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When investor Phil Tagami first proposed building an export terminal in Oakland, California, more than a decade ago, he probably didn’t anticipate the firestorm of litigation and controversy that would follow, in a saga that has now spanned three presidential administrations. There were early rumors that the terminal would export coal, much to the consternation of local residents, but Tagami said in a newsletter that the naysayers were “misinformed.” It was all downhill from there.

Tagami and others entered into a development agreement with the city of Oakland in 2013 after the city decided to redevelop a defunct army base on the city’s west side. At the time, Tagami was adamant that the developers were interested in building an all-purpose bulk terminal and capturing some of the traffic that Oakland was losing to other West Coast ports. But two years later, Oakland residents and environmental groups had their suspicions confirmed when the Salt Lake Tribune reported that the developers had quietly entered into an agreement to use the terminal to ship coal from Utah to buyers overseas. The revelation sparked intense backlash in the progressive city, and the ensuing conflict has put both the developers and the city on the hook for million-dollar losses at various times, though litigation is ongoing. 

Now, in the latest twist, the U.S. Department of Energy has stepped in to provide up to $75 million for building the terminal. The funding is the latest effort by the Trump administration to prop up the country’s coal industry — the Energy Department’s announcement last week also included over $400 million in support for coal-fired power plants — even as the fossil fuel’s role in generating U.S. electricity continues to collapse. Over the last year, the administration has loosened regulations that apply to the country’s coal fleet, ordered aging plants scheduled for retirement to keep running, and shifted the responsibility of overseeing coal contamination to states. 

The administration also argues that homegrown coal is still valuable abroad.

“For too long, limited West Coast export capacity has constrained America’s ability to move coal and other energy resources to global markets,” said Energy Secretary Chris Wright in a press release announcing the funding. Investing in the terminal would help in “advancing American energy dominance,” he added. 

Critics counter that the federal funding is the latest attempt to prop up a dying industry.

Ben Eichenberg, an attorney with the San Francisco Baykeeper, an environmental group in the Bay Area, said that terminal construction “really hasn’t gone anywhere because there’s no money to build” the facility. “The Trump administration stepping in and saying they’re going to supply that money gives it a new lifeline,” he said. “This terminal project was drowning, and they’ve just been thrown the life preserver.”

The Energy Department’s Hail Mary is unlikely to end the embattled terminal’s long saga. After Oakland officials learned a decade ago that the developers intended to transport coal through the terminal, they held public hearings and eventually passed an ordinance and adopted a resolution that barred the storage of coal anywhere in the city. That set the stage for the first round of lawsuits against the city.

Oakland’s development agreement stated that it would provide regulatory certainty for the terminal backers by locking in the regulations that existed at the time. In other words, the city wasn’t allowed to change the rules about what the terminal could be used for after development started. The developers sued Oakland on these grounds, claiming that the city had violated the terms of the agreement by passing the new anti-coal-storage ordinance, thereby affecting the developers’ ability to proceed with their project. 

The agreement did, however, make an important exception. New rules can be applied to the terminal if the city determines that the absence of those rules would put the people of Oakland in “substantial danger.” The city had held public hearings and collected evidence of the threat posed by coal dust, but the developers argued that the record was insufficient — and ultimately the judge overseeing the case agreed. He found that “the record is riddled with inaccuracies, major evidentiary gaps, erroneous assumptions, and faulty analyses, to the point that no reliable conclusion about health or safety dangers could be drawn from it.”

Crucially, the judge did not claim that the transport of coal through Oakland does not pose a threat to residents, or that the city didn’t have the right to pass an ordinance banning coal. A higher court also agreed with that decision and affirmed the ruling. 

“The fight was not about whether coal is safe or dangerous, but it was about the terms of the development agreement,” said Colin O’Brien, an attorney with Earthjustice, the nonprofit that represented the San Francisco Baykeeper and the Sierra Club as an intervenor in the proceedings. 

After suffering a loss in the courts, the city tried a different tack. The developers had signed a lease with the city, which required them to meet certain construction milestones. Because of the years spent litigating the terms of the development agreement, the developers hadn’t begun construction. Oakland officials cancelled the lease on these new grounds, dragging the city into its next round of legal battles. The developers sued in state court in 2018, arguing that the city’s own decisions had prevented them from meeting the construction deadlines. The court once again sided with the developers, as did a higher court on appeal last year.

By then, Insight Terminal Solutions, the company that was slated to operate the terminal, had filed for bankruptcy in Kentucky and decided to pursue claims against the city. During the bankruptcy proceedings last year, the company claimed that the protracted legal battles with Oakland were to blame for its financial woes — and that it was owed more than $650 million in damages. A sympathetic bankruptcy court judge agreed with the firm’s rationale, but on appeal in a federal district court, the ruling was vacated late last year, much to the historically cash-strapped city’s relief. 

Despite the influx of federal support for the terminal, the project’s backers still have a long road ahead. The terminal needs to secure a range of permits, including air quality permits from the Bay Area Air Quality District, and local advocates have already mounted a campaign to require stringent regulations for the facility. (Tagami and another representative of California Capital & Investment Group, the lead developer of the project, did not respond to multiple requests for comment.)

For their part, environmental groups are keeping a close eye on the permitting process.

“We’re going to do everything in our power to protect the community in San Francisco Bay from the pollution that this coal terminal represents,” said Eichenberg. “We’ll be evaluating all of those permits and any additional action that we can take to protect the community and fulfill our mission.”

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

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Even $75M from Trump may not save Oakland’s embattled coal terminal on Jun 15, 2026.

Prison 'used more' for climate, genocide activists Channel News brendan 15th June 2026 Teaser Media

Last year, Marie Tai needed a better way to keep her condo cool. Her window air-conditioning units were borderline ineffective, even running at full blast. Summers have been getting more intense in Tai’s Boston neighborhood because of a rapidly warming climate, and she had just adopted a 16-year-old cat named Mittens, who was still recovering from being hit by a car.

Tai had already been considering a heat pump, an all-electric appliance that heats and cools spaces and lets homeowners ditch polluting fossil fuels. But three contractors had quoted her prices ranging from about $28,000 to $40,000. Tai, who heads finance and administration at Harvard University’s Project Zero, thought those estimates seemed excessive for her 1,000-square-foot, two-bedroom place. So she had hit pause on the project.

But with Mittens’ well-being front of mind, Tai renewed her heat pump search last spring. Through Facebook, she found an opportunity to participate in a program that aggregates demand, organized by Laminar Collective, a local startup that does research on the tech and coordinates installations.

These heat pump group-buy initiatives let installers purchase equipment in bulk and spend less time chasing leads, accruing savings that they can pass on to customers. Tai, tantalized by Laminar’s menu of low prices for a heat-pump setup, decided to give it a shot.

Read Next American homes need heat pumps, not space heaters Matt Simon

After a representative from the startup visited her home to check what heat pump size and configuration would fit her needs, Tai signed up for a ductless minisplit system for $20,000 — thousands less than even her lowest initial quote. She then also took advantage of an additional $8,500 state rebate and eight-year financing with 0% interest.

The new equipment has been life-changing, Tai said.

She no longer has to buy fuel oil for heating in the winter, and the heat pump is so efficient that last year she saved roughly $1,300 on her energy bills. In contrast to the old, noisy window ACs, the new system’s wall-mounted, air-filtering indoor units ​“are so quiet,” she said. Her allergy symptoms have improved. And Mittens is comfortable and doing well, she noted. ​“I couldn’t be happier.”

Like Tai, homeowners in communities across the U.S. are signing up for an unusual way of buying heat pumps: together. Companies, nonprofits, and local governments are increasingly offering programs that coordinate consumer demand to secure meaningful discounts of around 10% to 20%, which can translate to roughly $3,000 to $6,000 per installation. It’s like a group buying a pack of muffins at Costco rather than each buying a muffin at Starbucks.

The bulk-buy approach is taking off as the Trump administration demolishes electrification incentives. Last year, the Republican-led Congress eliminated a $2,000 federal tax credit for home heat pumps. Late last month, the administration said that it won’t allow home energy-efficiency rebates to be used by people looking to get off gas.

Read Next What’s behind your eye-popping power bill? We broke it down, region by region. Naveena Sadasivam & Clayton Aldern

While heat pumps reduce pollution and typically cut owners’ energy bills, they can be a pricey proposition up front. Whole-home installations typically range from $17,000 to $30,000, depending on the property size, insulation, climate, and many other factors, according to electrification advocacy nonprofit Rewiring America.

“Even though homeowners often save significantly over time, the first quotes can bring real sticker shock,” said Cole Merrick, founder and CEO of VoltHub, an online heat-pump installation marketplace.

VoltHub and heat-pump general contractor Vayu organized a California group-buy program this spring to serve the counties of Los Angeles and Orange and the greater San Francisco Bay Area. They’re offering another one this summer.

Most heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning replacements are emergencies, and these jobs will continue to make up the majority of Vayu’s business, said founder and CEO Shreyas Sudhakar. But for households that can hold off on getting a heat pump installed, group buys are ideal, he noted.

The process entails a waiting period, which can be several weeks to about six months, as the slots fill up and the installer determines the final pricing. The installer then confirms individual quotes with customers — who can decide not to move forward without penalty — and schedules the work.

Heat pump group buys come in different forms. They can be organized at the grassroots level, offered by a contractor, or run by a third party that aggregates demand over a limited time window. Through a competitive bidding process, the third party vets qualified installers and chooses one or more to carry out the jobs.

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The collective bargaining approach has succeeded in the past. Nonprofit Solar United Neighbors has led similar group buys for rooftop solar since 2007, helping thousands of households net deals on installations.

Now, the organization is partnering with iChoosr, an international company that helps households electrify, in order to get group deals for heat pumps, too. Using iChoosr’s Switch Together platform, people in select areas can sign up to unlock group discounts for the all-electric appliance, as well as solar and batteries. Since 2023, more than 5,100 U.S. homeowners have gotten their solar panels or batteries via iChoosr, which earns a fee from participating vetted installers for jobs they get through the platform, said Fred Wu, a director of community engagement for the company.

iChoosr was already running successful bulk-purchasing programs for heat pumps in the U.K. and the Netherlands, and launched its first offerings in the U.S. last year with Solar United Neighbors. They opened one program in the Colorado Front Range and another in the Washington, D.C., area in July, closed those lists in September, and finished up the installations — for about 90 households — by the end of the year.

On the heels of that success, iChoosr reran group buys in both regions this spring. More than 1,000 households have signed up expressing interest so far.

This year, the company will also launch new programs in the metro areas of Houston and Dallas, Chicagoland, and northern Arizona around Flagstaff, partnering with nonprofits and local governments at no cost to them, Wu said.

For contractors, these bulk-buy initiatives are a boon.

They cut down on the installers’ sales and marketing costs, thanks to word of mouth and publicity from third parties like iChoosr. Home electrification contractor Elephant Energy, which is working with iChoosr to deploy the Colorado heat-pump installations, saves about $300 per project, said CEO and co-founder DR Richardson. Elephant has also run its own community bulk buys across its California, Colorado, and Massachusetts markets, he noted.

Group-buy initiatives smooth out demand by allowing for planned installations when business naturally slumps. Heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning work is highly seasonal, with most people calling an HVAC technician during the first heat wave or cold snap.

“For a lot of businesses, two months will make up 70% to 80% of the revenue for the year,” said Sudhakar of Vayu. ​“So to be able to have some guaranteed revenue that is on the books and [can] fill downtime is really valuable.”

But heat pump group-buying programs aren’t ubiquitous yet. Wu of iChoosr recommends that homeowners who are interested but not in a rush contact city and county leaders to let them know that they’d like to get a bulk deal going in their area.

“We’re continuously trying to expand the program,” Wu said. ​“The first thing we need … is a local government that wants to bring this to their constituents.” These partnerships lend credibility and visibility to the group initiatives, since local governments help promote them.

Tai in Boston was grateful to be part of Laminar Collective’s heat-pump bulk buy. It not only helped her save money but also provided her time to get her questions answered without the sales pressure she felt from one-on-one solicitations. ​“It’s empowering,” she said. After she told her neighbor about her experience, they got their heat pump that way, too.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Want a deal on a heat pump? Team up with your neighbors. on Jun 14, 2026.

Millions of people around the world are having their lives upended by floods, storms and heatwaves worsened by the climate crisis. Those forced to flee their home countries, however, are finding that the door to the US is more firmly shut than ever.

Neither US nor international law recognizes environmental hazards, such as climate-related displacement, as a valid cause to claim asylum or gain entry through other migration pathways, despite the mounting toll of disasters caused by an overheating planet.

But those who have managed to get to the US through other means after being displaced in this way now find themselves in an even more precarious position following Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown, with little hope of a new system to help others forced from their homes by climate impacts.

For some, that pathway to the US has been particularly perilous. When Hurricane Mitch crashed into Honduras, killing 7,000 people, one affected family surveyed the unsalvageable ruins of their home and realized they had a lifeline – to move to the US.

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Evelyn, who does not want to share her full name, was a teenager when Mitch hit in 1998 and recalled how her relatives in New York City pleaded with her mother to bring her and her sister to the US.

“There were bodies and dead animals floating in the water, the house was messed up, the furniture was all gone – doors, windows gone. It was so, so sad,” said Evelyn. “I got sick because of the mosquitoes and didn’t have any services to rebuild the house because our country is very poor. My uncle and aunt were just like, ‘OK, just bring the kids over here, don’t stay. It’s dangerous.’”

Storms of the deadly ferocity of Mitch are even more likely now because of a hotter atmosphere and ocean that has rapidly heated up from the burning of fossil fuels.

Yet Trump’s migration crackdown has made it far harder for people like Evelyn to flee to the US now. “Every day it’s more barriers,” said Evelyn, who still lives in New York and has two daughters, one studying to be a lawyer, the other a doctor. “It’s sad to know that people will not be able to apply for a status or something to help their situation and also help the people back home.”

Some migrants in the US have faced living in countries rocked by climate shocks and conflict.

“I was invited to come here and be part of this country and now all of a sudden you try to make me go back after establishing a life here?” said a doctor from Sudan, who moved to the US several years ago and did not want to be named. The doctor faces the prospect of deportation under a new Trump administration edict that has blocked all entry to the US from Sudan and dozens of other countries.

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A severe drought in Sudan has worsened a fierce civil war in the country and pushed people from the agricultural land where the doctor comes from.

“People have had to abandon their lands because there isn’t enough water, millions have fled,” he said. “There is climate change and the difficulty of people sharing resources and the conflicts are affected by that. I would rather stay home and do my medical training here but many factors forced me to leave the country.”

Droughts are being exacerbated by rising global temperatures, researchers have found, and a leading cause of the 250 million people worldwide who have been displaced by environmental factors in the past decade, according to the United Nations.

Displaced people in certain countries can also be affected by wars or fall victim to gangs or other violence as a result of their movement. These secondary impacts are often the ones that compel them to flee over international borders and gain sanctuary elsewhere.

“It was always hot, no rain,” said another man, from Somalia and now applying for asylum in the US, about the drought in his own country. Somalia, like Sudan, has been racked by civil war.

“People from the farming lands, they’re dying, with no water,” he added. “Also the animals, they die because when it’s not raining, everything will dry, people die, animals die, and all the people they run from the farm and come to the city. So everything can get hard.”

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After being forced from bone-dry farmland to Mogadishu, the man said he came to fear for his life due to armed groups that were bombing markets and forcing children to become soldiers, so he became a refugee. He now faces new fears in the US after the Trump administration effectively shut down the asylum system, other than to white South Africans.

“Now we are getting a lot of attacks from the government,” the man said. “I don’t know why. I don’t understand what the problem is. It’s scary with the government here, how they are treating people.”

People uprooted from countries like Sudan and Somalia now face an almost impossible situation in terms of entry to the US, according to Felipe Navarro, associate director of policy and advocacy at the Center for Gender and Refugee Studies.

“If you were displaced by climate change, that door is closed,” he said. “I don’t think climate displacement comes into the administration’s thinking; it’s probably not intentional. They just have a general hatred for certain nationalities and races. This administration doesn’t really care about climate change at all.”

Some Democratic lawmakers have in recent years attempted to introduce a climate-related visa that would cover people fleeing extreme weather disasters. However, with the political mood swinging strongly against migrants, advocates’ hopes of reform have dwindled, even as the number of displaced has ballooned.

“It’s hard to predict the long-term effects of these policies,” said Navarro. “When we close doors, though, people always find another path to move.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline ‘Every day it’s more barriers’: how the US is shutting out climate refugees on Jun 13, 2026.

The global roadmap on transitioning away from fossil fuels now being developed should be a “continuing conversation” which is part of UN climate talks, not just a one-off report, several governments told the Brazilian COP30 Presidency on Friday in Bonn.

During a 90-minute exchange of views at the annual mid-year climate talks in Germany, several European governments and the Marshall Islands said the roadmap that Brazil is due to finish by November should be incorporated into the official negotiations.

Any such push is likely to be resisted by nations whose economies are reliant on fossil fuel production. While Russia did not speak on Friday, it has said in earlier written submissions that the roadmap should not be referenced in any document approved by governments at UN climate talks. 

At COP30 last year, Brazil tried to get governments to agree to produce a roadmap on how to transition away from fossil fuels but the proposal did not win consensus, with major nations like Saudi Arabia and Russia opposed. 

Feedback in Bonn

To save the day, Brazil’s COP30 president André Aranha Corrêa do Lago promised at the closing plenary in Belem to draw up a voluntary roadmap in consultation with interested governments. Over 20 countries have officially submitted their opinions on this roadmap and, in Bonn on Friday, Corrêa do Lago sought their views – and those of civil society – in person after the presidency presented its findings so far.

The roadmap will also incorporate outcomes from the first global conference on transitioning away from fossil fuels held in Santa Marta, Colombia, in April and attended by around 60 countries. 

A negotiator for the Marshall Islands told Friday’s meeting that at COP31 this year all governments should “welcome the collaborative effort behind the roadmap and the Santa Marta conference and for this work to be taken on to COP32 and beyond”.

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A spokesperson for Switzerland said on behalf of a group of nations which includes South Korea and Mexico that the roadmap must be a “sustained process, not a one-off report” and “we would welcome an ongoing platform for dialogue, for learning and cooperation including among fossil-fuel production countries”.

“We expect more than a document, rather a process whereby we come together to develop concrete steps, recommendations and tools to prepare for the transitions,” she said, calling on the COP31 co-presidents Australia and Turkiye and COP32 host Ethiopia to “take up the leadership” for implementing the roadmap”.

Global stocktake response

France’s negotiator said the roadmap “is a process and we will need continuing discussions” as “implementation needs time”, while the UK called for a “continuing conversation, including as we head towards the second [global stocktake]”. 

The global stocktake (GST) is an official five-yearly report into how the world’s governments are doing on their Paris Agreement goal to limit global warming to 1.5C above pre-industrial temperatures.

The second stocktake will be published in 2028 and governments are likely to negotiate a response to it, which could include new commitments to reduce emissions, at COP33 that year. The response to the first global stocktake included the landmark COP28 commitment to transitioning away from fossil fuels in energy systems.

Activists and Indigenous people take part in a Stop EACOP campaign protest against fossil fuels during the UN Climate Change Conference (COP30) in Belem, Brazil, November 13, 2025. REUTERS/Adriano Machado Activists and Indigenous people take part in a Stop EACOP campaign protest against fossil fuels during the UN Climate Change Conference (COP30) in Belem, Brazil, November 13, 2025. REUTERS/Adriano Machado

“Even though it’s not a formal part of the negotiation agenda, the roadmap can be a key input for the entire information-gathering phase of the second GST,” Enrique Maurtua Konstantinidis, an independent climate policy consultant, explained to Climate Home News. 

“The key is for countries not to focus the discussion on defending the roadmap itself, but rather on its content, which is what truly matters,” he added.

At the Bonn event, civil society organisations also supported continuing the roadmap inside the formal climate process.

Natalie Jones, policy adviser for the International Institute for Sustainable Development, told Climate Home News the roadmap should be “an ongoing dialogue where countries can exchange their experiences, best practices and continue implementing the [transitioning away from fossil fuels] consensus”.

Russian resistance

But economies reliant on fossil fuel production are likely to oppose incorporating the roadmap into negotiations in Bonn and at COP summits. Russia’s written submission to Brazil’s consultation says the roadmap was not agreed by governments at COP30.

It says such work should therefore take place on the margins of the UNFCCC process, adding that “ the inclusion of any references to the “Roadmap” in the agenda or in official or informal documents” at Bonn or COP “would constitute a deviation from previously agreed consensus outcomes”.

Other major oil and gas producers like Saudi Arabia have not made written or spoken submissions and the US, as it has left the Paris Agreement, is not involved in discussions. But countries other than Russia are likely to resist incorporating the roadmap into official talks.

The UN climate process needs ambition – the law demands it

The submission by Japan, which is not a major producer of fossil fuels but consumes them from overseas, suggests nervousness about the roadmap. It asks Brazil for clarity on how the roadmap is “envisaged to be utilised” and argues that as many countries continue to rely on fossil fuels for electricity, a full and fast shift to “full decarbonisation” is “challenging.

After Friday’s event, Corrêa do Lago told Climate Home News that “the suggestions and the key milestones of the roadmap are not clear yet”. He added that the next step for the COP30 presidency will be to “sit down in July and August to really prepare” the content.

The veteran Brazilian diplomat added that the roadmap will have a section on the challenges of the transition and another section on solutions.

National fossil fuel roadmaps

Brazil, as COP30 president, is drawing up the global roadmap but its leader Lula da Silva has also ordered his officials to draw up a national roadmap. 

In April, France became the first and so far only nation to produce a roadmap, which amalgamated different existing energy and decarbonisation plans and targets. Colombia is reportedly drawing up a roadmap too, based on a draft document by academics.

On Friday, a coalition of nearly 100 civil society organisations called on the COP31 co-presidents Australia and Türkiye to both come up with national roadmaps in order to “lead by example”. Türkiye produces about a third of its electricity from coal, while Australia is the world’s third-largest fossil fuel exporter, the NGOs said.

But in the Brazil-led consultation meeting, a Norwegian negotiator downplayed the importance of separate national roadmaps for transitioning away from fossil fuels. 

While they can “have a supporting role”, the official said countries’ nationally determined contributions (NDCs) “must remain the primary vehicle for driving global climate transition.” 

NDCs are climate plans, usually containing emissions reduction targets, which the Paris Agreement states governments must update with higher ambition every five years. 

The post European, island states seek clear future for global roadmap to cut fossil fuels appeared first on Climate Home News.

A new paper details how the remnants of dead organisms strongly influence the fate of survivors.

Read more on E360 →

For decades, American politicians have been slow to take on climate change and curb carbon dioxide emissions, under the assumption that doing so might pass along costs to their voters. Ironically, their failure to rein in fossil fuel emissions has yielded the same result: Expenses for everyday Americans have soared as a result of more extreme flooding, fires, and heat.

“What’s striking is that already, households are bearing serious costs,” said Kimberly Clausing, a law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. She co-authored a paper from earlier this year finding that families were paying between $400 and $900 more each year because of the effects of climate change, with the costs above $1,300 in the 10 percent hardest-hit counties, many of them found in Florida, Louisiana, Nebraska, Colorado, and California. 

On Wednesday, the Commerce Department reported that the annual inflation rate reached 4.2 percent in May, the highest rate in three years. Though the war in Iran is mostly responsible for this recent increase, a surprising number of Americans are attributing the general economic pinch they’re feeling to the changing climate. Two-thirds of U.S. voters agree that global warming is affecting the cost of living to some degree, according to new survey data from the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, including most Democrats and moderate Republicans. Of those two-thirds, a majority of them said that climate change was driving up what they pay for groceries, utility bills, and home insurance.

Rising energy prices were at the top of people’s lists, a concern that some climate advocates are tapping into ahead of the midterm elections this November. On Monday, the LCV Victory Fund, a political action committee, announced that it will target “energy bill voters” with messages about how clean, affordable energy can trim their monthly expenses, and how Republicans have held back renewable power. That follows successes for Democrats in the off-year elections in 2025, where energy prices played a role in state races in Georgia, New Jersey, and Virginia.

There are many factors pushing up electricity prices, but in some parts of the country, efforts to revamp the electric grid to handle more extreme weather is the primary reason. In California, utilities are upgrading their infrastructure to reduce wildfire risk; in the Southeast, they are rebuilding after hurricanes and flooding and billing their customers for it. In Arizona, residents are cranking up the air conditioning during scorching heat and paying more for power simply because they’re using more AC.

Technicians conduct maintenance at electric facilities among the ruins of beachfront structures after the January 2025 wildfires in Los Angeles.
Qian Weizhong / VCG via Getty Images

Even Republican-leaning voters — 42 percent of conservative Republicans, and 57 percent of moderate ones — are linking their rising costs to global warming, according to the Yale survey. “It makes perfect sense that they would do so, given the results from our study, which show that the geographically rural areas are actually facing some of the highest costs,” Clausing said. From wildfires to hurricanes, rural areas are often facing the brunt of the damage. Her study found that the largest household costs occurred in parts of the West, the Gulf Coast, and Florida.

Utility bills, despite being a top political issue, are actually one of the smaller price-point impacts of climate change, according to Clausing’s research: Households are spending an average of about $35 more on electricity per year, compared with an extra $356 on homeowners’ insurance premiums, the biggest cost. Clausing, who owns a house in Portland, Oregon, said the insurance premium on her home skyrocketed from around $1,000 five years ago to about $2,200 today — an increase that her insurance company said was to help recoup the costs of wildfire damage in Oregon.

Another major category of costs in Clausing’s study was the health effects of climate change. As wildfire smoke grows more common, exposing people to harmful particulate matter, it’s leading to early deaths. The estimated economic damage of these premature deaths works out to $103 for every household in the United States each year. That’s not to mention the other ways climate change damages the public’s health, from lengthening allergy seasons to expanding the geographic spread of infectious diseases as temperatures warm, allowing ticks and mosquitoes to explore new territories. 

But it seems like many Americans haven’t made the connection: Only 35 percent of those in the Yale survey who agreed that climate change was driving up prices saw a link to higher health care costs. That’s because these health risks haven’t been adequately communicated to the public, said Anthony Leiserowitz, the director of the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication. “Health is one of the most powerful ways we have of saying, ‘Actually, this affects our lives right here, right now. It’s already affecting the people and places and things that we love,’” he said.

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Though most of the respondents thought climate change made groceries more expensive, it’s hard to measure the effect of extreme weather on food costs, according to Catherine Wolfram, a co-author of the study and a professor of applied economics at the MIT Sloan School of Management. That’s mainly because the United States’ food supply comes from all over the world, mitigating the impact of, say, a drought in Brazil or a heat wave in the Great Plains. Still, other research has found that hot summers can lead to higher food prices, with more increases projected as the world warms. 

As the effects of global warming grow more extreme, it’s becoming clear that they’re posing a problem for the budgets of lower-income Americans. Clausing is studying ways to design policies that tackle climate change without burdening poor families, through rebates or other mechanisms that can offset costs. 

“I’m glad people are connecting the dots,” Clausing said. “I think, at the moment, if you pursue better climate policy, the benefits to households, for the country as a whole, would exceed the costs.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline What’s driving up your expenses? Many Americans say climate change. on Jun 12, 2026.

Travis Terry lives in Forest Hills, a neighborhood in Queens about 5 minutes from an abandoned rail line. He describes the tracks, last used in 1962, as a “blight” plagued by illegal dumping. “It’s been sitting there for 65 years now,” he said, “and those of us in the community, we got tired of what it had become.” 

Terry has long seen great potential for a green space that would allow people to easily bike to Forest Park, the borough’s third largest park. He’s pursued this vision since 2011, advocating for a proposal, called QueensWay, to convert the 3.5 miles of idle railway into a 47-acre park.  

But some would rather the tracks, once the Rockaway Beach Branch of the Long Island Rail Road, become a subway line running north-south through New York’s largest borough. 

Andrew Lynch doesn’t see why it can’t be both. “When I saw this debate, I was like, ‘Man, none of you guys want to work together. Let me show you what’s up,’” Lynch told Grist. He wrote a blog post in 2016 outlining a project with rail service and green space. That led to the formation of QueensLink, a proposal to extend the subway’s M Train line and create 33 acres of parkland. 

All these years later, the two ideas remain at odds, a dispute that mirrors debates in other cities over how to repurpose such infrastructure — whether as transit, green space or some combination of the two. Nationwide, more than 25,000 miles of rail have been converted to recreational trails. The Atlanta Beltline is among the most prominent examples with its 22-mile loop of trails and parks, though plans to include light rail have stalled.

The debate in New York is happening even as the city continues expanding its subway system. It is spending $5.5 billion on the Interborough Express to connect Queens and Brooklyn, and $7.7 billion on phase two of Manhattan’s Second Avenue Subway. Queens, meanwhile, has shown steady growth since the pandemic, and residents make more commutes by car than those in any other borough. New York also has a history of ambitious rail-to-trail projects, including The High Line, and officials have spent more than a decade investing in equitable park access.

This long-running question now confronts Mayor Zohran Mamdani. While QueensWay’s first phase is expected to begin construction later this year, supporters of QueensLink are urging city and state officials not to foreclose the possibility of restoring rail service.

As an assemblyman representing parts of Queens, Mamdani expressed support for QueensLink in 2023. As mayor, however, he included $43 million for the QueensWay park project in his $124.7 billion annual budget. “The City remains committed to expanding green and open space across the boroughs and is actively exploring all available funding options to make that a reality,” a mayoral spokesperson told Grist.

Lynch said QueensLink supporters were “miffed” and “shocked” by that decision. A City Hall official told Grist the decision to finance the park does not preclude building the rail line as well.

Phase one of QueensWay, which would create a 5-acre linear park, is set to begin later this year. Phase Two, which would have added a 1.3 mile extension, was to be paid for with a $117 million grant from the federal Reconnecting Communities initiative, but Congress rescinded funding for that program when it passed the Big Beautiful Bill. 

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Mamdani’s staff recently told QueensLink supporters that the park project’s first phase is too far along to stop, according to Lynch, and said the administration will not rezone the land as park space. That preserves the possibility of also building the subway line, a point former Mayor Eric Adams’ administration made when it said one does not preclude the other. However, Lynch thinks the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, or MTA, which operates much of the region’s transit network, would balk at building a line on park land. 

Lynch said QueensLink is looking for Governor Kathy Hochul, who appoints the MTA’s board and plays a major role in drafting its budget, to support the project. Her office directed Grist to the MTA and New York City Hall for comment. 

The nonprofit Trust for Public Land has supported the park project since 2011. Tamar Renaud, its New York State director, said QueensWay will boost equity by eventually serving four of the 20 neighborhoods with the least amount of accessible park acreage. With 28 schools around the rail line, it would improve recreation for kids, while making the area more bikeable and walkable. “It was really about reconnecting communities that had been separated through these big infrastructure projects,” she said. 

QueensWay supporters see their project as more practical. A 2019 MTA report found that the QueensLink rail line would cost $8.1 billion, but the agency has since revised that to $5.9 billion and estimated it would serve 39,000 daily riders. “Reactivating the Rockaway Beach Branch with NYCT service has a high cost and serves a relatively modest number of riders,” the agency concluded. “This project would reduce auto usage and provide additional rail connections, but compared to other projects, the benefits are average for sustainability and resiliency.”

Advocates for the park project, on the other hand, put its cost at around $350 million. “I think we all recognize that after all these studies there wasn’t going to be a train,” Terry said.

Railway supporters argue the MTA’s cost estimate is high and its ridership estimate low. They hired the consulting firm Transportation Economics & Management Systems to evaluate the report; it placed the cost closer to $3.5 billion. A New York University report estimated it would serve around 75,000 daily riders; another found it would take 14,800 cars off the road each day. 

Eric Goldwyn, an expert on public transit project costs at the NYU Marron Institute, said QueensLink might not hugely boost ridership but that it would benefit operations by allowing busy trains on Queens Boulevard to run at a higher capacity. 

In Goldwyn’s view, QueensLink is the project that harmonizes rail and park. Like Lynch, he thinks the advancement of QueensWay would not be a good sign for QueensLink. “Once that first spade of dirt is turned over, the odds become… longer,” he said. “It’ll be harder and harder to envision QueensLink in the way that it’s been proposed.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline What is the best use for old railroad tracks? New Yorkers have opinions. on Jun 12, 2026.

This story is made possible through a partnership between Grist and The Flatwater Free Press, Nebraska’s first independent, nonprofit newsroom focused on investigations and feature stories.

Applause echoed through the halls of the Gage County courthouse. The county board had just approved new, more stringent wind energy regulations, and the overflow crowd of residents couldn’t contain themselves. 

Few in the crowded courthouse that day in September 2020 beamed brighter than Larry Allder. The Cortland-area resident helped lead the yearslong charge against wind energy’s looming expansion into the county. 

“It’s been a long road,” he told The Voice News after the vote.

Now six years later, another historically controversial energy source — nuclear power — could be coming. Last month, the Nebraska Public Power District, or NPPD, announced a list of four potential sites for a new nuclear power plant. Gage County, south of Lincoln on the border with Kansas, is on it. This time, though, Allder has no plans to mount an opposition.

“I think that’s a great idea. I like nuclear energy,” Allder said. “I think it’s the way of the future.”

Despite a legacy that often invokes fear, there are signs nuclear development won’t face the backlash that other energy sources, especially renewables, have generated for Nebraskans in recent years. “They were just trying to stick the wind turbines really close to my property, and I do not like wind energy,” Allder said. He considers the turbines to be “ugly.” More substantively, Allder thinks that wind and solar projects produce “very inefficient and very costly and very intermittent power.” Nuclear, however, he said, is “clean and it doesn’t take up much land space.”

Grist spoke with leaders in the four communities identified by NPPD — Beatrice, Sutherland, Norfolk, and Brownville— and most said their communities are open to a new nuclear project.

“I think the general consensus is still that we’re supportive of nuclear energy,” Madison County Commissioner Troy Uhlir said. “There’s definitely more people speaking up and saying, ‘No, not here,’ (but) it’s not overwhelming.”

Beatrice Mayor Bob Morgan said his community is excited to be in the top four site options.

In Sutherland, a few residents have voiced questions on safety, said Scott Meyer, chairman of the village board. Both Uhlir and Meyer believe those concerns can be calmed by education. 

“What I find pleasing and reinforcing is that there is a lot of support out there,” NPPD CEO Tom Kent told Grist. “Those communities are really interested in hosting and being a location for this kind of development, and Nebraska has always been a state that’s been very supportive of nuclear power.”

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Nationally, lawmakers in both parties have begun embracing nuclear power, as have everyday people like Allder. It also is being eyed by utilities, lured — amid growing demand for electricity — by its ability to generate large amounts of power without spewing climate-warming greenhouse gases.

Technological advancements offer another selling point. The next generation of nuclear power plants aims to solve problems the industry has historically grappled with, including their high costs, lengthy constructions, and safety concerns.

Proponents of nuclear say that advanced reactor plants like small modular reactors, or SMRs, could solve those problems that have long beset the industry. These reactors are also expected to be flexible, generating more or less power as needed, which can work well with renewables, said Joseph Giitter, a former senior executive at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. And the latest innovation wave has generated a massive amount of support from private tech companies and investors who are betting on nuclear as a solution for the spike in electricity demand from data centers. 

While projects involving new nuclear designs have started in Tennessee, Wyoming, and Washington, Nebraska is probably a decade away from seeing a new nuclear plant, which is why it’s important to start research now, Kent said. 

“When nuclear takes off, it’s going to take off quick. So we want to be ready to be in that first set of fast follower orders, right? Or we’ll miss the middle of the next decade,” he said.

NPPD was recently awarded over $27 million in cost-shared funding by the Department of Energy to apply for a federal permit needed to site a new nuclear plant. According to Kent, the funding will cover less than half of the application costs. In terms of designs, Kent says NPPD is considering designs similar to the small reactors being tested in Wyoming and Tennessee. But it remains to be seen whether this next generation of nuclear reactors can deliver what its proponents promise. 

The utility is also open to large-scale reactors, like the ones installed at Plant Vogtle in Georgia — a cautionary tale for Nebraska.

Georgia’s two new nuclear reactors started producing power in 2023 and 2024, 15 years after the utility applied for a license, according to the Associated Press. These reactors are more advanced than most operating in the U.S.. The project wrapped up years behind schedule and, at more than $30 billion, was over budget. In the end, the new reactors led to rate hikes for power customers, which fueled public backlash. 

Southern Company’s CEO, Chris Womack noted its subsidiary Georgia Power faced unique obstacles, including a nearly nonexistent workforce and supply chain, complications posed by the Fukushima nuclear accident in Japan in 2011 and the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, and the bankruptcy of the design contractor. 

But nuclear projects have historically run into significant delays and gone way over budget, said Edward Kee, CEO of Nuclear Economics Consulting Group. Large or small, these projects in the U.S. can be a gamble for utilities and their rate payers.

For context, NPPD’s Cooper Nuclear Station, which opened in 1974 and is the state’s only commercial nuclear plant in operation, cost about $313 million to build. Adjusted for inflation, that price tag translates to roughly $2.1 billion in today’s dollars. Omaha Public Power District’s now-retired Fort Calhoun Nuclear Station, which started operating in 1973, cost about $165 million to build. That would be roughly $1.2 billion today.

Sometimes, that gamble pays off, as happened in south Texas where, 20 years later, customers are experiencing lower power rates, Kee said. But in other cases, the projects never made it to completion. Since 2010, there have been at least 11 canceled commercial nuclear power reactor plans, according to the NRC. 

While new advanced reactors may minimize issues seen in Georgia, they too carry financial risks because they haven’t been tested, Giitter said. 

“The promise of the technology is there, but it hasn’t been proven yet,” Giitter said.

toolTips('.classtoolTips3','Carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and other gases that prevent heat from escaping Earth’s atmosphere. Together, they act as a blanket to keep the planet at a liveable temperature in what is known as the “greenhouse effect.” Too many of these gases, however, can cause excessive warming, disrupting fragile climates and ecosystems.');

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Nuclear in my backyard: A Nebraska utility is skirting the public backlash that plagues wind and solar on Jun 12, 2026.

Somali farmers and herders battered by droughts, floods and decades of conflict are starting to get help in the form of climate-smart crops and animals, new wells and restoration of barren landscapes to boost their resilience in a warming world.

Some of this support is being provided under Ugbaad, the Somali name for a new project meaning “fresh sprouting pasture”. Backed by an $80-million grant from the UN’s Green Climate Fund, it is enabling farmers to earn a more reliable living as climate shocks intensify. The project is also reducing conflict tensions among communities, according to a government representative. 

Abdiaziz Ibrahim Aden, adaptation and resilience lead at Somalia’s Ministry of Environment and Climate Change, said farmers who lost their land to floods and erosion have been able to rehabilitate it and plant crops like banana and sesame for export. “Their productivity is increasing now,” he told Climate Home News. 

He said the project, which aims to benefit over 2 million people in total, has made young people less vulnerable to recruitment by armed groups. Beyond improved water access for pastoralists, the initiative also includes ways to disseminate timely climate information to communities and build government capacity to keep land and ecosystems in better shape.

Nonetheless, Somalia remains one of the countries most vulnerable to climate change, with millions of its people facing food insecurity, displacement and recurring climate disasters. 

People queue to fill containers with water near displacement camps for people impacted by severe drought on September 3, 2022 in Baidoa, Somalia. (Photo: Ed Ram/Getty Images) People queue to fill containers with water near displacement camps for people impacted by severe drought on September 3, 2022 in Baidoa, Somalia. (Photo: Ed Ram/Getty Images)

Poor rains and major aid shortfalls have forced critical food and nutrition programmes to close, worsening hunger. The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, a global system used to measure hunger crises, has warned that nearly 2 million Somali children could face acute malnutrition this year. 

Climate change – a threat multiplier 

Somalia’s economy hinges on agriculture and repeated climate shocks continue to inflame tensions related to farming and food production. According to the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), every two in three conflicts in the country stems from competition over natural resources.

During drought periods, disputes often flare up among neighbouring communities over scarce water sources as herders move with their livestock in search of boreholes, Haji said. 

Clashes can quickly escalate in Somalia where many herders carry guns for protection, he added. “If two people meet at the water borehole and they fight over that area, then the war prolongs and extends from that zone to other zones,” he explained.

Aid agencies grapple with climate adaptation in fragile states  

Somalia is not alone. Across conflict-affected parts of Africa, climate change is fast becoming more than just an environmental challenge. From the shrinking of Lake Chad in the Sahel region to devastating floods in South Sudan and prolonged droughts across the Horn of Africa, stronger climate impacts are intensifying competition to maintain livelihoods in regions already struggling with weak governance, displacement and insecurity.

Alec Crawford, director of nature for resilience at the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD), described climate change as a “threat multiplier” that worsens already existing social and economic tensions. “It is a contributing factor to violence and instability and conflict, but it’s not the sole driver,” he emphasised. 

Fragile states coordinate peacebuilding and adaptation 

The growing overlap between climate vulnerability and insecurity is forcing governments and development agencies to rethink adaptation efforts. This was evident at a recent conference in Nigeria that brought together conflict-affected African countries including Burkina Faso, Somalia, Mali, South Sudan, Cameroon, Central African Republic and Chad. 

At the event, governments explored how peacebuilding can be integrated with their national climate adaptation plans, helping prevent conflict in communities facing mounting pressure over fertile land, water and other natural resources.

For many of these countries, none of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals will be achieved until peace and security are in place, Crawford said. They are currently trapped in a vicious cycle. “Some of these climate impacts are potentially worsening the conflict dynamics, while at the same time conflict is really getting in the way of reducing vulnerabilities and adapting to climate change,” he explained.

Politically fragile countries are increasingly looking for solutions to reduce the tensions within their borders that are preventing them from tackling climate change impacts. At the COP28 climate summit in Dubai in 2023, governments and aid agencies issued a joint call for “bolder collective action to build climate resilience at the scale and speed required in highly vulnerable countries and communities”. 

Crawford said many fragile states are overstretched and under-resourced because of conflict. He pointed to South Sudan as an example of a country simultaneously trying to house displaced people, rebuild schools and clinics, and restore basic infrastructure after war, making climate adaptation difficult to prioritise. However, ignoring climate risks could undermine any progress such countries manage to make, he warned. 

UN adaptation metrics exclude conflict

Another thorny problem is finding ways to track progress on climate adaptation in conflict-affected states. A set of indicators to measure how countries are doing in their efforts to implement the Paris Agreement’s Global Goal on Adaptation (GGA), finally agreed 10 years later at COP30 in Brazil, deliberately left out metrics relating to peace and conflict.

Katharina Schmidt, policy advisor at the NAP Global Network, a global initiative coordinated by IISD to help developing countries advance their climate adaptation planning, pointed to longstanding reluctance to formally integrate peace and conflict issues into core UN climate frameworks. This, she said, is partly because some countries want climate finance to stay separate from funding for peacebuilding and development. 

However, Schmidt said the absence of specific indicators in the GGA framework does not mean adaptation in fragile and conflict-affected states is being ignored. “Everybody agrees that there needs to be adaptation in [these] states,” she said, even if it is “often not reflected prominently in these negotiation documents”.

New data shows rich nations likely missed 2025 goal to double adaptation finance

This is why the NAP Global Network, which organised the recent conference in Abuja, is trying to strengthen coordination and peer learning among conflict-affected countries, helping them overcome some of the barriers that make adaptation planning difficult. 

Many lack the climate data and infrastructure needed to understand and respond to climate risks, in some cases because conflicts destroy weather stations and disrupt climate monitoring systems, Crawford said. To fill these gaps, the network is helping countries tap into existing global systems and open-source data platforms. 

Bridging the gap through the NAP process

For over a decade, the process for putting together National Adaptation Plans (NAPs), established under the UN climate framework in 2010, has helped countries identify climate vulnerabilities, integrate adaptation into long-term development planning and strengthen resilience to climate impacts. 

Crawford, who also works with the NAP Global Network, said one core pillar is to strengthen governments’ capacity to plan and implement adaptation measures across ministries. 

As part of its NAP process, Somalia conducted vulnerability assessments in several states and regions, helping the government understand how climate impacts, risks and adaptation needs vary across the country, according to government official Aden. This also revealed previously undocumented challenges facing different communities, from drought and water scarcity to coastal threats and land degradation.

“The NAP project helped Somalia identify some cases that were not known before,” he said, adding that it allowed the government to plan its budget to meet differing regional needs. 

In May 2026, Nigeria brought together African government representatives for a dialogue on strengthening national responses to their unique climate change vulnerabilities and risks, and identifying adaptation measures that reduce conflict and actively promote peace. (Photos: Jeremiah Ekpo) In May 2026, Nigeria brought together African government representatives for a dialogue on strengthening national responses to their unique climate change vulnerabilities and risks, and identifying adaptation measures that reduce conflict and actively promote peace. (Photos: Jeremiah Ekpo)

More than 6,000 kilometres away, the Liberian government, through its NAP process, is also identifying potential sources of tension around land rights, tenure and resource distribution, particularly as people fleeing conflict in Burkina Faso cross into Liberia through Ivory Coast. 

Arthur Becker, Liberia’s NAP coordinator, said Liberia’s ongoing NAP review process will incorporate peacebuilding considerations that were largely absent from its current 2020-2030 adaptation plan. 

The NAP process aims to help countries move beyond short-term responses to climate disasters, Crawford said.

“It’s really about looking to the medium and long term and saying, this is how the climate is changing within our country, this is going to have fundamental impacts on our development trajectory – how do we put adaptation to climate change at the heart of that development trajectory?”

Nigeria addresses conflict and climate risks together

Nigeria, which is already grappling with multiple security challenges linked to resource competition and environmental pressures, is also integrating peacebuilding into its NAP.

A climate risk and vulnerability assessment found that factors such as drought and desertification across northern Nigeria have made food less available and encouraged criminality and banditry. Down south, sea level rise, coastal erosion and flooding are destroying livelihoods and property and displacing people. Those impacts are increasingly fuelling tensions between communities and driving protests over environmental injustice.

Nigeria’s deadly flood exposes urgent need for climate adaptation plan

Kayode Aboyeji, Nigeria’s NAP coordinator, said it was in the course of the NAP process that “we realised that some of the conflicts in Nigeria are not just politically driven but that environmental issues, demand for natural resources, [and the] threat of climate change are some of the triggers.”

He said Nigeria has now integrated conflict sensitivity and peacebuilding into its NAP – which has yet to be formally approved and published – recognising the need for climate responses that do not worsen existing tensions. It is also raising awareness among key actors, including the Ministry of Agriculture and Water Resources, around the importance of adopting conflict-sensitive approaches to climate adaptation. 

In addition, Nigeria has developed adaptation strategies tailored to each of its geopolitical zones, which local authorities can use to better address climate-related challenges in their regions. 

Finance a major barrier to implementation

While countries are increasingly integrating peacebuilding into their climate adaptation planning, financing such work on the ground remains a major challenge, especially for fragile African states already grappling with insecurity, debt and weak public finances.

Nigeria’s Aboyeji said the country’s NAP requires resources to roll it out across the country. While the government is looking to development bodies, philanthropies and the private sector for support, it is also exploring domestic financing mechanisms such as green bonds and budget appropriations to help fund implementation. 

For countries like South Sudan – where ongoing instability continues to undermine the government’s ability to finance adaptation measures – the struggle is even more pronounced. Peter Jonglei Kureng, acting deputy director for its Budget Policy Directorate, said the government tries to include adaptation in national budgets, but implementation often stalls because the promised funds are never released.

“We can budget for it, but when it’s time for execution, there is no money,” he said.

Can climate funders overcome fear to tread in conflict zones? 

Liberia faces similar constraints. Becker said adaptation interventions are expensive, and the country is committing domestic resources to climate action even while expecting the bulk of financing to come from international partners. 

The financing gap remains one of the biggest hurdles to adaptation efforts. New OECD data shows that wealthy nations are likely to have missed their 2025 goal of doubling adaptation finance for developing countries, with funding reaching just under $35 billion in 2024 – far below estimated needs.

While international support remains non-negotiable and should be increased, especially for fragile countries, Crawford said they cannot rely solely on external funding, especially as many donors are cutting their overseas development assistance. 

Governments will also need to explore how to harness more domestic resources, while recognising the role private-sector actors can play, he added.

“Advocating for more of that financing flowing into adaptation is going to be crucial, because after all the work that goes into NAPs, it’s essential that they turn into concrete measures and don’t just gather dust on a shelf,” he said.

The post Climate adaptation helps African nations tackle rising conflict over resources appeared first on Climate Home News.

Environmentalists, myself included, pay close attention to gloomy topics like species extinctions and Earth’s dwindling life-support systems. It’s not for the love of dark matters that we keep tabs on depressing metrics. Rather, it’s with the hope that they teach us something and guide us toward mitigating future losses.

On the biological front, about a million species could be taken by an extinction vortex by the end of the century. That’s also when linguists estimate about one-third of the world’s 7,000-plus Indigenous languages will go silent — and with them, most of their related cultures.

This is not uplifting news, to be sure. Nonetheless, people concerned with environmental protection can learn a lot from language extinctions. As it turns out, the survival of languages and species may well be linked. And when we wrap our minds around this, the panorama for conservation actually gets a little brighter.

A Confluence of Curious Similarities

Linguistic variation around the world caught the imagination and attention of naturalists going back at least to the Victorian era of exploration, when folks like Alfred Russell Wallace and Charles Darwin traveled across the wilds of South America and the Malay Archipelago.

Wallace marveled at the linguistic diversity shown by communities spread along the edges of the watery world in the Amazon basin and dotting the highlands of New Guinea. He even wrote out partial lexicons to aid in communicating with his guides. Darwin, in his ruminations on the descent of man, went so far as to remark that languages and species are “curiously the same.” He was thinking about human evolution and wondering if languages might evolve by natural selection. With his thoughts on the flowering of languages, he did not give time to their senescence.

It would take more than 100 years, after the concurrent publication of Darwin and Wallace’s theory of natural selection, for scientists to uncover the full extent of global linguistic variation, and also the languages’ risk of extinction. Today the patterns emerging from these discoveries hold lessons for environmentalists.

One of the pioneering explorations was conducted by Larry Gorenflo (Penn State University) and his team of conservation biologists and linguists. Their labors produced some profound findings.

First off, the places on Earth with outrageously high numbers of species also have outrageously high numbers of Indigenous languages. Furthermore, many of the species and languages of these hyper-rich spots are endemic. They don’t occur, much less co-occur, anywhere else.

Gorenflo and team went on to examine language diversity in regions that conservationists designate as “priority areas.” A second striking fact emerged: High-priority conservation regions are home to nearly 70% of the world’s languages.

These results demonstrate we can either win big or lose big, depending on the success of our efforts in these doubly diverse hotspots. It’s like playing a Daily Double, with “How to save life on Earth?” as the question to the answer.

Lullaby for Language

Extinction is forever. Except when it’s not. This isn’t a reference to de-extinction and the facsimiles brought into existence by technology. It’s about languages.

When the last speaker of a language falls into eternal slumber, so does their language. Linguists say that such languages are “dormant.” Dormancy is different from the extinction of biological species, at least in principle.

Sleeping languages can, hypothetically, experience reawakening. That is, they can be spoken again after a period of dormancy, but only under special circumstances. At a minimum there must be a written record of the lexicon and syntax.  For instance, Hebrew came back in the 19th century after a long slumber.

Sadly, however, the vast majority of Indigenous languages only exist in the oral form, making linguistic resurrections nearly impossible. This is why dormancy and extinction are, for all intents and purposes, synonymous. It’s also why we must work to document and teach Indigenous languages before they nod off.

High Tolls for Both Languages and Species

Just as the vastness of language varieties was unearthed, the global decline became apparent as well. Nowadays researchers race to figure out what drives language endangerment. Lindell Bromham and Xia Hua (Australian National University) are two such investigators, who lead a large interdisciplinary team analyzing the subject.

In a recent cutting-edge study of massive scope and scale, the team uncovered the principal determinants that drive the downturn. One of the top three is strangely simple: roads.

“Greater road density, which may encourage population movement, is associated with increased (language) endangerment,” Bromham and team conclude.

You might say that roads compromise the linguistic intactness of a landscape. Conservation biologists, well versed in the dangers that roads pose to natural ecosystems, should relate to that.

A South American tapir crosses a fresh road cut across fragmented habitat in Mato Grosso, Brazil. Photo by Leandro Maracahipes, with permission to use.

This is not to suggest that road effects are perfectly analogous in their impacts on languages and species. There are major differences. They have to do with the paradoxical capacity of roads to both create and destroy connections.

For remote ethnolinguistic groups, a frontier highway increases connectivity. Distances that once required weeks or more to cross may be traversed in hours or days. Lines of communication suddenly open — for material goods, of course, but also for the transmission of diverse ideologies and ways of life.

When this happens with high speed or without guardrails, a collision with cultural traditions and language preservation ensues. Often, such roads are the handiwork of large industries, looking to make money in the frontier, usually at the expense of local peoples whose lands they usurp.

One of the first casualties of enhanced contact is the local vernacular. This is a big blow to culture, potentially harming people’s health, wellbeing, and identity. The loss is accompanied by a shift to another language, usually the parlance of government, business, and education. A new sociocultural reality arises as the highway expansion continues.

By contrast, roads harm ecosystems by severing connections. Effectively, highways fracture natural populations and break the fundamental rules of ecology.

Renowned ecologist and conservation biologist Dr. William Laurance (James Cook University) tells me that bulldozing through forest expanses is like opening Pandora’s box.

“It’s because of the transformative effect that (roads) have,” he says. “They’re the single most important proximate driver of environmental change and degradation. A road goes in and six months later the forest is split open like a splayed fish.”

In distant lands, far from government regulation and oversight, a motorway quickly spawns ghost roads — unauthorized byways branching from the central transit spine. In short order, plantation monocultures flatten forests and open-pit mines erupt like infectious pocks. The cleavage of habitats puts native plant and animal populations at greater risk of declines, even extinctions. Curbside, roadkill piles up.

So while highways and their byways exert harm in different ways, they are nonetheless critical factors that must be reckoned with, for both conservationists and linguists.

We Don’t Need No Education?

The work by Bromham and team produced a result that may run counter-intuitive to every reader of this piece. Next to roads, say the investigators, the biggest threat to languages is formal education.

Educators may shake their heads, but there’s good evidence that Bromham and colleagues are right. They argue that monolingual education can lead to language shifts, with local Indigenous languages yielding to rising tongues. Young people, looking ahead to professional careers, may be strongly incentivized to adopt the language that advances their aspirations.

Various lines of evidence suggest this is, indeed, what happens. An example comes from Papua New Guinea, a tiny nation in Melanesia whose name graces the very top of the list of language-rich countries. That diversity is endangered, in large part, due to high school education, say Alfred Kik (University of Goroka) and Vojtěch Novotný (Czech Academy of Sciences). They’re long-term investigators in Papua New Guinea who have been documenting students’ Indigenous language skills and knowledge of local flora and fauna.

Their work demonstrates a “precipitous” decline in both. The result derives, they argue, from the push for children to learn English, which is used in schools and perceived to be the language of opportunity. The shift is also related to the spread of Tok Pisin, a type of pidgin English used extensively as the lingua franca in multilingual settings, including cafeterias and playgrounds.

The message is not that formal education should be eliminated for the sake of global linguistic diversity. The lesson, rather, is that the language of instruction, which is usually determined by education policy and funding availability, is highly consequential. Multilingual education is a possible antidote, especially in the context of environmental education.

Nature and Knowledge

K. David Harrison (Swarthmore and Vin University), an environmental linguist, emphasizes the “nature-centric” qualities of Indigenous tongues. They are distinguished, he writes, by the great diversity of words that describe plants and animals and the way that grammar encodes information about the world around them.

Harrison attributes nature-centrism to longstanding, intimate relationships between Indigenous speakers and their natural surroundings. It reflects a mindset in which people are part and parcel of nature, not separate entities.

For oral languages, words are key to the transmission of traditional ecological knowledge. This refers to a body of information and concepts held collectively by community members. As such, it is a living, evolving, and growing library that is honed and built incrementally over time and comes to life in use. When language goes extinct, so does the knowledge it holds.

The continued existence of ethnolinguistic groups in remote, harsh, and untrammeled areas is proof that knowledge and communication skills ensure sustainable ways of life. Gorenflo argues that, with a million species at risk of extinction, we should have regard for those who demonstrate a history of conservation success.

“Traditional ecological knowledge provides a glimpse into how people adapt to, and use, resources without destroying them,” Gorenflo tells me.

Along the same vein, Kik is racing against time to document the traditional ecological knowledge of the elders in the highlands of Papua New Guinea. He says it’s an effort to keep language and nature alive.

“Traditional ecological knowledge plays an important role in biodiversity conservation, sustainability, and natural resource management,” he tells me. “It plays a crucial role. If we lose language, we lose knowledge, and then there is a problem for environmental conservation. This will have impacts,” he warns.

Environmentalism, Language, and Culture

As we learn more from the results of interdisciplinary investigations, like those mentioned here, lessons for environmentalists emerge.

The first, of course, is to do more. Conservation biologists and linguists benefit greatly from cross-pollination, and the cause of language and species can profit, too.

In the meantime we know there are key action items that can be focal points for the short term. They include allocating the always-slender conservation monies toward diverse eco-linguistic landscapes, which are now well-documented by the mapping studies of Gorenflo and others.

Other priorities are to support the cataloguing of Indigenous languages and ethnobiological knowledge while speakers can tell their stories. In classroom settings, especially in locations where Indigenous tongues are still spoken, there should be real efforts to include multilingual programming, especially in relation to environmental education. Even better, where elders are able to share, their original voices should be heard.

Undoubtedly today’s environmentalists stand to derive great insights from supporting Indigenous groups in leading their own kinds of conservation. Most importantly, nature and knowledge will be the biggest beneficiaries. But first we must first embrace the idea that the extinction of languages and cultures is an environmental issue.

Republish this article for free! Read our reprint policy. Previously in The Revelator:

Decolonizing Species Names

The post The Extinction of Languages Is an Environmental Issue appeared first on The Revelator.

Summer is almost upon us, and with it comes opportunities to enjoy what our planet has to offer — or enhance your understanding of the environmental issues that affect us all.

We’ve collected several great new books about birds, reptiles and amphibians, green gardening, and climate change. They offer wonderful insights into the natural world and how to enjoy and protect it.

We’ve also paired some of these books with related reads for young people, so kids and adults can explore and discuss the beauty and important challenges facing our wildlife and environment together IRL.

We’ve adapted the books’ official descriptions below, and the link in each title goes to the publisher’s page. You can also find any of these titles through your local bookseller and library.

 

Eco Revolution: Climate Justice, Community, and the Fight for Our Planet

by Maya Penn

With 15 years of hands-on experience, award-winning environmental activist Maya Penn writes resoundingly about the ever-growing threat of the climate crisis, putting the world on notice that we’ve not only entered into a once-in-a-generation era of social and environmental justice advocacy but a deep-rooted overlap between environmental crises and inequities.

This book chronicles sustainability history and highlights unsung eco-warriors, offering solutions for a more sustainable and equitable world, exploring our collective connection to the natural world through inherited ecology and Traditional Ecological Knowledge passed down through Indigenous cultures, which used naturally occurring ecosystems to create thriving, functional societies and how this now translates to our modern understanding about sustainability.

Penn looks at the current green movements around the world and how they have discovered new approaches to sustainable living, and how we can use our creativity to bring about real change. Penn also looks at the future — and how we can remain optimistic in the midst of crisis.

 

Owls: Nocturnal Birds of Prey From Around the World

by David Alderton

Owls have been a source of fascination and awe throughout history. In Indian folklore owls represent wisdom and helpfulness, while in Ancient Greece they were seen as a good omen if sighted before a battle. Today owls are often kept as pets by bird lovers and can be found in woodland and forests from the Canadian Arctic to the deserts of the Arabian Peninsula. Full of fun facts and expert insights, Owls introduces these iconic birds in all their variety. Did you know that owls can rotate their necks 270 degrees, or that an owl’s ears are asymmetrical? Or that owls are considered apex predators? Or that the tiniest owl in the world is the elf owl, a mere five inches tall, while the largest North American owl is the great gray owl at 32 inches tall? Or that barn owls swallow their prey whole — skin, bones, and all — and they eat up to 1,000 mice each year?

With chapters divided into type of owl — barn and grass owls, typical owls, snowy, horned and eagle owls, wood owls, pygmy owls, and owlets and nesting — this book examines these superb aerial hunters in over 200 vivid photographs.

 

Cold-Blooded Murder: Reptiles and Amphibians on the Brink of Extinction

by Craig Stanford

Around the world reptile and amphibian species are facing grave threats to their survival: Habitat destruction due to logging, agriculture, development, commercial exploitation and wildlife trade, to say nothing of climate change. Examples include Galápagos giant tortoises slaughtered for meat, pets and decorative items, Caribbean rock iguanas driven to the brink of extinction by invasive species such as cats and dogs, commercial exploitation of the ploughshare tortoise, severely threatened by poaching for the illegal pet trade, and the critically endangered Cuban crocodile for its valuable skin.

In Cold-Blooded Murder, Craig Stanford tells the stories of dozens of endangered reptiles and amphibians, depicting the ecological roles and unique characteristics of each species. He takes readers on a globe-spanning journey, revealing the diversity and beauty of the creatures with whom we share our world. He also highlights conservation projects that are protecting critically endangered animals, sharing inspiring success stories while acknowledging the challenge of saving species. This gripping and poignant book shows why we should be fascinated by reptiles and amphibians — and strive to prevent their extinction.

 

The Gardener’s Mindset: A Gardening Book Connecting With Nature Through Plants

by Stephen Orr

A reflection on being a gardener, this absorbing collection of essays and photographs by the former editor-in-chief of Better Homes and Gardens examines the restorative power of gardening while recounting Orr’s own challenges in the garden, offering advice on growing green things.

This book helps readers understand not just how to garden but how to think about it. Orr brings his musings and practical advice to gardeners everywhere, no matter what skill level. Gorgeous photographs and easy projects range from cultivating a color scheme to building a wildlife habitat, and Orr gives practical advice on how to cultivate plants that stay resilient in the face of climate change.

On Eating: The Making and Unmaking of My Appetites

by Alicia Kennedy

Author and journalist Alicia Kennedy’s captivating new book is a deeply personal work that asks: Can we eat and cook in a way that’s true to ourselves, roots us in the places we call home, and helps define our politics and ethics? Guided by curiosity and a hunger for flavor and experience, she posits that we don’t have to choose between what is delicious and what can sustain our planet and ourselves.

On Eating is not only a provocative bildungsroman and a celebration of desire but a challenge to each of us to consider our own relationship with food and how our need to eat — to live — affects the world.

 

Insect Safari: Exploring the Wondrous World of Everyday Bugs

by Margie Patlak

Join veteran science writer Margie Patlak on a fascinating adventure as she explores the ever-more-astounding world of insects — all in her own backyard. It started when she took a close-up snapshot of a bee in her backyard; that was the start of a years-long passion for cataloging and understanding the tiny creatures that were all around her. This book showcases the superpowers, alien anatomies, and striking untold behaviors and thinking abilities of bugs hidden in plain sight in backyards, parks, gardens, and even in the flowerpots that dot city courtyards and balconies.

Even more intriguing is the book’s reporting on the plethora of recent scientific findings revealing there’s more to the inner lives and behaviors of insects than people ever thought possible. Who knew wasps use tools and recognize faces, bees play with balls and do math, ants invented farming way before we did, and even fruit flies mull over their mating choices? These findings reinforce the notion that we aren’t the only intelligent beings on Earth and tease people’s curiosity about the alien life right here on their own planet.

 

Healing the Land Teaches Us Who We Are: How Indigenous Cultural Resistance Can Restore the Earth, Recover Community, and Create Sustainable Futures

by Maceo Carrillo Martinet, Ph.D.

Rooted in Indigenous wisdom and a four-element framework, this book invites readers to rediscover and re-embody the truth that caring for ourselves and caring for the living Earth are one and the same. Find how climate solutions are still possible and already exist, practiced by communities around the world. Explicitly decolonial, this book offers a framework rooted in reciprocity, resistance, and kinship with the living Earth and is built around four elements:

1. 1. Water: How ancient Indigenous water-harvesting technologies are vital for sustaining water, land, and community.
   2. Earth: How successful community land stewardship continues to support ecological health and human life in spite of colonial desecration.
   3. Fire: How “Indigenous fire” — frequent, low-intensity burns rooted in deep cultural relationship — functions as a crucial medicine for restoring forest health, preventing wildfires, and sustaining cultural and environmental resilience.
   4. Air: The profound connection between linguistic diversity and biodiversity — and how language can be nurtured to heal and awaken humans.

Combining these four elements shows us how enduring human and ecological systems are built upon the interconnectedness of collective action, cultural appreciation, and diverse, restorative relationships with nature.

 

Noticing: Intimate Encounters With the Natural World

by Richard Louv

Long beloved for his insightful, inspiring nature writing, Richard Louv returns with his most personal book yet. Noticing is about discovering who you are by exploring the natural world. Louv shows how, by tapping into the 30 or more human senses, readers can develop skills — sensory, scientific, artistic, and spiritual —to see and experience the other worlds of nature.

Through personal essays, rich with descriptions of the California wilderness around his home in the most biodiverse county in the nation, Louv draws on wisdom from influences as far-reaching as neuroscience, nature photography, Indigenous traditions, and mindfulness to foster what he calls “bio enchantment.” He offers a new, deeper understanding of what it means to see a tree, know a fox, and to become fully human.

Books for young people to explore this summer, including titles that can be paired with the selections above.

Who’s Making That Big STINK?!

by Darrin Lunde, illustrated by Erica J. Chen

Ages 3-7

Ew! Who smells like rotten eggs and smelly feet? Yuck! Whose burps smell like cow poop? Find out which animals stink (and why) in this reeky, cheeky guessing game. Animals make all sorts of smells for all sorts of reasons. Can you guess the stinker from its stink? Simple clues and laugh-out-loud art make this guessing game perfect for rowdy read-aloud times. Fun facts from a world-class zoologist reveal the science behind the stink. Readers are introduced to the striped skunk, the stink bird, the musk ox, the corpse flower, the bombardier beetle, the sea hare, and the binturong.

 

Plastic Problem: 60 Small Ways to Reduce Waste and Help Save the Earth

By Aubre Andrus, illustrated by Dynamo Ltd Illustrator

Ages 6 to Grown-ups

Learn how to transform yourself from a plastic polluter to a plastic patroller with this practical, easy-to-understand book. Actions are big and small, so what can you do to address climate change? It’s time to step up and end our toxic relationship with plastic. It’s actually easy when you do it in small steps. Whether it’s buying in bulk, bringing reusable bags to the grocery store, or using zero-waste toothpaste, this guide offers advice on the practical ways to minimize your plastics footprint. This guide not only shows you how but why it’s worth investigating our relationship with plastics. A great book for adults and children to work together making changes instead of gaming or doomscrolling.

 

Owls (National Geographic Kids Readers, Level 1)

By Laura Marsh

Ages 4-6

National Geographic presents young readers with an exploration of the feathery world of adorable owls. Follow these curious-looking creatures through their wooded habitats, and learn how owls raise their young, hunt, and protect themselves. Beautiful photos and carefully leveled text make this book perfect for reading aloud or for independent reading.

Pairs well with Owls: Nocturnal Birds of Prey From Around the World

 

The Ultimate Book of Reptiles: Your Guide to the Secret Lives of These Scaly, Slithery, and Spectacular Creatures!

by Ruchira Somaweera and Stephanie Warren Drimmer

Age 8-12 years

Sink your fangs into the hidden worlds of these scaly and sensational creatures with leading reptile scientist and National Geographic Explorer Dr. Ruchira Somaweera as your guide.

Meet the coolest cold-blooded animals ever. From lizards to snakes, turtles to crocodiles, something called a tuatara, and even enormous prehistoric reptiles (think real-life sea monsters!), you’ll discover what makes a reptile a reptile; how these creatures live, hunt, hide, and raise their young, and the wild adaptations that make them so unique. Learn which snake is the most venomous on the planet and which are surprisingly gentle creatures, which reptile is born with a highly developed third eye in its forehead, and which one is so tiny it could balance on the tip of your finger — plus loads of super important conservation information and impactful ways to join the fight to save endangered reptile species right from home.

Pairs nicely with Cold-Blooded Murder: Reptiles and Amphibians on the Brink of Extinction

 

Amphibians and Reptiles: A Compare and Contrast Book

by Katharine Hall

Ages 4-9

What makes a frog an amphibian but a snake a reptile? Both classes may lay eggs, but they have different skin coverings and breathe in different ways. Pages of fun facts will help kids identify each animal in the class like a pro. Using stunning photographs and simple nonfiction text to get kids thinking about the similarities and differences between these two animal classes, this picture book includes a four-page For Creative Minds section in the back of the book and a 67-page cross-curricular Teaching Activity Guide online. Amphibians and Reptiles is vetted by experts and designed to encourage parental engagement. Its extensive back matter helps teachers with time-saving lesson ideas, provides extensions for science, math, and social studies units, and uses inquiry-based learning to help build critical thinking skills in young readers.

Pairs nicely with Cold-Blooded Murder: Reptiles and Amphibians on the Brink of Extinction

 

Force of Nature

by Melissa Clark

Ages 12-18

This fresh, smart, funny young adult book asks the question: What if Mother Nature was a teenage girl? Chloe Lovejoy is a straight-C student, a girl with a crush on the cutie from chorus, an all-powerful being responsible for taking care of the planet … or perhaps all three. Chloe finds out on her 16th birthday, when she unexpectedly inherits the role of Mother Nature from her grandmother. Overwhelmed, when the unthinkable happens and Grandma is gone, Chloe is left to oversee the natural laws of the world all by herself.

A unique coming-of-age story about a teen girl rising to the occasion, even when she feels completely in over her head.

Pairs nicely with The Gardener’s Mindset: A Gardening Book Connecting With Nature Through Plants

Make your sunny days (and rainy days) this spring and summer fun and engaging for yourself and those young people in your life. You can find hundreds of additional environmental book recommendations in the “Revelator Reads” archives.

Let us know what you’re reading: Drop us a line at comments@therevelator.org

The post New Environmental Books: Spring-to-Summer Reads to Brighten and Enlighten appeared first on The Revelator.

There’s a particular weight to memory when you’ve lived through a time that others now only reference in shorthand. I don’t mean nostalgia. I mean the physical act of remembering who is missing.

In the 1980s and early 1990s, as AIDS moved through my community with a speed and indifference that still feels impossible to explain, I had address books that became, over time, records of absence. Names crossed out. Numbers that no longer rang. Whole clusters of friends and colleagues gone. Not abstractly, not statistically — specifically. People with voices, habits, jokes, plans. People who should have had the chance to grow older.

They didn’t.

At the same time, I was an undergraduate in marine biology, expected to keep pace — labs, exams, problem sets — as if the world were intact. Animal physiology, genetics, statistics, organic chemistry. Show up. Perform. Pass. All while a plague burned through my community with terrifying precision.

There was no accommodation for grief. No pause. No recognition that anything unusual was happening. The expectation was continuity — business as usual — no matter what was being lost.

And while that was happening, the federal government — under Ronald Reagan — withheld urgency in a way that still feels difficult to describe without anger. Years passed before the crisis was even named at the highest level. The silence was ambient, structural. It told us exactly how much our lives were worth in the hierarchy of concern.

So we filled the silence ourselves.

We marched. We organized. We protested in the streets and in front of federal buildings and in hospital wards. I remember the lines of police in riot gear, the pressure of bodies pushing forward, the stinging waft of tear gas, the sound of voices refusing to be contained. I remember the fear and the adrenaline and the clarity that comes when you understand that no one is coming to save you.

You either act or you disappear.

My generation built something out of that refusal. Not just activism but systems — care networks, research pipelines, legal strategies, cultural shifts. It was blood and sweat and grief. It was also ingenuity and persistence. It forced recognition where there had been none. It changed policy, medicine, and public understanding.

We didn’t win everything. But we won enough to believe that progress, once secured, might hold.

Now I’m in my 60s. There are more years behind me than ahead. This is supposed to be the part where you take a breath. Where you look around and see what endured. Where you enjoy, at least in part, the world you helped fight into being.

Instead I’m watching something else.

A kind of thinning. A quiet unraveling. A great forgetting. I’m watching it in civil rights language. I’m watching it in public institutions. And I’m watching it just as clearly in the environmental work I’ve spent my life in — where the stories we tell about land, water, and who belongs in them are being quietly rewritten.

The language shifts first. What was once widely understood becomes contested again. Terms that carried hard-won meaning — equity, inclusion, justice — are recast as excess, as ideology, as something to be rolled back in the name of neutrality. The current administration under Donald Trump has leaned into that reframing, encouraging a broader cultural move to strip away the very frameworks that made broader participation possible.

It’s familiar, in the way bad patterns often are.

You don’t erase history outright. You erode it. You question its premises. You remove it from curricula. You flatten it into something unthreatening or dismiss it as irrelevant. Over time the edges blur, the urgency fades, and the lessons become optional.

What makes this process so effective is its efficiency. Recast hard-fought struggles under a single dismissive label — “DEI” — and you don’t have to argue against their substance. You simply make them suspect. From there the cascade is predictable. Funding becomes conditional. Curricula are scrutinized. Research agendas narrow. Writing, teaching, and public engagement that reflect lived realities begin to carry professional or financial risk. Not always through explicit bans, but through signals — what is rewarded, what is questioned, what quietly disappears.

Fear does the rest. Institutions grow cautious. Individuals self-edit. The story contracts. And over time a generation comes of age not just without the full history, but with a lingering sense that perhaps those earlier gains were excessive, that something went too far. That equality and justice themselves were the overreach.

And alongside that, something even more unsettling: the return of silence from people who know better.

Allies who once spoke up now hesitate. Institutions hedge. The language becomes cautious, then vague, then absent. Even much of the media — consolidated, risk-averse, and increasingly billionaire-owned — pulls its punches, shaping silence as much as it breaks it. The same dynamic that defined the early years of the AIDS crisis, the gap between what was happening and what was publicly acknowledged, begins to widen anew.

There is, however, a distinction worth naming. The silence of the Reagan years was neglect — devastating in its indifference but defined by what was not done. What we’re seeing now is more deliberate. Federal agencies are being directed to reshape the narrative itself — to remove language, narrow scope, and determine whose experiences are permitted to remain visible. The effect may echo the past, but the mechanism has changed. This is not just silence. It is its construction.

That silence carries a memory for those of us who have seen it before.

As Pride Month arrives, we’re asked — publicly, collectively — to celebrate how far things have come. And there’s been real progress worth marking. But memory doesn’t move on a calendar. For some of us, it remains immediate, shaped by what it took to get here — the years when a “normal” life was never really on offer, when the choice was to fight or risk erasure. Sacrifice isn’t always something you commemorate cleanly. It lingers. It returns. In certain moments, it opens wounds again, often accompanied by a quieter, more persistent weight: the survivor’s question of why I am still here when so many are not.

We learned, very early on, what it meant. “Silence = Death” wasn’t rhetorical flourish. It was observation.

The throughline doesn’t belong only to the LGBTQ+ community. It runs through the broader arc of civil rights in this country.

Black communities fought to be seen in a nation structured to abuse and ignore them. Asian American communities refused to disappear into exclusion and incarceration. Indigenous nations resisted erasure from land and history. Women refused the legal and cultural frameworks that reduced them to property.

None of these struggles were granted recognition voluntarily. Each required pressure against systems that preferred quiet. These histories are not separate from environmental protection. They shaped it. And now, as those same voices are pushed to the margins again, the consequences are showing up in the places we claim to protect.

And here’s where the environmental story enters more fully — because public lands and waters have never just been about scenery. They’re where this country tells itself who it is.

Walk through a national park, a monument, a protected shoreline, and you’re walking through a narrative. These places carry the imprint of who was displaced, who resisted, who built, who endured. They are supposed to hold the full story — messy, uncomfortable, unfinished.

That’s precisely why they are now being rewritten.

What’s less clear to me is what is ultimately gained by narrowing that story. I understand the intent — the impulse to recast this country as the product of a singular lineage, to smooth complexity into something more orderly, more reassuring. There is a kind of counterfeit comfort in that version of history: simpler, less contested, easier to claim. But it comes at a cost. Because the fuller story of American lands and waters — of Indigenous stewardship, of displacement and resistance, of communities shaping and being shaped by these places — is not a burden. It is the substance of what “out of many, one” has always meant. To strip that away is not to clarify who we are. It is to trade a living, contested inheritance for something thinner, quieter, and far less true.

Recent directives have pushed federal agencies to scrub or soften references to slavery, Indigenous dispossession, civil rights struggles, LGBTQ+ history, and even climate science from the very places meant to preserve them. Exhibits have been altered, language removed, context narrowed. In some cases the stories of entire communities are being reduced or erased in the name of removing “divisive” narratives.

This isn’t just cultural housekeeping. It’s structural.

Because those same communities — the ones whose stories are now being minimized — were often central to the modern conservation movement itself. Indigenous stewardship shaped landscapes long before they were designated as parks. Black, Latino, and Asian communities have borne disproportionate environmental burdens while also driving environmental justice movements that expanded what conservation even means. LGBTQ+ advocates helped build coalitions, institutions, and public will at moments when environmental protection needed it most.

To erase those voices from the story of public lands is to do more than distort history. It is to narrow the present.

If conservation is recast as something neutral, apolitical, and disconnected from lived experience, then it becomes easier to exclude. Easier to decide who belongs in decision-making spaces and who does not. Easier to ignore whose communities are most affected by pollution, climate change, and ecological decline.

The land doesn’t just lose its history. It loses its witnesses. And once that happens, the decisions that follow begin to reflect that absence.

We see it in policy rollbacks framed as efficiency. In weakened protections justified as balance. In the sidelining of environmental justice as unnecessary complication. The same logic that dismisses DEI as “woke” is being applied to conservation — stripping away the very perspectives that made the field more honest, more effective, and more accountable.

Remove those perspectives and the system doesn’t become clearer: It becomes more brittle. Because ecosystems don’t exist in isolation from people. And conservation that refuses to see people clearly will fail to protect either.

This is the same pattern I watched unfold decades ago. Information existed. Communities spoke. The impacts were visible to those closest to them. But the systems in power chose not to see, not to listen, not to act.

That gap — between reality and recognition — is where harm multiplies.

There came a point when I threw my old address books away. The accumulation of loss had become unbearable — page after page of names, each one a life interrupted, a story cut short.

I think about it now as a warning. What we’re seeing this time around is a different kind of erasure. It starts quietly: histories softened, contexts removed, voices pushed to the margins. By the time the loss is visible, the record has already been rewritten.

What I carry from that time isn’t just grief. It’s a kind of pattern recognition — the moment systems begin to look away, the subtle softening of language to avoid discomfort, the speed with which urgency dissolves into ambiguity and then into silence.

And I know what it takes to interrupt that erasure. It takes people willing to challenge the rewriting of the story, to hold onto memory even as it’s being erased, and allies who understand that silence is not neutrality — it is participation in the outcome.

Because silence is still available as an option. It always is.

You can choose to look away. You can tell yourself that things aren’t that bad, or that they’ll correct themselves, or that it’s someone else’s fight. You can let the language erode, let the policies shift, let the history blur.

Or you can recognize the pattern and decide, again, not to accept it.

For those of us who have lived through earlier versions of this, that decision feels less like a choice and more like a reflex. We’ve seen where silence leads. We know what it costs.

And we know, just as clearly, what it takes to break it.

Republish this article for free! Read our reprint policy. Previously in The Revelator:

Environmental Groups: Earn Your Place at Pride

The post The Great Forgetting appeared first on The Revelator.

This may be true: That we live in a time of cosmic tragedy, when heedless human expansion has pushed many of the planet’s lives beyond bearing. Marvels such as the universe has never seen before — angels’ trumpets and vaquita porpoises — may be past saving. As ecosystems unravel, so do the cultures that depend on them, and the dreadful, dangerous human genius has not yet found the imagination or will to rescue them. I fear that this is so.

But this also is true: That a flock of butterflies is dancing around purple lupine in our field. They are tiny, the size of a buttercup, but blue. So blue they look like slips of summer sky, taken flight. Fender’s blue butterflies, Icaricia icarioides fenderii. They once seemed to have vanished from the world in the 1930s, when farmers plowed up most of the prairie flowers. Scientists got ready to pronounce them extinct. But then, in 1989, a young U.S. Fish and Wildlife biologist named Jarod Jebousek found a few butterflies on feral land next to our field.

So now, here they are. We see them lapping up nectar from the furry throats of wild iris. We find their eggs on the undersides of Kincaid lupine leaves. Butterflies gather to lick the mud. There are thousands, and it’s all because young acronym-agency scientists teamed up with landowners to save them. I know that this is so.

How is a person supposed to think about that? How do you hold both truths at the same time — the horror and the hope? How can you accept the truth that destroys hope and at the same time hold the hope that may be the only route toward recovery?

Essayist E.B. White made a joke of it: I arise in the morning torn between a desire to save the world and a desire to savor it. This makes it hard to plan the day. But it isn’t funny. It tears me apart. How can you love Earthly lives and know that forces are advancing to destroy them?

This is the question at the center of my life.

I once asked a group of students to pull out their pens and start writing a list of what they loved too much to lose. They started strong. My daughter. Smell of wet oak leaves. Bees in foxgloves. But the students couldn’t keep it up. Salmon coming home. Nettle soup. Sticky cottonwood buds. A student put his head in his hands. Do we have to do this, he asked. Dragonflies.

Yes, we have to do this, I whispered. We have to keep a list. We have to keep them in mind, all the small glories. We can’t let any of them escape our attention. Every day, every moment, we have to name what we love and stand to lose.

Here is what we will have to do: We will love the world with a tender and ferocious love, and we will do what we can to protect and renew it. Both of these. Even if it breaks our hearts. Even if we fail in the end. That’s what love means. That is why we are here.

That conviction may explain why my husband and I were standing in the center of the field with Kathleen Westly, in that nasty cold fog that afflicts Oregon’s Willamette Valley in December. Up until her retirement this year, Kathleen was the restoration program director of the Marys River Watershed Council, so she was the one coordinating the restoration of habitat for the Fender’s blue butterfly across agencies and landowners.

We were excited because we’d just learned that the Fender’s blue had been promoted from endangered to threatened. A small, even pitiable, victory, maybe, but a significant one, and who wouldn’t be glad for that? Kathleen held a field notebook and pointed with a pencil, as she sketched out how we might change the landscape to make it more welcoming for the butterflies.

Lupines in the field. Photo: KDMoore

Fender’s blue butterflies are rarely found more than 50 yards from Kincaid’s lupines. They may sip nectar from other plants, especially white or yellow composites, and they may lick roadkill, mud, or animal droppings for their mineral nutrients, but it’s Kincaid’s lupines that provide home and sustenance. Fender’s blues need Kincaid’s lupines, and the lupines need open prairie and sunshine. Only 1% of the Willamette Valley’s prairies are left, and these are small islands in a sea of subdivisions and grass seed farms.

So our first goal for us was to keep our prairie intact and connect it with other prairie land along the Marys River.

Kathleen pointed to a Douglas fir that shaded the oaks at the western boundary of our land. Shall we take this out? And this one? Before long, most of the tall evergreens on that border were goners. Frank and I gulped, but we understood that she wanted to give the butterflies an open, unshaded passage, so they could fly from one lupine patch to another.

We had planted the Doug firs that were in the way of the butterfly movements, and if that was a mistake, then we decided we should make it up.

Frank Moore looks for butterflies in the meadow. Photo: KDMoore

The wonderful surprise of this restoration work was to see so many people of skill and good will come together to create a connected corridor of lupine prairie. Along with the Marys River Watershed Council, credit many agencies and nonprofits, including Benton County, Starker Forests, the Greenbelt Land Trust, the Institute for Applied Ecology, and landowners all along the river. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Recovery Program is a big player, providing most of the funds.

The process has been complicated; I do not pretend to understand the acronyms or responsibilities of all the agencies that were involved, but they somehow came together to get the grants written and the work accomplished, from young Indigenous fire crews to those solid-shouldered, old timey ecologists who know everybody and everything. Along with the new butterfly/flower communities, the growing communities of caring people lifted my spirits, at a time when they could use a bit of lifting.

Long tongues that retract and roll up like measuring tapes. Bulgy eyes that see ultraviolet pathways to the heart of a flower. Intestines that collect the remains of the caterpillar that a butterfly used to be. Clear blood. Hairy feet that can taste sweetness. Two eyes that coordinate images from 6,000 lenses. Transparent wings with scales in some of the loveliest patterns and colors on the planet.

These are grand and glorious beings, complicated and clever beyond imagining. I want to ask, who thinks up these extraordinary creatures? But it’s not like that, I know. Butterflies evolved in the Cretaceous period, 100 million years ago. They danced around the feathered crests of dinosaurs, dipped their tongues in the blood of wounded pterosaurs, and drank from newly evolved flowers. Were butterflies beautiful then? Of course they would have been, because there’s survival value in bright beauty that mimics glaring eyes or warns of poison hairs.

The improbable, beautiful complexity of a butterfly seems like a miracle. But that’s the great miracle of biodiversity, isn’t it? That it’s no miracle at all — just nature doing what it does, according to the only rule it knows, which is to live long enough to produce more life.

The storms of the Cretaceous period could not kill the butterflies. The asteroid that set the world on fire did not kill the butterflies. They survived ice age after ice age, flood after flood, drifting continents and fire-breathing volcanoes. Even with their axes and plows, the homesteaders did not kill the butterflies. Tiny things, delicate as paper lanterns, each allotted only one year to live before they blink out, the butterflies on this land survived everything that 100 million years could throw at them.

I don’t know where or when their journey will end. But it will not be here, and it will not be now.

Republish this article for free! Read our reprint policy. Previously in The Revelator:

Insects Are Disappearing — Here’s How to Help

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Songbirds generally make their migratory flights at night, and during spring migration tens of millions of birds may be streaming north above us as we sleep. But when the sun rises, where do these tired birds choose to stop, rest, and refuel?

You may picture a nature preserve or grassy field, but a study published earlier this year in the journal Nature Cities shows that a large percentage of these birds are making their “stopovers” in cities, illustrating the importance of urban conservation efforts.

Ornithologist Miguel Jimenez was a Ph.D. candidate at Colorado State University when he led the study as part of his dissertation. The project was inspired by his desire “to do work that was useful to people who are actively working to conserve birds,” he says. “So I had a bunch of conversations with different folks doing that work, and one thing I consistently heard was that it’s often really hard to convince people that bird conservation in cities matters.”

Jimenez’s dissertation focused on studying bird migration using weather radar. Large masses of migrating birds show up clearly on the nationwide radar system used by meteorologists, and this data isn’t subject to the same biases as bird counts carried out by people. If you capture a radar image just as migrating birds are starting out in the morning, Jimenez explains, you can pinpoint the stopover locations from which they’re leaving.

“You see this kind of mushroom cloud of birds taking off, and then they start to dissipate over the landscape.”

Jimenez and his colleagues used data from 143 radar sites to identify stopover hotspots across the continental United States for both spring and fall migration, then calculated how many of those sites fell within urban areas.

“To be totally honest, I ran this analysis originally expecting, like, I’ll probably figure out that most of it doesn’t happen in cities,” says Jimenez.

Instead, nearly half of the stopover sites he found were within what the U.S. Census Bureau has defined as Metropolitan Statistical Areas. Other ways of statistically defining cities showed a similarly disproportionate number of migrating birds using urban stopover sites.

So why would migrating birds choose city habitats?

“Probably a good chunk of my career is [going to be spent] on that question,” says Jimenez.

But there are already some indications. Cities often develop along coastlines and rivers, places that already have high biodiversity, he points out. And birds are attracted to artificial light at night (though scientists aren’t sure exactly why), so perhaps they’re being drawn in by city lights.

Taking things a step further, Jimenez and his colleagues searched for signs of the so-called “luxury effect,” the tendency of urban wildlife to congregate in high-income neighborhoods due to the greater amounts of green space. Analyzing bird stopover use of more than 2,000 parks across 88 urban areas, they found that stopover density was indeed higher, on average, in areas with higher-income residents.

These nationwide averages, however, don’t tell the full story. Both the overall density of urban stopovers and the strength of the luxury effect varied considerably from one U.S. region to another, and the reason may have something to do with water.

Cities where the luxury effect was most pronounced, such as Phoenix and Los Angeles, were in regions where surface water can be scarce. Dryer regions also had a higher overall proportion of urban stopover sites. It seems in dry places, the way that humans concentrate the available water (and the resulting vegetation) in the places where we live — and especially in the highest-income neighborhoods — may also attract high concentrations of migrating birds.

“This area, where ecology meets the social forces that shape biodiversity, is really important and interesting,” says Emily Cohen, a bird migration expert and faculty member University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science who was not involved in the project. “Not only are cities important for birds, but the connection between people and birds [that can happen in cities] is just a really powerful tool for conservation.”

Cohen says she’d love to see follow-up research on the regional variations uncovered by Jimenez’s work, as well as on how the birds using these urban habitats are actually faring.

“I would describe this paper as more opening up questions than giving answers,” agrees Jimenez. Having completed his Ph.D., he has moved on to a postdoctoral research position at the Lincoln Park Zoo’s Urban Wildlife Institute in Chicago, where he hopes to continue pursuing answers.

But what we definitely know, he says, is that “the actions that we take where we live, which for most people today is in cities — those matter a lot for migratory birds.”

Republish this article for free! Read our reprint policy. Previously in The Revelator:

What City Birds Around the World Have in Common

The post City Birds: New Study Shows Urban Habitat Matters for Migrating Species appeared first on The Revelator.

Children bear the consequences of today’s major crises more than most, yet their concerns and experiences remain largely invisible in political life. A childist revolution calls for transforming the political space to cultivate a deeper sense of our social and natural interdependence – including fully democratising democracies through ageless suffrage. 

This article is part of the Green European Journal’s upcoming print edition on demographic futures, out in early June. Subscribe now and get it delivered straight to your door.

Democracies face crises when populations lose confidence in their ability to address fundamental concerns – as is usually the case in periods of rapid industrialisation, runaway inequality, economic depression, mass migration, and war. During such times, they often backslide into authoritarian appeals, but tend eventually to evolve new democratic norms and practices. 

The worldwide crisis of democracy today revolves around issues that centrally concern one of the most disempowered social groups: the third of humanity who are children. It is children above all who face the greatest impacts of climate change, both immediately and in the long term. Children in rich and poor countries alike suffer disproportionate poverty because of global neoliberalism. Young people die in outsized numbers from civilian-targeted modern warfare and terrorism. And they are hit hardest by the ways that new digital technologies manipulate information and foster technological addiction. 

However, children remain largely invisible in political life. Indeed, it is this very invisibility that keeps children’s issues at the margins of democratic policymaking.  

The rise of childism 

The past couple of decades have seen the rise of a movement among academics and activists to respond to these democratic and childhood realities under the umbrella of childism. Childism is a critical approach to societies similar to feminism, anti-racism, decolonialism, and the like. It seeks to empower children and acknowledge their concerns and experiences by transforming historically ingrained assumptions and structures. Its aim is to reconstruct social norms to make them genuinely age-inclusive. 

The word “childism” was coined in the early 2000s in academic literature rooted in the then-emerging field of childhood studies, which seeks to understand children’s agency and experiences as children rather than as developing adults. In the 1990s, the term was used briefly in literary studies to refer to a practice of reading like a child. More recently, it has also been used in a negative sense, akin to sexism and racism. But the predominant meaning in scholarship – and now also in social activism – is in its positive sense of children’s empowerment. 

The central problem that childism addresses is a deeply rooted adultism: the assumption that the adult is the measure of the human. Adultism is the often forgotten side of patriarchy, the historical power of the “pater” or father, which is not only gendered but also aged. Like sexism, adultism is deeply embedded in our histories, cultures, and languages. Adultism in particular asserts a binary opposition between supposedly rational and independent adults on the one hand, and supposedly irrational and dependent children on the other. In this way, it divides social relations in everything from families and communities to human rights and law. 

 Adultism is the often forgotten side of patriarchy, the historical power of the “pater” or father, which is not only gendered but also aged.

Children themselves are already practising an implicit childism. Young climate protesters are demanding age inclusivity in environmental policy. Child labour union activists are calling for recognition for non-adult work. Youth are fighting for schools free of gun violence. Transgender children are pushing their communities to change how they think about gender identity. Children and youth in the dozens of countries with child and youth parliaments are pressing for children’s perspectives on safe streets, access for people with disabilities, and education reform. 

Children’s suffrage 

As marginalised groups over history have found, however, the ultimate right to political inclusion is the right to vote. Suffrage does not solve all problems, but it does confer on those possessing it the status of first-class citizens with equal political dignity. It is the right to participate in the process of forming rights. This is why non-landowners, the poor, racial and ethnic minorities, and women fought so hard to achieve it. And it is why the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights call, without any type of qualification, for “universal and equal suffrage”.  

Children have been fighting for suffrage since at least the 1990s. They have done so in campaigns and legal action by groups like We Want the Vote and KRÄTZÄ in Germany, the National Youth Rights Association (NYRA) in the US, Young Pirates of Europe (YPE), and Green Youth. Adults have joined them with academic and policy support, including through initiatives like the Children’s Voting Colloquium, Amnesty International UK, the Freechild Institute, the National Association of Large Families , and the Child Rights International Network (CRIN). What is more, children and adults have sued governments for ageless suffrage in Germany, California and Massachusetts in the United States, Sweden, and Canada.

The childist argument for ageless suffrage is that it is necessary for the wellbeing of both children and democracies. Children themselves would finally have their lives and perspectives taken just as seriously by policymakers, whose jobs would no longer rely solely on pressure from adults. And democracies would benefit from the full range of the people’s ideas, thus making better-informed decisions. 

A matter of competence?  

The main objection to children’s suffrage has historically been that children lack voting competence. People under the age of maturity are thought to be deficient in democratic thinking skills, knowledge, and independence, and to be too open to manipulation. And they are presumed to lack the experience and understanding needed to contribute to difficult decisions about complex political matters like war, health policy, and immigration. 

But these presumptions misunderstand both democracy and childhood. Working backwards from the aims of democracy, voting competence consists in the ability to give voice to political views. The purpose of democratic voting is not to place decisions in the hands of those with certain types of knowledge, but to hold elected representatives accountable to the people impacted by their decisions. Anyone should be included in the vote who wishes to have a say in what policymakers may do. 

Barring children from voting is, in reality, a form of systemic discrimination. It holds them to a standard of voting competence that is not applied to the rest of the population.

If voting competence is properly understood, children have much more of it – and adults much less – than commonly thought. It is hard to deny democratic capacities to the millions of children who march for climate change policies, fight against racism, or participate in children’s parliaments, child labour unions, or any number of other political organisations. Children worldwide discuss politics at the dinner table, read or watch the news, and hold diverse opinions about current events. There is no magical stage of neurological development at which the capacity to have political views suddenly arises. It is a general capacity of anyone aware of their larger world. 

This capacity of children to participate in democratic life is already legally recognised in Articles 12, 13, and 15 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child. These guarantee children the rights to “express [their] views freely in all matters affecting the child”, “freedom of expression” without unnecessary restriction, and “freedom of association”. All of these rights are violated when children are banned from exercising their democratic capacities. 

Likewise, adults exhibit very wide ranges of democratic skill, knowledge, and susceptibility to influence. Adults have the right to vote regardless of ignorance, thoughtlessness, and openness to manipulation. They retain this right even if they suffer from severe cognitive impairment, mental disability, or dementia. History shows that adults frequently make terrible voting decisions. Furthermore, no adult has a deep understanding of all the matters they must vote upon, from economic statistics to military capacities, health innovations, top secret information, legal precedents, and much else. 

Barring children from voting is, in reality, a form of systemic discrimination. It holds them to a standard of voting competence that is not applied to the rest of the population. The European Court of Human Rights defines discrimination as “differential treatment in comparable situations without an objective or reasonable justification”. Adult-only voting excludes children as a class of citizens for reasons outside the objective requirements of voting itself. 

Stronger democracies 

But the most important reason to give children the right to vote is that it would improve life for children and adults and strengthen democracies.  

Children themselves would live in political environments that are required to take their interests into account centrally instead of peripherally. Currently, they cannot vote politicians out of office, which means authorities are not truly incentivised to take children’s experiences and concerns seriously. Children may be objects of democratic beneficence, but like adults, they also need to be treated as subjects with democratic agency.  

If children could vote, they would likely pressure politicians, for example, to finally take the climate emergency seriously, fight child poverty, regulate digital media, invest in meaningful education reform, attend to lifelong healthcare, and create safer streets and greener spaces. They would also have greater recourse to fight social discrimination, such as social media bans, age curfews, exclusion from divorce proceedings, corporal punishment, school discipline, issues with access to medical care, and much more. 

Granting children the right to vote would also benefit adults. Everyone would gain from better climate policies. Parents would be helped by children’s greater economic support. Teachers would be empowered by education policies that better respond to children’s actual lives and experiences. Doctors would find greater resources for child healthcare and research. And business leaders would hire from a better-educated workforce.  

Moreover, democracy itself would be strengthened by becoming more fully responsive to the people’s actual lives. Policymakers would find themselves equally beholden to all instead of just some of their constituents. Democratic leaders could make clearer decisions with – so to speak – a third more pixels added to their policymaking screen. And democracies would make choices about war, spending, and judicial reform in more inclusively informed ways. 

What is more, children’s suffrage could provide the needed antidote to today’s slide of democracies into authoritarianism. The right to vote for all would undercut the assumption that some are natural rulers over others. And it would eliminate the problem of citizens spending the first quarter of their lives being told that their views do not count, which opens citizens to simplistic authoritarian appeals. Instead of looking to father figures, democracies would more likely turn to broad-minded defenders of human rights. 

Children may be objects of democratic beneficence, but like adults, they also need to be treated as subjects with democratic agency.  

Systemic inclusion 

Childism calls for not only new understandings of voting rights but also new electoral practices. Suffrage movements typically shift how voting actually takes place. We have come a long way from landowning men choosing representatives in taverns.  

A good first step is to lower the voting age. In countries that have lowered the national voting age to 16, children have been shown to turn out in higher numbers for elections than young adults and to retain higher voting rates into adulthood. They have also moved policymakers to include more child-friendly interests. However, from a childist perspective, lowering voting ages does not go far enough. It still only enfranchises children who are thought to have achieved adult-like competencies, whereas genuine democracies need to move beyond adultism. 

There are several different proposals for ageless voting rights, but my own is for what I call proxy-claim voting. Under this proposition, all citizens would have a proxy vote from birth to death, which can be used by their legal guardian – a parent, caretaker, or next of kin. This proxy vote would most likely be used on behalf of infants, young children, cognitively impaired children and adults, adults with significant disabilities or health issues, and elderly persons with dementia. But all citizens would, at the same time, have the right to claim the exercise of their vote on their own behalf. Whenever a citizen desired to vote independently, regardless of their age or condition, they could claim their right to do so. 

Some might object that a proxy-claim right to vote would advantage larger families, but in reality, it would advantage the children themselves in these families who deserve their own equal representation. Others might find proxy voting fundamentally undemocratic, yet it already exists in most countries for impaired (or even just travelling) adults, so why not also for the youngest children? Some do not think voting is all that powerful anyway, but is it fair or just to ban one group even from the choice to participate? 

Childism calls for children’s systemic inclusion and empowerment. It suggests, just like first-wave feminism, that the right to vote is a fundamental human right. But suffrage is only a first step. Childism sets in motion a systemic critique of societies’ adultistic biases across law, policy, culture, and family. It insists that children are not second-class citizens but central to infusing societies with humanity.