ready to install a solar array when the federal funding was frozen. Courtesy of Jon Klimstra

Across Appalachia, historically high energy costs have made the difference between survival and failure for many local businesses, said Heather Ransom, who works with Solar Holler, a solar company that serves parts of Virginia, West Virginia, Kentucky, and Ohio.

“We have seen incredible rate increases across the region in electricity over the past 10, even 20 years,” she said.

Through Solar Holler, REAP grants also passed into the hands of rural library systems and schools; the company installed 10,000 solar panels throughout the Wayne County, West Virginia school system. About $6 million worth of projects supported by Solar Holler are currently on hold.

In other parts of the region, community development financial institutions like the Mountain Association in eastern Kentucky combatted food deserts through helping local grocery stores apply for REAP.

Solar Holler also works in coal-producing parts of the region, where climate change discussions have been fraught with the realities of declining jobs and revenue from the coal industry. The program helped make the case for communities to veer away from coal and gas-fired energy. 

“What REAP has helped us do is show people that it’s not just a decision that’s driven by environmental motives or whatever, it actually makes good business sense to go solar,” Ransom said. In her experience, saving money appeals to people of all political persuasions. “At the end of the day, we’ve installed just as much solar on red roofs as we do blue roofs, as we do rainbow roofs or whatever.”

Jim Lively has a local food market just minutes from the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore in northern Michigan. He’s waiting for the federal money he was promised so he can put solar on the roof and offset the costs of opening up a campsite for RVs in this field. Izzy Ross / Grist

The Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore in northern Michigan draws over 1.5 million visitors every year. Jim Lively hopes some of those people will camp RVs at a nearby site he’s planning to open next to his family’s local food market. He wants to use solar panels to help power the campsite and offset electric bills for the market, where local farmers bring produce directly to the store. 

Lively helped promote REAP during his time at an environmental nonprofit, where he’d worked for over two decades. So the program was on his mind when it came time to replace the market’s big, south-facing roof.

“We put on a metal roof, and worked with a contractor who was also familiar with the REAP program, and we said, ‘Let’s make sure we’re setting this up for solar,’” he said. “So it was kind of a no-brainer for us.”

They were told they had been approved for a REAP grant of $39,696 last summer — half of the project’s total cost — but didn’t feel the need to rush the solar installation. Then, at the end of January, Lively was notified that the funding had been paused. 

The interior of the Lively NeighborFood Market, where owner Jim Lively likes to feature local produce. He was hoping to install a solar roof this year, but the funding has been stalled. Izzy Ross / Grist

The property runs on electricity, rather than natural gas, and Lively wants to keep it that way. But those electric bills have been expensive — about $2,000 a month last summer, he said. When they get the RV site up and running, he expects those bills to approach $3,000.

Selling local food means operating within tight margins. Lively said saving on energy would help, but they won’t be able to move ahead with the rooftop solar unless the REAP funding is guaranteed.

Continuing to power the property with electricity rather than fossil fuels is a kind of personal commitment for Lively. “Boy, solar is also the right thing to do,” he said. “And it’s going to be difficult to do that without that funding.” 

The grants aren’t only for solar arrays and other renewable energy systems. Many are for energy efficiency improvements to help farmers save on utility bills, and in some cases cut emissions. In Georgia, for instance, one farm was awarded just under $233,000 for a more efficient grain dryer, an upgrade projected to save the farm more than $16,000 per year. Several farms were awarded funding to convert diesel-powered irrigation pumps to electric.

The USDA did not directly answer Grist’s emailed questions about the specific timeline for REAP funds, the amount of money under review, or the future of the program. Instead, an emailed statement criticized the Biden administration’s “misuse of hundreds of billions” of IRA and bipartisan infrastructure law (BIL) funds  “all at the expense of the American taxpayer.” 

“USDA has a solemn responsibility to be good stewards of the American people’s hard-earned taxpayer dollars and to ensure that every dollar spent goes to serve the people, not the bureaucracy. As part of this effort, Secretary Rollins is carefully reviewing this funding and will provide updates as soon as they are made available,” the email said.

Read Next Trump is freezing climate funds. Can he do that? Jake Bittle

Two federal judges have already ordered the Trump administration to release the impounded IRA and BIL funds. Earthjustice, a national environmental law organization, filed a lawsuit last week challenging the freeze of USDA funds on behalf of farmers and nonprofits. 

“The administration is causing harm that can’t be fixed, and fairness requires that the funds continue to flow,” said Jill Tauber, vice president of litigation for climate and energy at Earthjustice.

Rollins released the first tranche of funding February 20 and announced the release of additional program funds earlier this month. That did not include the REAP funding.

The USDA announced Wednesday it would expedite funding for farmers under a different program in honor of National Agriculture Day, but as of March 20 had not made an announcement about REAP.

Rahul Bali of WABE contributed reporting to this story. ​​

Editor’s note: Earthjustice is an advertiser with Grist. Advertisers have no role in Grist’s editorial decisions.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Farmers and small business owners were promised financial help for energy upgrades. They’re still waiting for the money. on Mar 21, 2025.

Burning oil, gas, and coal — literal fossil fuels, made from the compressed remains of ancient plants and plankton — has released carbon into Earth’s atmosphere, where it traps heat and alters the climate. That process has caused massive destruction and loss of life, and it will continue to do so. As a result, carbon came to be seen as something to “fight,” “combat,” and “capture.” 

Paul Hawken, the author of the new book Carbon: The Book of Life, argues that the climate movement is thinking about its work, and messaging, all wrong. “Those who call carbon a pollutant might want to lay down their word processor,” Hawken writes. Carbon, he notes, is after all the building block of life, the animating force behind trees, rhinos, eyelashes, hormones, bamboo, and so much more. Without it, Earth would just be a lonely, dead rock. So much for decarbonizing. 

Hawken has come to believe that treating carbon as something to tackle, liquefy, and pump into geological formations not only reflects the same mindset that caused climate change in the first place, but also further alienates people from the living world. There is no “climate crisis,” he argues, but a crisis of human thinking and behavior that’s degrading the soil, wiping out entire species, and changing the weather faster than people can adapt. “From a planetary view,” he writes in Carbon, “the warming atmosphere is a response, an adjustment, a teaching.”

Viking / Jasmine Scaelsciani Hawken

The book records a shift in his thinking. In 2017, Hawken published Drawdown: The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reverse Global Warming, a book that ranked 100 climate solutions by how much they could reduce carbon emissions, from refrigerant leaks to food waste. The nonprofit Project Drawdown, which he launched, continues to implement these kinds of fixes around the world. But now, Hawken is forgoing straightforward metrics to focus on what he sees as a deeper cultural problem. “The living world is a complex interactive system and doesn’t lend itself to simple solutions,” he said.

The new book frames carbon as a flow — a cycle that moves through the atmosphere, oceans, soil, with the element absorbed by growing plants and exhaled in every animal breath. Hawken’s book is a lesson in what’s sometimes called “unlearning,” or letting go of old assumptions, like the idea that nature is something to fix or control. The book explores ways to repair a broken relationship with the natural world, drawing inspiration from Indigenous cultures and new scientific discoveries. Hawken marvels at how much remains unknown about carbon, which he dubs “the most mysterious element of all.”

The book’s poetic language offers a stark contrast to the warlike terms climate advocates tend to use to describe carbon. Hawken argues that the typical metaphors are not only inaccurate — how exactly do you battle an element? — but also provide fuel for right-wing narratives that carbon has been unfairly demonized. Last week, E&E News reported that the Trump administration is planning a federal report making the case that a warming world would be a good thing, a pretext for weakening climate regulations. 

“Carbon dioxide is not an evil gas,” David Legates, a former Trump official, said in a recent video put out by the Heartland Institute, a conservative think tank. “Rather, it’s a gas beneficial to life on Earth. It’ll increase temperatures slightly, and warmer temperatures are certainly better than colder temperatures.” 

Read Next How the Klamath Dams Came Down Anita Hofschneider & Jake Bittle

Hawken wants a broad shift in how people talk about the natural world, though, not just a rethinking of the climate movement’s metaphors. He points to how financial institutions increasingly refer to nature as a commodity. In January, BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, declared “natural capital” an investment priority. In February, Goldman Sachs launched a “biodiversity bond fund” turning ecosystems into investment products. The jargon used in scientific reports and global climate conferences also creates a sense of detachment that dulls the living things it refers to. Hawken describes the word “biodiversity” as “a bloodless term” and “carbon neutrality” as an absurd “biophysical impossibility.” 

“We are numbed by the science, puzzled by jargon, paralyzed by predictions, confused about what actions to take, stressed as we scramble to care for our family, or simply impoverished, overworked, and tired,” Hawken writes. “Most of humanity doesn’t talk about climate change because we do not know what to say.”

Even plainspoken terms like “nature” are suspect, in Hawken’s view: The concept only seems to exist to mark a separation between humans and the rest of the world. He points out that the Chicham language of the Achuar people in the Amazon doesn’t have a word for nature, nor do other Indigenous languages. “Such words would only be needed if the Achuar experienced nature as distinct from the self,” he writes. English, by contrast, he describes as a “rootless” language, borrowing terms from so many places that it struggles to teach the kind of deep, reciprocal relationships that are born from living in one place and caring for it over many generations. 

Hawken hopes to mend that separation by helping people discover the flow of carbon in their daily lives and kindle a sense of wonder about it. Carbon delves into mind-bending scientific discoveries about the kind of marvels that carbon makes possible. Bees, with their two-milligram brains, appear able to count, learn by observation, feel pain and pleasure, and even recognize their own knowledge. The rye plant senses the world around it with more than 14 million roots and root hairs, a network that one plant neurobiologist described as a type of brain. Hawken’s book is a reminder that carbon — despite all the problems caused by releasing too much of it into the atmosphere — is actually a gift.

The goal of Carbon isn’t to map out a plan for saving the Earth, but to rekindle a sense of relationship with it. 

Where Hawken lives in California, his community recently restored a salmon stream, breaking down a concrete barrier under a bridge that had blocked the fish on their final journey up the stream to spawn. “The core of it is about care, and kindness, and connection, and compassion, and generosity,” Hawken said. “That’s where regeneration starts.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline The climate movement is talking about carbon all wrong, a new book argues on Mar 21, 2025.

Cultivating farmland after the bombs Channel News brendan 21st March 2025 Teaser Media

The wearable MAIJU smart jumpsuit developed collaboratively by the University of Helsinki and the New Children’s Hospital at Helsinki University Hospital enables objective and accurate assessment of children’s motor skills without the presence of researchers.

As global electricity demand grows, traditional energy sources are under strain. 

The Trump administration has issued an Executive Order to build minerals refining facilities on military bases and other federally-owned lands. This stems from the president’s speech to Congress promising to expand extraction and processing of energy transition minerals, particularly rare earth elements. These minerals are used in renewable energy technologies like electric vehicle batteries; they also have military uses. The previous Trump and Biden administrations both used the Defense Production Act to encourage domestic mining and mineral processing. 

Moving mineral processing and refining onto military bases will neither make US residents safer nor the world more peaceful. And it certainly will not alleviate the climate crisis. 

Minerals processing is an extremely polluting process, especially for rare earth elements. Building and operating these facilities on bases would not contain their impacts to a military base; impacts would spread downwind and downstream, affecting military families and surrounding communities. 

Activities on military bases have a history of polluting nearby air and water, including uranium mining and milling in the Navajo Nation and surrounding areas. Military bases already host 141 Superfund sites, but if “broadened beyond Pentagon installations, about 900 of the 1200 or so Superfund sites in America are abandoned military facilities or sites that otherwise support military needs.” Simultaneously, the Environmental Protection Agency removes uranium mine waste from Navajo Nation one cleanup at a time, where a 2016 study found that 27% of the 599 participants have high levels of uranium in their bodies. 

Congress has repeatedly considered and passed laws compensating persons suffering public health problems caused by pollution on, and beyond, military bases. Instead of bringing more polluting industries onto military bases, Congress should address existing harms and reauthorize and expand the Radiation Exposure and Compensation Act, to help uranium miners, millers, and those downwind and downstream from atomic testing, including the Indigenous Peoples of the Marshall Islands.   

Building mineral processing on bases still needs public review, including under the National Environmental Policy Act, the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Air Act, and the Endangered Species Act. The administration has proposed dissolving the Council of Environmental Quality rules for NEPA, but DOD’s NEPA reviews are still required for communities on and near bases, as well as for the public impacted by these facilities. 

Mineral supply is not a new issue for the Department of Defense: it already manages a stockpile of metals and other materials it needs for military uses. Congress funds procurement for this stockpile in each year’s National Defense Authorization Act. Some members of Congress support filling the stockpile with more recycled content. The military also recycles certain ETMs, like germanium, from tank windows, rifle scopes, and jet engines. This recycling program helps reduce geopolitical tensions associated with trade restrictions other governments have or may impose upon the US. 

The US is the largest emitter of greenhouse gases in history, and our military is the single largest producer of GHGs in the world. Instead of bringing polluting industries onto military bases, Congress and the Department of Defense should take action to correct past and ongoing harms and reduce the need for mined and processed minerals, including by reauthorizing and expanding RECA. Most importantly, Congress should dramatically reduce the Defense budget to reduce mineral demand, while implementing circular economy policies that accomplish the same goal.

The post Mineral Processing on Military Bases Will Not Make the US Safer appeared first on Earthworks.

New research finds that microalgae in northern peat bogs will absorb more carbon dioxide as the planet warms, helping to take a bite out of emissions.

Read more on E360 →