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In April, a climate denial conference hosted in Washington, D.C., and boasting US Environmental Protection Agency head Lee Zeldin as a keynote speaker signaled a new era in US politics: from a slow but growing embrace of climate science in federal policy to outright rejection of the scientific consensus.

Join Covering Climate Now for a special webinar, with DeSmog reporter Rei Takver alongside Manon Jacob, Climate Digital Investigation Reporter for Agence France-Presse, and Maxine Joselow, Climate Policy Reporter for The New York Times, as they explore how the Trump administration’s overt embrace of climate denialism in Washington is creating a permission structure for more denial at the highest levels of government in the US and beyond.

Rei will discuss her story, co-published with The Guardian, “Climate Deniers Expected More Resistance to Trump’s Fossil Fuel Blitz,” which covers Donald Trump’s assaults on the legal foundation for U.S. regulations on global warming emissions, and how climate deniers have been celebrating what they claim is the “silent” acquiescence of billionaires, Democrats, climate activists and even reporters to the president’s aggressive pro-fossil fuel agenda.
 
“In my 26 years of being focused on climate, I’ve never seen anything like this. Trump is gutting everything they ever stood for,” Marc Morano, a long-time climate denier, said in January at the “World Prosperity Forum,” a five-day event in Zurich, Switzerland, Rei reports.

The World Prosperity Forum’s sponsor was The Heartland Institute, a conservative think tank that has been at the forefront of spreading climate disinformation for decades, and was also a contributor to Project 2025, the policy blueprint for President Trump’s second administration.

“Billionaires are silent. Democrats in Congress have been silent. Climate activists. There has been no push-back on this,” Morano said — and he may have a point, according to some experts who research the climate denial movement.

Join in on Thursday, May 7, at 12:00 p.m. EDT for this virtual conversation about the Trump administration’s embrace of climate denialism, what that could mean for the future of US climate policy, and how to cover it

You won’t want to miss it.

Register and submit your questions here.

The post Event | How Climate Denialism Is Evolving With Trump in Office appeared first on DeSmog.

A prominent ultra-conservative think tank with a long history of climate denial and close ties to the Trump administration is questioning whether all Americans should be allowed to cast ballots in elections. 

“Look, I’m going to say something very controversial: Not every adult over the age of 18 should have the right to vote,” Jim Lakely, communications director of the Heartland Institute, said during an early April episode of the group’s In the Tank podcast. 

Heartland was a contributor to Project 2025, the policy blueprint for Trump’s second term.
 
 “We did not have universal suffrage when the framers of the Constitution founded this country. It varied a little bit state-to-state, but basically you had to be a white man. You had to be an owner of property, and a certain amount of property, and that pretty much was only white men,” Lakely said. “We’re never going back to that, of course, and I wouldn’t actually argue for that. But there’s something to be said for the way they set that up on purpose, and it was because they wanted only people who have a stake in the country — mainly the people paying taxes to support the government — should have the franchise and be able to select the direction of the government.”

Lakely’s comments, which DeSmog has quoted in full at his request, came just days before Heartland hosted a two-day conference in Washington, D.C. keynoted by Lee Zeldin, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Zeldin has been floated to replace Pam Bondi as Trump’s attorney general. 

Zeldin praised the Heartland Institute, which has long been at the forefront of spreading climate disinformation and strongly backed the EPA’s recent repeal of the “endangerment finding,” the Obama-era determination that under-girded the federal government’s authority to limit climate-heating air pollution.

It was time to “celebrate vindication” of the group’s decades of anti-climate campaigning, Zeldin said.

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All Americans should be worried that a top Trump cabinet official openly lauded a group that questions universal suffrage, said climate scientist Michael Mann, the director of the Center for Science, Sustainability, and the Media at the University of Pennsylvania. 

“Heartland’s authoritarian, anti-democratic agenda is now exposed for all to see,” Mann told DeSmog in email. “The assault on climate action and the assault on democracy are one and the same, an effort to advance the authoritarian agenda of fossil fuel interests and the politicians in their pay.”
 
 When approached for comment, the EPA told DeSmog: “Administrator Zeldin is doing something genuinely different at EPA, refocusing the agency on its core mission of protecting human health and the environment and exercising its statutory authority as written, not as expansively reimagined in prior years. Administrator Zeldin will continue advancing President Trump’s agenda on behalf of the Americans who elected him to do exactly that.”

‘Reduce the Franchise’

During the podcast, Heartland senior fellow S.T. Karnick backed up Lakely’s comments about voting. “The original plan in America was that votes would go one vote to each property-holding family,” Karnick said. “That has been hacked away at throughout the decades and for a two and a half centuries now.”

“Now, can you go back?” he added. “Well, anything’s possible, but it wouldn’t be the same country we’re living in in any way to start to reduce the franchise.” Karnick said that an alternative solution would be to “repeal the doggone 17th Amendment,” the 1913 addition to the Constitution that established the direct election of U.S. senators, and return to having senators elected by state legislatures. “It would be a way of pulling away from the popular votes,” he said.  

Heartland Research Fellow Linnea Lucken and Editorial Director Chris Talgo also appeared on the podcast.

During the Heartland podcast, Lakely made the false claim that the use of mail-in ballots during the COVID-19 pandemic created “quite a bit” of “easy natural election fraud,” saying that “if you could go to the grocery store, if you could go to a BLM [Black Lives Matter] march, you can get in line at your local polling place and vote and participate in the election.” When DeSmog approached Lakely for comment about this last claim, Lakely responded: “I stand by that.”
 
 Zeldin, a longtime Trump supporter, has previously endorsed similar claims. Following Trump’s loss of the 2020 election to Joe Biden, Zeldin — then a House member representing New York’s 1st Congressional District — “sided with Republicans who were amplifying doubts about its legitimacy,” according to The New York Times, and shared ideas with White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows on how to discredit Biden’s win. On January 6, 2021, Zeldin voted against certifying the election results.

The following year, while running as the Republican candidate for governor of New York, Zeldin was disqualified from getting his ticket an additional ballot line for the Independence Party, because nearly 13,000 of the petition signatures his campaign submitted to the state elections board were photocopied duplicates.
 
 Soon after taking over the EPA in 2025, Zeldin promised that the agency would begin “driving a dagger straight into the heart of the climate change religion.” Since then he has revoked billions in climate funding, slashed thousands of EPA staff, and rolled back dozens of clean air and water protections.
 
 In his Heartland keynote address, Zeldin argued that these rollbacks were “what the American public voted for” when they re-elected Trump. 

The EPA chief praised the Heartland audience for being “right there on the front lines” of opposition to the endangerment finding. “I appreciate all of you for having the thoughtfulness years and decades ahead of your time.”

Attorney General Zeldin?

If Zeldin replaced Bondi, he would oversee the Justice Department’s defense of his EPA actions in court, including lawsuits by states and environmental groups over the endangerment finding repeal.

“The Supreme Court, in my opinion quite correctly, would say that the EPA should not be putting forth trillions of dollars in regulations without there being a vote in Congress,” Zeldin said in his speech, adding that members of Congress are “the ones who, as recently as this upcoming November [mid-term elections], put their name on the ballot, go before the people, and the American public will decide who in this republic will represent them.”

Zeldin’s record of election denial would fit right in at the top of the current Justice Department.

Since Trump took office, the department has shifted from enforcing voting rights laws — including scrutinizing whether states are conducting fair elections and prosecuting threats against election officials — to investigating alleged voter fraud. Most of the lawyers working in the Voting Section of the agency’s Civil Rights Division have left, according to reporting by Wired, and many of their replacements have ties to election denial groups.

Right now, Trump’s cratering approval ratings with voters paint a grim picture for Republicans in the November elections  — but as part of his efforts to manipulate the mid-terms, the Trump Justice Department has been openly coming to their aid. 

Under former AG Bondi, the department began collecting voter data from cooperative states — and suing dozens of states to get more — apparently hoping to direct purges of the rolls. The FBI in January raided an election office and seized 2020 voting records in Fulton County, Georgia, which Trump lost, although It’s well-established that voter fraud is very rare in the United States, and didn’t happen in 2020.

A number of red states have already answered Trump’s call to create more House seats for Republicans by redrawing their election districts. Now more are on the way because in late April the Supreme Court’s conservative majority gutted the Voting Rights Act of 1965, handing down a ruling that effectively lets states redraw their election districts in ways that weaken the voting power of Blacks and other minorities.

Within hours of the decision, several southern states began taking steps to create election maps that will increase the number of Republican House seats.

Badge of Dishonor

The Heartland Institute, which has denied that humans are driving climate change, calling it a “delusion,” has boasted of its “strong” ties to “big individuals” in the Trump administration.

During Trump’s first term, as DeSmog reported at the time, Heartland advised the EPA on staffing and policy decisions. “They recognized us as the pre-eminent organization opposing the radical climate alarmism agenda and instead promoting sound science and policy,” said Tim Huelskamp — a former Republican congressman who was then leading Heartland — in 2018.
 
 Heartland also advised a member of the administration’s National Security Council, longtime climate denier William Happer, on how to discredit the fact that burning fossil fuels was driving dangerous levels of global heating.

When Trump announced in 2017 that the United States would withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement, he invited Heartland’s then-CEO Joseph Bast to attend the announcement at the White House.

The Heartland Institute received at least $676,000 between 1998 and 2007 from U.S. oil giant ExxonMobil. It has received donations from Republican donors in the Mercer family, as well as foundations linked to the owners of Koch Industries – a fossil fuel giant and a leading sponsor of climate science denial.

“What a badge of dishonor it is to be a keynote speaker at this plutocrat-funded propaganda event masquerading as a ‘conference,” Mann said to DeSmog, referencing Zeldin’s ties to the group. “Polluting interests can only advance their agenda of a fossil fuel-dependent America by keeping Republicans in power.”

The post Heartland Institute Podcast Questions Whether All Americans ‘Should Have the Right to Vote’ appeared first on DeSmog.

Peer-reviewed EWG study finds produce washing options can reduce pesticide residue Anthony Lacey May 4, 2026

• All methods of washing fruits and vegetables reduced pesticide residues, but effectiveness varied widely and depends on the pesticide, produce and method.
• Soaking produce in a solution of baking soda or vinegar solution was more effective than soaking or rinsing in water, on average.
• EWG scientists recommend improvements to how pesticides are monitored in food and in people to further reduce exposure.

WASHINGTON – Affordable, simple household practices can reduce pesticide levels on fruits and vegetables and help consumers lower their daily dietary exposure to potentially harmful farm chemicals, a new peer-reviewed study by Environmental Working Group scientists finds.

The study builds on EWG’s pesticide consumer guidance in the annual Shopper’s Guide to Pesticides in Produce™ and its comprehensive research on pesticides exposures. 

“Fruits and vegetables are essential to a healthy diet, but they can also increase exposure to pesticides,” said Dayna de Montagnac, M.P.H., associate scientist at EWG and lead author of the study. 

“Our findings reinforce the effectiveness of safe and accessible ways to reduce pesticide exposure while highlighting necessary improvements in research and monitoring to further reduce it,” she said.

Pesticide residues on produce

The review, published recently in the journal Frontiers in Environmental Health, analyzed data from 47 peer-reviewed studies of 23 produce items and 79 pesticides. The findings point to safe and effective methods consumers can use at home to reduce pesticide residues and provide a starting point for more research and monitoring in this area of study. 

Last year, EWG published peer-reviewed research showing how the consumption of fruits and vegetables with higher pesticide residues is linked to measurable levels of pesticides in urine. Other recent publications have investigated the growing problem of PFAS pesticides, chlormequat and glyphosate. 

Studies of the general population show exposure to pesticides is linked to cancer, reproductive harm, hormone disruption and neurotoxicity in children. 

Residues of these chemicals are often detected on produce and frequently appear in mixtures on every type of produce, except potatoes, with an average of four or more pesticides detected on individual samples, according to EWG’s recent analysis of Department of Agriculture pesticide testing data. 

Key findings

EWG scientists reviewed data that recorded pesticide concentrations of fruits and vegetables before and after rinsing or soaking them with water, baking soda or vinegar. Experiments where scientists rinsed their produce for more than two minutes were excluded to better reflect how people likely wash their produce at home.

Among the key findings:

• All washing methods reduced pesticide residues, but effectiveness varied widely.
• Rinsing with water showed modest reductions, with a median of 30.2%, although reductions ranged from 0% to 94%.
• Soaking in plain water performed slightly better than rinsing, with reductions from 0.6% to over 99% and a median of 33.7%.
• Baking soda soaking substantially improved removal, achieving reductions from 0.2% to over 99%, with a median of 50.9%.
• Vinegar, or acetic acid, soaking was the most effective method overall, with reductions ranging from 8.6% to over 99% and a median of 54.2%.
• Baking soda and vinegar treatments outperformed plain water by more than 15 percentage points in median pesticide reduction across studies, likely because of how certain pesticides break down in alkaline or acidic environments. 
• Real-world effectiveness may be lower than what EWG’s study showed, since many studies used higher concentrations of baking soda or vinegar than a typical household would.
• Key factors influencing pesticide removal included the chemical properties of the pesticide, the washing method used, and the type and surface characteristics of the produce.

These findings confirm the role washing produce can provide in moderately lowering pesticide levels.

Where more work is needed

The study’s authors recommend that government agencies make it a priority to monitor stubborn pesticides, those that remain on produce even after household washing. 

They also suggest expanding biomonitoring of fruits and vegetables to include pesticides frequently detected in the U.S. food supply. 

Future research should explore what proportion of pesticide residues remain within specific produce items and to what extent these residues increase exposure. 

The authors also suggest study designs that are more realistic, such as testing for the effect of rinsing for just a few seconds as a baseline. Further experiments could then show how adding baking soda or vinegar, with incremental increases in concentrations and washing times, can compare to the baseline method.

What consumers can do

EWG recommends regularly washing and eating plenty of fruit and vegetables.

Washing produce in any way will always be better than no washing in reducing exposure to pesticide residues. The USDA’s Pesticide Residue Program rinses produce samples with cold water for 15 to 20 seconds before testing produce, reflecting the assumption that consumers do basic washing at home.

A quick rinse or soak works in a pinch. When feasible, the addition of baking soda or vinegar to soaking solutions can further reduce residues. Refer to EWG’s guide on washing produce for more guidance.

When possible, EWG recommends prioritizing organic produce for the most pesticide-heavy produce listed in its Shopper’s Guide. The guide features the Dirty Dozen™ list of the produce with the highest pesticide residues detected and the Clean Fifteen™ list of items with the lowest residues.

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The Environmental Working Group is a nonprofit, non-partisan organization that empowers people to live healthier lives in a healthier environment. Through research, advocacy and unique education tools, EWG drives consumer choice and civic action.

Areas of Focus Food Family Health Pesticides Press Contact Alex Formuzis alex@ewg.org (202) 667-6982 May 5, 2026

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Vermont Senate advances landmark ban on Parkinson’s pesticide Anthony Lacey May 3, 2026

Vermont’s Senate today gave its initial approval to landmark legislation that would ban the use and sale of the highly toxic herbicide paraquat, bringing the state to the cusp of becoming the first in the nation to enact such a prohibition.

The legislation, H. 739, would end Vermonters’ exposure to paraquat, an extremely dangerous weedkiller linked to serious health harms, including Parkinson’s disease. Despite these risks, the U.S. still allows its use, even though more than 70 countries have banned it.

Vermont’s House passed a nearly identical measure in March and must now vote to concur with the Senate’s version, before sending the bill to Gov. Phil Scott (R).

“With today’s vote, Vermont is on the verge of making history by becoming the first state to ban paraquat,” said Geoff Horsfield, legislative director at the Environmental Working Group. “Lawmakers in both chambers have recognized the urgent need to protect public health. The House should act swiftly to send this bill to the governor’s desk.”

Horsfield thanked Democratic and Republican lawmakers alike for their work on the bill, led by Rep. Esme Cole (Windsor-6) and Sen. Martine Larocque Gulick (Chittenden-Central District). “They have made clear that safeguarding farmers, rural communities and children must take precedence over continued use of one of the most hazardous pesticides still on the market,” he added.

Paraquat has been extensively studied for its links to Parkinson’s disease and other serious illnesses, and even small amounts of exposure can pose significant health risks, including death. The chemical can travel through the air for more than two miles and persist in the environment, raising concerns for rural communities and agricultural workers alike.

If enacted, the legislation would position Vermont as a national leader at a moment of growing momentum to phase out paraquat.  At least 12 other states have introduced similar bans, and California is considering new regulatory restrictions. These efforts are clear signs of escalating concern over the chemical’s well-documented health risks.

“If signed into law, this bill will prevent needless exposure to a chemical tied to a devastating disease and set a powerful precedent for states across the country to follow,” Horsfield said.

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The Environmental Working Group (EWG) is a nonprofit, non-partisan organization that empowers people to live healthier lives in a healthier environment. Through research, advocacy and unique education tools, EWG drives consumer choice and civic action.

Areas of Focus Farming & Agriculture Paraquat Vote puts state on brink of being first-in-nation to prohibit toxic herbicide paraquat Press Contact Alex Formuzis alex@ewg.org (202) 667-6982 May 6, 2026

In mid-April, Indigenous leaders from British Columbia traveled to Ottawa to protest against the federal government’s aggressive support for fossil fuel expansion.

Mark Carney’s Liberal government is fast-tracking multiple LNG projects in British Columbia, including the recent approval of Enbridge’s $4 billion natural gas pipeline expansion.

Securing Indigenous support for fossil fuel projects has been a cornerstone strategy of Canada’s oil and gas sector in recent years, with companies promising considerable benefits on the one hand while highlighting Indigenous involvement as an aspect of corporate responsibility on the other.

Not everyone is on board however, and Indigenous communities have been some of the most vocal opponents of major Canadian energy projects, including Union of BC Indian Chiefs representative Kitisha Paul, who argued at the Ottawa protest that fossil fuel expansion is causing the “deterioration of our land, our water.” 

Kai Nagata, an energy campaigner with the B.C.-based environmental non-profit Dogwood, has spent years working with Indigenous communities on the front-lines of opposition to new oil and gas infrastructure, a role that’s included deep research into the benefit agreements offered by industry as well as the foreign investors set to cash-in from new gas pipelines and export terminals. In an extensive Q&A with DeSmog, Nagata illuminates some of the tensions around promises of Indigenous participation in new fossil fuel projects, and the ways in which these supposedly “nation building” projects are tied to the U.S. and the MAGA movement.

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This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

To what extent are Indigenous communities participating in the development of new fossil fuel infrastructure in British Columbia?

Coastal GasLink, a gas pipeline built across Northern BC, has zero percent Indigenous equity ownership. Sixty-five percent of the pipeline is owned by KKR, which is a New York private equity firm, and 35 percent remains with TC Energy Corporation.  

The LNG Canada terminal in Kitimat has zero percent Indigenous ownership, as it’s owned by Royal Dutch Shell and a consortium of Asian oil companies, some of which are state-owned.

The financing for these projects came from U.S., Canadian, Japanese and some Chinese banks. So the investors, the shareholders, the owners, and indeed many of the senior project staff and people involved in engineering and building the thing are not even Canadian, let alone Indigenous. 

The only LNG project that has Indigenous ownership right now in BC is Cedar LNG. So the Haisla Nation has a 50 percent stake in the terminal, but they’re buying the gas from Coastal GasLink, which is owned by KKR. And KKR also has a midstream infrastructure partnership with Pembina Pipelines, which is the Haisla’s partner on Cedar LNG. So they’re not outside the orbit of KKR by any means.

With Prince Rupert Gas Transmission pipeline (PRGT) or the Ksi Lisims project, which are being advanced by this Texas company [Western LNG] with Wall Street investors, they’ve really been at pains to make it seem like this is an Indigenous-owned project. That’s how it’s been pitched by the provincial government. And that’s just not true.
 
 (Author’s note: filings with the BC Environmental assessment office show Western LNG is the primary owner and operator of the Ksi Lisims project).

Companies are riding this wave of concern over the poor treatment of Indigenous people historically in Canada and the need to make that up to them.They’re calling this ‘economic reconciliation’: here’s an opportunity for a small number of your governing elite to cash in, with hopefully some long-term benefits for the broader population on your reserve or in your nation.

Can you speak more to the kinds of agreements companies have signed with Indigenous communities?

Every deal is different, and they’re all secret. So that’s the first sign they might not stand up to scrutiny.

During the initial negotiations around the PRGT, which was back in 2014, you had band councils and hereditary chiefs signing impact benefit agreements. That was the same era as Coastal GasLink. Prior to that era of projects, the older model involved people from industry coming into Indigenous communities and saying “you people need to get out of the way now, the bulldozers are coming.”

Recognizing that that approach carried material risk for projects, the energy companies started crafting impact benefit agreements. They follow a similar template, basically an Indigenous community gets some limited financial benefits upfront. They get a promise of ongoing financial benefits, often very modest, but in return, they have clauses that are pretty draconian, like you have to prevent any of the members of your Indigenous group from speaking out against this industry or this project, and that can include on social media.

How do you get people to agree to that?

If your chief and council signs a closed-door deal with a pipeline company, it may contain clauses like your band members can’t shit talk this project on Facebook. That came out of a leaked benefit agreement that was signed with Coastal GasLink.

The chief and council weren’t sure if it was a good idea. So they put it out to a plebiscite and the community voted against it. Then they said there were ‘problems with the process’, so they took it to an in-camera vote. The council was split down the middle, so the chief himself passed the tie-breaking vote.

It actually came down to one guy—the band chief—after a democratic majority of band members rejected the deal. And the deal contained disparagement clauses. If community members disparaged the industry, the community could be held financially liable. I would characterize that as coercive. That’s not a deal anyone should sign. But when you have no leverage and when you’ve been dealing with the effects of poverty for 150 years, there’s a lot of immediate needs that these projects promise to fulfill.

Like what?

Kitselas First Nation recently signed an impact benefit agreement with Western LNG, the company developing the PRGT pipeline. They’re going to find some spaces for child care on the reserve, so that more people can go to work.

But childcare is a provincial responsibility. Except for First Nations. So you have a situation where they’re being deprived of services the non-Indigenous population receive from the provincial government, and are then forced to sign very one-sided deals with industrial projects to fund those basic social services.
 
 You create a situation where it feels like a pretty good deal if the pipeline goes through and you get a little revenue and maybe some childcare too. Obviously you’re gonna take the deal where you get something instead of nothing.

What are the risks of pursuing these projects for Indigenous partners?

There’s some really big risks around LNG right now, like what’s happening in global markets in Asia and Europe. Who carries those risks? Which investors are first in line to be paid? Which creditors are first to line if things go wrong? You might be the last in line to recoup your investment depending on the structure of the deal.

The trend is that the lawyers and the industry consultants—the people who jump from project to project around the world and arrange these big financing deals—they get paid right away. They don’t stick around to build the project. And I’m concerned by the fact that this current crop of LNG projects are all backed by Wall Street, because Wall Street doesn’t know anything about building pipelines or operating energy infrastructure.

But they do know how to ride a bubble.

They know to make money into other money, and they know how ruthlessly exploit a dying industry. Don’t forget, what we call ‘private equity’ today used to be called ‘leveraged buyouts’. And that may sound high-minded and complicated financial stuff, but really it’s just the same core business it was 40 years ago: either you turn around a troubled asset, or you fire all the workers and sell off the parts.

Vulture capitalism is a key component of private equity.

What happens when Indigenous communities resist projects, like in the case of Wet’suwet’en Hereditary chiefs and land defenders opposing the Coastal GasLink project

Pipelines in particular come with a whole playbook and a set of actors which are very practiced in operating in conflict zones and sites of recent political or environmental upheaval.

The companies that are building PRGT include Bechtel, which is a major U.S. military contractor, and one of the biggest privately-owned companies in the world. They manufacture weapons, build defense installations, and they do oil and gas work in shall we say the ‘imperial borderlands’, contested spaces. They’re deeply integrated with the U.S. security state and with U.S. foreign policy. And they have a playbook for dealing with the ‘restive local tribes’ or any other local community that might give the Americans a hard time over their globe-spanning infrastructure.

We saw an example of this with the Wetʼsuwetʼen when they contested Coastal GasLink. The company that bought the pipeline, KKR, has its own internal intelligence division, which is run by David Petraeus, who’s the former CIA director and was prior to that a top-ranking general who literally wrote the U.S. Armed Forces manual on counterinsurgency warfare.

And if you read his book, you see there’s a lot of familiar tactics that we saw adapted to Northern BC. We saw veterans of the War on Terror step in and take control of a physical space in a way that was new to people covering Canadian resource extraction projects.

You had American, British, Belgian, South African mercenaries essentially working as private security for the pipeline who were really directing the actions and collecting intelligence and evidence for the police who just got called in to do the hands-on stuff and make the arrests.

I would characterize what we witnessed there as a corporate counter-insurgency.

Do you view Indigenous participation in new fossil fuel projects part of the marketing scheme or a guarantee against another Wetʼsuwetʼen crisis?

Both the federal and provincial levels of government are doing all they can to de-risk these projects and entice these very small communities with limited fiscal capacity to invest in these multi-billion dollar projects which include loan guarantees and other kind of bespoke deals around transmission line access and that kind of thing. 

They’re bending over backwards to make these projects work because they know that [between the] combination of Indigenous ownership and the green branding around electrified LNG terminals, most people in Vancouver who see one news article will think “oh, a First Nation has decided to build a gas terminal in a place I’ve never visited. Sounds like they’re trying to protect the environment and it’s good to see native people get a stake in these projects after being on the sidelines for so long, good for them.”

In the case of the Haisla nation that has ownership over Cedar LNG, It’s up to them to determine whether these projects benefit their community, but we do need to consider how much information—and the quality of the information—the public, Indigenous or otherwise, has when making these decisions. In the small towns of Northern BC, there’s really no media scrutiny to speak of. The energy companies send their press releases to the local newspaper, the focus of which is how many jobs will be created, but there’s really no scrutiny of what the impact will be. And many of these decisions are happening behind closed doors anyways. We only find out the terms if they leak.

What was the calculus for investors in wanting to develop these projects?

Apollo Global Management invested in Western LNG and the development of the Ksi Lisims terminal back in 2018. They got in on the ground floor at a time when there were low LNG prices worldwide. There was a down cycle starting in about 2015, 2016, where we saw a huge wave of these projects get canceled because the markets weren’t there yet. The prices didn’t take off until Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, and that’s what kicked off the current gold rush.

Some of these people had the idea of using an emerging technology—modular floating LNG terminals—as a way to both lower the risk and lower the cost. The floating terminals are basically converted LNG bulk carriers, which can be moved around the world and hooked up wherever they’re needed. Instead of building a massive onshore terminal, the floating terminals are built in Korea and they can be hooked up in series to expand capacity.

Apollo saw the potential in that, not just the export terminals, but there are equivalent facilities that are built on ships for the import of LNG, which Apollo also invested in, in the same year. They really saw the opportunity for vertical integration in emerging markets where people need access to reliable electricity. And this is the cheap modular way to do it.

Leon Black is the former CEO who made that call and who got Apollo Global Management to be the first major Wall Street backer of the Ksi Lisims project, and it’s the only project that Western LNG has ever developed. The company was incorporated in Delaware and headquartered in Texas, but it’s only ever existed to develop this project in BC.

You have talked about how the backers of the Ksi Lisims project are tied to the MAGA movement, can you tell me more about this? 

Steve Schwartzman, who runs Blackstone, (the other major investor in this project) is a top-10 donor to Trump. He’s bankrolling the MAGA movement. He’s a major advisor and donor to Trump, who is steering and financing what I would characterize as like an authoritarian political movement that is taking over institutions in the U.S. and openly wants to annex Canada for its resources.

It puts the question of Indigenous ownership in perspective, given the players. I really don’t think that they have the best interests of local people in their minds as they’re structuring these deals. They’re not here on a charitable project. The reason why they would empower the companies that they’re invested in to strike these deals with local First Nations is to give them the kind of political cover they need to get permits and authorizations and the loans.

The post How Canada’s LNG Push is Benefiting Trump and Shortchanging Indigenous People appeared first on DeSmog.

Going full glam with EWG Verified® JR Culpepper April 30, 2026

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Crafting the perfect look for any occasion takes laser-like focus, patience and the right products. The last thing on your mind should be whether a product is safe to use.

When you're getting ready for an important occasion, whether a wedding, prom or graduation, you don't want any stress over what’s in your cosmetics.

This spring, EWG is making sure those worries won’t interrupt your makeup flow state. We’ve put together a list of products to help reach your full glam look. This list includes lipsticks, mascaras, eyeliners, eyeshadows and foundations. 

The best part? Every product below is EWG Verified®. That means it has been reviewed by our scientists and meets our strictest standards for safety and ingredient transparency.

If you’re looking for other ideas or products, check out our Skin Deep database.

Lips CRUNCHI Everluxe® Lip Crayon View details Counter Lined and Primed Lip Defining Pencil View details Maia’s Mineral Galaxy Liquid Lipstick View details Mascara Well People Expressionist Curling Mascara View details Counter Think Big Mascara View details Rejuva Minerals Pur Lash Volumizing Mascara View details Eyeliner Well People Fresh Lines Eye Pencil View details Maia's Mineral Galaxy Mineral Eye Liner View details CRUNCHI Highliner® Pencil View details Eyeshadow CRUNCHI Shadow Bar® Enchanted Neutrals View details Rejuva Minerals Eyeshadow Multi Purpose Powder View details ATTITUDE Oceanly Eyeshadow View details Brows DIME Boost Duo View details Well People Expressionist Brow Pencil View details Foundation Well People Supernatural Complexion Stick Foundation + Concealer, Light Medium Warm View details ATTITUDE Oceanly Foundation, Cream View details Counter Skin Twin Featherweight Foundation View details Highlighter/bronzer ATTITUDE Oceanly Highlighter View details Well People Supernatural Stick Highlighter View details Counter Velvet Cream Bronzer View details Authors EWG Communications Team April 30, 2026

FDA abandons stricter tanning bed standards, leaving teens at risk Anthony Lacey April 30, 2026

Tanning beds can increase the risk of skin cancer, and the Food and Drug Administration has long warned that children and teens should never use them. Yet the agency has quietly killed a rule that would have banned anyone under 18 from using these devices.

The FDA first proposed the rule over a decade ago, along with other restrictions on the use of tanning beds and requiring that they carry warning labels. If finalized, the rule would have brought the federal government in line with dozens of states that have already restricted teens’ access to the beds.

Instead, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s FDA recently issued a notice scrapping the proposal. The agency justified the move by claiming industry groups and others raised “scientific and technical concerns” about the plan. It also asserted that withdrawing the proposal doesn’t prevent it from crafting new tanning bed rules in the future.

That leaves minors without any federal protection from an industry that has long targeted teenage girls. It’s hardly going to “Make America Healthy Again.”

At least 23 states, along with most of Canada, the European Union and Australia have already banned minors from tanning beds due to their serious health risks. The FDA’s decision is a clear case of burying its head in the sand while leaving teens in harm’s way.

What the science says

The science on tanning bed risks isn’t emerging or uncertain.

A large scientific body of evidence links tanning bed use to serious health harms, with cancer often occurring decades after first exposure. The FDA’s withdrawn rule was based on these findings, proposing a plan to protect minors across the country from these harms.  

In 1999, the National Toxicology Program classified tanning beds as known carcinogens. It cited the link between the ultraviolet, or UV, radiation the beds produce and the risk of developing both melanoma and non-melanoma skin cancers.

Nearly a decade later, the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer, or IARC, placed tanning beds in its highest risk category: a known human carcinogen. This classification is the same given to tobacco and asbestos, based on a 75% increased risk of melanoma for women who start using tanning beds before the age of 30.  

A large body of epidemiological evidence also links use of sunbeds to higher melanoma risk, especially when first use occurs before age 30. 

The IARC review also found that tanning bed usage  increased the risk for other skin cancers including, squamous cell carcinoma, as well as caused serious, lasting eye damage.

Agency avoids action

Despite the evidence, the FDA spent decades avoiding any real action. 

When initially faced with evidence showing rising melanoma rates in young women, the agency proposed in 2013 a warning label. That label advised that tanning beds should not be used by people under the age of 18. But there was no way to enforce it to guarantee the labels were used, and no restriction on minors using the beds.

It was a gesture, not a safeguard.

The ultraviolet A, or UVA, radiation inside a tanning bed is very different from the natural sunlight your body encounters outdoors. 

Tanning beds are deliberately engineered to maximize  UVA radiation, the wavelength responsible for tanning the skin, while minimizing ultraviolet B, or UVB, rays responsible for sunburn. It’s a design choice to keep customers coming back by removing the most immediate, visible consequences of overexposure.

But suppressing the burn doesn’t suppress the damage. UVA radiation penetrates deeper into the skin than UVB and is linked to skin aging, skin immune harm and plays an important role in the development of skin cancer. 

Some proponents of tanning beds point to modest, short-lived increases in the body’s vitamin D levels as a justification for use. But researchers are clear. No brief vitamin D boost is worth the added cancer risk, especially when there are safer alternatives, such as dietary changes. 

Ineffective sunscreen carries its own risks

The tanning bed problem doesn’t stop at the salon door. 

Consumers might think wearing sunscreen while sunbathing protects them from harmful UVA exposure. But many sunscreens primarily block the rays that cause sunburn, UVB, while providing far weaker protection against  UVA. The result is UV exposure that closely resembles a tanning bed.

Researchers calculated that a two-week vacation spent using a sunscreen with poor UVA protection, even with frequent reapplication and no visible sunburn, delivers the same solar exposure as 10 trips to a tanning salon. 

That’s why EWG’s Guide to Sunscreens® places heavy weight on strong UVA protection in the product rankings. And it’s why we’ve worked for decades to urge the FDA to require stronger UVA standards and set a limit on sun protection factor, or SPF,  values for U.S. sunscreen.

The gap between what sunscreens promise with their often high SPF labels and what they actually deliver on UVA is well documented. 

When EWG tested sunscreens in 2021, we found that, on average, UVA protection was just one-quarter of the SPF level advertised on the label. 

FDA researchers reached the same conclusion in their own sunscreen testing, finding that many U.S. sunscreens lack adequate UVA protection. The agency flagged a particular concern that high SPF numbers often mask weak UVA coverage.

EWG Verified® sunscreens go one step further. These products must undergo additional testing to confirm that their UVA protection exceeds the requirements in both the U.S. and in Europe – not just meet them. They’re also free from EWG’s chemicals of concern, so you know you’re buying a safer and more effective sunscreen for you and your family.

The sun is both a major cause of skin cancer and the body’s primary source of vitamin D, an essential nutrient that forms when skin is exposed to intense sunlight. 

But generating vitamin D needs only a few minutes of sun exposure per week during summer for people with less melanated skin. Major medical associations advise against deliberate, prolonged sun exposure as a strategy for boosting vitamin D levels. The health risks outweigh the returns. 

What you can do

The science on tanning beds, sunscreens and UV risks is clear, even if federal policy is not. 

EWG provides actionable consumer advice to minimize the potential for long-term harm:

• Avoid tanning beds entirely. There is no safe level of use, especially for minors. The risk increases the younger that someone starts using them. 
• Use sunscreen. High SPF numbers don’t always guarantee UVA protection. It’s important to find a sunscreen that works for you.
• Check out EWG’s tools. Search EWG’s Guide to Sunscreens™ and EWG's Healthy Living App to find top-rated products that provide balanced UVA/UVB protection without ingredients of concern.
• Cover up. Wear protective clothing, hats and UV-blocking sunglasses.
• Seek shade. Find or create your shade with an umbrella or canopy.
• Time your outdoor activities. UV radiation is strongest between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. Plan your outdoor time around the sun's peak hours when you can. 

Go outside. Have fun. Don’t get burned. A tanning bed isn’t worth the risk. 

Areas of Focus Sunscreen Family Health Women's Health Children’s Health Agency withdraws decade-old plan for protecting minors from skin cancer Authors David Andrews, Ph.D. May 1, 2026

Your favorite brands might be in the fight against stricter food safety laws JR Culpepper April 30, 2026

More than a dozen states have enacted laws to protect consumers from harmful food chemicals and ultra-processed foods. Your favorite food brands may be tied up in efforts to erase them.

A draft bill known as the “FRESH” and Affordable Foods Act, introduced last week by Rep. Kat Cammack (R-Fla.), would take an unprecedented step in food policy by undoing many state laws aimed at strengthening food safety. States would also lose authority to regulate food chemicals in the future.

If enacted, the bill would make it dramatically easier for the food industry to add new chemicals to the food supply without meaningful review by the Food and Drug Administration – and would make it harder for the public to get information about these substances.

The bill closely mirrors previous proposals advanced by Americans for Ingredient Transparency, or AFIT. This is a front group lobbying for the interests of the largest food manufacturers and trade associations in the country. 

Names you might recognize on AFIT’s website include the Coca Cola Company, General Mills, Hormel Foods, Ken’s, Keurig Dr Pepper, Kraft Heinz, McCormick & Company, Nestlé, Ocean Spray, PepsiCo, Sargento and Tyson Foods. 

While AFIT isn’t officially backing the bill, the clear parallels between its wishlist and the legislation make its involvement appear likely. 

Brand favorites are tied up in the food fight

The companies belonging to AFIT own thousands of popular U.S. food and drink brands, whose products could be sitting on your shelves or in your fridge right now.

Below are just a few brands – many of which are known for promoting healthy or kid-friendly foods – owned by companies who are members of the front group AFIT.

General Mills is known for classic cereal brands like Cheerios. It also owns Cascadian Farm, EPIC protein bars, Larabar, Nature Valley and Yoplait.

Nestlé is the parent company of a range of brands, from Gerber baby and toddler foods to San Pellegrino waters to Orgain protein powders and nutritional supplements.

Keurig Dr Pepper owns the Mott’s brand, which caters to kids and families with its applesauce, juice and other snack lines. It also owns multiple flavored water brands, including Bai and Core Hydration.

PepsiCo is the parent company of multiple brands marketing nutrition supplements and healthier beverage options like Bubly, Poppi and Lifewater. Its products also include Sabra hummus, PopCorners chips, and Quaker oats, bars and cereals.

The complete list of foods owned by member companies of AFIT spans products found in virtually every grocery aisle. It includes a wide range of popular meat and poultry items, cookies and crackers, chips and snacks, energy and sports drinks, canned food, condiments, spices and seasonings, and prepared and frozen meals.

The FRESH Act makes food less safe

The retroactive reach of the FRESH Act – undoing existing state food safety laws – is its most radical feature and the one that has received the least attention. 

California’s Food Safety Act, which bans Red Dye No. 3, brominated vegetable oil, potassium bromate and propyl paraben from food sold in the state, would be nullified. 

Similar laws in Arkansas, Texas and Utah banning the same chemicals would be void. Taken together, these state laws represent years of effort, public advocacy and the democratic process, which would all be eliminated overnight by one single federal bill.  

The FRESH Act would also make it easier for companies to add chemicals to food without FDA approval. Food chemicals already approved, including those considered “generally recognized as safe,” or GRAS, would not receive additional FDA review. 

But GRAS chemicals aren’t necessarily safe chemicals. That’s because nearly 99% percent of the chemicals approved as GRAS since the year 2000 have been greenlighted by industry, not the FDA. 

The FRESH Act would undermine an already weak system for approving new chemicals. It would allow food chemical companies to submit even less information to the FDA on the chemicals they use. 

The bill would also let companies enlist industry-funded expert panels to decide food chemicals are safe, as long as they are added to an FDA database. Experts could also continue to have conflicts of interest as long as they are “managed.” If the FDA doesn’t respond to a request to add a new chemical to the GRAS list in 90 days, it would be added by default.

Under the FRESH Act, even if the FDA does ban a food chemical due to health and safety risks, the chemical of concern would still be allowed in food for two years. Companies may also ask the FDA to hide safety information from the public or delay chemical restrictions indefinitely by requesting hearings.

Everything the bill aims to achieve is a striking contrast to the agenda of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Under his signature “Make America Healthy Again,” Kennedy has called out food dyes, ultra-processed foods and the GRAS loophole as targets for reform. 

What consumers can do now

In the absence of federal action, states have stepped up to protect our health by removing toxic chemicals from our food. The FRESH Act would strip states of that power and place food safety in the hands of chemical companies instead.

Contact your representative and urge them to preserve critical public health protections by rejecting the FRESH Act. This is a direct attack on states rights and food safety. Your call carries weight.

At home, shoppers can check EWG’s Dirty Dozen Guide to Food Chemicals, which highlights top food chemicals to avoid due to health and safety concerns. 

For some extra help, take a look at EWG’s Food Scores, which provides ratings for more than 150,000 foods and drinks based on nutrition, ingredients and processing. Food Scores also flags unhealthy UPF and can help you identify alternatives. 

Or if you’re on the go, EWG’s Healthy Living app puts that information in your pocket while you shop.

The food industry, including some of your favorite brands, is hoping consumers aren’t paying attention to this fight. Let’s prove them wrong.

Authors Sarah Reinhardt, MPH, RDN April 30, 2026

Kursk II is one of Rosatom’s most important nuclear construction projects within Russia. Four of the most advanced and powerful units in Rosatom’s history—VVER-TOI reactors with capacities of up to 1,250 MW each—are being built there.

But this site is also the Russian nuclear power plant closest to the border with Ukraine. Likely for this reason, Rosatom is carrying out construction under conditions of limited transparency—either not publicly disclosing key construction milestones or doing so with significant delays and inconsistencies. This has led to confusion even at the level of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

To read the rest of this article, click here.

The post The curious, secretive case of the Kursk II nuclear power plant’s weird data appeared first on Bellona.org.

EWG applauds House passage of Luna amendment to protect public from toxic pesticides Anthony Lacey April 30, 2026

WASHINGTON — House lawmakers today passed a farm bill amendment, led by Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.), that removes a controversial liability shield for pesticide manufacturers.

The successful 280-142 vote scraps a provision that would have given the companies sweeping immunity from liability for illnesses linked to their products. 

The vote also preserves states’ authority to adopt stronger health warnings for pesticides.

The following is a statement from EWG’s Legislative Director Geoff Horsfield:

EWG strongly supports the House’s adoption of Rep. Luna’s amendment to the farm bill. By striking provisions that would have shielded pesticide manufacturers from accountability and undermined state and local protections, the House has taken an important step to safeguard public health.

At a time when communities nationwide are increasingly concerned about the risks associated with pesticide exposure, lawmakers should be strengthening – not weakening – the ability of states and local governments to act. 

Preserving these protections ensures that communities, especially farmworkers and children, are not left vulnerable from exposure to harmful farm chemicals.

EWG commends the House for rejecting efforts to erode state and local authority and urges Congress to maintain this critical language as the farm bill advances. Protecting people from toxic pesticides must remain a top priority.

###

The Environmental Working Group (EWG) is a nonprofit, non-partisan organization that empowers people to live healthier lives in a healthier environment. Through research, advocacy and unique education tools, EWG drives consumer choice and civic action.

Areas of Focus Pesticides Press Contact Alex Formuzis alex@ewg.org (202) 667-6982 April 30, 2026

Senior executives, directors, and major investors from the world’s largest fertiliser and grain companies have sold shares worth more than $66 million (£49 million) during price hikes linked to the Iran war, DeSmog can reveal.

Since the outbreak of the conflict in February, provoked by a U.S.-Israeli bombing campaign in Iran, fertiliser prices have increased by almost 45 percent – leading wheat producers in Australia to pare back planting, and some UK farmers to warn they may not sow for the summer season, risking soaring global grain prices.

The increased costs come after Iran blocked the Strait of Hormuz, a key shipping route. Around one-third of the world’s fertiliser, 20 percent of liquefied natural gas, and 25 percent of seaborne oil usually passes through the strait. The vast majority of chemical fertilisers are made from fossil fuels. 

DeSmog’s new analysis found that insiders at three firms – fertiliser giants CF Industries and Nutrien, and grain company Archer Daniels Midland – have sold shares worth tens of millions since the outbreak of the conflict.

As commodity prices have increased, so have the share prices of the world’s largest fertiliser and grain companies. In March, Nutrien saw its share value grow by over 50 percent, and CF Industries by nearly 40 percent. Although grain company shares have increased less markedly, they have also shown an upward trend.

DeSmog found that Kenneth Alvin Seitz, the CEO of the world’s largest fertiliser company, Nutrien, sold shares worth almost $5 million (£3.7 million) in March 2026 after the outbreak of the Iran war, making a $1.8 million (£1.3 million) profit on the transaction.

Three senior vice presidents at Archer Daniels Midland also banked nearly $8.5 million (£6.3 million) selling shares.

The Financial Times reported last month that insiders at CF Industries sold more than $30 million (£22 million) in shares after Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz on 2 March. DeSmog’s analysis found that, in total, insiders at the firm have sold almost $50 million (£37 million) of shares since the war began.

In the U.S., Canada and, some European countries, publicly traded corporations must declare the sale of shares by insiders, including senior executives, board members, significant shareholders, and their close family members.

The findings come weeks after the United Nations’ World Food Programme warned that the conflict in the Middle East could push roughly 45 million more people into acute hunger. In the UK, food prices will rise by “at least” nine percent this year, according to warnings from the country’s Food and Drink Federation in late March.

“These findings are outrageous, but we shouldn’t be surprised,” said Mónica Vargas Collazos, head of the global programme at Grain, a sustainable food campaign group.

“When there are conflicts or other supply shocks, these companies use their monopoly power to jack up prices, extract mega profits, and enrich shareholders. Farmers and consumers pay the price.”

All the companies and individuals named were approached for comment, and there is no suggestion that they breached any rules or laws.

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Bosses also cashed in during the Ukraine war. DeSmog’s findings reveal that insiders at five of the world’s largest fertiliser and grain companies – also including Bunge and Mosaic – sold shares worth nearly $515 million (£380 million) during price hikes liked to both the Iran and Ukraine wars.

W. Anthony Will, CEO of the world’s third largest fertiliser company CF Industries until January, sold shares worth over $150 million (£111 million) during price spikes linked to the conflicts. Will acted as an advisor to CF Industries until mid-March, and remains on its board.

Insiders at Archer Daniels Midland sold more than $90 million (£67 million) during the two wars, while insiders at Bunge unloaded shares for over $175 million (£129 million) during price spikes tied to the Ukraine war.

Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 caused fertiliser prices to quickly peak, followed by further increases between August and December as Russia’s squeeze on Europe’s gas supply caused fertiliser manufacturers to pause some operations.

Insiders at CF Industries banked just under $180 million (£134 million) in share sales in the year following the invasion.

Jennifer Clapp, food security expert with IPES-Food, and a professor at the University of Waterloo, Canada, told DeSmog that the findings underlined the need to move away from fossil fuels in food production.

“This crisis has revealed, in all too vivid terms, just how dependent our food system is on fossil fuels,” she said. “It is long past time to break free from this insecure oil-addicted model, and shift to more ecological forms of farming and more local, territorial food systems.”

Pie – share sales
Infogram Big Beneficiaries

In total, DeSmog identified 11 months where the Ukraine and Iran wars contributed to soaring fertiliser and grain prices. Insiders sold 45 percent more shares in these 11 months than in the three intervening years combined.

Company executives often pre-plan sales and acquisitions ahead of time to demonstrate that they are not trading based on insider knowledge or gaming the market. Of the 136 sales analysed, only 28 were linked to these plans – suggesting that the vast majority were deliberate, in-the-moment decisions based on high share prices.

Beneficiaries included CF Industries’ Christopher Bohn, the company’s current CEO, who sold more than 150,000 shares for over $13 million (£9.6 million) in February and August 2022. He was the company’s chief financial officer at the time.

Other beneficiaries included an executive vice president CF Industries who sold shares worth nearly $30 million (£22 million) during key moments of the Ukraine war.

Executives and board members are often awarded shares by firms as part of compensation plans. CF Industries awarded W. Anthony Will, its then CEO, more than 150,000 shares on 28 February 2022 at the end of a three year compensation plan. 

As part of compensation packages, companies can also give executives and directors the right to buy shares for several years at a fixed price, incentivising the individuals to increase their value. In multiple transactions, insiders were able to use this arrangement to purchase shares below market price, and then sell them for a significant profit.

Alongside his freely awarded shares, Will also purchased more than 1 million shares at below market price on 28 February. He then sold over 1.2 million shares worth $100 million (£74 million) the same day – four days after the Ukraine war broke out.

In one transaction, on 25 February 2022, the day after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, CF Industries’ Christopher Bohn purchased more than 100,000 shares under price guarantees dating back as far as 2014. He sold these shares at up to double the price – making $4 million (£3 million) in profit.

Grain Prices

Global wheat prices could rise by 4.2 percent if the Strait of Hormuz remains closed for a sustained period, according to the Kiel Institute.

Rising grain prices have been caused in part by disruptions to oil and gas supply – increasing the cost of fertilisers and therefore of intensive food production.

Archer Daniels Midland and Bunge are part of the “ABCD” firms that collectively control more than 70 percent of the global grain market.

In 2022, following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the value of shares in the two companies increased by almost a third.

Share sales
Infogram

Beneficiaries included Juan R. Luciano, CEO of Archer Daniels Midland, who purchased 300,000 shares at below-market price before selling them for almost three times the value in October 2022. He made a $18 million (£13 million) profit from the transaction.

The transaction was pre-planned, but will have been scheduled to take place on a particular date or once share prices reached a certain high.  

Archer Daniels Midland’s share price soared in October 2022 – the month when Russian leader Vladimir Putin upped threats to leave the Black Sea Grain Deal, which allowed for the safe export of grain, food, and fertiliser from Ukrainian ports.

The single biggest wins were made by Paul J. Fribourg and Continental Grain, a private investment firm and agribusiness conglomerate led by Fribourg and established by his family. Fribourg was a board member at Bunge until the end of 2022. He and Continental Grain sold shares worth nearly $170 million in March 2022, although they also appear to have begun selling off part of their stake in the months prior to Russia’s invasion.

Bunge told DeSmog that “Continental Grain has no current ownership position and exited its stake in Bunge in 2023.”

A spokesperson added that “Bunge’s role is to help keep essential food, feed and fuel supply chains moving safely and reliably, in compliance with all applicable laws.”

Fact checked by Brigitte Wear

The post Fertiliser and Grain Bosses Bank $66 Million Selling Shares During Iran War appeared first on DeSmog.

Reform UK has received £24 million from oil and gas interests, accounting for more than two thirds of its total income, DeSmog can reveal.

Led by Nigel Farage, the party is calling for new North Sea oil and gas drilling ahead of UK-wide elections in May on the ill-founded claim that it will cut energy bills.

DeSmog’s analysis reveals that 67 percent of Reform’s funding to date has come from donors with financial interests in fossil fuels, totalling more than £24 million.

A further £2.4 million has been donated by individuals who have disputed basic scientific facts about climate change.

“What these extraordinary numbers make clear is that Reform is less a political party and more a very highly paid public-facing lobby group for oil and gas interests,” said Jolyon Maugham, executive director of the Good Law Project campaign group.

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The biggest chunk (£22 million) has been gifted by Thailand-based crypto billionaire Christopher Harborne, whose firm AML Global sells jet fuel, which is made from crude oil. More than half (£12 million) of this figure was donated in 2025.

Another £1.7 million has come from hedge fund boss Jeremy Hosking, whose investment firm Hosking Partners has $440.8 million (around £326.5 million) invested in oil, gas, and coal. As revealed by DeSmog, Hosking Partners has ramped up its fossil fuel investments in recent months during the war in Iran, which has caused energy shortages and windfall profits for oil giants.

Reform has received more than £2 million from its deputy leader Richard Tice, a property millionaire who has denied that man-made carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions are causing climate change – instead calling it “plant food”.

Farage has himself claimed it’s “absolutely nuts” for CO2 to be considered a pollutant.

The party has also accepted £230,000 from management consultancy First Corporate Consultants, whose owner Terence Mordaunt is a former chair of the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF). The GWPF is the UK’s foremost climate denial group, and has claimed CO2 emissions are a “benefit to the planet”.

In total, Reform has received almost £26.7 million from climate deniers and fossil fuel interests since it was set up by Farage as the Brexit Party in 2019 – roughly three quarters (74 percent) of its total £36 million income.

IN NUMBERS: Reform’s smoggy £26 million Christopher HarborneFossil fuel interest£22,190,000Richard TiceClimate science denier£2,257,919Jeremy HoskingFossil fuel interest£1,718,000Terence MordauntClimate science denier£230,000Ashley Mark LevettFossil fuel interest£200,000Jacques J. TohmeFossil fuel interest£50,000TOTAL£26,652,919

Reform – which is leading UK-wide polls at 25 percent – has vowed to “scrap net zero”, end subsidies for wind and solar power, approve new oil and gas exploration, lift the ban on fracking for shale gas, and open new coal power plants.

The party has doubled down on these policies during the Iran war. Earlier this month, Tice called for the UK to extract “every last drop” of oil and gas in the North Sea, and described new drilling as “our patriotic duty”.

Green Party MP Ellie Chowns told DeSmog: “When you receive nearly two thirds of your funding from vested interests, it is no surprise you dance to their tune.

“This exposes precisely why Reform wants to promote fossil fuels and undermine the green transition to renewables that would provide us with cheaper, secure energy.”

New climate modelling has indicated that a critical Atlantic current is significantly more likely to collapse than previously thought, while scientists have warned of a “rapidly closing window” to limit temperatures rises to 1.5C and avoid the worst impacts of climate change.

In March, the UK’s independent Climate Change Committee said the entire cost of cutting emissions to net zero by 2050 would be less than a single fossil fuel price shock – two of which have been experienced by the UK in the past five years.

Meanwhile, a report by the New Economics Foundation last year concluded that Reform’s anti-renewables agenda could cost 60,000 jobs and wipe £92 billion off the economy.

“It isn’t exactly a shock to discover that the party most reliant on fossil fuel funding is also ignoring climate science and claiming that more drilling will solve all of our energy problems,” Angharad Hopkinson, political campaigner for Greenpeace UK, told DeSmog.

“But can they continue to hold that line as Trump’s war in Iran makes it more and more obvious that our dependence on oil and gas gives control over our energy prices to dictators and petrostates with no loyalty to the UK?”

Hopkinson added: “Reform is trying to walk a tightrope, presenting themselves as the party of patriotism while working to preserve foreign influence, rather than saving Britain money by switching to home-grown renewable energy and taking back control.”

Reform was approached for comment.

Reform’s Fossil Fuel Donors

Reform’s biggest donor is crypto investor Harborne, whose company AML Global supplies aviation and maritime fuel to a distribution network that includes “main and regional oil companies”, according to its website.

As reported by Private Eye, the price of jet fuel has doubled since the start of the war in Iran, which would benefit Harborne’s business interests.

One of AML Global’s past clients is the U.S. military, which made payments worth £115 million to AML Global’s Hong Kong division between 2020 and January 2026. It’s unclear if the U.S. military is still a client. 

Harborne and AML Global didn’t respond to DeSmog’s request for comment. In response to a similar enquiry in 2024, he posted a lengthy statement on the AML Global website, stating: “Firstly, I am not a climate science denier and secondly, I do not seek to influence any government through donations or lobbying regarding their policies on climate change or in favour of corporate interests.”

However, Harborne is by far the biggest donor to the UK’s leading anti-climate party. In addition to his £22 million in donations to Reform, The Guardian has revealed that he gave £5 million personally to Farage before the 2024 general election.

Copy: Farage’s foreign money
Infogram

DeSmog analysed Electoral Commission data going back to Reform’s founding, along with company accounts and investment registers.

Reform has also received £1.7 million from hedge fund boss Hosking, whose firm Hosking Partners has extensive fossil fuel holdings.

Its latest filings at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission show the hedge fund has $369.7 million (around £273.7 million) invested in oil and gas companies, and $71 million (around £52.6 million) invested in coal firms.

Hosking’s total fossil fuel investments increased by almost 54 percent in the first three months of 2026.

Hosking previously told DeSmog: “I do not have millions in fossil fuels; it is the clients of Hosking Partners who are the beneficiaries of these investments.” 

Reform also received £50,000 last year from Nova Venture Holdings. The company’s sole director, Jacques J. Tohme, is an oil executive with a long history in the industry. He is founder and managing partner at Samos Energy, which finances oil and gas projects in Southeast Asia. He previously founded Tailwind Energy – later merged with Serica Energy – an oil and gas company which operated in the North Sea and which “transacted” with Shell, BP, and ExxonMobil.

In November, the party accepted a further £200,000 from Ashley Mark Levett. He currently sits on the board of Monaco-based company, Levmet – a global commodities trader whose interests include fossil fuels.

Climate Denier Donors

Reform has also received more than £2.5 million from donors who have promoted climate science denial. 

The party’s deputy leader Tice has provided £2.3 million via his companies TISUN investments, Britain Means Business, and Leave Means Leave since the party’s founding in 2019.

Tice has described carbon dioxide as “plant food”, and told Sky News: “There’s no evidence that man-made CO2 is going to change the climate. Given that it’s gone on for millions of years, it will go on for millions of years.”

The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the world’s leading climate science body, has said it is “unequivocal” that human influence has caused “unprecedented” global warming.

Tice has been accused of hypocrisy for calling renewable energy “a massive con” while fitting solar panels and electric vehicle charging stations on his commercial properties.

In 2023, Reform received £230,000 from First Corporate Consultants, a company owned by Terence Mordaunt, who chaired the GWPF from November 2019 to October 2021.

The GWPF has claimed that carbon dioxide has been “mercilessly demonised” when in fact it should be “two or three times” higher than current levels.

In reality, the IPCC has said CO2 emissions are causing dangerous climate change, fuelling extreme weather, crop failure, and excess deaths around the world.

Despite their opposition to climate science and their fossil fuel donations, Reform MPs represent some of the constituencies most at risk from extreme heat and flooding, including Farage’s constituency of Clacton and Tice’s seat of Boston and Skegness.

Reform UK leader Nigel Farage looking at the floodwater in Burrowbridge, Somerset.

Credit: PA Images / Alamy Other Big Donors of Note

Outside the scope of this analysis is Zia Yusuf, a multi-millionaire former tech entrepreneur and Reform’s home affairs spokesman, who has donated £206,000 to the party.

While he has attacked climate action, Yusuf has not explicitly denied the role of man-made CO2 emissions to global warming.

Yusuf donated to Reform ahead of the 2024 election, after which he was appointed as the party’s chairman.

Following the election, Yusuf attacked the Labour Party’s clean energy policies, saying: “Labour champagne socialists are restricting supply of the cheapest form of energy for ordinary citizens.”

He has called net zero “religious madness” and described North Sea oil and gas as “a gift from god”. He welcomed Donald Trump’s election as U.S. president in 2024 as a rejection of “net zero fanaticism”.

The same year, Reform received £247,000 from David Lilley, a metals and mining executive and a director at the investment firm Drakewood Capital. The company holds a 20 percent stake in VSA Capital, which claims to have “a deep knowledge of mining and oil and gas” and which provides banking and brokerage services to the industry. 

Lilley – an old friend of Farage – is also a director of Resolute 1850, a Reform-linked think tank rebranded as the Centre for a Better Britain. It was launched last year by right-wing academic James Orr to “support Reform with policy development, briefing and rebuttal”. Orr joined Reform as head of policy in February, having previously been a senior advisor to the party.

Reform UK leader Nigel Farage and home affairs spokesperson Zia Yusuf.

Credit: ZUMA Press, Inc. / Alamy

Reform has received a further £990,000 from property billionaire Nick Candy, who is Reform’s treasurer and who claims to have sought party funding from oil and gas executives. 

As DeSmog has reported, Candy also has financial interests in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), a Gulf petrostate. In late 2024, his firm Candy Capital entered into a “strategic joint venture partnership” with Modon Holding, which is chaired by a board member of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC).

Between 2023 and 2025, the party accepted £95,000 from Panther Securities, a property investment company chaired by former UKIP donor Andrew Perloff, who has blamed rising inflation on climate policies and defended climate science deniers.

In June 2022, Perloff wrote: “Whilst they [scientists], of course, could be correct that global warming is happening, I feel it is worrying that those with different opinions are often prevented from presenting them for consideration.”

Reform has also received £36,000 from Heathrow Airport, which was found to be the world’s second most carbon-emitting airport in 2019. Heathrow has also donated to Labour and the Conservatives in recent years.

Farage’s Millions

Alongside these donations, Farage has received £664,000 since July 2024 from the anti-climate broadcaster GB News, which employs him as a presenter. The platform is co-owned by Paul Marshall, whose hedge fund had £1.8 billion invested in fossil fuels as of June 2023.

As revealed by DeSmog, Farage has received gifts from the UAE, and has been lavished with £150,000 worth of flights to give speeches to U.S. anti-climate groups. 

Last year, Farage helped launch a UK-Europe branch of the Heartland Institute, a U.S. climate denial group which has described itself as “the world’s most prominent think tank supporting skepticism about man-made climate change”.

In total, Farage has received almost £2 million in earnings and gifts since his election in 2024, including £675,000 from foreign sources.

The post Revealed: Reform’s £24 Million from Fossil Fuel Interests appeared first on DeSmog.

For years, advertising executives have largely escaped criticism for glossing the images of major polluters.

But as climate protestors turn up at ad agency offices and dozens of U.S. states file lawsuits accusing oil companies of deliberately spreading disinformation, the industry is coming under increasing scrutiny. U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres has called ad execs working with the fossil fuel industry “Mad Men fuelling the madness.”

Now, a new DeSmog report reveals which advertising companies have helped oil giants ExxonMobil, Chevron, BP, and Shell spend a collective $1.5 billion on buying U.S. ad space since the Paris Agreement to tackle climate change in 2015.

Below we’ve ranked their CEOs — the real life “Mad Men” — according to the estimated amount of oil company ad spend serviced by their company on their watch. (Click on the portraits to read a profile of their firm).

Note: Two of these companies — IPG and Omnicom — merged in November but have been considered separately as they were individual entities throughout the analysis period.

Mark Read, who stepped down last year amid nosediving profits, was one of the more outspoken ad industry leaders on climate change, despite WPP consistently having the most fossil fuel clients of any advertising company in the world under his leadership. In 2022, Read argued against a burgeoning industry movement to divest from fossil fuel clients, telling an audience of financial analysts: “We are there to support them on [their energy] transition.” Since then, an ad made by WPP agency VML has been banned by the UK advertising regulator for misrepresenting Shell’s business as greener than it actually is; a U.S. Congressional committee report cited a series of ExxonMobil ads made by WPP agency Group SJR as examples of greenwashing; and campaigners lodged a complaint (yet to be ruled upon) with the OECD alleging WPP had broken guidelines on climate and human rights. At the time, a WPP spokesperson said, “Contrary to the claims being made, we adhere to the highest regulatory standards in our work for clients.”

The longest serving CEO in this list, John Wren has overseen Omnicom’s lucrative longstanding relationship with ExxonMobil — which has a long history of funding climate science denial. Most notably, a group of Omnicom ad agencies developed ExxonMobil’s long-running algae-fuel ads. Hundreds of millions of dollars were spent on advertising a “climate solution” that few experts believed would ever leave the lab. Omnicom’s acquisition of IPG in November means Wren’s combined oil and gas client list is now the longest of any advertising CEO in the world. Although Omnicom has made some promises to reduce its operational emissions, the firm has never made any public move under Wren to restrict the nature of its work for the fossil fuel industry.

An accountant by trade, Michael I. Roth’s 15 years at IPG saw the company sign with ExxonMobil in 2011. Since then, a group of IPG media-buying agencies have managed hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of ad space for the oil giant to help it reach its desired target audiences. Roth’s reign also saw IPG become the go-to advertising partner for Saudi Aramco, the world’s biggest oil company — although those ad dollars are not included in this analysis. Roth left IPG in 2020, having earned nearly $200 million across 15 years, according to executive intelligence firm Equilar. When inducting him into the American Advertising Federation Hall of Fame, the federation described him as “a champion-level voice for what is good and right.”

Arguably the most famous (and richest) man in the ad industry. WPP’s founder Sir Martin Sorrell turned wire basket maker Wire & Plastic Products into the biggest advertising company in the world — and until recently the biggest provider of communications services to the fossil fuel industry. Sorrell was knighted in 2000 for his contributions to the business world. By 2015, his annual salary was over $90 million. He eventually left WPP in a cloud of controversy over allegations of personal and financial misconduct. A Financial Times investigation at the time said anonymous interviews with WPP staff painted “a picture of routine verbal abuse of underlings and a blending of Sir Martin’s corporate and private life”. Sorrell denied all the allegations against him.  

“I strongly believe that a brand that [does] not invest into this [clean energy] transition will be out of business in 10 years,” declared Yannick Bolloré in August 2023. The following month, Havas won a multimillion-dollar contract to handle Shell’s global ad placement strategy. Shell had U-turned on its renewable energy targets in favour of maintaining oil and gas production just months earlier. Insiders told DeSmog at the time that employees were taken aback, having watched Bolloré cultivate a personal brand of caring about the climate (though the deal was less surprising if you knew the Bolloré family’s business empire is partly built on transporting oil). Facing Extinction Rebellion die-ins at the Havas offices and the loss of a climate-focused client, the youngest “Mad Man” on this list has dug in, repeating in various interviews that “the most effective change comes from within.” In the end, four Havas agencies ended up losing their B-Corp certifications for ethical businesses over the Shell deal, and Havas had to warn investors the reputational damage could impact its financial performance.

Dentsu’s CEOs have tended not to make personal statements in the media on advertising’s relationship with the fossil fuel industry. Nevertheless, under Hiroshi Igarashi’s leadership, Dentsu took a significant step when it decided to quietly publish its “advertised emissions” in an investor risk report — representing the amount of carbon pollution associated with the uplift in sales resulting from its advertising campaigns, such as an airline ad leading to greater demand for flights. Dentsu found these were 32 times higher than the emissions from its core operations, such as powering its offices. Igarashi has shown no sign of moving Dentsu on from its lucrative contracts with Chevron and Shell — two of 18 fossil fuel clients Dentsu currently serves, according to research by industry campaign group Clean Creatives.

Toshihiro Yamamoto started his career with Dentsu back in 1981. A full 26 years later, the Dentsu veteran replaced the outgoing Tadashi Ishii as CEO, tasked with steadying the ship after Ishii left in a cloud of controversy. Yamamoto’s five years in charge saw the Japanese ad giant add Shell to its client roster, when its business-to-business ad agency Merkle gained control of a share of the hundreds of millions the oil giant spends on advertising each year. By the time Yamamoto departed in 2021, Dentsu had upped its fossil fuel contracts from five when he started his tenure to at least 11, according to DeSmog research.

In September 2022, Philippe Krakowsky announced an “industry first” climate policy that would restrict its work with fossil fuel companies. The new policy didn’t apply to existing clients. In an internal memo at the time, Krakowsky — like Read and Bolloré — told staff, “it is important to be in the room” with clients such as ExxonMobil to “positively impact their business transformation journeys.” Since Krakowsky sent this email, ExxonMobil has said it plans to increase production by more than a million barrels a day by 2030 and build four new gas projects. In August, a DeSmog investigation published with the Financial Times revealed allegations from staff that IPG was in breach of Krakowsky’s climate policy, after leaked documents showed it was helping Saudi Aramco — the world’s biggest oil company — target government policymakers. IPG and Krakowsky did not respond to the allegations. Krakowsky became the Chief Operating Officer at Omnicom in November after IPG was bought by its New York rival, a deal which earned Krakowsky a $48.6 million payout.

Under Tadashi Ishii, Dentsu led Chevron’s advertising strategy in the U.S., making ads that painted the oil giant as a steward of the environment and promoted speculative climate solutions like carbon capture. One ad from 2012 said “protecting people and the environment is a core value” at Chevron. In 2013, Ishii oversaw the $3.2 billion purchase of UK ad agency Aegis.  The Aegis acquisition saw Dentsu inherit major fossil fuel contracts not included in the analysis, such as French oil giant TotalEnergies.

Note: Big Oil ad spend figures for each CEO only cover the years they were in charge from the 2015 Paris Agreement onwards, even if they were in the job prior to this.

Art by Sabrina Bedford. Design by Sari Williams.

The post ‘Mad Men Fuelling the Madness’: Meet the Advertising CEOs Boosting Big Oil appeared first on DeSmog.

British advertising conglomerate WPP has helped oil companies ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell, and BP spend an estimated $1 billion on ads in the United States since the 2015 Paris Agreement to tackle climate change, a new report shows. 

The figure is nearly twice the respective amounts linked to U.S. rivals Omnicom and Interpublic Group (IPG), which merged in November. London-based WPP was the leading advertising group serving America’s oil industry over the past decade, according to the analysis by DeSmog. 

During this period, ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell, and BP had employed “deceptive and misleading” communications strategies designed to thwart policies to tackle the climate crisis by curbing the use of fossil fuels, a congressional investigation concluded in April 2024.

WPP’s services — from developing ideas for ads and designing logos, to securing ad space and analysing target audiences — were “crucial” to maintaining the oil industry’s public image, current and former WPP employees said. WPP is estimated to have earned millions of dollars a year from this work.

“The UK prides itself on climate leadership, and yet WPP, the supposed jewel of the British advertising industry, is facilitating dangerously misleading advertising in the U.S.,” said Victoria Harvey, holder of a PhD in the ad industry’s response to the climate crisis from the University of East Anglia, who reviewed DeSmog’s methodology.

“By creatively articulating the deception from big oil and gas, WPP has set the climate agenda back and continues to do so,” Harvey said.

ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell, and BP spent an estimated combined total of $1.5 billion on buying U.S. ad space such as TV slots and social media feeds since the Paris Agreement, according to the analysis. That’s roughly equivalent to running ads on every billboard in New York’s advertising hotspot Times Square every day for the last decade.

WPP’s global network of subsidiary advertising agencies made an estimated two-thirds’ worth of those ads, the analysis found. WPP, which is one of Britain’s biggest companies by revenue and also works with clients such as Coca-Cola and Unilever, was the only major ad company to partner with all four oil giants on advertising projects during this time.

This work may have breached a policy WPP adopted in 2022 not to accept projects that may “frustrate” the goals of the Paris Agreement, the current and former employees said, since the oil majors were committed to increasing oil and gas production and promoting speculative climate solutions.

A version of this article has been published by the Guardian.

WPP agencies Ogilvy and Wavemaker have both worked on U.S. campaigns for BP and Chevron respectively which received misleading advertising complaints, for taglines such as “We see possibilities in planes that fly on garbage.” Neither complaint was taken forward, although BP voluntarily withdrew its ads.

A 2022 U.S. Congressional committee report cited several ExxonMobil ads made by WPP’s Group SJR as examples of greenwashing, including one that compared fossil gas paired with renewable energy to “a peanut butter and jelly sandwich”.

An ExxonMobil ad featuring peanut butter and jelly made by WPP agency Group SJR, shown on Twitter (now X). (Credit: University of Oxford Climate Litigation Lab)

Staff who raised concerns about this work have been told by seniors that they are helping clients communicate about their shift to cleaner business models, the WPP employees said. But many who have worked on these projects fear they serve primarily to deflect criticism from polluters.

WPP clients BP and Shell have both weakened their own climate targets in the past three years. At the same time, their advertising output has pivoted to promoting the necessity of fossil fuels, a report published in March by industry campaign group Clean Creatives found.

BP’s 2023 campaign “And, not or” suggested that renewables should exist alongside oil and gas rather than replace them. The campaign included ads saying BP was reducing the climate impact of oil by running wells on electricity in Texas’ Permian Basin.

In a Shell YouTube ad run in October, a drone inspector identified as Tori describes how she is “helping provide American energy security” by carrying out safety checks on a drilling platform.

“We heard that a lot internally, that we were influencing them in the right direction,” said a former employee who worked on projects for BP at WPP branding agency Landor. “In reality, whatever BP decides to do, we would just deliver it.”

WPP and the other ad agencies mentioned did not respond to requests for comment.

Shell declined to comment. BP, ExxonMobil and Chevron did not respond to a request for comment.

Piece of the Pie

Advertising companies do not publish details about how much their clients spend on ad space, and increasingly avoid publicising their fossil fuel contracts.

To generate its estimates, DeSmog mapped the dozens of ad agencies that have worked for the four oil companies, using public sources such as staff social media profiles and industry award listings, confidential information shared by employees, and previous research by DeSmog and Clean Creatives. These contracts were then cross-referenced with ad spend estimates obtained from market research platform MediaRadar by the University of Oxford’s Climate Litigation Lab.

Most of the oil majors’ U.S. ad spend was channelled via subsidiaries of the handful of advertising holding companies that dominate the industry globally. After WPP, Omnicom and IPG, Tokyo-based holding company Dentsu ranked fourth in terms of its exposure to this ad spend ($255 million) and Paris-based rival Havas ranked fifth ($230 million).

(Credit: Sari Williams/DeSmog)

The analysis did not seek to capture the millions of dollars the fossil fuel industry spends every year advertising in countries outside the U.S., as well as on lobbying, branding, public relations, and other marketing activities.

Advertising industry insiders say momentum around climate initiatives has slowed over the past few years as competition from big technology companies and artificial intelligence (AI) has squeezed margins.

New WPP CEO Cindy Rose is due to present her strategy to reverse declining profits at the company’s annual general meeting on May 8. A preview in February did not mention sustainability.

Under previous CEO Mark Read, WPP committed to reduce carbon emissions and prevent greenwashing, including via the policy adopted in 2022 “not to take on any client work…designed to frustrate the objectives of the Paris Agreement.”

But employees claim these moves have changed little. 

There are concerns that WPP’s ongoing work with Shell, BP, and Chevron may breach the policy because many of these clients’ ads have distracted from or justified fossil fuel expansion, according to six current and former employees, who spoke to DeSmog anonymously for fear of professional repercussions.

New fossil fuel projects planned by the companies are incompatible with the Paris goal to limit the global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees and prevent catastrophic climate change, scientific assessments have found.

“I don’t think there’s anything that WPP could possibly be saying for BP or Shell that would adhere to the policy,” said a former director at two WPP agencies in New York.

In total, WPP has held at least 82 contracts with the fossil fuel industry around the world since the start of 2025, according to industry campaign group Clean Creatives. More than a quarter of those contracts relate to work wholly or partially targeted at U.S. audiences.

Experts say that the impact of WPP’s moves to lower carbon emissions by reducing employee travel and powering buildings with green energy is outweighed by its work for polluters.

“By shaping public narratives, increasing consumption, and normalising fossil fuel use, agencies like WPP can significantly influence emissions far beyond their operational footprint,” said Alexis McGivern, a researcher on corporate climate policy at Oxford Net Zero, a research group at the University of Oxford.

WPP ad agencies Ogilvy and VML have led BP and Shell’s respective advertising strategies since at least 2000, DeSmog found.

Ogilvy devised BP’s “Beyond Petroleum” campaign in 2000. It also popularised the concept of the “carbon footprint” through a series of BP ads in 2004 which sought to emphasise individual responsibility for reducing emissions. 

Screenshot from a Shell YouTube ad featuring a drone inspector identified as Tori, 19 October, 2025. (Credit: University of Oxford Climate Litigation Lab)

Today, WPP agencies such as Ogilvy are still “deeply embedded” in BP’s advertising process and have some staff dedicated solely to working on BP projects, according to the former Landor employee.

In 2020, BP briefed seven WPP agencies — including Ogilvy, Landor, and VML — to create a new brand strategy to tackle the company’s image as “the bad guys,” according to a WPP document obtained by investigative outlet Drilled.

Subsequent U.S. ad campaigns launched by BP repeatedly promoted the company’s “#netzero” goals and said it supported regulation to limit methane emissions, despite BP having successfully lobbied the U.S. government to roll back such rules, an investigation by Unearthed found.

“WPP has had oil clients for decades, whether they were promising to go green or not,” said one former partner at a WPP agency, who has worked on Shell campaigns. “That tells you everything you need to know about whether we are actually trying to change things.”

Risks Rising for Protecting Polluters

Pressure is building on advertising companies to acknowledge their role in delaying climate action by protecting the reputations of polluters.

U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres has urged ad agencies to drop fossil fuel clients, calling ad executives “Mad Men fuelling the madness.”

The OECD, an intergovernmental economic organisation, is considering a complaint against WPP filed by climate and human rights campaigners in February last year. At the time, a WPP spokesperson said, “Contrary to the claims being made, we adhere to the highest regulatory standards in our work for clients.” Protesters have since targeted WPP’s Thames-front offices in London with banners reading “climate criminals”.

The “increased reputational risk associated with working on client briefs perceived to be environmentally detrimental” could affect revenue, WPP said in its 2025 sustainability report.

Climate activists from Extinction Rebellion protest outside WPP’s offices in London, June 25, 2025. (Credit: Extinction Rebellion)

Legal risks are rising, too.

In a first-of-its-kind ruling in October, a Paris court found French oil giant TotalEnergies misled consumers by saying it had put “climate at the heart of its strategy” during a 2021 rebrand, despite continuing to heavily invest in new oil and gas projects.

WPP agency Wavemaker advised TotalEnergies on where to buy ad space for the rebrand campaign but was not named in the case.

In January, Michigan state filed the latest of dozens of U.S. lawsuits being brought by local and federal governments against ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell, BP, and other oil companies accusing the companies of climate deception and disinformation.

So far, a U.S. court is yet to find against an oil company in such a case. The companies deny any wrongdoing, arguing that the courts are the wrong venue to determine climate policy.

“In the context of increasing litigation to recover substantial damages for the escalating costs of climate change on the basis of oil majors’ deceptive activities, doing large amounts of the same companies’ advertising work does not seem legally advisable,” said Johnny White, a lawyer at environmental law firm Client Earth, which advised on the TotalEnergies case.

Additional reporting by Kathryn Clare and Ellen Ormesher

The post Revealed: British Ad Giant’s Billion-Dollar Greenwash of U.S. Oil Industry appeared first on DeSmog.

Two months ago, everyone was still wondering whether the First Conference for Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels would carry the relevance it promised in Brazil. Would governments around the world care enough to show up after the excitement of COP30 had faded? In a world that seemed to be sinking into new wars with global consequences?

Paradoxically, the escalating aggressions by the United States and Israel in Southwest Asia (Middle East) have shown the world exactly why we need to leave behind our dependence on fossil fuels. Entire communities have been destroyed, families buried under rubble, children killed, livelihoods erased, all in a region whose political fate has been shaped for over a century by the control of oil and gas. People in Palestine, Lebanon, and across the region are paying with their own lives for the world’s thirst for fossil fuels.

These are not abstract arguments. They are the bombs that fall, the blockades that starve, the occupations that endure, all because fossil fuel wealth concentrates power in the hands of those willing to use violence to protect it. Not only do fossil fuels poison our planet, they fuel instability, deepen inequality, and tie our futures to volatile and unjust energy systems. Moving beyond fossil fuels is no longer a distant goal. It is a shared necessity.

The response? Fifty-seven countries representing roughly a third of the global economy came together, signaling that the transition is not only possible but already underway.

But what truly defined this conference was not just who showed up at the governmental level. It was who was finally let in.

Indigenous peoples from around the world, trade unions, youth groups, academics, Afro-descendant communities, peasant associations, women and diverse identities, activists and NGOs, among others, engaged for the first time in a participation mechanism that actually listens to their voices and puts their demands on the table.

And beyond the high-level spaces, communities were building, not just speaking. During both days of the Peoples Summit, 350.org with 32 organizations across Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico and the Caribbean Islands a Fair of Alternatives, showing that futures beyond fossil fuels are already here. Community leaders hosted a panel within the Peoples Summit space, and their voices fed into the final declaration.

Frontline communities from all around the world had a voice on the Santa Marta conference

 

It was no small thing to see Indigenous women leaders from Putumayo and Bolivia connecting over their shared concern about an energy transition being carried out without consultation in their territories, one that threatens to bring extractive models for copper and lithium that would gravely affect their environments and communities. But ready, too, to share models of community energy generation through biodigesters they have built themselves. Because communities around the world have not sat around waiting for their governments to act. They have thought of solutions and carried them out.

That same spirit drove the Popular Assemblies we co-organized in three territories in Colombia and Ecuador, where affected communities named the crisis in their own terms. Two of the communities that led these Assemblies — Cesar sin Fracking and Alianza Libre de Fracking — attended the high-level Conference, including Yuvelis Morales Blanco, now a winner of the Goldman Environmental Prize. 350.org also held an organizing space toward a common Latin American campaign against fracking and LNG with leaders from Colombia, Argentina and Mexico.

These connections between communities were perhaps the most powerful thread running through the conference. Activists from across the world linked militarization and the climate crisis in a country with more than 60 years of armed conflict, where multinationals like Glencore and Drummond have used armed groups to displace and kill local communities, seize their lands and waters, and leave surrounding populations in misery and fear. The Climate Justice Flotilla traveled across Caribbean islands still under Dutch colonial rule to bring their voices to this space — possibly the first time Aruba and Curacao had representation at a conference like this, even as the Netherlands, their colonial power, co-hosted while opposing a fossil fuel transition treaty.

During the Santa Marta conference, activists and local communities blocked the entrance of one of the main coal ports in Latin America.

 

It was also no small thing to see these same activists blockade one of the largest coal ports in Latin America with solar panels — Drummond’s port in Ciénaga. The action put the demands of affected communities front and centre: making polluters pay for the loss of land, biodiversity and life, and the need for a just transition. For local communities, doing something like this would mean enormous security risks — just weeks earlier, armed groups had kidnapped 25 fishermen from the community most affected by Drummond. But these young people from around the world used their foreign origins as a kind of shield, standing in solidarity with the communities of Ciénaga, Santa Marta, and all of Colombia affected by this multinational. Those same solar panels used in this action will now go to the communities most harmed by that coal port.

So what did governments actually deliver?

Let’s be clear: they could have been far more ambitious. The world is on fire, sometimes literally, and the political outcomes of this conference reflect cautious, small steps that do not match the urgency communities are living every day.

Governments from 57 countries meet at the First Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels Conference, in Colombia

 

That said, the fact that this conference happened at all, that it finally named fossil fuels as the root cause of climate chaos and created a dedicated space to address them outside of the pressures of formal COP negotiations, is itself a significant victory. Five concrete outcomes came out of the high-level segment:

1. Continuity. A second conference has been announced for 2027, co-hosted by Tuvalu and Ireland, with the main event taking place in Tuvalu. And who better than our brothers and sisters from the Pacific nations, on the frontlines of climate chaos, to carry forward what started in Santa Marta and remind the world of the urgency?
2. A coordination group has been established to ensure continuity between conferences, bringing together countries leading different alliances and initiatives on the fossil fuel transition, including the co-hosts of the first and second conferences.
3. The outcomes will be handed over to the COP30 Presidency, shared ahead of the intersessional meetings in Bonn this June and formally presented at London Climate Action Week, with plans to bring them to the UN Secretary-General during New York Climate Week. The intention is to feed these results into the second Global Stocktake, making sure this process does not live in isolation from the UNFCCC.
4. Three workstreams have been launched to identify concrete opportunities for cooperation: one focused on national roadmaps guided by the Science Panel, another on economic dependencies and financial architecture, and a third on aligning fossil fuel producers and consumers toward trade systems free of fossil fuels. These workstreams will remain open for countries to join or lead.
5. A Science Panel for the Global Energy Transition will anchor the entire process in evidence rather than politics. Academics and scientists from around the world joined forces to ensure that science guides the process of leaving fossil fuels behind, and to help countries develop roadmaps aligned with the 1.5°C trajectory and to dismantle the legal, financial, and political barriers standing in the way.

Are these outcomes enough? No. Are they the kind of bold, binding commitments that the scale of the crisis demands? Not even close. But in a world where the largest historical emitter has abandoned climate action entirely, where wars rage over the very resources we need to leave behind, the fact that 57 countries sat down, opened the doors to movements and communities, and committed to a sustained process is not nothing. It is the floor, not the ceiling, and it is up to all of us to push it higher.

Communities everywhere will keep building the solutions their governments have been too slow to deliver. And the rest of us? We stay loud, stay connected, and keep showing up, because the transition has already begun, and it was never going to be led from the top.

Because if this conference showed anything, it is that the transition is not only about energy systems. It is about power. The power of who gets to decide. Who benefits. Who is heard. And for perhaps the first time at this scale, the answer is beginning to shift.

The Great Power Shift has started. Join us!

The post Santa Marta was just the beginning appeared first on 350.

New study finds ‘clean’ products for textured hair contain hidden hazards  Ketura Persellin April 29, 2026

Americans spend billions of dollars on hair care products every year, with growing demand for those marketed as “clean,” “natural” or “free from” harmful chemicals. But a new study finds the claims don’t always stand up to scrutiny and highlights the need for transparency in labeling to reduce uncertainty for consumers. 

The article was published in the Journal of Exposure Science and Environmental Epidemiology.

This means some consumers who think they’re buying a safer product could still be exposed to potentially harmful substances in their products. And products marketed to Black women contain more hazardous ingredients, resulting in disproportionate exposure from personal care products for Black women and women of color.

Scientists led by researchers from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and Columbia University along with Black Women for Wellness and Silent Spring analyzed products marketed as “clean,” focusing on textured hair described as curly, coily or wavy. Researchers reviewed products available at a Target in Los Angeles and used EWG’s Skin Deep® database to review ingredients in 150 hair products. 

Skin Deep scores over 144,000 personal care products based on the potential toxicity of their ingredients.

Some of the products included undisclosed “fragrance” compounds that can be endocrine disruptors linked to allergies, skin irritation and potential harm to the reproductive system. Other brands included ingredients that have been linked to these and other health concerns.

Around 40% of the products the researchers analyzed are listed in EWG’s Skin Deep database. The main findings were:

• 70% of products contained undisclosed fragrance, which is an umbrella term that refers to a mixture of potentially 100 or more chemicals. 
• 90% were classified as a “moderate” hazard (between 3 and 6 in Skin Deep). 
• “Free from” claims were inconsistently used on products. For example, only 60% of products formulated without sulfates were described as “sulfate free.”

Inequitable hazards

This isn’t just a marketing or labeling problem. It’s an equity problem. 

The study focused on textured hair products because they are disproportionately used by women of color, who already bear a heavier burden of exposure to endocrine-disrupting chemicals. 

EWG’s 2025 report on products marketed to Black women found disparities in the availability of safer personal care products. Using data from Skin Deep, EWG found the products were, on average, more hazardous than products without demographic marketing. 

Studies that have measured the concentration of certain personal care product chemicals in the body have also consistently reported that concentrations are higher in Black women, compared to white women.  

Regulatory gaps

Personal care product brands and retailers should take steps to develop and promote safer options that are genuinely free from chemicals of concern.

But it’s not just the industry’s duty to act – the lack of a federal definition for “clean” products means consumers must still navigate a complex and often opaque marketplace. No U.S. government agency requires companies to back up safety claims about their products.

The European Union has taken steps to protect consumers from greenwashing, a marketing tactic that involves making misleading claims so the product appears safe, environmentally friendly or sustainable. The EU’s 2023 Green Claims Directive outlined criteria to prevent companies from using unsubstantiated claims on their products. 

While the Federal Trade Commission says it is illegal to make claims that are “unfair or deceptive,” these terms are not closely regulated. This leaves little protection for consumers from greenwashing claims.

What you can do 

If you’re shopping for hair care or any other personal care products and you want to avoid problematic ingredients, here are some tips:

• Look for the EWG Verified® mark. In lieu of stronger regulations, third-party certification can fill the gap. That’s why EWG Verified exists: It gives consumers a mark they can trust. These products have been reviewed by our scientists and meet our most rigorous standards for health and transparency. 
• Avoid undisclosed fragrance. Watch for this term on product labels. Fragrance can hide hundreds of undisclosed chemicals. Instead, choose products that disclose all their fragrance ingredients, or look for the EWG Verified mark.
• Look for low hazard options. Check the list of the 4,000+ products marketed to Black women, and choose low hazard options. Or search our Healthy Living app or Skin Deep database to identify products that score low hazard (a 1 or 2). 

Areas of Focus Cosmetics Authors Alexa Friedman, Ph.D. April 29, 2026

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As the UK and EU debate how to source the vast quantities of electricity they’ll need to power their grand visions of home-grown artificial intelligence (AI), the gas turbine sector is confident that governments will soon follow the lead of the United States – by clearing the way for Big Tech to embrace natural gas.

“Sooner or later there will be a wake-up call for the EU”, said Francesco Ciccola of American gas turbine manufacturer Mitsubishi Power Aero.

DeSmog spoke to Ciccola last month at Datacloud Energy Europe, a tech energy conference dedicated to “defining Europe’s AI power strategy,” held in Brussels, Belgium. 

San Francisco-based Global Energy Monitor, a research and advocacy group that tracks global fossil fuel developments tied to data centres, says that Mitsubishi Power Aero is a major provider of turbines for the AI boom in the U.S.

“This new administration in the U.S., they give you a workshop of reality”, said Ciccola, a Europe-based sales director for the manufacturer, which sponsored the conference. “It’s typical, this buffer in time between U.S. and Europe, in everything.”

After the event, Ciccola told DeSmog that “Mitsubishi Power’s mission is to help create a future that works for people and the planet by advancing innovative power solutions that support decarbonization while delivering reliable energy.”

He added: “Any remarks made at Datacloud Energy Europe were intended to describe observed market conditions and customer demand, not to comment on or advocate for any political or regulatory approach.

“Mitsubishi Power Aero operates in full compliance with all applicable permitting, planning, and regulatory requirements in every jurisdiction where we do business. References to differences between markets were descriptive of timing and demand dynamics only.”

Across the U.S., President Donald Trump has championed fossil fuel-powered AI, while tech giants are planning, constructing, and operating their own gargantuan, energy-voracious new AI data center complexes with off-grid gas power plants.

Tech companies including Meta, Google, Microsoft, OpenAI, Nvidia, and xAI, are currently planning or building out fleets of gas turbines that will generate at least 23 gigawatts (GW) of electricity, according to an analysis by Cleanview – roughly twice as much as New York City uses.

This American AI construction blitz has come at an enormous cost to the climate, skyrocketing the tech industry’s carbon emissions and pushing one tech giant after another to abandon its climate pledges.
 
Is it now Europe’s turn?

Datacloud Energy Europe 2026 sponsors listed at the event.

Credit: Datacloud / LinkedIn

“I just think the American market is ahead of us [and] the same thing is going to happen here”, said a turbine sales representative from UK-based manufacturer Langley Holdings, which also sponsored the March 25-26 Datacloud conference and primarily sells to the UK. “It just will take a bit longer and it will be a bit harder because more people will be saying, ‘hang on a minute, we don’t want to be burning greenhouse gasses.’”

A sales representative from MWM, the European arm of U.S.-based gas generator manufacturer Caterpillar, who asked not to be identified, told DeSmog that the company – another summit sponsor – is “definitely” confident that gas-powered AI will be coming to the UK.

The representative said MWM is working on “numerous” projects in Europe and the UK, each capable of generating up to 100 megawatts (MW). The projects are “getting more concrete” compared to last year, they said, with “actual projects” materialising in Germany and the UK.
 
MWM and Langley Holdings were approached for comment.

The Datacloud summit came at a pivotal moment. The EU and UK are due to unveil new regulations that will dictate to what extent new AI data centres can construct off-grid gas plants to power their operations – and as gas turbine manufacturers report global order backlogs running to 2030.
 
Datacloud’s organisers promised that the summit – which involved tech sector and energy leaders, gas turbine industry representatives, and European politicians – would “influence billions in investment” and “reshape regulatory pathways.”

The result was a fierce two-day debate where high-level decision makers in the world of AI and energy fought over whether data centres in Europe will be rolled out with fossil fuels.

“We have to face the reality – there is a real risk of gasification for data centres,” said MEP Nicolás González Casares, a member of the European Parliament Committee on Industry, Research, and Energy. “We cannot gassify this sector. Data centres must become an enabler of the green transition.”
 
“No planet, no data centre,” said Neal Kalita, senior director of global power and energy at NTT Global Data Centres, the third largest data centre operator in the world. “Being a kind of a continent that develops a digital infrastructure that doesn’t destroy the planet is going to be not just a competitive edge – it’s an imperative.”
 
Powering Europe’s AI boom with gas, if governments allow it, could decimate net zero goals. A recent analysis by Carbon Brief found that if the UK relies heavily on gas to power data centres, the AI sector would emit 30 metric tonnes of carbon a year by 2035 – as much as the entire country of Denmark. Any increase in emissions will take the UK further away from its goal to cut emissions by 81 percent from 1990 levels by 2035.

The EU’s AI ambitions would demand up to 168 terawatt-hours (TWh) of power by 2030, according to projections by the Kiel Institute – equivalent to what Poland consumes every year. If powered by non-renewables, the report warns, data centres will be putting the EU’s climate goals “at risk.”
 
Will the gas evangelists win out? Europe is on the cusp of making that decision.

European AI Dash?

Both the UK and the EU have announced plans to triple their AI capacity – in the UK by 2030 and the EU by 2035. The pledges have set off a rush of data centre construction across Europe.
 
However, years-long wait times to connect new AI data centre projects to electricity grids have pushed many developers to try to skip the queue by requesting direct hookups to gas. In the last year, companies including Nvidia, Microsoft, and Amazon have pressured the UK government to approve fleets of private gas turbines and generators for their projects in Britain.
 
In that spirit, off-grid gas-powered data centre projects have begun to crop up across Europe in recent months.
 
Ireland, which has long embraced data centre development, is emerging as the canary in the coal mine. In 2024, data centres consumed 6,969 gigawatt-hours (GWh), 22 percent of the country’s total electricity consumption. Off-grid gas power is now rolling in to alleviate this energy crunch.

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Last month, British off-grid power specialist company AVK, alongside data centre operator Pure Data Centres, announced the completion of the first data centre in Dublin powered by dedicated gas-fired turbines capable of producing 90 MW, enough energy to power 100,000 homes for a year. While AVK says the turbines could theoretically be run on renewable hydro-treated vegetable oil, currently they are running on natural gas as the “primary fuel”. Neither company has given a timeline for the turbines to transition off gas.

Will governments green-light European gas-fired AI projects? Campaigners are concerned about the gas turbine industry’s confidence at this prospect.
 
“The gas industry evidently sees [European] data centres as a growing market, which is a worrying sign of apparent government apathy towards the climate implications,” said Oliver Hayes, head of big tech at environmental campaign group Global Action Plan. “Using AI as an excuse to breathe new life into destructive oil and gas projects is neither welcome nor wise.”

Gas Powered, Government Approved?

There are indications that Britain may sign on to gas-powered AI, even if it spells calamity for its climate goals.

Future Energy Network, which represents UK pipeline operators, told The Times that seven data centre projects have already been waived through to hook up to the gas grid.

In March, the Labour government gave its approval for a proposed 300 MW gas-powered data centre campus in Wapseys Wood, Buckinghamshire to apply for planning permission as nationally significant infrastructure – which allows projects to bypass the usual local planning requirements.

There are indications that the European public doesn’t support this kind of development. According to an October survey by the campaign group Beyond Fossil Fuels, two-thirds of people in the European Union don’t want data centres powered by fossil fuels.

Europeans “do not want to shoulder the costs” of powering data centres, said Jill McArdle, a campaigner at Beyond Fossil Fuels. She added that the opposition of Americans to sharply rising energy prices “should serve as a warning for Europe.”

“The U.S.-Iran war is exposing European countries’ over-reliance on unstable and expensive foreign imports of fossil fuels”, said McArdle. “Yet Big Tech and the gas [energy equipment] industry are plotting to keep us hooked and grow their profits.” 

It may soon become clearer whether EU or UK lawmakers agree. The EU is set to release two new AI regulations in the coming few months: a new law that is expected to include provisions about renewable energy requirements for data centres, and a data centre sustainability rating scheme.
 
In the UK earlier this year, the Labour government launched an inquiry into the future climate impacts of data centres. Energy and Net Zero Secretary Ed Miliband has already said these impacts are “inherently uncertain.”

In response to a request for comment, Labour said that its recently-formed AI Energy Council is “exploring opportunities to attract investment and support the development of clean power for data centres”, and that the country’s designation of five “AI Growth Zones” is “driving these partnerships forward.”

This same council pressured the government last year to support off-grid gas for data centres in Britain.

So far, many data centre operators in Europe have avoided reporting their energy usage. A new investigation by Investigate Europe, an independent journalism group, has revealed that U.S. tech companies successfully lobbied the EU two years ago to keep information on the operations of individual data centres secret, including environmental data like energy use and carbon emissions. Only 36 percent of Europe’s data centres submitted any data to a 2025 European Commission report on their energy usage. In the Netherlands, Microsoft and Google have come under fire for failing to report the energy usage of their Dutch data centers to the government.

McArdle said that the UK and EU governments need to intervene to ensure the sector is held to account. “Only regulation and fossil fuel phaseout will protect Europeans from rising energy costs,” she said. “Otherwise, we will pay the price for the reckless profit-making schemes of Big Tech and the gas industry.” 

The post Inside the Plot to Cover Europe with Gas-Powered AI Data Centres appeared first on DeSmog.