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War’s impact often ripples far beyond the battlefield — setting off a chain of consequences that shape landscapes, cultures, and economies in ways no one could predict. As we mark the 50th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War, we must recognize that its aftershocks are still playing out in some of the most unexpected ways.

In Southeast Asia, the Vietnam War unleashed just such an effect, influencing the illegal tiger trade that today spans Vietnam, Malaysia, and beyond. What began as wartime survival and cultural resilience has, over time, fed a cross-border black market in tiger parts — one that these countries are now working to dismantle.

Against that vast backdrop of lost lives, shattered communities, and devastated landscapes, focusing on something like the illegal tiger trade might seem oddly narrow, even trivial. And yet, that narrow focus reveals a surprising truth: what many might assume is a free-standing wildlife trafficking problem is intricately woven into the broader social, economic, and cultural histories of Vietnam and Malaysia.

I’ve been working on issues related to trafficking of big cats for the past decade. To address it effectively requires engaging with this deep complexity — the legacy of war, the persistence of tradition, and the realities of economic survival — rather than viewing it as a straightforward market problem.

With this shared history as a foundation, Vietnam and Malaysia are uniquely positioned to lead a regional conservation resurgence.

A War That Disrupted More Than Just Borders

The Vietnam War — or, as it’s known in Vietnam, the Resistance War Against America — left behind a staggering ecological toll. Aerial bombing, napalm, and chemical defoliants like Agent Orange destroyed up to 30% of Vietnam’s forests, wiping out critical habitat for species like the Indochinese tiger.

That ecological crisis, of course, came alongside a human one. With medicines in short supply, many Vietnamese communities returned to traditional remedies made from herbs and animal products — an enthusiastic and proud revival of a Vietnamese national medicine, blending ancient remedies with some modern medicines.

But by the 1990s, things had shifted. As Vietnam’s economy took off, so did spending power. Expensive wildlife remedies, long associated with vitality and strength, were suddenly affordable to more people. A cultural practice born of need became a consumer trend.

Vietnam’s Tigers Vanish — and Attention Turns South

Vietnam’s wild tiger population had all but vanished by the early 2000s.

That scarcity didn’t curb demand though — it just redirected it across the South Asian Sea. Malaysia, with more intact forest and a surviving population of Malayan tigers, became an attractive source for traders.

The route between Vietnam and Malaysia wasn’t new. After the war, Malaysia took in hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese refugees. Over time, that humanitarian corridor turned into something else: labor migration. By the 2000s, Vietnamese workers were filling jobs in Malaysia’s fast-growing palm oil, timber, and manufacturing sectors — many of them in or near tiger habitats.

This migration wasn’t about wildlife. But as is often the case, when workers stumbled upon animals, some saw a way to pad their income — a shift that, over time and with the help of certain Malaysian traders, poachers, and facilitators, evolved into specialized roles within the illegal trade. What began as a small-scale activity evolved into something more organized — not just in tiger products, but also in other high-value forest goods, such as agarwood.

Vietnamese harvesting teams, already operating abroad for agarwood in Thailand and Laos, often became the backbone of these expanding networks. The infrastructure was already there: shared language, established routes, and an expanding black market.

Quang Binh became one of the main provinces for teams of poachers travelling overseas. Hammered by wartime bombing and recurring natural disasters, many residents developed bushcraft survival skills during the war and passed these on to the next generation. Some later used those same skills to participate in forest harvesting and poaching activities abroad, including in Malaysia. Their story is one of economic need intersecting with global demand.

The consequences for Malaysia’s wildlife were devastating. As demand surged, so did pressure on the Malayan tiger. Poaching, compounded by habitat loss, drove the population into freefall. By 2021 fewer than 200 Malayan tigers remained — placing the species on the brink of extinction.

Turning History Into Leadership

Neither Malaysia nor Vietnam created the demand for tiger parts alone — and neither country can end the trade on its own. But both have taken real steps toward conservation.

Malaysia strengthened its wildlife laws in 2010, mobilized over 1,000 community rangers, and formed the National Malayan Tiger Task Force (MyTTF) in 2021, chaired by the prime minister. This raised the urgency for actions to save the critically endangered species. Vietnam also introduced tougher penalties in 2019 and remains a committed party to international wildlife agreements like CITES (The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species).

And just this year, the two nations signed a comprehensive strategic partnership — a sweeping agreement that, among other priorities, names security and defense cooperation as shared goals. It’s a sign that the era of isolated efforts may be coming to an end.

Lessons From the Past

This shared history offers three key takeaways.

First: War changes ecosystems — and societies. The destruction of Vietnam’s forests and healthcare systems didn’t just hurt tigers in the short term; it also shifted how people related to nature, medicine, and survival.

Second: cultural practices aren’t static. What began as traditional healing became a luxury trend. Conservation efforts must address both cultural roots and economic shifts.

And finally: solutions must cross borders. The tiger trade is transnational, and so are the forces driving it — from poverty to prestige to migration. Conservation must be transnational too.

A New Chapter for Tigers

Vietnam and Malaysia’s intertwined past and emerging interdependence can now become a foundation for something new. But seizing this moment means going beyond policy statements.

Neither country can do this alone; they need each other. The comprehensive strategic partnership offers a new foundation for dismantling the Malaysia-Vietnam tiger trafficking problem.

Accomplishing this requires cross-border information sharing and joint counter-trafficking strategies that target key points along the supply chain — both of which the strategic partnership should now enable. Vietnam and Malaysia can now prioritize closing opportunities for the illegal movement of people, wildlife products, and finances that sustain the problem, and coordinating investigations against key roles in the trade.

The private financial and transportation sectors have levers to pull here. For example, investigating and freezing assets of individuals financing and profiting from tiger trafficking, enhancing screening, and checking procedures in the transport sector.

Governments and NGOs can also harness rural development schemes and vocational training programs, combined with engagement to shift community acceptance away from the illegal wildlife trade. Successful community-based programs in Vietnam, India, and Indonesia have shown how combining clear communication of risks with targeted assistance can steer would-be poachers toward safer, legal livelihoods, but need funding and scale from national governments.

Conservation isn’t just about saving tigers. It’s about supporting people — especially those in the shadow of poverty and conflict. As we mark both 50 years since the end of the Vietnam War and International Tiger Day, the chance to turn a difficult legacy into a powerful model for ecological recovery is a real one.

Republish this article for free! Read our reprint policy. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter. Scan the QR code, or sign up here. Previously in The Revelator:

Wildlife Trafficking: 10 Things Everyone Needs to Know

The post 50 Years Later: The Vietnam War’s Enduring Effect on the Tiger Trade appeared first on The Revelator.

A legal tipping point on climate Channel Comment brendan 29th July 2025 Teaser Media

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Eight years ago, when Debbie Wei Mullin founded her company Copper Cow, she wanted to bring Vietnamese coffee into the mainstream. 

Vietnam, the world’s second-largest exporter of coffee, is known for growing robusta beans. Earthier and more bitter than the arabica beans grown in Brazil, Colombia, and other coffee-growing regions near the Equator, robusta beans are often thought of as producing lower-quality coffee. 

In an effort to rebrand robusta, Mullin signed deals with coffee farming cooperatives in Vietnam and created smooth blends. Over the years, she helped a cohort of farmers convert their operations to organic. “We put in huge investments and were certified as the first organic specialty-grade coffee farms ever in Vietnam,” said the CEO and founder. In a few weeks, Copper Cow is planning to launch its first line of organic coffee at Whole Foods and Target.

But the second Trump administration has changed the calculus of her business. Mullin said she “was bullish” about her company’s prospects when President Donald Trump first took office, believing that Vietnam would likely be exempt from exorbitant tariffs since the president has many supporters in the coastal Southeast Asian country. Then, in April of this year, the White House announced a 46 percent tariff on goods from Vietnam. 

The shock left Mullin rethinking the very thesis she had set out to prove. “A big part of our mission is about how robusta beans, when treated better, can provide this really great cup of coffee at a lower price,” she said. “Once you put a 46 percent tariff on there, does this business model work anymore?”

Trump soon paused his country-specific tariffs for a few months, replacing them with a near-universal 10 percent tax. This month, Trump announced on social media that he would lower Vietnam’s eventual tariff from 46 to 20 percent — a sharp price hike that still worries Mullin. Meanwhile, Trump has threatened to impose an astounding 50 percent tariff on goods from Brazil, the nation’s largest importer of coffee, starting August 1. 

“I joke with my partner that I feel like I’m in a macroeconomics class,” said Mullin. In lieu of raising its prices, Copper Cow, which sells directly to consumers as well as to retailers, has scrambled to cut costs by reconsidering its quarterly team get-togethers and slowing down its timeline for helping more farmers go organic. The price of coffee hit an all-time high earlier this year, a dramatic rise due in part to ongoing climate-fueled droughts in the global coffee belt. As the U.S. considers fueling a trade war with coffee-producing countries, “it just feels like such an insult to an injury,” said Mullin. “It’s like, let’s have an earthquake hit a place that is in the middle of a hurricane.”

Coffee beans being roasted in a traditional coffee roasting store in India. Abhishek Chinnappa / Getty Images

Economists like to say that demand for coffee is relatively inelastic — drinkers are so attached to their daily caffeine fix that they keep buying it even when prices increase. As the Trump administration mounts its retaliatory trade agenda, that theory will be put to the test. Coffee growers, as well as the roasters and sellers that purchase them in the U.S., are now facing unforeseen geopolitical and economic challenges. “We have not seen tariffs of this magnitude before,” said David Ortega, a professor of food and economics policy at Michigan State University. “There’s no playbook for this.” 

Should Trump’s threatened tariffs go into effect next month, it will likely hurt consumers, as many businesses will pass on the costs by raising prices. But it could also have ripple effects on coffee farms, as companies may cut costs by pulling back on investments in environmentally-conscientious practices like organic or regenerative agriculture. “Our goal was always to slowly convert the rest of our products to certified organic,” said Mullin. “And we feel like that is not an option anymore because of the tariffs.”

Even if the tariffs do not go into effect in August, the ongoing economic uncertainty will likely impact coffee growers in Brazil, which provided 35 percent of America’s unroasted coffee supply as of 2023. As U.S. coffee companies navigate the Trump administration’s evolving trade policies, they are likely to seek out new, cheaper markets for coffee beans. “Suddenly, they become less attached to where they source their coffee from,” said João Brites, director of growth and innovation at HowGood, a data platform that helps food companies measure and reduce carbon emissions along their supply chain. 

The problem with that, according to Ortega, is that other countries in the coffee belt, such as Colombia, do not have the production capacity to match Brazil’s and meet U.S. demand for coffee. If the threat of punitive tariffs on Brazil kickstarts an increase in demand for coffee from other countries, that will likely raise prices. For coffee drinkers, “there are very few substitutes,” said Ortega.

These pressures on coffee farmers and buyers are coming after a period of worsening climate impacts. A majority of coffee grown in Brazil — about 60 percent — comes from smallholder farms, grown on about 25 or fewer acres of land. “The current reality they’re operating in is that they’re already very stretched,” particularly because of weather disruptions, said Brites. Coffee grows best in tropical climates, but in recent years unprecedented droughts in Brazil have stunted growers’ yields, forcing exporters to dip into and almost deplete their coffee reserves. Vietnam has been rocked by drought and heat waves — and though robusta beans need less water to grow than arabica beans, making them a relatively climate-resilient crop, growers have also seen their yields decline. (Mullin said she is seeing early signs of harvests rebounding this year.)

Brites speculated that U.S. companies buying from smallholder farms in Brazil may be able to pressure growers into selling their beans at lower prices, adding to the economic precarity that these growers face. “For a lot of these coffee growers, the U.S. is such a big market,” he said, adding that it would take time for them to find new buyers in other markets.

Charts showing President Donald Trump’s country-specific “reciprocal tariffs” on April 2 in Washington, DC.
Alex Wong / Getty Images

Growers themselves are worried. Mariana Veloso, a Brazilian coffee producer and exporter, said producers are facing logistical challenges — and anticipating more. “If we want to ship a coffee in the next month, we will probably not be able to,” said Veloso, remarking that sometimes cargo ships holding coffee sit at Brazilian ports for weeks before setting out. Shipping companies seem to be delaying shipments from Brazil, said Veloso, perhaps in anticipation of the looming tariffs.

In the U.S., not every coffee company sources from Brazil or Vietnam. But the Trump administration’s existing 10 percent across-the-board tariffs are still rattling the coffee business. “We source coffees from all around the world. So we’re not immune to anything,” said Kevin Hartley, founder and CEO of Cambio Roasters, an aluminum K-cup coffee brand. He added, “You know, 10 percent here and 30 percent there, that’s not trivial.”

Hartley added that one of the impacts of droughts on coffee growers is that younger farmers worried about the future are considering leaving the business. “In coffee farming families around the world, it’s a tough life and the current generation is showing reticence to take off where their parents began,” he said. 

Regardless of whether the U.S. imposes prohibitive tariffs on individual coffee-growing countries, climate change is already taking a toll on this workforce. “Everyone’s looking for a solution for this,” said Mullin, who believes robusta beans can offer a drought-resistant alternative to the ever-popular arabica beans. 

Copper Cow has even started experimenting with a lesser-known varietal of coffee beans called liberica, which requires even less water to grow than robusta beans. “And it’s delicious,” Mullin said. It’s an extremely labor-intensive crop because the coffee plant grows so tall, but one of the farmer cooperatives she works with is starting to plant them now, thinking the investment will be worth it as temperatures keep rising. 

This new era of environmental, economic, and geopolitical challenges has shaken coffee brands. “Everybody’s wondering, in 50 years, will there be much coffee anymore? People are trying to be really realistic about what that world is going to look like,” said Mullin. In the midst of that broader uncertainty, the impact of Trump’s tariffs is another question only time can answer.

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This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Climate change has sent coffee prices soaring. Trump’s tariffs will send them higher. on Jul 29, 2025.

The Arctic island of Svalbard is so reliably frigid that humanity bet its future on the place. Since 2008, the Svalbard Global Seed Vault — set deep in frozen soil known as permafrost — has accepted nearly 1.4 million samples of more than 6,000 species of critical crops. But, the island is warming six to seven times faster than the rest of the planet, making even winters freakishly hot, at least by Arctic standards. Indeed, in 2017, an access tunnel to the vault flooded as permafrost melted, though the seeds weren’t impacted.

This February, a team of scientists was working on Svalbard when irony took hold. Drilling into the soil, they gathered samples of bacteria that proliferate when the ground thaws. These microbes munch on organic matter and burp methane, an extremely potent greenhouse gas and significant driver of global warming. Those emissions are potentially fueling a feedback loop in the Arctic: As more soil thaws, more methane is released, leading to more thawing and more methane, and on and on. 

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In some parts of Svalbard, though, the scientists didn’t need to drill. Air temperatures climbed above freezing for 14 of the 28 days of February, reaching 40 degrees Fahrenheit, when the average temperature at this time of year is 5 degrees. Snow vanished in places, leaving huge pools of water. “I brought my equipment to drill into frozen soil and then ended up sampling a lot of soil just with a spoon, like it was soft ice cream,” said Donato Giovannelli, a geomicrobiologist at the University of Naples Federico II and co-lead author of a paper describing the experience, published last week in the journal Nature Communications. “That was really pretty shocking.”

Scientists can now dig with silverware in the Svalbard winter because the Arctic has descended into a crisis of reflectivity. Until recently, the far north had a healthy amount of sea ice, which bounced much of the sun’s energy back into space, keeping the region cool. But as the planet has warmed, that ice has been disappearing, exposing darker water, which absorbs sunlight and raises temperatures. This is yet another Arctic feedback loop, in which more warming melts more sea ice, leading to more local warming, and on and on. 

Making matters worse, as temperatures rise in the far north, more moisture enters the atmosphere. For one, warmer seawater evaporates more readily, adding water vapor to the air. And two, a warmer atmosphere can hold more moisture. This leads to the formation of more low-level clouds, which trap heat like blankets — especially in the dark Arctic winter — amplifying the warming. That, combined with the loss of sea ice, is why the Arctic is warming up to four times as fast as the rest of the planet, with Svalbard warming even faster than that. 

James Bradley

James Bradley

Researchers on Svalbard say rising Arctic temperatures have led to reduced sea ice cover and rapidly thawing permafrost. These conditions are part of a feedback loop that makes the region especially vulnerable to climate change. Courtesy of James Bradley

James Bradley

During the winter, Svalbard’s soils have historically frozen solid, and scientists assumed this made microbial activity grind to a halt. Reindeer could push through the snow to graze on vegetation. But February’s heat and rain melted the snow, forming vast pools of water that froze once temperatures dropped again. That created a layer of ice that reindeer couldn’t break through. “What we encountered was just so powerful, to be in the middle of this event,” said James Bradley, a geomicrobiologist at the Mediterranean Institute of Oceanography and Queen Mary University of London, co-lead author of the paper. “It really almost all melted over large, large, large areas of the ground. That ground remained frozen, so the water didn’t have too many places to drain away to, so what we also saw was huge pooling of liquid water over the tundra.”

This new climate regime could be profoundly altering the soil microbiome. Scientists assumed that methane-producing bacteria, known as methanogens, stopped proliferating when Svalbard’s soils froze in the winter, just like food in your freezer keeps for months because it’s in a hostile environment for microbes. But with warm spells like this, thawing could awaken methanogens, which could still produce that greenhouse gas even if it then rains and a layer of ice forms at the surface. In addition, that solid cap on the soil will stop the exchange of atmospheric gases into the ground, creating anaerobic, or oxygen-poor, conditions that methanogens love. “In some areas, deeper layers might never freeze completely, which means the methanogens and microbes at depth remain active,” Giovannelli said. “There’s no real winter period.”

If snow melts and the ground thaws, microbes eat organic material and release methane, a potent greenhouse gas that accelerates warming. Courtesy of James Bradley

Vegetation, too, is changing up there, a phenomenon known as Arctic greening. As temperatures rise, trees and shrubs are creeping north to conquer new territory. The good news is that those plants capture carbon as they grow, mitigating global warming to a certain extent. But the bad news is that dark-colored vegetation absorbs more of the sun’s energy and raises temperatures, just like the exposed ocean does. And shrubs trap a layer of snow against the landscape, preventing the chill of winter from penetrating the soil and keeping it frozen.

The speed of transformation in the Arctic is shocking, even for stoic scientists. And as nations keep spewing greenhouse gases, the feedback loops of the far north are threatening to load the atmosphere with still more methane. “We call this the new Arctic — this is not something that is a one-off,” Giovannelli said. “And on the other side, we’ve probably been a bit too cautious with our warnings regarding the climate. It’s not something for the next generation. It’s something for our generation.”

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This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Troubling scenes from an Arctic in full-tilt crisis on Jul 29, 2025.

In her latest rap song, Madhura Ghane, known by her stage name Mahi G, walks on a barren, drought-stricken hill where a large, leafless tree has fallen to the ground. In the following frames, with the background music slowly rising, the video shows close-ups of Indian laborers — men, women, and children — working at a brick factory in Maharashtra. As the background tempo reaches a crescendo, Mahi G fires the first few bars about brick kiln workers, sewage cleaners, and construction workers toiling under the scorching sun. “The one whose sweat builds your house himself wanders homeless,” she raps in Hindi. “But who cares about the one who died working for you in the sun?”

Mahi G’s song “Heatwave,” which was produced in collaboration with Greenpeace India, dropped in June, just as the country was reeling under soaring temperatures. Last year, more than 100 people died across India because of an extreme heat wave during the summer. Prolonged heat exposure can lead to heat strokes, a risk disproportionately borne by outdoor workers. 

In India, those workers typically occupy the lowest rungs of the social hierarchy. The country’s caste system divides people into four main groups based on birth. Those who are placed outside the system — referred to as Dalits — are often relegated to the most hazardous jobs. Members of tribes or Indigenous communities — referred to as Adivasis — also fall outside this structure and face systemic discrimination. Successive governments in India have evicted Adivasis from their ancestral lands to clear the way for exploiting mineral resources.

Mahi G’s music primarily speaks to the experiences of Dalits and Adivasis. She belongs to the Mahadev Koli tribe, a community found in the western state of Maharashtra, and lives in Mumbai. She has released 12 songs so far since she first began rapping in 2019.  Nearly half of them are about climate justice.

Growing up, the 28-year-old rapper witnessed her community struggle to access clean drinking water. “It always made me sad to see women walk long distances to fetch water,” she said. As an Adivasi woman, her drive to research and write about the environment comes from a deep, personal space, she said, and she chose to rap about sociopolitical issues because “you can talk about a big issue in a short, powerful, and aggressive way.”

India’s mainstream hip-hop scene has been mostly dominated by upper-caste male artists, primarily from Maharashtra and Punjab, a northwestern state. But in recent years, a handful of Dalit and Adivasi rappers have broken into the mainstream, using their music to challenge caste hierarchies, critique government policies, and spotlight social injustices.

Among them is Arivu, who shot to fame with his track “Anti-national,” a bold critique of the Indian government led by Narendra Modi, a right-wing Hindu nationalist, whose party and supporters routinely label dissenting voices as anti-national. In another song, Arivu lays bare feudalism and its contemporary manifestations while paying homage to his grandmother, a landless laborer in a tea plantation. The video has garnered more than half a billion views on YouTube.

Mahi G’s videos haven’t had that level of reach, but she draws support from activists and nongovernmental groups working on environmental and social justice causes. Her videos typically garner tens of thousands of views, and one song about Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar, a social reformer and architect of the Indian constitution, has more than 300,000 views. But the music hasn’t made much money so far. She hasn’t monetized her YouTube channel and is instead funding her music through her salary as an engineer at a private company. 

“Heatwave” is not the first time Mahi G has used her music to talk about climate justice. In her first rap song, “Jungle Cha Raja” — King of the Jungle — Mahi G explored the relationship between tribal communities and the natural environment, highlighting how they have long worked to protect it. In another song, “Vikasacha Khul,” she raps about the cost of development — how the building of roads, skyscrapers, and shopping malls has come at the expense of forests, lakes, and clean air.

Rappers like Mahi G and Arivu are often making music that challenges the political establishment at great risk to themselves. In 2023, Umesh Khade and Raj Mungase, two rappers from Maharashtra, were jailed after the right-wing political party ruling the state alleged they had made defamatory statements about their politicians. Despite these concerns and looming threats, Mahi G said the response to her songs keeps her going. Her music has compelled people to think about the environment and has helped them realize that they don’t want industrialization that destroys forests, she said. Even though her community members, who are often new to rap, do not understand her music, she said they have appreciated her work to spotlight climate change, which has directly affected their lives. Shifting rainfall patterns and depleting water resources have taken a toll on the Mahadev Koli tribe’s ability to sustain themselves.

Asim Siddiqui, who teaches at Azim Premji University in southern India’s Bengaluru city and works on the educational and cultural politics of youth, said that rappers from lower-caste and Indigenous communities who have been historically marginalized grow up in contexts where they are intimately connected to their social and natural environment. Ecological destruction or social injustice has a personal impact on their emotions and identity. “It becomes obvious for them to bring out these themes in their musical expression,” he said.

Siddiqui said that singing was historically stigmatized in India as a degrading occupation and, therefore, confined to lower-caste communities. But once India gained independence from British rule and embarked on its nation-building project, “some of the music traditions got classicized and later commodified, which excluded singers and performers from Dalit and Adivasi communities,” Siddiqui said. Hip-hop provided access to marginalized communities across the world, he added, as it enabled young rappers like Mahi G to tell their stories through music.

For Mahi G, music is a platform for activism. “My rap focuses on protecting natural resources,” she said. “If you can’t plant a tree, at least don’t cut one down.” These basic principles form the core of her message.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline This Indian rapper is spitting bars about climate justice, caste, and Indigenous rights on Jul 29, 2025.

From Frankfurt to London to Lisbon, major European airports are seeing an expansion frenzy. In Barcelona, where residents have grown increasingly frustrated with overtourism and its associated problems, authorities and business associations are trying to push ahead with a plan to enlarge El Prat, Europe’s sixth-busiest airport. But will the project really benefit Catalans and the Spanish economy, as its promoters claim?

June 10, 2025. The Catalan government announces a project aimed at expanding Barcelona’s El Prat Airport with an investment of 3.2 billion euros. The proposal – which has acquired the Spanish government’s stamp of approval – joins a roster of ambitious projects to expand air travel capacity in Europe’s major airports, including Madrid-Barajas, London’s Heathrow, Frankfurt airport, and a new airport in Lisbon.

In recent years, various proposals to expand El Prat Airport had surfaced in public debate but none had received official approval. However, the recent alignment of the Socialist Party (PSOE) in the national, regional, and Barcelona city governments has revived the project, which had been shelved since 2021 due to opposition from the then-regional government and Barcelona city council, as well as popular mobilisation. 

The main drivers of the expansion are the Catalan business lobby and the major political parties, namely the PSOE and the Catalan nationalist Junts. On the other hand, the largest trade unions oscillate between ambiguity and support, while parties to the left of the PSOE, environmental movements, and a large part of Barcelona’s civil society remain fiercely opposed. The latter group took to the streets on 28 June to protest against El Prat’s enlargement – and has promised to continue resistance.

The Catalan government and the Spanish Airports and Air Navigation Authority (AENA, the public-private company that manages airports) hope to begin construction in 2030 and complete it by 2033. Yet in reality, what we have seen so far resembles the case of Heathrow Airport, where expansion was first proposed in 2009 but has yet to materialise in the face of fierce opposition from environmental groups, local residents, and some political parties. In fact, the coalition government between Conservatives and Liberals (2010-2015) cancelled the construction of Heathrow’s third runway – approved by the previous Labour government  – due mostly to the opposition of residents and MPs from nearby towns, who worried about noise pollution. Current prime minister Keir Starmer has recently revived the project, citing expected positive economic outcomes.

In 2024, El Prat Airport, located about 15 kilometres from the centre of Barcelona, surpassed 50 million passengers – mostly tourists – and 182,000 tonnes of air cargo. More than 700 flights depart every day from El Prat, making it the sixth busiest airport in Europe. The Catalan government’s expansion plan includes building a new terminal and extending the third runway by 500 metres, with the stated aim of increasing long-haul flights, as larger aircraft require longer runways to land. In the words of Catalan President Salvador Illa, the goal is to turn El Prat into an “intercontinental hub”. The airport’s enlargement is expected to increase passenger numbers to around 70 million per year. 

Adopting a rhetoric that frames cities as competing businesses, Illa has stated he does not want to “allow other hubs like Istanbul and Qatar to take advantage and steal this opportunity from Barcelona”. This is precisely the sort of argument used by Alan Rides, the CEO of West London Chamber of Commerce, to demand the construction of a new runway in Heathrow: “If Heathrow doesn’t expand to meet the demand, then airlines will take their trade to European Hub airports like Paris, Frankfurt, or Amsterdam.” 

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According to the Climate Emergency Declaration approved by the Barcelona city council in 2020, El Prat emits nearly eight million tonnes of CO2 and equivalent gases annually, more than double the total emissions of the city of Barcelona itself. Still, the Catalan government claims that increasing long-haul flights and airport capacity is compatible with reducing emissions, thanks to the development of clean fuel. However, the public research institute Barcelona Regional has calculated that the planned capacity increase would raise the airport’s CO₂ emissions by 33 per cent.

The government of Socialist Salvador Illa has, in theory, committed to halving Catalonia’s emissions by 2030 – a target that would be nearly impossible if El Prat is enlarged. Eva Vilaseca, a spokesperson for the Catalan Assembly for Ecosocial Transition, has told  Infolibre that reviving the expansion was “outrageous”, warning: “We have a very narrow window to avoid exceeding 1.5 degrees of warming. The deadline is 2030, and this legislative term runs until 2028. Missing this opportunity is extremely worrying.” 

In its Proposal for a Carbon Budget for Catalonia (2021-2045), the expert group on climate change advising the Catalan parliament calls for “no expansion or construction of projects and mega-projects with significant environmental impacts”. It also suggests imposing a ban on “domestic flights where there is a train alternative of under two and a half hours”. As journalist Manel Riu has noted in Crític, the Catalan Climate Change Law obliges the government to incorporate this expert committee’s recommendations – a mandate Salvador Illa is ignoring with his expansion proposal. 

Furthermore, there are fears that El Prat’s expansion will have a negative impact on La Ricarda lagoon, a protected ecosystem that is part of the Natura 2000 network due to its high-value bird species and habitats. The lagoon and its surroundings are one of the most biodiverse areas in the Llobregat Delta, with over 540 identified species that also include endangered birds. The Catalan government has promised to offset the damage from the project, which would affect 27 hectares of protected wetlands, by enlarging the lagoon and improving water quality to aid ecosystem restoration. However, a report by the University of Barcelona states that it is impossible to fully reconstruct an ecosystem like La Ricarda, which would suffer irreversible damage if the project goes ahead. 

Because it affects a Natura 2000 site, El Prat’s expansion requires approval from the European Commission, which has reminded Spain that ecological compensation measures promised in 2004 (when the third runway was built) remain pending. Since 2021, there has been an open infringement case for non-compliance against Spain, with Brussels warning it would not approve the new plan until outstanding compensations are completed. This is something the current Catalan government has pledged to address. 

Yet, despite the Commission’s apparent firmness, the Habitats Directive allows the EU to authorise constructions that damage Natura 2000 sites if they are justified by “imperative reasons of overriding public interest”. Given that the current European Commission, which has been open to making deals with the far right, is weakening Green Deal requirements and other environmental and climate regulations, it seems unlikely it will block El Prat’s expansion to protect a wetland. And this sort of EU negligence is not unprecedented: In Frankfurt, massive protests against clearing forest areas to add a fourth runway to the airport failed to stop construction, which was completed in 2011. The German government accepted the destruction of valuable natural areas as collateral damage, and the Catalan and Spanish administrations seem set to follow the same path.

Given that the current European Commission is weakening Green Deal requirements, it seems unlikely it will block El Prat’s expansion to protect a wetland.

The tourism problem

President Illa has warned that El Prat airport is nearing capacity and argued that a larger infrastructure is needed “to remain a tourism leader”. However, the overtourism plaguing Barcelona and the Catalan coast is precisely one of the main arguments evoked by those who oppose expansion. In 2024, over 15 million people visited Barcelona, a city of fewer than 2 million inhabitants. Between January and July 2024 alone, Catalonia received more than 11 million tourists – a 10.5 per cent increase from the previous year. With 80 per cent arriving by plane, there is little doubt that a higher airport capacity would raise the number of tourists significantly: Barcelona Regional estimates an additional 10 million visitors per year. 

74 per cent of Barcelona residents believe the city has reached its “tourism limit”. This view comes as no surprise, as mass tourism is driving up housing prices in Barcelona and other Catalan cities. Moreover, the tourism industry has also brought about significant environmental consequences due to emissions from planes and cruise ships, energy and water consumption, and waste production – all far higher among tourists than the city’s residents. And what’s more, the tourism sector offers worse working conditions than average (higher temporary employment rates and lower wages) and increases nuisances like noise and street overcrowding, particularly in a geographically small city like Barcelona. These adverse effects explain the growing street protests against overtourism in the Catalan capital. Last year, demonstrations against mass tourism in Barcelona sparked similar action around the world when protestors squirted visitors with water pistols.

In addition to the overcrowding of the city centre, the impact on the housing market is the most tangible negative consequence of the Catalan capital’s tourism market. In 2024, the average rent reached 1200 euros per month, an amount higher than the minimum wage. One of the reasons for this rise in property prices in Barcelona and other tourist areas of the country is the use of thousands of homes as tourist apartments or for short-term rentals, which evade the price regulations introduced by the Spanish parliament in 2023.

Growing discontent over the social and environmental harms of mass tourism has spread widely across Spain in recent years, challenging a long-standing dominant narrative – pushed by major political parties and the media – that tourism should not be criticised since it brings wealth to the country.  Since 2024, massive demonstrations have taken place in various locations, especially in the Canary Islands, an archipelago that continues to have one of the lowest income levels in Spain despite (or perhaps because of) its booming tourism industry, and where locals are also facing soaring rents and environmental degradation.

With Catalan authorities seemingly resolute to press ahead with the expansion of El Prat, the issue of mass tourism will be one of the key political battlegrounds between the defenders and the opponents of the project.

The economic growth imperative

The Catalan government and business leaders have tried to justify El Prat’s expansion by arguing that it will lead to economic growth. President Illa declared at the project’s launch that it was “a great day for Catalonia’s competitiveness in the coming decades”, even claiming that “all Catalan businesses and their infrastructures need an international airport that represents a leap forward”. Yet in Spain, less than one per cent of goods are transported by air, and the airport already has numerous international connections. 

Foment del Treball Nacional, the main Catalan employers’ organisation, has proposed  various options over the years for extending the airport – including building a runway over the sea – and published triumphalist reports on the supposed urgency of the project. According to the business lobby, the planned expansion would boost Catalonia’s GDP by “almost 2 per cent”.

The issue of mass tourism will be one of the key political battlegrounds between the defenders and the opponents of the expansion of El Prat airport.

Meanwhile, the region’s largest trade union, Comisiones Obreras, has taken an ambiguous stance: while criticising the lack of “social dialogue” before the project’s announcement, the union, lured by the prospect of job creation, does not oppose the expansion. This aligns with Foment del Treball’s forecasts that “tens of thousands of new jobs” will be created if the runway is extended and the number of flights increased. Similarly, business groups and major trade unions in the UK are among the leading advocates for Heathrow’s third runway. Starmer’s government has said that it could create 100.000 jobs. 

In both London and Barcelona, the promise of economic growth and reduced unemployment – structurally high in Spain – seems to remain effective in rallying key political and economic actors behind a project that contradicts the very climate and environmental agendas they claim to support. 

Yet alternatives exist. The Sustainable and Safe Mobility Foundation estimates that with 2 billion euros – less than the projected cost of expanding El Prat – numerous train and tram lines could be built across Catalonia, improving low-emission connectivity and creating jobs. More than a quarter of Catalonia’s population uses trains or metros daily, taking 2.2 million trips per day. This is a far more democratic use than air travel, as Sweden’s Linnaeus University found that the wealthiest 1 per cent of the world population generate half of aviation-related emissions. Activist Eva Vilaseca proposes a broader alternative: “a 10-year productive conversion plan for Catalonia’s economy, with an ecological transition fund worth 10 per cent of GDP. We propose investing in rail infrastructure, which would also create jobs with a future,” she told Infolibre. 

Corporate profiteering

Promoting economic growth and turning Barcelona into an international hub with more long-haul flights are the stated arguments of politicians and business leaders. However, to understand why this investment is prioritised over alternatives (such as rail or promoting low-emissions economic sectors), we must look at the structure of the Spanish airport sector.

In Spain, airports are managed by AENA, a public-private company that is 51 per cent controlled by state-owned air navigation manager Enaire, with the remaining 49 per cent in the hands of investment funds, banks, and other private shareholders. Infrastructure investments allow increased fees on plane tickets, translating into immediate profits for shareholders. The prospect of higher earnings for AENA investors is absent from public debate, but it is one of the most powerful drivers of the push to expand El Prat, especially for the business lobby. In 2024 alone, AENA posted a record profit of more than 1.9 billion euros.

A report by the Barcelona city council’s Infrastructure Advisory Committee – supportive of the airport’s enlargement – admits that the number of long-haul flights could be increased without extending the third runway, by allowing more large aircraft to use the existing longest runway. However, the committee dismisses this option due to the extra noise it would provoke in nearby residential areas. It is worth noting that the most affected areas are governed by the Socialist Party, a major advocate of expansion. 

As the case of Heathrow shows, local politics should not be underestimated in debates over mega-infrastructure. Even in Frankfurt, where a fourth runway was built despite mass demonstrations in 2011, civil resistance continues. Protests resumed in 2024, this time focusing on emissions rather than noise, and led to the cancellations of more than 100 flights.

A European frenzy

European air traffic is projected to grow by 52 per cent by 2050, according to Eurocontrol. Clean fuels currently account for less than 0,1 per cent of all aviation fuels consumed, and even the most optimistic forecasts envision a share of 2-4 per cent for sustainable fuel by 2030. Another way to reduce aviation-related emissions would be to improve aircraft efficiency, but according to the International Energy Agency (IEA), even a potential improvement of 20 per cent in efficiency will be outpaced by growth in activity. Therefore, increased air traffic – brought about by the planned airport enlargement – will inevitably mean more emissions. Besides, aviation is excluded from national emission reduction targets under the Paris Agreement, a special regime enabling the sector’s uncontrolled growth. 

The expansion of El Prat Airport exemplifies this dynamic. The Catalan and Spanish governments – which elsewhere maintain green rhetoric – have embraced a proposal pushed by the business lobby and guided by profit-seeking for AENA shareholders and the tourism sector. In London, the business coalition backing Heathrow’s expansion is led by engineering and freight firms. The continent-wide airport expansion fever reflects the fossil fuel economy’s enduring influence over national and European economic policies. The Catalan government’s plan to extend El Prat’s third runway, cloaked in rhetoric of infinite economic growth, prioritises corporate profits over climate action and biodiversity protection.  And the ongoing airport fever reveals the fragility of European governments’ climate commitments when it comes to imposing limits on the aviation sector. 

In Barcelona, the coalition of political and business elites will be a formidable opponent for social movements opposing the expansion. However, the final project has not even obtained the necessary approval yet. Past airport expansions show these are slow, decades-long processes, giving opponents multiple opportunities to derail the project through action ranging from street protests to legal challenges. The long-delayed Heathrow case suggests El Prat’s expansion may also prove more complicated than its backers hope.

A flight corridor for testing drones and electric aircraft will link the University of Michigan’s one-of-a-kind autonomy research and proving ground facilities in Ann Arbor to Michigan Central’s real-world, urban testbed and innovation district in Detroit.

A technology called Dynamic Targeting could enable spacecraft to decide, autonomously and within seconds, where to best make science observations from orbit.

As global inaction over the climate crisis has mounted and Pacific islands nations have watched in frustration as their calls for decisive action have gone unheeded, a growing number of them, led by Vanuatu, have turned to the courts. If policymakers won’t act, they hoped, perhaps the courts would. 

And so island nations in the South Pacific region of Melanesia, where Indigenous communities have had to flee their traditional lands due to landslides and rising seas, filed a case that was ultimately joined by more than 130 countries. Together, they urged the International Court of Justice to decide whether nation-states have a legal obligation to address climate change, and whether those harmed by a warming world have a right to reparations. 

Justices considered testimony in Indigenous Pacific languages, heard arguments from Indigenous attorneys, and learned how Indigenous traditions are being harmed by the typhoons, rising seas, and other extreme weather events worsened by the burning of fossil fuels.

Last week, the court issued a landmark ruling that climate harm violates international law. The seismic decision, although advisory, opens the door for countries like Vanuatu to seek reparations from some of the world’s biggest polluters, and it is widely expected to shape current — and future — climate lawsuits as early as this week.

“What the court has done has come in and made it crystal clear that affected frontline nations and communities that have been devastated by climate harm — harm that can be traced to the conduct of specific countries and corporations — those communities, those nations, they absolutely have the right to redress and reparations,” said Joie Chowdhury, a senior attorney at the Center for International Environmental Law. 

The court’s decision, handed down Wednesday, said that all nations have a legal obligation to limit greenhouse gas emissions and failing to do so, through the support of fossil fuel production, could violate international law. The justices didn’t disclose how much major polluters might owe, and said the level of reparations would be determined on a case-by-case basis. But Chowdhury said she expects the ruling to immediately influence ongoing climate litigation worldwide, and prompt new lawsuits. “There are litigators all over the world that are looking to this case and will absolutely bring it into the courtroom,” she said.

Kelly Matheson, deputy director of global strategy for Our Children’s Trust, a nonprofit law firm representing youth in climate litigation, said the organization is already incorporating the language of the advisory opinion into an amicus brief that it plans to file in a case in Latin America this fall. She also expects the ruling to feature heavily in La Rose v. His Majesty the King, a Canadian climate case youth plaintiffs brought against the Canadian government scheduled for trial next year, as well as a climate case pending before the African Court of Human and Peoples’ Rights. 

Government attorneys also are studying the decision to determine whether their countries can sue. Malik Amin Aslam Khan, former minister of the environment in Pakistan, said the ruling “opens up a legally grounded pathway for claiming climate damages and demanding reparations for countries like Pakistan, which has continuously been one of the world’s worst climate sufferers and has credibly recorded climate damage costs crossing $40 billion in the past decade alone.”

Ralph Regenvanu, Vanuatu’s minister of climate change, said Vanuatu plans to immediately push for a resolution at the United Nations General Assembly to implement the advisory opinion. The government also plans to use the ruling to advocate for better climate financing for the Pacific and better regional and domestic policies to address the climate crisis.

“For the first time in history, the ICJ has spoken directly about the biggest threat facing humanity, which is climate change,” Regenvanu said during a press conference at The Hague last week. ”It’s very important now, as the world goes forward, that we make sure our actions align with what was decided or what came out today from the court.”

The ruling builds upon a growing consensus in international law that states have a legal obligation to limit greenhouse gas emissions. Last year, the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea ruled that the 169 countries that have signed the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea — a list that includes China and India, but not the U.S. — must reduce emissions. It was another victory led by Pacific island nations as well as island nations in the Caribbean and West Indies.

“For the first time in history, the ICJ has spoken directly about the biggest threat facing humanity,” Ralph Regenvanu, Vanuatu’s climate change minister, said of the ruling. He is seen here in court before the decision was handed down. John Thys / AFP via Getty Images

Earlier this month, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, a regional court for Latin and South America, ruled that a healthy climate is a human right and governments should limit emissions. The court also said they should prevent harm to marginalized communities such as Indigenous peoples and emphasized their role in combating climate change.

“Indigenous peoples play an essential role in the preservation and sustainable management of these ecosystems because their ancestral knowledge and their close relationship with nature proved essential for the conservation of biodiversity and the mitigation of climate change,” the court wrote. “Therefore, states should listen to them and facilitate their continuing participation in decision-making.”  

Matheson said that when Sheila Watt-Cloutier, an Indigenous Inuk woman who then chaired the Inuit Circumpolar Conference, brought a climate case to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights wo decades ago, it dismissed her claims within two pages. Several years later, Palau brought a similar case before the ICJ to no avail. 

“For the law to be moving at this speed —  to go from dismissals and no consideration of the impact that climate change has on human rights 20 years ago, when the first case was filed, to now you have opinions from all but one of the highest courts in the world — is amazing,” she said, noting that an African court is expected to weigh in soon. 

While the ICJ ruling did not expound on the rights of Indigenous peoples and focused on the responsibilities of nation-states, it did clarify a question that has long troubled leaders of countries like Tuvalu and Kiribati that are losing land to rising seas: What happens to their borders if their islands disappear? On that note, the ICJ said any recognized borders should remain unchanged, which is important to ensure they continue to have a political voice on the international stage and control over their waters. “That presumption of statehood and sovereignty is a critical bit,” said Johanna Gusman, a senior attorney for the Center for International Environmental Law. 

The case was initiated six years ago by a group of law students in Vanuatu and led by the government of Vanuatu and the Melanesian Spearhead Group, which represents several nations in that region of the Pacific and the Indigenous people of New Caledonia.

“By affirming the science, the ICJ has mandated countries to urgently phase out fossil fuels because they are no longer tenable for small island state communities in the Pacific, and for young people and for future generations,” Vishal Prasad, director of Pacific Islands, Students Fighting Climate Change, said during a press conference at The Hague. “This opinion is a lifeline and an opportunity to protect all that we hold dear, and all that we love.”

The United Nations established the International Court of Justice in the wake of World War II to help the global community address conflicts and concerns peacefully and judicially. It has heard cases on issues ranging from nuclear testing to fishing rights to the status of entire territories, such as Western Sahara. While not binding, its decisions are significant because they interpret international law and clarify states’ legal responsibilities. In this case, the court reviewed several treaties, including the 2015 Paris Agreement climate accord, and concluded that under those treaties and under customary international law, all nations have a legal obligation to limit emissions and may owe compensation to countries that are harmed. 

Read Next Inside the Marshall Islands’ life-or-death plan to survive climate change Jake Bittle

There are limits to who can bring cases before the ICJ, which only hears cases brought by nation-states and not, for example, Indigenous political entities such as First Nations in Canada. Gusman said that Indigenous peoples may instead use the language of the cases in domestic disputes or through other U.N. venues. For example, “Indigenous nations and First Nations within Canada now have stronger legal backbones to take cases against Canada,” she said.

The court’s ruling will also be dulled somewhat in the United States, which has long rejected the ICJ’s authority and under President Donald J. Trump has been retreating even further from climate action. The U.S. and China are two major polluters whose rejection of the ICJ’s jurisdiction could prevent a country like Vanuatu from suing them directly over their emissions. 

Korey Silverman-Roati, a senior fellow at the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law, said the ruling is a seminal moment for climate litigation but that the effects in the U.S. will be muted because U.S. courts don’t traditionally recognize the ICJ’s authority. “I don’t think we can expect that the direct language of the ruling will impact cases in the U.S.,” he said. He thinks the advisory opinion will likely instead influence other countries whose judicial systems give more weight to the ICJ, and influence the U.S. through the ruling’s use in international negotiations. 

Already, the ruling is expected to figure heavily at this year’s Conference of the Parties, or COP, in November in Brazil. Last year, negotiations fell apart in the waning minute to the disappointment of Pacific island nations and many climate advocates who criticized the amount of money pledged by U.N. member states as woefully insufficient. 

“The advisory opinion will be an essential tool that we in the Global South will use at the next meeting of the United Nations General Assembly, the U.N.’s climate change and biodiversity conferences, and everywhere to advocate for climate justice,” said Ilan Kiloe, acting director general of the Melanesian Spearhead Group. He said Pacific peoples have already suffered forced relocations due to climate change. “We have already lost much of what defines us as Pacific Islanders.”

Tik Root contributed reporting to this story. 

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline How the world’s highest court bolstered the fight for climate reparations on Jul 28, 2025.

Native Americans are increasingly responsible for emergency management systems when a natural disaster hits a tribal community.

Tribes can issue emergency declarations requests to open up help from regional and federal partners, typically 24 hours after the event. When help is authorized to arrive, emergency management systems tend to move slowly and may be staffed with volunteers juggling multiple roles in a new command to get aid directly to people. To help you prepare and stay safe, Grist has put together a toolkit to outline what Native people and their tribal governments should do to receive aid when natural disasters hit.

Jump to:

↓ How to find accurate information
↓ Preparing for a disaster
↓ How disaster response works for tribes
↓ Finding shelter and staying safe

How to find accurate information

Many people find out about disasters in their area via social media. But it’s important to make sure the information you’re receiving is correct. Below is a list of reliable sources to check for emergency alerts, updates, and more.

Your local emergency manager: This year, New Mexico and Arizona joined three other states (California, Colorado, and Washington) to create laws that establish “Feather Alerts” — public safety operations that many consider Native versions of AMBER alerts. This requires multiple jurisdictions to work together with preparedness in mind for when large-scale emergencies need to alert every cell phone in a region. Call a local nonemergency line and ask if your tribe has an emergency management department that operates police, fire, or hospital services. A simple call or visit to any tribal administration office can also help confirm if this is the case. Many tribal nations apply for federal or state grants in collaboration with other local governments.

From there, ask if you can sign up for any text alerts, emails, or an automated phone call service. For example, Navajo Nation has a text service: Text “NavajoNation” to 888-777. (These alerts can also be useful to learn about road closures, ceremonial events, and weather outside of a disaster.) 

Some alerts go to specific ZIP codes, or to people who receive tribal benefits like housing or senior services. Schools opt-in parents for campus alerts at both tribally run schools and campuses run by the Bureau of Indian Affairs (which can be another resource to get alerts).  Emergency managers are responsible for communicating with the public about disasters, managing rescue and response efforts, and coordinating among different agencies. They usually have an SMS-based emergency alert system, so sign up for those texts now. Many emergency management agencies are active on Facebook, so check there for updates, like livestreamed press conferences that give operational status updates and share resources for shelter and other aid.

If you’re having trouble finding your local department, you can search for your state or territory. We also suggest typing your city or county name followed by “emergency management” into Google. In larger cities, it’s often a separate agency; in smaller communities, fire chiefs or sheriff’s offices may manage emergency response and alerts.

National Weather Service: This agency, also called NWS, is part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, and offers information and updates on everything from wildfires to hurricanes to air quality. You can enter your ZIP code on weather.gov and customize your homepage to get the most updated weather information and receive alerts for a variety of weather conditions. The NWS also has regional and local branches where you can sign up for SMS alerts. Local alerts in multiple languages are available in some areas.

If you’re in a rural area or somewhere that isn’t highlighted on the agency’s maps, keep an eye out for local alerts and evacuation orders. NWS may not have as much information ahead of time in these areas because there often aren’t as many weather-monitoring stations.

Read more: How to get reliable information before and during a disaster

Local news: The local television news and social media accounts from verified news sources will have live updates during and after a disaster. Meteorologists on your local news station use NWS weather data. Follow your local newspaper and television station on Facebook or other social media, or check their websites regularly. If you don’t have cable, these stations often livestream online for free during severe weather. 

Weather stations and apps: The Weather Channel, Accuweather, Apple Weather, and Google, which all rely on NWS weather data, will have information on major storms and other extreme weather events. That may not be the case for smaller-scale weather events, and you shouldn’t rely on these apps to tell you if you need to evacuate or move to higher ground. Instead, check your local news broadcast on television or radio.

Read more: What disasters are and how they’re officially declared

Tribes with police or fire agencies must have emergency management plans in place and are another resource for information on a tribe’s response plan. Disasters often bring first responders from elsewhere; checking in with the ones who serve the community are going to be the most useful on-the-ground resource for families with limited access to transportation or technology like the internet or cell phones.

Preparing for a disaster

As you prepare for a disaster, it’s important to have an emergency kit ready in case you lose power or need to leave your home. These can often be expensive to create, so contact your local disaster aid organizations, houses of worship, tribal leaders, or charities to see if there are free or affordable kits available — or buy one or two items every time you’re at the grocery store. 

Here are some of the most important things to have in your kit. You can read more details about how to prepare safely here. 

• Water (1 gallon per person per day for several days)
• Food (at least a several-day supply of nonperishable food) and a can opener
• Medicines and documentation of your medical needs
• Identification and proof of residency documents (see a more detailed list here)
• A flashlight 
• A battery-powered or hand-crank radio
• Backup batteries
• Blanket and sleeping bag
• Change of clothes and closed-toed shoes
• First-aid kit (the Red Cross has a list of what to include)
• N95 masks, hand sanitizer, and trash bags 
• If you have babies or children: diapers, wipes, and food or formula
• If you have pets: food, collar, leash, and any medicines needed

Read more: How to stay safe if you’re feeling exhausted or ill

How disaster response works for tribes

When a major disaster hits, your tribal government will communicate with the Federal Emergency Management Agency to apply for immediate aid as well as support for services that seek to mitigate future disasters. Here’s how that works:

There is a specific process cities, states, and tribal governments must navigate in order for residents to receive FEMA aid. FEMA has 10 regions that support tribes during disaster response. If your tribal nation’s lands cross multiple FEMA regions, identify which FEMA region the headquarters is located to determine whom to contact. Here is a map with a list of contacts.

FEMA updated its tribal policy in 2020, with the following guidance for its employees and contractors: Maintain tribal government relationships, consider unique community circumstances, and build tribal capacity through educational and technical assistance programs. It was updated again in December 2024 after FEMA held nine listening and consultation sessions with 118 tribal nations in all 10 regions the agency oversees. 

In 2025, FEMA changed that policy to empower “tribal nations’ sovereignty and access to federal assistance, thereby enhancing their response and recovery efforts and improving community and tribal community members’ outcomes.”

Here are other recent changes to the FEMA Tribal Policy:

• The policy gives power to tribes to define “tribal community member” when offering individual assistance to ensure “their full community is served.” This could reduce barriers for help to people not enrolled in the tribe to receive federal emergency funds for food, shelter, and reimbursements.
• Rebuilding tribal homes after a disaster also changed: When public assistance is approved, the federal government will automatically recommend that it takes on 98 percent of the cost when the total reaches $200,000. This means tribes could pay less for approved recovery and, as FEMA summarized from its tribal listening sessions, “provide more certainty for non-federal cost shares to tribal nations.”

Read more: How to navigate the FEMA aid process

State-recognized tribes

Tribes that are not federally recognized may encounter more red tape when trying to access government aid because they don’t have a direct relationship with FEMA. For example, the Grand Caillou/Dulac Band of Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw struggled to get aid after Hurricane Ida in 2021.

According to a June 2020 FEMA policy, state-recognized tribes should be treated as local governments, rather than tribal governments with a nation-to-nation relationship with the federal government. This way, they can access both individual assistance if there is a major disaster declaration in their state, as well as public assistance for infrastructure repair.

Tribal and state collaboration

Partnerships between local tribes and states or cities they border are essential for how Native nations and people move disaster aid and recovery. For example, a deadly Oklahoma wildfire in March gave some insight into how FEMA’s local partnerships work in a state with prominent tribal jurisdictional maps and people who live both in and outside the communities.

Last year, Oklahoma created rules for its State Assistance Dedicated for Disaster-Impacted Local Economies Revolving Fund, which takes federal disaster money, approves requests for aid, and pays Oklahomans directly with loans for long-term recovery projects.

There is a growing number of coalitions focused on relationships among tribes to promote a more collaborative approach. For example, Oklahoma has had the Inter-Tribal Emergency Management Coalition since 2004 and meets regularly to discuss emergency preparedness.

Read more: How to find housing and rebuild your home after a disaster

Finding shelter and staying safe

Emergency shelters can be set up in established tribal spaces, like school gymnasiums, powwow grounds, and hospitals. Tribal senior services and schools have the most up-to-date records of people and organizations in the community and are tapped by emergency management teams for welfare checks and transportation needs. Hospital services can also be key to prescriptions and other medical needs.

In the same way that cousins and relatives are expected to offer a home to rest, tribal citizens now have the expectation for their tribal government to give full immediate aid and help in recovery.

FEMA recovery centers

FEMA disaster recovery centers provide information about the agency’s programs as well as other state and local resources, and are opened in impacted areas in the days and weeks following a federally declared disaster. FEMA representatives can help navigate the aid application process or direct you to nonprofits, shelters, or state and local resources. Go to this website to locate one in your area, or text DRC and a ZIP code to 43362.

Community organizations and nonprofits

Here are some organizations focused on emergency management for Indigenous communities:

• Partnership with Native Americans has a disaster relief service and fund that helps displaced people, sets up supplies for shelters, and more. They coordinate with local groups as well as the Red Cross. 
• Northern Plains Reservation Aid, Southwest Reservation Aid, Native American Aid, Navajo Relief Fund, Sioux Nation Relief Fund, and Southwest Indian Relief Council are groups that offer direct aid to the regions they can serve. They can also be a direct resource for state-recognized tribes.

Read more: How to access food before, during, and after a disaster

More resources

Here are a few organizations that have newsletters, workshops, and other resources for tribal communities across the country.

• The Tribal Emergency Management Association, or iTEMA, is a “national association created for Indian Country, by Indian Country” that promotes a collaborative approach to disasters that impact tribal communities. They offer workshops and resources for tribal leaders, emergency managers, and other interested people. 
• Hazard Mitigation Planning through FEMA is essential. How to keep up with federal grant deadlines and policy directives can be navigated by the Pacific Northwest Tribal Climate Change Project: The online resource hosted by the University of Oregon is an example of tribal regional planning, with foundational support from the Nespelem Tribe in northern Washington. 
• The Regional Tribal Emergency Management Summit in May brought direct sources to South Dakota on what to expect in the next year. Access to presentations, other resources, and a list of other events is available on their site.
• The Red Guide to Recovery is another example of tribes networking with outside community groups in California. The National Tribal Emergency Management Council is listed as a partner.

 

Download a PDF of this article | Return to Disaster 101

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline How tribes navigate emergency response aid to citizens and what you can do to prepare on Jul 28, 2025.

In 1982 cartoonist Bob Thaves wrote that dancer Fred Astaire “was great, but don’t forget that Ginger Rogers did everything he did… backwards and in high heels.”

When it comes to environmental and LGBTQIA+ activism, nothing could be truer of drag queen extraordinaire, Pattie Gonia, who first went viral in 2018 after posting a video of herself hiking in six-inch-heeled boots. Overnight she became the “backpacking queen.”

With her fiery auburn hair and mustache and fantastical costumes made of upcycled and recycled clothing and other materials, Pattie has become the fierce voice of a generation determined to combat climate change. She has capitalized on her ever-growing platform of more than 700,000 social media followers to spread her message through gloriously entertaining videos and stage performances at festivals across the world.

Ever since she discovered drag to express herself authentically, Pattie has merged powerful, often comedic performance art with her unwavering, inspiring dedication to raise awareness about threats to nature, both manmade and otherwise.

Pattie Gonia on stage in Denver. Photo: Monica Lloyd Photography, used with permission

A leading advocate for inclusivity and diversity in the outdoors, Pattie co-founded the Outdoorist Club, a nonprofit that encourages LGBTQIA+, BIPOC, and femmes to venture into the outdoors through community and education. She is also a board member of Brave Trails, which provides a summer camp and backpacking trips for queer youth, as well as the founder of the Queer Outdoor and Environmental Job Board, a free career sourcing tool.

To date she has fundraised over $2.7 million for LGBTQIA+, BIPOC, and environmental causes. Her passionate pursuit has garnered several prestigious awards including the “Next Gen Leader 2024” from Time, “Nat Geo 33 Changemaker” by National Geographic, and “Person of the Year 2022” from Outside.

 

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A post shared by Pattie Gonia (@pattiegonia)

We spoke with Pattie Gonia during a break from her ambitious international touring schedule, which is currently bringing a team of environmentally focused drag queens to venues around the United States.

Aside from “going outside,” where do you find your source of personal strength and joy to continue your work as an environmental activist?

My chosen family. Other drag performers like Sasha Velour, Shea Couleé and VERA!

And knowing that every time I take action for people and the planet, a little bit of fascism dies a sweet death.

Now that we are witnessing the rapid-fire dismantling of protections for federal wildlife lands and nature preserves, has your approach to environmental activism changed? Do you see it changing with the rollback of laws that have preserved our environment?

Now is an important time to remember what our queer elders who founded the queer rights movement knew well –– we mourn in the morning, we fight in the afternoon, and we dance in the evening –– and it’s the dancing that keeps us going. We need to fight hard but we also need to celebrate the wins, build the community and make the joy that will sustain the movement.

Do you see your approach to your drag art form evolving to meet these new threats, or will it remain the same?

Yes, [a lot of] drag represents a fight for nature, just as much as the fight for equality of the people on it.

Is it harder to find the “joy” at the center of your message? Or have you found a renewed strength in the new challenges ahead?

Joy is and always will be the goal. They take joy away from us and what do we got? Make no mistake, people in power want us to believe we don’t deserve joy. That’s when they win. I won’t let them have that.

In a time when millions of people are feeling disheartened, demoralized and even terrified for the future, what would you say to rally them to continue their efforts to fight for the protection of our environment and find their joy?

Inaction is an active choice. Doing nothing is doing something. People in power want us to believe that we can’t affect change. Yet, if we look at history, we can see that time and time again, the people united will never be defeated.

 

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What are three things that members of the LGBTQIA+ community can do today to show the world that they still believe in the protection of nature and our world? How can they use self-expression to promote the cause of saving our natural environment?

One: We must remember that nature is gay as fuck. I’m not talking gay whales that have sex with each other, which is true. But I’m talking about a broad definition of queerness in nature –– the way nature problem solves, resists, gets creative and survives against adversity. That’s queer nature to me.

Two: Go outside with people you love in a way you love. Doesn’t have to be a 20-mile hike. How about a picnic or a blunt or a walk outside at a local park?

Three: When we go outside, we build a relationship to nature. Through that relationship we realize how needed it is to fight and protect nature, because we fight for what we love.

Pattie Gonia’s current projects include a touring drag show entitled SAVE HER!, a TV series with Bonnie Wright of “Harry Potter” fame, and collaborations with artists and musicians across a variety of environmental spaces. To learn more about Pattie and her organizations and nonprofits, visit her website or find her on Instagram and TikTok @pattiegonia.

Republish this article for free! Read our reprint policy. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter. Scan the QR code, or sign up here. Previously in The Revelator:

Environmental Muralist Faunagraphic Brings an Urban Oasis to the Concrete Jungle

The post Pattie Gonia: Nature’s Warrior Queen appeared first on The Revelator.

Climate change is bringing ever more precipitation and rising seas to low-lying Denmark. In response to troubling predictions, Copenhagen is enacting an ambitious plan to build hundreds of nature-based and engineered projects to soak up, store, and redistribute future floods.

Read more on E360 →

One sunny morning in May, four high school students stood on a flower-dappled prairie in southern Dallas holding shovels. Before them swayed a Texas blazing star, a tall and spindly stalk that erupts in a bottlebrush of purple florets. Max Yan, a senior, made two putts on either side of the imperiled member of the aster family and was beginning to wedge it out when a siren wailed in the distance. He froze, his foot on the blade. There were no fences, no signs warning them off. But the land is, like 97 percent of the state, private property, and they were, strictly speaking, breaking the law.

“Hopefully that’s not for us,” he said.

The siren faded, and the teens — who attend St. Mark’s School of Texas, an elite, all-boys prep academy on the other side of town — resumed work. They are among the most dedicated members of its prairie club, rising early on weekends to rescue rare plants from bulldozers and move them to restoration sites. Their guerrilla campaign rattles some professional conservationists, but in an era of mounting climate anxiety, it offers a tangible way to make a difference. Not to mention a dose of adrenaline. It is, one said, like “collecting my Pokémons.”

Laura Mallonee / Grist

Laura Mallonee / Grist

Max Yan (top, with shovel) and other members of the Blackland Prairie Restoration Crew at St. Mark’s School rescue plants at Coneflower Crest, a prairie in southern Dallas slated for demolition. Laura Mallonee / Grist

Laura Mallonee / Grist

Coneflower Crest, as the boys call this place, after the dusty pink flowers that bloom here, covers nearly 300 acres of undeveloped land believed by some to be the last large intact prairie in Dallas County. Heavy machinery is expected to crush most of it, making way for hundreds of homes and businesses promised to revitalize a neglected corner of Dallas. The developers tout their project’s walkability and eco-friendliness, with ample open space, water-smart landscaping, and native vegetation. But even the greenest projects come at a cost: The city is trading an ecosystem that naturally mitigates the effects of climate change for still more impervious growth that only exacerbates them. 

The trend is accelerating across Texas, where blackland prairie once stretched roughly 12 million acres from the Red River to San Antonio — an area nearly twice the size of Vermont. Eons ago, an ancient inland sea sculpted the state’s limestone geology and enriched its soil, sustaining more than 300 species of indigenous grasses and herbaceous flowering plants like big bluestem, lotus milkvetch, and rattlesnake master that fed bison and pronghorn antelopes.

Laura Mallonee / Grist

But since European colonization, agriculture and urban development have swallowed 99.9 percent of the prairie and continue taking their fill. No more than 5,000 acres are left statewide, and last year, a solar farm claimed most of the largest remnant near the Oklahoma border. In Dallas County, which covers some 908 square miles, more than 300 acres have been scraped away since 2014 to make way for everything from data centers and parking lots to high-rises and warehouses — and even a golf course.

All that concrete increases flooding and emissions, depletes aquifers, and compounds the urban heat island effect — the same problems prairies naturally alleviate, said Norma Fowler, a plant ecologist at the University of Texas at Austin. Long grasses and herbs help the ground soak up rain. Their roots reach a depth of 16 feet, producing humus-rich soil that holds water and releases it slowly. Prairies also cool cities, temper the impact of wildfires, and sequester up to one ton of carbon per acre each year. It’s why biodiversity loss and climate change are inherently linked. “Everything we do for conservation is also mitigating the bad effects of climate change,” Fowler said. “If we want to save the planet, it’s not either-or. It’s both-and.”

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Environmentalists have rallied to save the region’s grassland since at least the 1980s, when one particularly impassioned fellow patrolled Pioneer Prairie — a 127-acre field off Interstate 30 — with a shotgun. By the 1980s, development of the site loomed, prompting naturalist Ken Steigman to start surreptitiously digging up plants. He even used a sod cutter to roll up ribbons of earth — bugs and all. “It’s like Noah’s ark,” he said. “You are trying to protect everything.” 

Plans to replace the prairie with condos stalled amid an FBI investigation of its developers, who were later convicted of loan fraud. Activists rejoiced. Still, development came in bits and pieces, including the construction of a medical complex and a church. In 2019, a native nursery owner named Randy Johnson saw a drilling rig pulling cores for geotechnical analysis, a harbinger of construction. He rode his Honda minibike through its Indian grass as a kid, but by his 20s, reckless joy had given way to wonderment. Johnson worked with the city manager to map its most ecologically sensitive areas, thinking the landowner might build around them, but the bulldozers spared nothing. “It’s one of the most depressing things,” he said with a drawl. “[It’s] something you love and have devoted your life to, and every day you get in your car and see it being destroyed.” 

Laura Mallonee / Grist

He had nearly given up hope when a lanky freshman named Akash Munshi wandered into the St. Mark’s greenhouse, which Johnson tended, that same year. The young man was “hyper,” Johnson said, and extremely bright. Inspired by relatives in south India who cultivate rice, Munshi wanted to learn how to grow food and started a horticulture club. That interest gave way to native plants, and within a couple years, Munshi was as fluent in their Latin names as their common ones. 

His senior year, the club began restoring prairie to an acre of bermuda grass along a nearby bike path, a feat that consumed his time outside studies and soccer practice. To source the seeds, he visited local prairies, often after spotting their grassy texture and blinding limestone in satellite imagery. He counted six large sites fated for development, impressing on him a need to salvage as many plants as possible. Within two years, all but one — Coneflower Crest — were stripped bare. 

“It was pretty crushing. I didn’t realize how quickly I would lose them,” he said. “There were some sites where there was no sign of development, and I’d come back [the] next week, and the whole thing was scraped.” 

The destruction coincides with unprecedented biodiversity loss. Forty percent of all known plants worldwide, and 45 percent of flowering ones, could be at risk of extinction, and they are disappearing at a rate many magnitudes higher than normal due to human activity and climate change. Those recently discovered — like glandular blazing star, first described in 2001 and found only in Texas — are even more likely to vanish without anyone understanding their role or what benefits they might offer. As populations of at-risk flora shrink, their gene pools become less diverse, making them vulnerable to collapse. 

From left: Plants for sale at Native Plants and Prairies Day at White Rock Lake in Dallas. Monarch caterpillars crawl through a plastic container on display at the Texas Conservation Alliance’s booth during a native prairie event at White Rock Lake. The organization annually cultivates thousands of seedlings at its Native Plant Propagation Center at the Dallas Zoo. Laura Mallonee / Grist

“Each one of those that’s lost is threatening an already under-pressure system,” said Canaan Sutton, a botanist at the National Ecological Observatory Network. The organization collects ecological data to support research on how ecosystems are changing in response to climate change and other factors. Animals of all kinds lose food and habitat when prairies fall, particularly invertebrates with unique relationships to plants they’ve evolved with. There are fewer caterpillars to feed the birds, for example, and fewer bees to pollinate blooms and crops like east Texas’ famed blueberries. 

Rescuing doomed individuals can help prevent uncommon species from undergoing “a silent extinction,” Sutton said. Though conservationists focus on collecting seeds, they aren’t always ripe when developers permit harvesting. Some, like hall’s prairie clover, remain so poorly understood that few know how to germinate them. Others, including compass plants, take years to bloom from seed, delaying their availability to pollinators. Keeping a specimen alive helps bridge these gaps. But ultimately, the restoration sites where they live are faint echoes of the vast, complex ecosystem they once knew.

“What we’re in now is this perpetually shifting baseline of, ‘This is what we have, and this is as good as it gets,’” Sutton said. “Ultimately, people doing these rescues are trying to move that baseline back in the direction of the past and a more interconnected, natural world — even if that’s just [with] a handful of plants.”

The summer after his senior year, Munshi was leading a high school tour through another prairie destined to become a highrise. Stopping for a water break, he noticed a tiny yellow flower against a girl’s black shoe. “Oh shoot!” he said. “That’s dalea hallii!”

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Hall’s prairie clover — a globally imperiled plant listed as threatened by the state — grows on chalky, south-facing slopes of limestone prairies. These patches, an offshoot of the blackland prairie, form where bedrock breaks the surface, creating microhabitats that shelter species found nowhere else. They survived for centuries because the rocky terrain was too difficult to plow. But now, as developers search for more land to build on, that same rock offers an ideal foundation for sprawl.

At the time of Munshi’s discovery, just 59 populations were known to exist on Earth. He counted at least 100 plants and shared his find on Instagram and during a presentation at a meeting of the Native Prairies Association of Texas. It stunned Sutton — then president of the group’s Blackland chapter — and he worked with the Botanical Research Institute of Texas, or BRIT, which banks obscure seeds, to arrange a rescue operation that October.

The developer gave the crew three hours to dig up what it could. Wearing his customary conical straw hat, Johnson showed more than 40 volunteers how to excavate the plant’s 4-foot-long tap root using knives, pickaxes, sledgehammers, and pneumatic drills. Afterward, he hauled about 300 daleas to his nursery in Forney. Johnson, who is known locally as a plant wizard and, with his long gray hair and narrowed eyes, looks the part, repotted them in soil packed with microbes from bat guano and other things. A month later, he texted Sutton a picture of a flourishing dalea ready for its new home. “He was like, ‘Check it out, dude!’” Sutton said.

Laura Mallonee / Grist

To increase their odds of survival, the clover was spread across several sites, including a park, a preserve, and a ranch. More than one-third of those planted on public land survived, a high success rate for such delicate flora. But 180 minutes wasn’t sufficient to save the remaining plants dotting Penstemon Point. So, when Kay Hankins, a conservation botanist at BRIT, offered to contact the developer at Coneflower Crest, Munshi asked her not to, fearing they wouldn’t be given enough time. He and others have spent hundreds of hours relocating thousands of flowers from that site and others to a bike path 30 minutes north — casting any worries about trespassing aside like the rocks they pried loose with their shovels 

Despite the questionable legality of their efforts, Munshi said no one has ever confronted them or even asked them to leave. Once, at another location, a passerby suspected him of burying a body and called the police. When the officers saw the plants, they left. “They don’t care,” Munshi said. “They’re literally about to scrape the entire site.” 

Johnson fears seeking permission could backfire. A raft of federal protections shields endangered species. Texas offers few for those it lists on its own, and landowners who don’t want the hassle or liability of having them on their property may target them. “This is a war between us and the developers, and nobody’s calling uncle or throwing up white flags,” he said. “You can get out of jail, you can post bail, but once the [plant] genetics are gone, they’re gone, and I’m not going to let that happen if I can help it.”

But some in Texas’ native plant community are uneasy with this approach, arguing that permission is essential for “ethical” digs that promote trust and collaboration with landowners and developers. “If all the experience developers have [with conservationists] is negative, we’ll always be initiating the dialogue from a disadvantaged position,” Hankins said.

Laura Mallonee / Grist

Developer involvement could ensure that activists don’t inadvertently disturb land that isn’t slated for construction, and more volunteers might help out if it doesn’t involve breaking the law. It also enhances the flora’s value for research and conservation, Hankins said, since reputable institutions, seed banks, and herbaria don’t accept specimens collected without paperwork. As Ashley Landry, who founded the Native Plant Rescue Project near Austin, put it, “We can’t give rare plants to conservation organizations if they’re stolen.”

Landry plays “a long PR game” to gain access. She monitors municipal websites and follows the news to spot new development, then sends emails and snail mail to start a conversation with landowners. She also drives by their property to try catching them in person. In February, her team of 30 volunteers relocated 900 square feet of MoKan, the 30-acre “crown jewel” of central Texas prairies. Tractors carved out 56 sections, each as thick as a mattress, and stitched them together like quilts at two nearby sites. If the transplants take, the method could be replicated elsewhere.

“I just always feel so thankful to have seen these places before they’re gone,” said Landry. “It helps frame your understanding of what the landscape is supposed to look like.”

Relatively few people can enjoy that experience today—and even fewer are likely to know it in the future. In Dallas, swaths of historic prairie survive in parks, preserves, and the unwanted stretches along utility lines and railroads. Most are tucked away on private land, off-limits to trespassers. These slivers of the past are all that remain there of the grasslands that once waved across the state. The prep school boys now fighting to save what’s left were raised in neighborhoods garnished with greenery from other continents. Some say they grew up without the strong sense of place that environmentalist Wendell Berry has called essential for living in a locale without destroying it. 

Like Landry, those who have truly seen Coneflower Crest — not just looked at it, but knelt in its grasses, attuned to its miniscule delights and dramas — have felt changed by the experience. Munshi, now a plant science major at Cornell University, vividly remembers the first time he glimpsed what became his favorite prairie. White rosinweed and Cobea penstemon speckled the grasses, and butterflies flitted amid more echinacea than he had ever seen, suggesting the ground had never been scarred by a plow. “This is, like, a 10!” he exclaimed, filming the scenery. “Imagine what else is in here!”

Laura Mallonee / Grist

Leadership of the club he founded, the Blackland Prairie Restoration Crew, passed to Yan, who graduated this spring. He has since handed it off to two boys who joined him in digging up the Texas blazing star and a handful of other beleaguered species. Just two days after their surreptitious dig, a dozen men and women in business suits smiled for the cameras as they scooped shovelfuls of what might be the county’s last expanse or tallgrass. Homes may rise on the pockets that held the greatest biodiversity. Yan and his friends knew this was coming and they understand the need for more housing, but it still saddened them. He dreams of a movement that would push developers to preserve prairies, though such a movement may come too late. “I just don’t know if the prairie will be able to recover at that point,” he said. “There are parts of Coneflower Crest that will never be recovered.”

Stacked against this tremendous loss, their efforts felt almost trivial. But long after the bulldozers at Coneflower Crest move on to the next job, hundreds of its priceless plants will persist, quivering in the breeze along the bike path. Before Yan and his classmates even transplanted the last of the flora they’d rescued, a few uprooted daleas bloomed in their buckets, rising from the soil toward the sun just as they have always done.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline The guerrilla campaign to save a Texas prairie from ‘silent extinction’ on Jul 28, 2025.

Last summer, the United States took a crucial step towards protecting millions of workers across the country from the impacts of extreme heat on the job. In July 2024, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, or OSHA, published its first-ever draft rule to prevent heat illness in the U.S. workforce. Among other things, the proposed regulation would require employers to provide access to water, shade, and paid breaks during heat waves — which are becoming increasingly common due to human-caused climate change. A senior White House official at the time called the provisions “common sense.”

Before the Biden administration could finalize the rule, Donald Trump was reelected president, ushering in another era of deregulation. Earlier this month, the Trump administration announced plans to revise or repeal 63 workplace regulations that Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer said “stifle growth and limit opportunity.” 

OSHA’s heat stress rule wasn’t among them. And though the new administration has the power to withdraw the draft regulation, it hasn’t. Instead, OSHA has continued to move it forward: The agency is currently in the middle of soliciting input from the general public about the proposed policy. Some labor experts say this process, typically bureaucratic and onerous even in the absence of political interference, is moving along faster than expected — perhaps a sign that civil servants at OSHA feel a true sense of urgency to protect vulnerable workers from heat stress as yearly temperatures set record after record. 

But labor advocacy groups focused on workers along the food supply chain — many of whom work outside, like farmworkers, or in poorly ventilated spaces, like warehouse and meat processing facilities — say workers have waited too long for basic live-saving protections. Earlier this month, Senator Alex Padilla and Congresswoman Judy Chu, both from California, reintroduced a bill to Congress that, if passed, would direct OSHA to enact a federal heat standard for workers swiftly.

It’s a largely symbolic move, as the rulemaking process is already underway, and the legislation is unlikely to advance in a Republican-controlled Congress. But the bill signals Democratic lawmakers are watching closely and urgently expect a final rule four years after OSHA first began drafting its proposed rule. The message is clear: However fast OSHA is moving, it hasn’t been enough to protect workers from the worst impacts of climate change. 

“Since OSHA started its heat-stress rulemaking in 2021, over 144 lives have been lost to heat-related hazards,” said Padilla in a statement emailed to Grist. “We know how to prevent heat-related illnesses to ensure that these family members are able to come home at the end of their shift.” 

The lawmaker added that the issue is “a matter of life or death.” 

Farmworkers in southern California take a water break in the middle of a heat wave.
ETIENNE LAURENT / AFP via Getty Images

Heat is the deadliest form of extreme weather, according to the World Health Organization. In the U.S., the Environmental Protection Agency estimates that 986 workers died from heat exposure on the job from 1992 to 2022, or about 34 per year. 

This is very likely an undercount. Prolonged heat exposure can exacerbate underlying health problems like cardiovascular issues, making it difficult for medical professionals to discern when illness and death is attributable to extreme heat. As heat-trapping greenhouse gas emissions continue to push global temperatures higher, experts expect heat-related illnesses and deaths to follow.

The life-threatening impacts of exposure to extreme heat in the workplace have been on the federal government’s radar for more than 50 years. Labor unions and farmworkers have long pushed for federal and local heat standards. In 2006, California became the first state to enact its own heat protections for outdoor workers, after an investigation by the state’s Division of Occupational Safety and Health found 46 cases of heat-related illnesses the year prior. Legislative efforts to protect workers or nudge OSHA along often follow or name farmworkers who died from heat stress. Padilla and Chu’s bill from this year is named after Asunción Valdivia, a 53-year-old who died in California in 2004 after picking grapes for 10 hours straight in 105-degree Fahrenheit heat. 

OSHA’s proposed heat standard would require employers to establish plans to avoid and monitor for signs of heat illness and to help new hires acclimate to working in high heat. “That should be implemented yesterday,” said Nichelle Harriott, policy director of HEAL Food Alliance, a national coalition of food and farmworkers. “There really is no cause for this to be taking as long as it has.”

In late June and early July, OSHA held virtual hearings in which it heard testimony from people both for and against a federal heat standard. According to Anastasia Christman, a senior policy analyst from the National Employment Law Project who attended the hearings, employees from the agency seemed engaged and asked substantive questions. “It was very informative,” she said. OSHA didn’t respond to Grist’s request for comment.

As written, OSHA’s proposed heat rule would apply to about 36 million workers in the U.S. Christman noted that sedentary workers — those who sit for most of the work day — are currently excluded from the federal standard. Ironically, at one point during the agency’s hearings, participants had to take an unscheduled break after the air conditioning stopped working in the Department of Labor building where OSHA staff were sitting. “They had to be evacuated because it was too hot to sit there and be on a Zoom call,” said Christman. She estimated that if sedentary workers were non-exempt, the number of U.S. workers covered by the rule would nearly double to 66 million.

From her point of view, OSHA is moving “very fast on this — for OSHA.” But Christman acknowledged that, even in a best-case scenario, regulations would not be on the books for another 12 to 14 months. At that point, OSHA would publish guidance for employers on how to comply with the regulation, as well as respond to any legal challenges to the final rule. That process, “in an optimistic world,” she said, could take between two and four years. 

A farmer loads plants on a truck at an ornamental plant nursery in Homestead, Florida, some 40 miles north of Miami.
CHANDAN KHANNA / AFP via Getty Images

For many farmworkers, as well as other workers along the food supply chain, that’s too long to wait. 

“For decades, millions of workers have been waiting for federal heat standards that never came,” said Oscar Londoño, co-executive director of WeCount, a member-led immigrant rights organization based in South Florida. 

The group has spearheaded multiple campaigns to draw public attention to how sweltering temperatures impact outdoor workers in the region, including plant nursery workers. Londoño said some agricultural workers have told WeCount it already feels like the hottest summer of their lifetime.

In response to the news of Padilla and Chu’s bill, Londoño said, “We appreciate any step by a lawmaker trying to protect workers, especially as we’re seeing, once again, a record-breaking summer.” But he cast doubt on OSHA’s ability to enforce regulations around heat stress, particularly in the agricultural sector.

“We know that there are employers across the country who are routinely violating the laws that already exist,” said Londoño. “And so adding on new laws and regulations that we do need doesn’t automatically mean that workers will be protected.”

WeCount’s organizing is hampered by Florida’s Republican governor and state legislature, which passed a law last year prohibiting local governments from enacting their own heat standards. In the absence of politicians who will stand for workers, WeCount members are trying to publicize the risks that agricultural workers take on. Their latest campaign, Planting Justice, centers on local plant nursery workers, who grow indoor houseplants. 

The goal is to try and educate consumers about the labor that goes into providing their monsteras, pothos, snake plants, and other indoor houseplants. “If you buy indoor houseplants, it’s very possible that that plant came from workers in Florida,” said Londoño, “workers who are being denied water, shade, and rest breaks by working in record-breaking heat, including 90- or 100-degree heat temperatures.”

Down the line, the nursery workers hope to solidify a set of demands and bring those concerns to companies like Home Depot and Lowe’s that sit at the top of the indoor plant supply chain. Similar tactics have worked for agricultural workers in other sectors; the Fair Food Program, first established by tomato pickers in 2011 in Florida, has won stringent heat protections for farmworkers in part by building strong support for laborers’ demands among consumers.

“Right now we are looking at every possible solution or strategy that can help workers reach these protections,” said Londoño. “What workers actually need is a guarantee that every single day they’ll be able to go to work and return home alive.” This kind of worker-led organizing will continue, he said, whether or not OSHA delivers its own heat standard.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline A long-awaited rule to protect workers from heat stress moves forward, even under Trump on Jul 28, 2025.

Seeding ecofeminism in Rojava Channel News brendan 28th July 2025 Teaser Media

Americans are paying more for electricity, and those prices are set to rise even further.

In almost all parts of the country, the amount people pay for electricity on their power bills — the retail price — has risen faster than the rate of inflation since 2022, and that will likely continue through 2026, according to the Energy Information Administration, or EIA.

Just about everything costs more these days, but electricity prices are especially concerning because they’re an input for so much of the economy — powering factories, data centers, and a growing fleet of electric vehicles. It’s not just the big industries; we all feel the pinch firsthand when we pay our utility bills. According to PowerLines, a nonprofit working to reduce electricity prices, about 80 million Americans have to sacrifice other basic expenses like food or medicine to afford to keep the lights on. And it’s about to get even worse: Utilities in markets across the country have asked regulators for almost $29 billion in electricity rate increases for consumers for the first half of the year.

Why are prices rising so much all of a sudden? Right now, there are the usual factors driving the rise in electricity rates: high demand, not enough supply, and inflation. But there are problems that have been building up for decades as well, and now the bills are due: Aging and inadequate infrastructure needs replacement, while outdated business models and regulations are slowing the deployment of urgently needed upgrades.

On the campaign trail, President Donald Trump promised to bring energy prices down by increasing fossil fuel extraction. “My goal will be to cut your energy costs in half within 12 months after taking office,” Trump said last August in a speech in Michigan.

But electricity prices are still going up, and Trump’s signature legislative accomplishment, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, is likely to raise prices further. Without better management and investment, the result will be more expensive and less reliable power for most Americans.

The variables baked into your power bill, explained

There are several key factors that shape how much you pay for electricity.

There’s the cost of building, operating, and maintaining power plants. Higher interest rates, inflation, tariffs, and longer interconnection queues — power generators waiting for approval to connect to the grid — are making the process of building a new electricity generator slower and more expensive. PJM, the largest power market in the U.S., said this week that soaring demand for electricity and delays in building new generators will raise power bills 1 percent to 5 percent for customers in its service area across 13 states and the District of Columbia.

Then there’s the fuel itself, whether that’s coal, oil, natural gas, or uranium. For renewables, the cost of wind, water, and sunlight are close to zero, but intermittent generators need conventional power plants or energy storage systems to back them up. Still, wind and solar power have been some of the cheapest sources of electricity in recent years, forming the dominant share of new power generation connecting to the grid.

That electricity then has to be routed from power plants over transmission lines that can span hundreds of miles and into distribution networks that send electrons into homes, offices, stores, and factories.

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Then you have to think about demand, over the course of hours, days, months, and years. Some utilities offer time-of-use billing that raises rates during peak demand periods like hot summer afternoons and lowers them in evenings. Cooling needs are a big reason why overall electricity use tends to be higher in summer months than in the winter. And for the first time in a decade, the U.S. is experiencing a sustained increase in electricity use driven in part by a rapid build-out of power-hungry data centers, more EVs, more electric appliances, and more air conditioning to stay cool in hotter summers.

More users for the same amount of electricity means higher prices. The Trump administration’s rollback of key incentives for renewables and slowdown of approvals for new projects is likely to slow the rate of new generation coming online.

And the process of bridging electricity supplies with demand is becoming a bottleneck, thus comprising a larger share of the overall bill. “If you actually look at the cost breakdowns of what’s significantly increasing, it’s really the grid,” said Charles Hua, founder and executive director of PowerLines. “It is the poles and wires that make up our electric infrastructure that’s increasing in cost particularly rapidly.”

According to the EIA, just under two-thirds of the average price of electricity is due to generation costs, with the remainder coming from transmission and distribution. However, energy utilities are now putting more than half of their expenditures into transmission and distribution through the end of the decade. “It used to be the case maybe a decade ago where generation was the largest share of utility investments, and therefore customer bills,” Hua said. “But it has now been inverted where really it’s the grid expense that is rising and doesn’t show any signs of relief.”

There are several reasons for this. One is that the existing power grid is old, and many components like conductors and switchgear are reaching the ends of their service lives. Replacing 1960s hardware at 2025 prices raises operating costs even for the same level of service. But the grid now needs to provide higher levels of service as populations grow and as technologies like intermittent renewables and energy storage proliferate.

Power outages driven by extreme weather are becoming more frequent and longer, but hardening the grid against disasters like floods and fires is expensive too. Putting a power line underground can add up to double or more the price of stringing conductors along utility poles, which is why power companies have been slow to make the change, even in disaster-prone regions.

While utilities are pouring money into distribution networks, they are having a harder time building new long-distance transmission lines as they run into permitting and regulatory delays. The U.S. used to build an average of 2,000 miles of high-voltage transmission per year between 2012 and 2016. The construction rate dropped to 700 miles per year between 2017 and 2021, and dipped to just 55 miles in 2023. There were 125 miles of new high-voltage transmission installed in the first half of 2024, but it was all for one project. The Department of Energy this week canceled a loan guarantee for the Grain Belt Express, a transmission project that would stretch 800 miles across four states.

There are also shortages of critical parts of the grid like transformers, while tariffs on materials like aluminum and steel are pushing up construction expenses.

One underrated driver of higher prices is the lack of coordination between utilities, grid operators, and states on how to spend their money. In utility jargon, this process is called Integrated Distribution System Planning, where everyone with a stake in the energy network puts together a comprehensive plan of what to buy, where to build it, and who should pay — but only a few states like Illinois, Maine, and New Hampshire have such a system set up.

“That’s sort of a no-brainer,” Hua said. “Anybody should understand the need to plan ahead, especially if you’re talking about something that has such high economic implications, but that’s not what we’re doing.”

So while prices are rising, there’s no easy way around the fact that the grid is overdue for a lot of necessary, expensive upgrades. For millions of Americans, that means it’s going to get more expensive to stay cool, charged up, and connected.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Why your energy bill is suddenly so much more expensive on Jul 27, 2025.

President Donald Trump is temporarily exempting medical sterilization facilities that use the colorless gas ethylene oxide from tighter emissions standards, including plants in Georgia that have generated health concerns for residents living nearby.

Last year, then President Joe Biden’s administration finalized new emissions limits for plants that use ethylene oxide, also known as EtO.

The rules require facilities install new controls to limit releases of the gas, monitor continuously for leaks, and meet other requirements. The standards were set to phase in starting in 2026, with the largest EtO users given an extra year to comply. Under Biden, the Environmental Protection Agency said the stiffer regulations would reduce emissions from EtO facilities by 90 percent and protect residents living near them.

But in a Thursday proclamation, Trump said he would extend the deadline for a slew of facilities across the country to meet the requirements, claiming the technology is not “commercially viable” to meet the timelines. Now, sterilizers will have two more years to make upgrades.

Trump argued the current rules would “likely force existing sterilization facilities to close down, seriously disrupting the supply of medical equipment.”

“In short, the current compliance timeline would undermine our national security,” Trump’s proclamation says.

Read Next How medical supply warehouses poison workers with ethylene oxide Naveena Sadasivam & Lylla Younes

The extension applies to several Georgia facilities, including: Becton Dickinson, or BD, facilities in Covington and Madison; the Sterigenics plant in Cobb County; Kendall Patient Recovery, or KPR, near Augusta; and Sterilization Services of Georgia’s facility 15 miles from downtown Atlanta.

EtO plays a critical role maintaining safety in medical and dental settings by killing dangerous bacteria that can’t be eliminated by other methods, like steam or radiation. About half the medical devices used in the United States — approximately 20 billion devices each year — are sterilized with EtO, according to the EPA. It is also used to kill potentially harmful microbes lurking in spices, dried vegetables, walnuts and other food products.

But the gas has been known for years to be dangerous to humans.

In 2016, the EPA reclassified ethylene oxide as a human carcinogen and the gas has been linked to breast, lymphoid, leukemia and other types of cancers. That same year, the EPA determined ethylene oxide is dangerous at much lower levels than previously thought.

Based on its new threshold, EPA air modeling flagged several census tracts in Georgia for potential elevated cancer risks from exposure to ethylene oxide in 2018. But neither the agency nor the state Environmental Protection Division alerted the public. A year later, media reports revealed the potential for increased cancer risk based on the modeling faced by residents in neighborhoods surrounding Sterigenics’ Cobb County plant.

Read Next The unregulated link in a toxic supply chain Naveena Sadasivam & Lylla Younes

The situation spawned a slew of lawsuits and in 2023, Sterigenics agreed to pay $35 million to settle dozens of claims by people who alleged their exposure to EtO from the plant caused cancer and other injuries. Sterigenics did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Trump’s proclamation.

Hundreds of lawsuits are still pending in Georgia against BD, Sterigenics, and KPR. In May, the first of those to reach trial resulted in a $20 million verdict for a retired Covington-area truck driver, Gary Walker, who claimed decades of exposure to EtO from BD and its predecessor, C.R. Bard, was to blame for his non-Hodgkin lymphoma.

Michael Geoffroy, an attorney who’s part of Walker’s legal team and involved in many other EtO cases, said the Trump administration’s move “is only going to make things worse.”

“Loosening rules or delaying implementation of safety standards that are there to keep communities safe and make it to where fewer people get sick with cancer is just a step in the wrong direction,” Geoffroy said.

In a statement, BD spokeswoman Fallon McLoughlin said the company is “committed to the safe and responsible operation of our medical sterilization facilities and has a long history of compliance with local, state and federal regulations related to EtO emissions.”

She added BD has already installed new emissions controls at many facilities and is committed to meeting the new standards. But she said doing so could require new equipment that may not be available in time to meet the deadline.

“The recently announced exemption will ensure there is a more realistic time frame to comply with the new requirements,” McLoughlin said.

A representative for Sterilization Services declined to comment. KPR did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Mindy Goldstein, director of the Turner Environmental Law Clinic at Emory University, said the federal Clean Air Act allows presidents to exempt certain facilities from compliance for up to two years. But to do so, they must prove that the technology to meet the requirement is not available and the extension serves a national security interest.

Trump used both rationales in his proclamation. But Goldstein said he included little evidence to support the claims, which could give opponents an opening to challenge the move.
The Trump administration, meanwhile, has already said it’s reevaluating the Biden-era EtO rules, but it’s unclear whether they’ll seek to change the standard. Trump’s EPA has already unwound much of his predecessors’ environmental legacy, announcing plans to reconsider drinking water standards for certain toxic “forever chemicals,” roll back limits on greenhouse gas emissions from power plants and much more.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Georgia sterilization plants using toxic gas among those exempt from new rules on Jul 26, 2025.

What would you do if an energy company declared that it planned to build a natural-gas pipeline through your property, your community, and the surrounding countryside?

For many residents of Virginia and West Virginia, that question became a reality in 2014 when a consortium of energy companies announced plans to build the Mountain Valley Pipeline, using eminent domain to claim a wide swath of public and private lands.

Residents and activists spent the next 10 years fighting the project. In the process, they connected with each other, built community resources and mutual-aid networks, and inspired other activists around the country.

They lost the fight — the pipeline started transmitting gas in 2024, two years after West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin struck a deal with President Joe Biden to help push the climate legislation known as the Inflation Reduction Act over the finish line.

But their experiences offer valuable lessons for other communities, says activist and artist Denali Sai Nalamalapu, who spent several years involved in the battle against the Mountain Valley Pipeline. Nalamalapu has now collected six residents’ stories — including a single mother, a photographer, a teacher, and an Indigenous seed keeper — in the new book, Holler: A Graphic Memoir of Rural Resistance (Timber Press).

The Revelator recently sat down with Nalamalapu to discuss the graphic novel, the ongoing climate fight, the problem of “false hope” narratives, and how to find balance in a worsening crisis. (This conversation has been lightly edited for clarity and brevity.)

Could you put this book in the context of your greater activism?

I’ve been a climate organizer since I graduated college in 2017. I was living on Borneo in Malaysian territory through a Fulbright grant and was surrounded by the impacts of palm oil plantations and rainforest destruction. I was thinking a lot about how complicated environmental destruction and climate change are, even though our impulse is often to simplify things. That made me want to go into climate organizing and climate communications, where I became very interested in who was being left out from the narrative and who we weren’t speaking to, because climate communications can be very scientific and can be specific to Western audiences.

Ultimately I landed in the Mountain Valley Pipeline site in Appalachia in 2021.

One of my big questions there was, where could we be more accessible and who are we leaving out of our audience, because the audience could be so big with a fossil fuel pipeline during this point in the climate crisis.

And you carried that over to the book, where you interviewed a range of people who seem like the people who would often get ignored in these narratives. Are you hoping that readers have six opportunities to see a little something of themselves in that book?

Yeah, that’s a big part of why I wrote the book and how I wrote it. In talking to people like Karolyn Givens, whose story is featured in the second chapter, I was struck by how many of us have grandmothers who are nurses or other people in our family who worked in the medical field. I hope that people pick up the book and see someone like Karolyn or Becky Crabtree, who is a science teacher. So many of us have teachers in our lives.

And they can see how these ordinary people use the skills that they already had to be part of resistance to a powerful, giant, fossil fuel project, even though they weren’t career activists.

 

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I’m so taken by the artwork in this book. It’s pared down, a little cartoony. But the linework is very evocative and reveals the destruction and the pain on these people’s faces. Did you learn anything through drawing it in this approach?

I always felt like my path as an artist was too winding, like I didn’t have necessarily a specific medium that was my thing. I was just always obsessed with making art, whether that was painting portraits most recently, or in my very early days of childhood that was cartooning and comics. And the thing that surprised me is that all those different journeys —through ceramics and printmaking and cartooning and portraiture — did come together in this large project.

For example, I spent so much time during the pandemic in oil and acrylic portraiture, so I learned a lot about the shadows on people’s faces. There’s not a lot I could do to really make those emotions on people’s faces be super realistic, because by design they weren’t supposed to be. But shadows are one way to connect them to the way I see people.

 

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Now, this is a fight that did not pan out. A lot of people and land faced a lot of destruction. The pipeline still pretty much went through as planned. But there’s still an important message you’re trying to convey here about hope and about continuing to fight these pipelines. Can you speak about that?

I feel that at this point in the climate crisis and in the climate movement, we can’t just be looking for 100% crystal-clear wins, because the reality is that our future will be imperfect — especially when we think about how reluctant and combative leaders and the United States have been to retiring fossil fuels. And when we look at the way capitalism has such a tight grip on our world, I think that it’s important to tell stories that have more complexity than just “we won.”

And the Mountain Valley pipeline is one of those stories. Being part of the movement, I saw every day that it mattered that we fought against the pipeline for 10 years.

There were some anecdotes that suggested that the Atlantic Coast Pipeline getting canceled was connected to the fierce direct-action movement against the Mountain Valley pipeline. The Atlantic Coast developers didn’t want to put up with that degree of resistance.

And there are many other ways to look at the community that was built, the mutual aid networks that were built around monitoring water quality across the route, the ordinary people who learned about our regulatory agencies and how we can advocate for planetary well-being and community well-being in those agencies.

All these things felt very important in the day-to-day and I think, looking back, are important to remember. Because I think we lose out if we just have complete 100% happy hope or complete despair. There’s so much in between, and I hope that this book can contribute to all of the stories and possibilities in between.

There are now hundreds of smaller pipelines in the works or in the planning phases around the country. People in those communities could learn from this book.

We’re definitely seeing that with the Mountain Valley Pipeline Southgate site, where many people living on the main line still support the resistors on the extension that MVP is trying to build into North Carolina.

 

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Generally, the fossil-fuel industry has changed its playbook from the massive pipelines we saw 10 years ago to much smaller pipelines.

I think one thing that feels important and makes me feel hopeful as an activist is that many people see the connections between all these pipelines, all these small projects and the banks and insurers behind them. And people are seeing more clearly how capitalism is behind this, and corporate greed is behind this.

There’s certainly a lot of work left to do, and a lot more people to share the message with. But the reality of this massive pipeline going through — and then MVP pursuing a tiny extension along with a bunch of other smaller projects in the southeast — is that these movements are quite connected and the pipeline fighters are learning from each other.

I hope that this book can be part of people’s journey, whether they’re shifting from the mentality of fighting big projects to fighting many smaller projects, or they’re newer to the climate movement and they’re trying to learn about the history of the fight and all the possibilities that are before them in terms of how they resist.

You’re on tour now. You’re doing some signings and some events. What kind of reaction are you getting?

I started writing this book before the MVP was greenlit and completed. I didn’t know how it would change the reception that it was a completed project. But I’m really pleased that people are still willing to learn from the people in the book and the overall story, even though the project was completed.

I have also really enjoyed meeting expat Appalachians who feel so connected to the region and to the history of fossil fuel resistance.

Every place I go, I meet people who are very connected to these mountains, where the Appalachian Trail runs and where people have either childhood memories or hiking memories. That’s a beautiful thing, because I live in Southwest Virginia because of my love for the mountains.

And then, more broadly, I’m hearing from people about this moment.

One thing that I’m hearing is that people are very disinterested in false hope and people talking down to them about how “everything’s going to be okay.” Because we’re all seeing so clearly that things are not okay and that they are getting much worse, and that what’s happening on the federal level is very violent and is hurting people.

So, what comes next? Are you still in the fight? Are you looking at other stories to tell? Or are you just working on trying to help people in their communities right now?

I really enjoy a life of balanced organizing and creative work. I think after the November election and after the Mountain Valley pipeline was greenlit and then constructed — and the gas is flowing now — it became clear to me that two of the most important levers of power we have are our local elections and our mutual aid networks.

In terms of organizing, that’s what I’m really interested in: how we can elect climate champions on the local levels, given the clown show that is the federal government right now. And then I think it’s important that we know our neighbors and develop mutual aid networks and are prepared for storms like Hurricane Helene or other disastrous floods and wildfires.

One thing I learned working on a pipeline site that we lost is that it can be a precarious thing to anchor your hope in one action. Something that’s important to me is that I’m working on local elections near me and around the country, involved in my mutual aid networks, doing creative work — just having a diversity of things I’m doing that address climate change in different ways that are rooted in community. Right now I’m thinking about that notion of hope and what it means to actually believe in a possibility of a climate future — or of a better future in a way that doesn’t feel like it’s diluting oneself or diluting the reader in terms of false hope.

I find that having creative projects ongoing as I organize is a helpful way to keep up my energy. Otherwise, I get too pigeon-holed in one part of the work, and it’s easy to feel more despair.

Specifically, I’m interested in creating more stories for younger audiences, because I think we can never have enough support and stories for young people who are figuring out the world they’re going to enter.

Republish this article for free! Read our reprint policy. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter. Scan the QR code, or sign up here. Previously in The Revelator:

Building a Flock: How an Unlikely Birder Found Activism — and Community — in Nature

The post A Memoir of Resistance Shows Readers the Dangers of Fossil-Fuel Pipelines — and How to Fight Them appeared first on The Revelator.

Close to 900 million people across the Global South live in densely packed urban slums, which often sit in floodplains. A new study finds that one in three slum dwellers is at risk of "disastrous" flooding, a risk that is set to grow as warming spurs more intense rainfall around the world.

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