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In a win for transparency and accountability, particularly for Delta communities, Tribes, ecosystems, and ratepayers statewide, the California Supreme Court denied review of a trial court ruling that found the State Department of Water Resources (DWR) exceeded its authority in approving bond financing for the Delta Tunnel.

Attorneys representing several Counties and agencies challenging DWR, Roger Moore and Thomas Keeling, praised the decision, calling the Court’s denial a “wise rejection of a misguided attempt by DWR and other Delta tunnel proponents to acquire unchecked power exceeding the scope of DWR’s delegated authority.” Restore the Delta is proud to have been part of the litigation, represented by attorney Robert Wright.

The ruling reaffirms ongoing concerns about the environmental and financial risks of advancing the Delta Tunnel project without proper regulatory review, concerns shared by a broad coalition of counties, legislators, Tribes, community advocates, environmental organizations, and public interest groups.

Read the full release from Attorneys Moore and Keeling here.

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Click here to Download —> Greenaction Spring 2026 Frontlines of EJ Newsletter PDF

 

 

Construction Updates The Orange County Transportation Authority (OCTA), in coordination with Metrolink, is replacing the railroad bridge over San Juan Creek. Built in 1917, the bridge has reached the end of its useful life and will be replaced by a new three-span girder bridge. Stay up to date.

California Nurses Association members condemn the California State Assembly’s failure to advance A.B. 1900, the California Guaranteed Health Care for All Act, also known as CalCare, at a time when health care is needed more urgently than ever before. CalCare is a comprehensive, high-quality single-payer program that would be many Californians’ only lifeline for care.

This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Pearl Marvell

The Trump administration’s fuel blockade against Cuba has resulted in widespread power outages, gas shortages, garbage in the streets, and a humanitarian crisis – but also a surge in solar installations.

In 2025, the Caribbean nation produced 10% of its electricity from renewable sources, a jump from 3.6% in 2024, according to Rosell Guerra Campaña, director of the Ministry of Renewable Energy at Cuba’s Ministry of Energy and Mines.

Cuba’s increased reliance on renewables is driven by dire necessity.

Since President Donald Trump’s January 2026 executive order imposing tariffs on countries that supply oil to Cuba, gas and diesel supplies have grown sparse, forcing many residents to stay home.

“The streets feel like a ghost town,” said Michael Galant, a senior research and outreach associate at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, who visited Cuba for work in March.

Galant described the situation as “extremely dire” and “visibly worse” than what he saw in previous visits.

Trash trucks can’t operate without fuel, so garbage is piling up on city streets and creating a breeding ground for the mosquitoes that spread diseases like dengue and chikungunya. The alternative is to burn the trash, polluting the air.

U.N. experts condemned the fuel blockade in February.

“The U.S. executive order imposing a fuel blockade on Cuba is a serious violation of international law and a grave threat to a democratic and equitable international order,” they said.

Residents in La Habana and Morón, in the middle of the main island of Cuba, have expressed their frustration by banging pots and pans at all hours.

The U.S. capture in January of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro has intensified the crisis, as Venezuela was previously one of the primary suppliers of oil to Cuba. In February, Trump allowed the resumption of some Venezuelan oil imports, but that has not halted the energy crisis. Other countries that used to supply oil have cut Cuba off under the threat of U.S. tariffs.

A crumbling grid and worsening blackouts

Cuba is heavily dependent on oil for generating electricity for its fragile grid. With oil supplies curtailed, power outages sometimes exceed 20 hours a day. In March, there were three major blackouts across the nation.

Raúl Rodríguez Rodríguez, director of the Center for Hemispheric and U.S. Studies at la Universidad de La Habana, said that an alarming number of hospitals have been canceling surgeries – including a planned operation for his own wife – as a result of the blackouts. In March, CNN reported that tens of thousands of Cubans were awaiting surgeries that had been delayed by power outages.

Cuba’s economic situation has been precarious since the U.S. imposed an embargo in 1962 after Fidel Castro took power. Decades later, the Obama administration loosened some sanctions, but Trump resumed hard-line policies during his first term.

“It is designed to attack Cuba’s vulnerabilities,” Rodríguez Rodríguez said in Spanish. “It has a double significance: an economic and humanitarian aspect.”

It’s not just the blockade that is causing the energy crisis.

Rodríguez Rodríguez compared the archipelago’s electrical grid to Frankenstein: made up of a series of components from different countries, companies, and time periods. The result is that repairing the system is extremely difficult. Some of the companies involved in creating the grid no longer exist or are not allowed to do business with Cuba as a result of long-term U.S. policy.

The grid’s vulnerability to extreme weather was highlighted by Hurricane Melissa, which hit Cuba in 2025 as a slow-moving Category 2 storm, causing widespread power outages.

“The problem comes from two things: the state has very few resources, and the maintenance of the grid,” Rodríguez Rodríguez said.

Jorge Piñon, a senior research collaborator at the Energy Institute at the University of Texas in Austin, said he believes that the situation is a little more complicated than that. He said that the Cuban government has the means to update its energy grid – it just hasn’t.

Piñon pointed to the luxury hotel Torre K-23 in Havana, a 42-story, Cuban-financed hotel that opened in 2025 only to be shut down recently. Why couldn’t the money invested in the luxury hotel have been spent on rebuilding the grid, Piñon wondered?

Piñon compared the grid to a terminally ill patient who became so largely due to government mismanagement.

“It’s going to take a lot of years, it’s going to take a lot of money,” he said, for the electrical grid to function correctly. “It takes time. It takes effort.”

Can solar solve Cuba’s power crisis?

Still, solar is ramping up at unprecedented levels.

On Feb. 10, Cuba generated more than 800 megawatts from solar energy for the first time, according to the Ministry of Energy and Mines. The next day, it generated 900 megawatts.

With 34 solar farms, the country aims to produce 15% of its electricity from renewable sources in 2026.

Rodríguez Rodríguez said that he has seen a surge in renewable microgrids, which are small-scale power grids made up of solar panels or wind turbines and batteries. He’s also seen a rise in the installation of cheap Chinese solar panels – which are not caught in the crosshairs of tariffs – at medical clinics, hospitals, and private businesses.

The growth is made possible by a dramatic decrease in the cost of clean-energy systems. The cost of solar panels has fallen 90% in the past decade, and the price of combined solar and battery systems has fallen significantly as well.

Although sanctions and logistics make the costs higher, the fact that the Cuban government owns the majority of land in the country simplifies the process of installing solar parks.

“It’s pretty extraordinary,” said London-based economist Kevin Cashman of Cuba’s solar power boom.

But Piñon said solar is not yet being implemented at the scale that is needed. Nor is it reliable enough to supply the majority of energy to the country.

“You need size, you need bulk,” he said.

And many Cubans still can’t afford home solar, Cashman said. The country also needs outside financing to repair its grid, but many countries are worried about running afoul of U.S. sanctions.

A new report by Cashman argues that international investment in Cuba’s renewable capacity is necessary to free the country from U.S. coercion. An investment of $8 billion would enable Cuba to generate 93% of its electricity from renewables, the report says, with $19 billion needed to achieve a fully renewable power system. “For decades, the U.S. has imposed an embargo that severely limits Cuba’s trade with foreign entities,” Cashman wrote.

“The case for solar in Cuba is so compelling, and what the U.S. is doing is so cruel,” he said. “It is creating a humanitarian crisis on purpose.”

WIRT Comments on SROG Miller 1-15 Well Application

CAIA Miller 1-15 Well Drilling Objection with Attachments

 

The Center for Biological Diversity, The Protect Our Communities Foundation and the Environmental Working Group have appealed to the California Supreme Court to overturn the state’s new rooftop solar policy after a lower court approved it a second time. The policy significantly slashes the credit new solar users get for sharing extra solar energy with the grid and has reduced demand for new rooftop solar systems.

“The appeals court ignored the Supreme Court’s order, so we’re asking the state’s highest court to force it to follow the law and stop capitulating to state regulators on this policy that’s devastating rooftop solar,” said Roger Lin, a senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity. “It’s illegal to give undo deference to the utility commission. The Supreme Court agreed and ordered a do over. So why did the appeals court rubberstamp the commission’s decision again and basically endorse utility talking points? I’m hopeful another appeal gets this unfair policy thrown out so more Californians can afford rooftop solar, which an essential tool to fight the climate crisis.”

In March the California Court of Appeals upheld the California Public Utility Commission’s December 2022 action for a second time, despite the Supreme Court ruling in August 2025 that the lower court gave the commission too much latitude and needed to revise its ruling.

Friday’s appeal to the state Supreme Court says the lower appeals court again ignored state law, which requires the court to review the commission’s statutory interpretations as it would those of any state agency. Instead, the three-judge panel resurrected the same flawed review standard giving extreme deference to commission decisions. That leaves the agency virtually untouchable, which was what the legislature was trying to prevent when it passed the law in 1998.

“We’re asking the California Supreme Court to provide additional clarity to the lower courts so that both its decision and the Legislature’s intent have real effect in practice,” said Malinda Dickenson, who is representing The Protect Our Communities Foundation.

California’s updated net-metering policy slashes customer credits by up to 80% for electricity generated on rooftops and sold back to the grid, which reduces the financial benefit of installing solar systems. This has crushed efforts to expand rooftop solar in California, including in communities of color and low-income neighborhoods, and led to huge layoffs in the solar industry. It also violates state law, which requires that any policies ensure the rooftop solar market keeps growing.. The net energy metering rollback also goes against the United States’ recent global agreement at COP28 to triple renewable energy by 2030.

“From rising costs to wildfires to blackouts to air pollution, California consumers are fed up with the state’s investor-owned utilities,” said Bernadette Del Chiaro, senior vice president for California with the Environmental Working Group. “And yet the one government agency that voters created over a 100 years ago to stand up to these monopoly utilities on behalf of consumers is now doing their dirty work, blocking consumers from having access to the technologies needed to solve myriad problems. At its core, that’s what this lawsuit is really all about.”

In its 2025 ruling, the Supreme Court said the appeals court had overlooked the California Legislature’s 1998 direction to limit deference to regulators, rejecting arguments from the utility commission and the three large investor-owned utility companies in California — Pacific Gas and Electric Company, Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas and Electric Company.

For-profit utilities across the country are trying to gut rooftop solar programs because distributed energy resources like rooftop solar threaten the utility business model.

Today the Goldman Environmental Prize, which celebrates grassroots leaders who prove that ordinary people can have an extraordinary impact on the environment, announced its 2026 winners. Among the six women who were awarded the prize this year were members of frontline communities affected by mining and oil and gas drilling, and Alannah Acaq Hurley, Executive Director of United Tribes of Bristol Bay, was one of them. 

Hurley was recognized for her extraordinary work to stop the Pebble Mine in Alaska. Earthworks and our supporters spent more than a decade advocating alongside Tribal Nations and local groups to stop the destructive project. Our staff is delighted to see Hurley receive this recognition for her extraordinary leadership and her coalition’s victory.

This award is so well deserved! Alannah has been a fearless leader in the fight to protect Alaska’s Bristol Bay from the proposed Pebble Mine. She brings joy, community and a real strength of spirit to the work. The world is a better place because of her, and her work to protect the world’s largest wild salmon fishery—an ecological and economic powerhouse that sustains local communities and supplies the world with a bounty of healthy seafood. I had the great honor to attend an event at the White House rose garden, where Alannah joined President Biden on stage to celebrate Bristol Bay protections. I was so inspired by her passion for the region and her commitment to the people she was there to represent.

— Bonnie Gestring, retired Northwest Program Director, Earthworks

Additional Goldman Prize winners this year were honored for their efforts confronting extractive industries. Theonila Roka Matbob’s efforts compelled Rio Tinto to finally take responsibility for massive environmental contamination at the Panguna mine in Bougainville, Papua New Guinea. Yuvelis Moralis Blanco was awarded for organizing to prevent fracking in Colombia. 

Learn more about Alannah Acaq Hurley and the other 2026 Goldman Prize winners.

Alannah Acaq Hurley in Dillingham, Alaska. January, 2026. Image courtesy of Goldman Environmental Prize.

The post Earthworks celebrates Alannah Acaq Hurley, Goldman Environmental Prize Winner appeared first on Earthworks.

The wars being waged right now in Iran, Lebanon, Palestine and Ukraine are not abstract. They are children pulled from collapsed buildings. They are families who fled their homes carrying nothing. They are entire neighborhoods reduced to dust by weapons manufactured far away, financed by governments that call themselves defenders of democracy. 

Ceasefires come and go, are announced and broken. But ceasefires are not peace – they are pauses in the same ongoing violence. What we are demanding is something far more urgent, far more real: a complete and permanent end to these wars.

As someone born and raised in Puerto Rico, an island that knows what it means to live under the shadow of militarization, colonial extraction, and disaster without accountability, I feel a deep, bone-level solidarity with the people of Palestine, Lebanon, Iran and Ukraine. We may be separated by oceans and languages, but we share the same wound: the wound of being considered expendable by empires that never asked for our consent.

The people of Iran, Lebanon, Palestine, Ukraine and other war zones are not symbols or numbers. They are neighbors, parents, scientists, teachers, humans with lives and dreams. Their suffering demands that governments act, that arms supplies stop, and that the international community treat civilian life as non-negotiable – wherever those lives are lived.

Here in Puerto Rico, I learned that when the hurricane comes, whether it is María or military occupation or economic austerity, it is always the women, the children, and the poor who suffer most. The same is true in all of Palestine, in southern Lebanon, in Iranian cities and Ukrainian villages. And when the fighting drives up food prices and energy costs worldwide, it is working people, families already in debt, communities already stretched thin, who absorb that blow. 

This is the deal we were never asked about. That’s enough. Governments must stop hiding behind strategic interests and geopolitical calculations and start protecting the people whose lives hang in the balance. A permanent end to these wars is not a radical demand. It is the bare minimum of human decency.

Solidarity is not sympathy from a distance. It is the recognition that our struggles are connected, that no one is free while others are bombed into hunger and displacement. From Bayamón to Beirut, from San Juan to Kyiv, we stand together in demanding what should never have been in question: peace, dignity, and the right to a future.

Join the global call at https://350.org/they-profit-we-pay-fix-it-now/

The post End the War appeared first on 350.

More than 60 Maryland environmental and community groups sign letter opposing the Moore administration’s apparent plan to facilitate construction of a massive gas power plant and gas pipeline to power data centers owned by cryptocurrency company.

 

ANNAPOLIS, MD – Fearing a tidal wave of climate pollution and profound disruptions to Charles County communities and natural resources, more than 60 organizations from across Maryland sent a letter Monday to Governor Wes Moore asking him to drop his apparent interest in supporting a massive data center project along the Potomac River in Charles County. 

In the letter, the groups – including the Maryland Sierra Club, Public Citizen, Chesapeake Climate Action Network, and dozens of faith, justice and community-based groups — are calling on Moore “to immediately stop all special support and assistance your administration is giving to plans to convert the Morgantown Generating Station into a one gigawatt methane gas power plant along the Potomac River in Charles County, MD.”

The project would require a minimum of 20 miles of new gas pipeline and would represent hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars of investments in new fossil fuel infrastructure. TeraWulf, the cryptocurrency mining company behind the project, is counting on the Moore administration’s support to shepherd the project through an expedited environmental review process so that the electricity generated from the plant could power nearby data center operations. 

The group American Rivers just named the Potomac River the “most endangered river in America,” largely due to existing and proposed data centers in the river’s watershed. The energy use alone for the Charles County project would be equal to all the electricity used by the city of Baltimore. 

Many of the signatory groups have pledged to stop the power plant from ever being built. 

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Chesapeake Climate Action Network is the first grassroots organization dedicated exclusively to raising awareness about the impacts and solutions associated with global warming in the Chesapeake Bay region. Founded in 2002, CCAN has been at the center of the fight for clean energy and wise climate policy in Maryland, Virginia, and Washington, DC.

The post Outpouring of Maryland Nonprofit Groups Tell Gov. Wes Moore to Drop All Support for Mega-Polluting Data Center in Charles County appeared first on Chesapeake Climate Action Network.

Gulf and environmental groups sued the Trump administration today over its approval of BP’s new ultra-deepwater oil drilling project in the Gulf of Mexico. The project endangers the health of Gulf residents, ecosystems and industries like fishing and tourism.

Kaskida is BP’s first completely new oilfield approved in the Gulf since the U.K.-based company’s Deepwater Horizon disaster, which occurred 16 years ago today. BP’s infamous accident killed 11 people, wiped out horrific numbers of marine animals, and caused billions of dollars in damages to the Gulf, including by eliminating thousands of local jobs, including in fishing and tourism. BP’s Deepwater Horizon remains the worst oil spill in U.S. history.

Kaskida will be at greater depths than Deepwater Horizon, in riskier waters. BP will drill for oil as far down as six miles below the sea floor, deeper than the height of Mount Everest.

The groups are challenging the approval of BP’s development proposal because legally required information is either missing or significantly flawed. For instance, BP failed to demonstrate it has the experience, expertise and certified equipment to conduct safe drilling under extreme conditions at Kaskida’s location, where a “loss of well control” incident (which caused BP’s 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster) is six to seven times more likely compared to typical deepwater oil wells.

BP’s proposal also underestimated the volume of a worst-case oil spill by at least half-a-million barrels of oil, which the Interior Department unfortunately adopted in its environmental analysis. And BP did not show in its proposals that it will have the necessary containment capabilities in case the company needs to stop a blown-out well from spilling 4.5 million barrels of oil or more across the Gulf.

The groups — Healthy Gulf, Turtle Island Restoration Network, Habitat Recovery Project, Sierra Club, and Center for Biological Diversity — are being represented by Earthjustice.

“The Trump administration has teed up the entire Gulf region for a Deepwater Horizon sequel with its approval of BP’s extremely risky ultra-deepwater drilling project,” said Earthjustice senior attorney Brettny Hardy. “The greenlighting of BP’s project sets a dangerously low bar for oil-and-gas companies that want to drill in our public waters. We’ll see the Trump administration in court over its unlawful and insulting approval of Kaskida.”

“Once again, BOEM has approved a deep water well in the Gulf of Mexico. Marine wildlife and communities along the Gulf coast were devastated by the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill 16 years ago,” said Joanie Steinhaus, ocean program director for Turtle Island Restoration Network. “This project is a threat to our fragile ocean ecosystem, will inflame climate change and threatens the health of coastal residents. BP has not adequately demonstrated the capacity to operate and handle an oil spill in the high-pressure, high temperature conditions of this project.”

“Kaskida is emblematic of a new era in offshore oil extraction: corporate hoarding of risky, ultra-deep water leases in an attempt to monopolize the future of oil production, with little to no oversight from the Trump Administration. We, as citizens of the Gulf South, are not standing for it,” said Martha Collins, Healthy Gulf executive director. “BP has shown how they handle oil spills on this anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon disaster — their risky drilling and inexperience at this great depth will ensure their continued legacy of the Gulf never being the same again.”

“Offshore drilling is one of the riskiest kinds of oil extraction, but the Trump administration is ignoring the law to allow Big Oil CEOs to endanger coastal communities for the sake of corporate profit,” said Devorah Ancel, senior attorney at Sierra Club’s Environmental Law Program. “This permit would allow BP to develop multiple ultra-deep high-pressure wells, which is already exceptionally risky, and with BP’s track record in the Gulf, coastal ecosystems face extraordinary danger. We’re suing the Trump administration to ensure the coastal communities that would suffer the consequences of BP’s actions get their day in court.”

“It's appalling that the Trump administration has authorized this deepwater drilling project without having information critical to preventing harm to marine life,” said Rachel Mathews, a senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity. “This will put Rice's whales, sea turtles and other Gulf wildlife at terrible risk. Ultra-deepwater drilling is ultra-dangerous, full stop.”

Background

The Trump administration’s approval of Kaskida follows a series of actions that prioritize the oil-and-gas industry in the Gulf at the expense of communities and ecosystems.

Last month, the White House illegally exempted federally authorized Gulf oil-and-gas exploration, development and production from needing to comply with certain requirements of the Endangered Species Act, even though no Gulf projects have been rejected due to the Act, and the oil industry is not facing any burdensome requirements under the law that are slowing or halting offshore drilling activities. The U.S. is also already producing more oil than any nation in history, is the world’s top producer of gas, and is a net exporter of both.

The administration has also proposed weakening “well control” rules developed to tighten up safety protocols in the wake of Deepwater Horizon. It has sought to roll back “financial assurance” requirements that require the weakest oil and gas companies to backstop their obligations to clean up the mess they leave behind, rather than forcing American taxpayers to foot the bill. And, it is now consolidating two federal agencies involved in offshore drilling oversight that were intentionally separated after Deepwater Horizon to root out industry influence over regulators. The White House has proposed a budget cut for the new agency of more than 30% in funding and staff that address safety and manage operations.

While such measures may boost oil industry profits, they have done little to nothing to alleviate energy prices or inflation.

In the 16 years since BP’s Deepwater Horizon disaster, the oil industry has set its sights on deeper and riskier Gulf waters. In the three most recent oil-and-gas lease sales, 90% of company bids are going for deep or ultra-deepwaters, even though the likelihood of uncontrolled oil spills arising from offshore drilling operations increases exponentially with depth. Meanwhile, the oil industry is sitting on millions of acres of leases (nearly 80% of all leases the industry is in possession of) in the Gulf that haven’t begun producing oil or gas.

Maasai people have protested in one of Tanzania’s most important tourism destinations over their eviction in the name of conservation, to highlight UNESCO’s complicity in the persecution of Maasai people. #

In the early morning, the light in the Atacama Desert is still a muted gray. In places the ground is damp, moistened by fog that flows in gentle waves over rocks and scree slopes at daybreak. In northern Chile this weather phenomenon is known as the camanchaca, bringing life where it sometimes doesn’t rain for decades.

Thanks to this climate, some of the world’s rarest cacti grow along the steep coastal hills around the town of Paposo: the Copiapoa. These plants draw nearly all their water from the maritime fog, which sustains surprising biodiversity in an otherwise hostile region.

The Desert Walkers

Few people know this desert as well as Mauricio González. With his volunteer group, the Caminantes del Desierto (Desert Walkers), he regularly patrols the Atacama with a notebook, camera, and water, mapping cactus populations and documenting changes.

In recent years the walkers have seen disturbing patterns.

“We have witnessed the death of entire cactus populations — hundreds of plants simply disappearing,” González says. When fog moisture is no longer sufficient, the plants overheat. Volunteers try to water them, “but often we arrive too late. Then we find only remnants — literally charred by the sun.”

Many Copiapoa are over a century old and adapted to the desert’s extremes. But climate change — hotter temperatures, drier winds, less fog — is pushing them beyond their limits.

A second pressure compounds the crisis.

“We have also observed massive extraction of rare species for the illegal trade,” González says. Local poachers dig up plants for a flourishing global black market. “A loss that cannot be repaired without the help of experts and the public.”

Copiapoa are among the most endangered cactus genera in the world. Researchers still debate their taxonomy, but the International Union for Conservation of Nature has assessed 39 taxa and listed 29 as threatened. Six are considered critically endangered. International trade is restricted or prohibited under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, the global treaty that regulates cross-border trade in wild species to prevent overexploitation — a system that also governs how Copiapoa can, or cannot, be traded.

For botanist Pablo Guerrero of the Universidad de Concepción, the sharp rise in illegal extraction is especially troubling. He links it directly to international buyers.

“The demand comes from enthusiasts who want to own a piece of the desert — ideally with all the marks of the wild,” he says. For many collectors, Copiapoa have become status symbols, especially when the plants come directly from their natural habitat.

Smartphones and social media have made this trade easier.

“A lot happens via Facebook and Instagram,” Guerrero says. “Buyers can choose the plants themselves. Some sellers even stream live videos from the desert and ask which plants they should dig up.”

The latest IUCN assessment for the species “is significantly worse than the one we conducted 10 years ago,” he adds. He emphasizes that these pressures do not act independently: “Climate change does not act in isolation. It interacts with threats like habitat loss or declining habitat quality.”

Copiapoa grow extremely slowly; some species grow only millimeters per year and take decades to flower. Although they have adapted to life in tough desert conditions, plant ecologist Michiel Pillet of the University of Lausanne, who studies the genus’ climate sensitivity, warns against assuming that cacti are universally hardy.

“Cacti … are adapted to the conditions in their distribution range,” he says. “If those conditions change, as they already are under human-induced climate change, species must adapt, shift their range — or go extinct.”

Pillet’s modeling suggests Copiapoa could lose up to 60% of their habitat as fog patterns and temperatures change.

Illegal trade adds further pressure. A recent study found that 31% of all cactus species worldwide are threatened by poaching — one of the highest rates among plant groups.

The ecological impact becomes visible in the Atacama. Copiapoa are not solitary organisms but structural species that collectively create shade, store moisture, and provide habitat. “They create microclimatic refuges where vertebrates can live and protect themselves not only from the harsh environment but also from predators,” Guerrero explains. Their pollen supports insects and other invertebrates. Removing even a few plants disrupts these networks; the loss of many can be devastating.

A Landmark Ruling

More than 7,500 miles away, in the Italian port city of Ancona, another dimension of the Copiapoa crisis unfolded. Through spring 2025, a courtroom examined the largest documented theft of Copiapoa plants — a case whose extensive investigation became known as “Operation Atacama.”

The case began in February 2020, when Italy’s Carabinieri Forestali — the country’s environmental and forestry police — followed information provided by botanist Andrea Cattabriga in the town of Senigallia. Cattabriga regularly assists European Union authorities in identifying illegally traded ornamental plants.

Inside dealer Andrea Piombetti’s apartment, officers found more than 1,000 Copiapoa. Some species were entirely prohibited from commercial trade; others lacked required documents. The estimated market value exceeded €1 million (about $1.16 million U.S.).

“My first reaction when I saw the Copiapoa was shock — because there had already been a similar incident with this trader years earlier, when he could not be convicted,” Cattabriga recalls.

Forensic evidence and soil samples linked the plants to repeated trips Piombetti made to Chile between 2016 and 2019. Messages and auction records on his devices revealed an international network of at least 10 dealers and 10 regular buyers, with plants sold to collectors in Japan, South Korea, and North America. Piombetti’s closest accomplice, Mattia Crescentini, advertised plants through a since-deleted Instagram account called “Cactus_Italy.”

Piombetti and Crescentini were convicted in criminal court in January 2025, receiving fines and suspended sentences. But the case gained additional significance when Cattabriga’s NGO — the Associazione per la Biodiversità e la sua Conservazione — filed a civil claim arguing that the illegal extraction caused a moral injury to nature and, therefore, damaged ABC’s mission of protecting nature.

In the spring of 2025, the court recognized this second claim — a first in a civil biodiversity case in Italy.

The defendants appealed. Their procedural challenge before Italy’s Supreme Court of Cassation was rejected, and the case was sent back to the Court of Appeal for further review. A new hearing is currently scheduled for spring 2026.

If the original decision is upheld, Piombetti and Crescentini would need to pay €20,000 in damages to ABC — money that, according to Cattabriga, would support cactus research, public outreach, and protection.

“What makes this case absolutely unique is that, for the first time in history, a court ordered those responsible to pay damages to an organization — our association — for harming its mission to protect nature,” Cattabriga says. The ruling symbolically acknowledged “a nature that is finally recognized here in all its components: plants, animals, but also rivers, forests, entire ecosystems … with a right to exist.”

This is exactly the kind of precedent environmental scientist Jacob Phelps hopes to strengthen. A longtime advisor to ABC, he is also cofounder of Conservation Litigation, an initiative promoting legal tools for conservation.

“It is very unusual for the state to use its authority to seek remedies for environmental damage,” Phelps says. The Ancona ruling marked the first time in Italy that a conservation organization received damages for biodiversity loss. According to Phelps, such recognition can have symbolic power and may influence courts in other countries. “Access to justice is realistic in many countries — if you know how to do it and if the costs remain manageable,” he says.

Conservation Litigation is supporting similar cases in countries such as the Philippines, Liberia, and Indonesia, focused on habitat destruction and wildlife trade. The aim is to establish that ecological damage can be treated as a civil harm within national legal systems.

For now the Ancona case remains an exception — and its influence will depend partly on how restitution is conceived in practice.

Sending Them Back to the Desert

In April 2021 around 840 confiscated Copiapoa were transferred from Milan’s botanical garden back to Chile. More than 100 of the plants had already died; others remained in Milan for research.

The repatriation was organized by the IUCN Cactus and Succulent Plants Specialist Group under Bárbara Goettsch.

“There was no protocol for returning confiscated plants,” Goettsch says. “We had to develop the procedure step by step ourselves.”

It was the first large-scale return of living cacti to their country of origin, although true reintroduction proved impossible. Many plants had unclear origins, were genetically mixed, or carried potential disease risks. Most will remain under cultivation.

Still, Goettsch calls the case “unprecedented” — less for ecological impact than for awareness raising and international cooperation.

“Many people do not realize that their plant may have been illegally collected. They buy based on appearance — not on origin,” she says.

This desire drives illegal extraction.

“Demand comes from enthusiasts who want to own a piece of the desert — preferably with all the traces of wilderness intact,” Guerrero says. Social media makes it easier: “Some sellers even stream live videos from the desert and ask which plants they should dig up,” he explains. Many Copiapoa are listed only under CITES Appendix II, which regulates but does not prohibit trade. “Some species should be moved to Appendix I,” Goettsch says. “But without capacity building, that won’t help much.” Enforcement authorities worldwide struggle to distinguish legal from illegal plants.

European nurseries grow cacti from global seed stocks, but cultivated plants lack the appearance of old, wild specimens, which often bear scars from decades of exposure — including weathering, sun damage, and lichen growth — that give them a distinct, aged form shaped by harsh desert conditions.

“Trade in European-produced cacti is legal — but it does not help conservation in the countries of origin,” Goettsch says. “Not a single cent from what is sold in Europe goes back to Chile.”

Botanical gardens could support conservation, but many are underfunded and at capacity.

More serious, Pillet warns, is a growing divide between researchers, conservation practitioners, and hobby growers. “Illegal trade has driven a wedge between research, practice, and hobby cultivation.”

Despite steep losses, González and the Caminantes continue searching remote hillsides for surviving plants. Some undocumented species persist in hidden spots known only to the volunteers, who carry water to them in summer.

One site near Mejillones haunts González. Thousands of Copiapoa solaris once grew there, some nearly a meter tall. Today almost all are dead — except for two standing on a windswept ridge.

“We devote our full attention to these two. We preserve them at any cost,” he says.

Their survival is a quiet act of defiance — against the disappearance of life from the desert.

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Sen. Cory Booker, Yale Law: “As a proud alumnus of Yale Law School (Class of 1997) and a longtime advocate for a healthier and more equitable food system, I write to urge Yale Hospitality to join the Fair Food Program (FFP).” “The Fair Food Program is widely recognized as one of the most effective human rights initiatives in U.S. agriculture… Yale has long been a leader in both scholarship and social responsibility. Joining the Fair Food Program would extend that leadership into the University’s food system, demonstrating that Yale is committed to protecting farmworkers and supporting responsible growers… “

As students at Yale University continue calling on their administration to join the Presidential Medal-winning Fair Food Program, Senator Cory Booker — a proud alumnus of Yale Law School and a longtime champion of the Fair Food Program — wrote to his alma mater urging the university to demonstrate real leadership toward by protecting the farmworkers who harvest the food served in campus dining halls as a Participating Buyer in the FFP.

The letter, which was made public by Yale Daily News, explained that Yale is in a unique position to extend the same leadership it demonstrates in scholarship and social responsibility into the “University’s food system, demonstrating that Yale is committed to protecting farmworkers and supporting responsible growers.” Though directed specifically at Yale University, Senator Booker’s letter also speaks to the many benefits the FFP can bring to any university interested in joining. The program’s transformative impact on farm labor conditions has created a rare — and documented — win-win-win scenario that benefits workers, growers, and buyers alike.

But despite the extraordinary letter, a petition with hundreds of student signatures and counting, and a rally outside Yale Hospitality’s offices attended by over 75 students and two of the CIW’s co-founders, the administration still refuses to join the FFP. Instead, Hospitality administrators continue to insist on taking only piecemeal, voluntary steps toward addressing farm labor conditions in the university’s supply chain, even while recognizing the FFP as a proven human rights leader in agriculture and promising to increase tomato purchases from FFP farms to over 90% by next school year.

Undeterred, students are now reaching out to Yale’s wide alumni network, as well as university faculty, to seek their support for the campaign. The fast-growing campaign has even become a key issue in the 2026 Yale College Council elections. John Robert Walker and Michelle Jimenez, one of four slates of candidates running for YCC President and Vice President next school year, made the Fair Food University campaign a central plank in their platform, as reported in last Friday’s Yale Daily News:

John Robert Walker ’28 and Michelle Jimenez ’28

John Robert Walker ’28 says he is “fighting for Yale to respect” both workers in New Haven and the broader student body population.

Walker wrote in his candidate statement that he aims to raise the student minimum wage to $22 per hour, protect contracted faculty and staff, and ensure Yale joins the Fair Food Program, which ensures humane wages and safe working conditions for farmworkers…

If you are a Yale alum interested in supporting the Yale Student/Farmworker Alliance effort, make sure to reach out to organize@sfalliance.org.

Below is the full report from Yale Daily News on Senator Booker’s letter, which includes statements from both students and university representatives. Stay tuned for more updates on the Fair Food University front!

In letter, Cory Booker urges Yale to make farmworkers’ rights pledge Sen. Cory Booker, a Yale Law School alumnus, wrote a letter last month to Yale Hospitality, throwing his weight behind a student campaign for the University to join the Fair Food Program.

Sen. Cory Booker LAW ’97 wrote a letter to Yale Hospitality last month, urging the University to join a farmworkers’ rights initiative.

Booker’s one-page letter, dated March 26, added to the Yale Student/Farmworker Alliance’s campaign for Yale Hospitality to participate in the Fair Food Program. Student organizers have hosted screenings and petitions, and recently marched to Yale Hospitality’s offices in an effort to pressure the University to join the program.

“As a proud alumnus of Yale Law School (Class of 1997) and a longtime advocate for a healthier and more equitable food system, I write to urge Yale Hospitality to join the Fair Food Program (FFP),” Booker wrote, later adding that “Yale has long been a leader in both scholarship and social responsibility.”

Booker, a New Jersey Democrat who ran for president in the 2020 Democratic primary and is seen as a potential 2028 contender, is a member of the Senate’s Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Committee. In the letter to Yale’s assistant vice president for Hospitality, Jodi Smith Westwater, Booker referred to his personal experience with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, the group that created the Fair Food Program.

Student/Farmworker Alliance member John Robert Walker ’28 shared Booker’s letter with the News. Booker’s office confirmed that the senator wrote the letter but did not respond to the News’ emailed inquiry about what prompted him to do so.

Alexa Gotthardt, a Yale Hospitality spokesperson, wrote in a statement on April 7 that the University has “received the letter and a response is forthcoming,” but did not respond to the News’ questions about whether Yale Hospitality has reconsidered its position. 

Gotthardt referred the News to a previous statement in which she wrote that Yale “is not currently positioned to become a formal signatory to the FFP, given its role further downstream in the supply chain,” but that the University is “aligned with the program’s goals.”

Yale University students,alongside CIW co-founder Lucas Benitez (second from the right), call on the historic Ivy League school to join the Fair Food Program

The protest last March was organized by the Student/Farmworker Alliance. Walker, who has since announced his candidacy for Yale College Council president, wrote in an email to the News that the alliance had contacted Booker, who then agreed to write the letter.

“Despite Senator Booker’s letter urging Yale to join the FFP, an official resolution from the Yale College Council, a petition signed by hundreds of students, and no clear reason for not joining the program, Yale Hospitality has refused to take any good-faith steps toward joining the FFP,” Walker wrote. According to the alliance, its petition had 300 signatories by the end of March.

According to the Fair Food Program’s website, buyers that participate in it — including companies such as McDonald’s and Walmart — must agree to buy produce from farms that guarantee certain worker protections and abide by a code of conduct. Buyers also agree to pay a premium of one cent per pound picked, which goes to farmworker wages.

Yale Hospitality has said that it hopes to source more produce from program-affiliated suppliers. According to Gotthardt, more than 64 percent of Yale Hospitality’s tomato purchases through suppliers are sourced from growers affiliated with the Fair Food Program, and the University hopes to increase its percentage of tomatoes from program-approved growers to 90 percent.

Booker’s letter discussed his experience with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers.

“The FFP was created by the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW), who I had the pleasure of meeting while participating in the Food Inc. 2 documentary, which highlights the systemic abuses farmworkers face,” Booker wrote. “I learned from the CIW about the extreme poverty, sexual harassment, and labor trafficking faced by many farmworkers, and the power of market-driven accountability to create real change.”

Booker wrote that joining the program would set “an example for students, alumni and peer institutions about the power of ethical purchasing decisions and institutional leadership in ending longstanding abuses and transforming labor conditions for farmworkers for generations to come.”

According to Walker, the group is in the process of contacting more alumni to support the group’s campaign.

“We’ll contact dozens more prominent alumni in the weeks ahead, and we expect many will follow Senator Booker’s example and call on Hospitality to support the human rights of the farmworkers who grow our food by joining the FFP.” Walker wrote.

Booker graduated from Yale Law School in 1997. The Law School’s dining hall was independently operated prior to 2011 and stopped accepting undergraduate swipes in 2009. According to its website, Yale Hospitality now operates Café Law, which serves “coffee, sandwiches, salad, or soup for lunch, and plenty of snacks.”

Before you go, we want to share some exciting news about another longtime ally of Fair Food: Jeanne Findlater, a pioneering force in television news at a time when there were virtually no women in leadership positions anywhere in journalism, has been inducted into the Michigan Journalism Hall of Fame!

Now 97, Findlater has lived an extraordinarily storied life, helping to break barriers in journalism and opening doors for generations of women who followed in her footsteps. You can read more about her remarkable career in this profile from the Naples Daily News.

After retiring to Naples, Findlater brought that same sense of courage and conviction to the work of the CIW and Campaign for Fair Food, becoming a familiar face at campaign actions and standing shoulder to shoulder with farmworkers and consumer allies on street corners, holding signs and demanding dignity for farmworkers everywhere.

Her lifelong commitment to speaking truth to power — first as a trailblazing journalist and later as an ally of the farmworker movement — has made her a true friend of the CIW and the Fair Food Program.

From everyone at the CIW and FFP, congratulations to Jeanne Findlater on her well-earned induction into the Michigan Journalism Hall of Fame!

Dear Councillors Fletcher, Chernos Lin, Colle, and Pasternak, On Dec. 5, 2025 we sent out a bulletin to our supporters expressing our disappointment with respect to the City of Toronto’s Infrastructure and Environment Committee’s decision to delay action on reducing gas burning at the Portlands Energy Centre. Specifically, we were disappointed by the Committee’s decision

The post An Open Letter to Councillors Fletcher, Chernos Lin, Colle and Pasternak appeared first on Ontario Clean Air Alliance.

This article Cooperation is more powerful than coercion was originally published by Waging Nonviolence.

This article was first published on Meditations in an Emergency.

What is power? It is at its most essential the ability to influence an outcome on any or all scales, to protect one’s own interests at a minimum and to influence, even control others at a maximum. 

Violence is constantly misunderstood as power, and it certainly looks like power, and in some respects it is power, but a limited kind of power to harm and destroy. The threat of violence is often used to coerce — but also often has negative consequences, including the loss of other kinds of power, the powers that come with relationship, connection, alliance, trust. Violence isolates and alienates; it makes enemies, it stirs up dangers that linger. Friends are another kind of power built through another set of skills.

Botanist David George Haskell’s new book “How Flowers Made Our World: The Story of Nature’s Revolutionaries” describes a kind of power often ignored or dismissed, just as flowers themselves are. He writes, “When flowers arrived, they upended and transformed the planet. They were late arrivals on the world stage, appearing about two hundred million years ago, long after the evolution of complex animals and other land plants. By one hundred million years ago they were the foundation of most habitats on land.” 

He expanded on the subject in a “Wonder Cabinet” podcast interview, declaring “We often think of power and revolution as about control, authoritarianism, and violence. Might makes right. But that’s not the only way in which revolution and power and transformation take place. Flowers offer a different narrative. They changed the world in revolutionary ways through cooperation, through collaboration, often mediated by beauty, by sensory experiences. So a flower is quite literally speaking to the sensory system of a bee or of a hoverfly or of a bird to draw that animal into establishing a cooperative relationship, a reciprocal relationship. And we’re just the latest animal to become enchanted by the flowers and to become loyal collaborators with the flowers.”

Flowers, as he unpacks, developed the power to influence others’ behavior by building symbiotic relationships: “I’ll feed you fruit if you scatter my seeds; I’ll give you nectar and pollen in return for pollination; I’ll let you domesticate me and provide you with your daily bread and you’ll plant and tend me across countless fields for countless generations.” In an earlier book, “The Botany of Desire,” Michael Pollan speculated that plants had domesticated us as much as we had domesticated them, since we serve their needs so that they may serve ours, from the most practical issue of bodily sustenance to the most poetic one of bouquets and beauty. That’s flower power.

A hawk moth on a morning glory I witnessed a few summers ago in Santa Fe. (Rebecca Solnit)

But as Jonathan Schell reminded us in his landmark book from 2003, “Unconquerable World: Power, Nonviolence, and the Will of the People,” violence as military attack is often deployed because politics — the art of persuasion, the building of alliance, the finding of common ground — has failed. Violence itself often fails too. Schell came of age as a young writer who went to Vietnam at the height of the U.S. war there and perceived that for all its superior military might, the U.S. could not conquer the people of that country. Because the U.S. or some of its leaders didn’t learn that lesson, the same mistake was made in Afghanistan, Iraq, and is being made now in Iran. 

People who have violence at their disposal often confuse it with power, and while it can achieve some things it fails at others. I think of the abusive spouses who think they can coerce love but often can only extort a reluctant simulation of the same by someone whose motivating feeling is fear rather than love and whose desire is often to escape.

Something that’s struck me about the Trump administration throughout its second term is its profound misunderstanding of power. Over and over again, Trump and his minions demonstrate that they think they have a monopoly on power and that history will unfold as their actions without any reactions, a literally inconsequential view, as in, “There will be no consequences other than the ones we impose.” It’s a version of reality so simple I would not accuse a toddler of holding it; toddlers know well there will be reactions and consequences, because they know others have power.

But the Trump administration’s thugs, for example, went into Minneapolis thinking they were a conquering army that would terrorize and intimidate the populace into subjugation and found that the populace was fearless in its defiance. It was a defiance motivated by a kind of moral beauty — solidarity, care, loving thy neighbor — that this administration has trouble imagining, especially when that solidarity reaches across differences of ethnicity and religion, as it did in Minneapolis. In this sense love is a power, or a motivating force to exercise the power of solidarity with the oppressed and the power of noncooperation with the oppressors. The abominable JD Vance doesn’t understand these forces; he had earlier misinterpreted Catholic theology to claim that, “We should love our family first, then our neighbors, then love our community, then our country, and only then consider the interests of the rest of the world.” Catholic theologians smacked him down then, and they haven’t stopped since. 

Speaking of the Catholic church, this week The New Republic described this extraordinary situation:

Days after Pope Leo XIV delivered his State of the World speech, Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Elbridge Colby summoned Cardinal Christophe Pierre, the Vatican’s U.S. representative, to a closed-door Pentagon meeting for a bitter lecture. ‘The United States,’ Colby said, according to a blistering new report by The Free Press, ‘has the military power to do whatever it wants in the world. The Catholic Church had better take its side.’ One U.S. official present at the meeting brought up the Avignon papacy, a period in the 14th century in which the French monarchy bent the Catholic Church into submission, ordering an attack on Pope Boniface VIII that led to his downfall and subsequent death and forcing the papacy to relocate from Rome to Avignon, a region inside France.

Yes, these idiots reportedly threatened the head of this ancient institution, on the basis that the pope had better not dare oppose their power. But unless it wants to use violence against the pope and the Vatican, the Trump administration has very little power in that situation. And if it did use violence, the blowback would be profound, domestically and internationally.

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The power the administration constantly squanders without understanding the consequences is soft power. Take for example, the fact that when Trump wanted European countries to help him reopen the Strait of Hormuz, which was only closed because of his feckless unforced mistake of a war, heads of state laughed at him because he’d destroyed the U.S.’s once-good relationships with a number of their countries with his threats against Greenland, his waffling on support for Ukraine and NATO, and his tariffs.

USAID created soft power around the world while also doing actual good in saving lives and preventing suffering; dismantling the organization was one of many actions this administration took that weakens this country in the long run and, really, the short run — that with all that macho strutting and bullying, they don’t understand that they are weak and making this country weak says more about the epic incomprehension. This should remind us that knowledge is power, and understanding is power; stupidity is a weakness of theirs evident in the attack on Iran. The heroic uprising against the regime was undermined, not strengthened, as the Trumpists thought, by this attack. They strengthened the regime instead. And Iran has seized control, for now, of the Strait of Hormuz and is demanding huge tolls from ship traffic there.

The war has had catastrophic impacts around the world on the price and availability of fossil fuel and fertilizer (aka nutritional supplements for flowering plants), and that in turn has sacrificed more U.S. soft power and good will and created more suffering. The fact that this fossil-fuel crisis is pushing both nations and individuals to speed the transition to renewable energy is another consequence the fossil-fuel-allied regime did not foresee. Likewise, the Trump administration has exercised its power to sabotage climate efforts and renewable energy in ways that make this country weaker in the long term, but Trump is on his way out and clearly does not care about the long term in any way other than in masturbatory monuments to himself and illicit wealth for his family. In a similar way, Netanyahu has devastated Israel’s relationships with its neighbors and much of the world, because he apparently only cares about his own fate and not about his country’s, let alone the lives of those he has slaughtered in Gaza and Lebanon.

While the primitive machismo of the Trump administration sees violence and the ability to inflict harm as power, and asserts that because it is powerful it does not need alliances and good relationships internationally, these things have not made it and our country strong, but weak.

Vice President JD Vance has a playground bully’s understanding of power, as has been clear at least since he went to Europe in 2025 and went out of his way to insult and patronize the world leaders he met with there. It too sacrificed the long-term power of having the trust and support of European heads of state and diplomatic leaders. Vance said this week in response to the Iranian refusal to give up the right to enrich uranium, “You know what? My wife has the right to skydive, but she doesn’t jump out of an airplane because she and I have an agreement she’s not gonna do that, because I don’t want my wife jumping out of an airplane.” This stunningly idiotic analogy seems intended to mean that Iran is like his wife, someone who has to agree to his wishes, but he has instead shown that he doesn’t understand analogies, power, Iran and, possibly, wives.

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What we can learn from the playbook that defeated Orbán

Last week Vance went to Hungary to try to stump for Viktor Orban, the authoritarian president there who as I write, has just lost the election after 16 years as prime minister, during which he worked hard to spread authoritarianism around the world, including in the U.S. The vice president’s efforts were said to have been the opposite of helpful. Only yesterday, the inexperienced Vance failed to gain anything in his negotiations with a far more skilled Iranian negotiating team. The Trump administration appears to have lost this war — had it won, it would be dictating terms, rather than unsuccessfully negotiating to return to the status quo of an open Strait of Hormuz. And of course the main justification after the fact for the war is Iran’s alleged pursuit of nuclear arms, but speaking of soft power and the power of cooperation, Trump sabotaged the deal the Obama administration struck with Iran. Soft power trumps the power of violence, over and over.

And then there’s the case of congressman and California gubernatorial candidate Eric Swalwell, exposed Friday by a detailed account in the San Francisco Chronicle of his alleged manipulation and sexual abuse of a staffer and by another report at CNN detailing accounts of sexual misconduct by more women. It’s a sordid story or several of them, and one that is only too familiar. Two things are most striking to me. One is his apparent gambling on getting away with exactly the kind of actions that have in recent years terminated a lot of men’s reputations and careers and sent some to prison (even if some have bounced back or escaped the most serious consequences).

The other is that while espousing Democratic and presumably lower-case democratic values, he allegedly used the power differential to bully and coerce young women, and counted on that inequality to keep them silent. Now he looks likely to pay for his abuse of power with a permanent loss of it. The term democratic values in the sense I just employed it means a world in which the rights and voices of young women matter even when they’re in conflict with a powerful man, a new world just emerging thanks to feminism. The soft power Swalwell had as allies, supporters and endorsers building possibilities of further political power is fast draining from him. By using coercive power, he has lost cooperative power.

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The lesson flowers offer is that when you treat others well, when you meet their needs, you can enter into relationships that serve you as well as them. When you use violence or otherwise exploit and coerce to get what you want, you create adversaries, not allies, and they too often turn out to have power. In a world of increasing equality over the past few centuries, cooperative power matters more, and violence, as Schell points out, has become an increasingly weak way to get what you want.

We are increasingly coming to understand nature itself — Haskell’s book is a fine exploration of this — as orchestrated by cooperation and symbiosis, not the Social Darwinist’s vision of brutal competition for scarce resources. Haskell’s is only one of many splendid books about this new vision of nature to appear recently. Forestry scientist Suzanne Simard, whose book “Finding the Mother Tree” was a hugely impactful account of how forests are essentially communicating cooperatives, a deeply interwoven whole, not a collection of lone competitors, has just come out with a new book I’m excited to start reading, “When the Forest Breathes: Renewal and Resilience in the Natural World.”

It is all connected. In my most recent book I quoted the scholar Judith Butler who has another explanation of why violence should not be conflated with strength or power: “In my experience, the most powerful argument against violence has been grounded in the notion that, when I do violence to another human being, I also do violence to myself, because my life is bound up with this other life.”

This article Cooperation is more powerful than coercion was originally published by Waging Nonviolence.

This Earth Day, we’re bringing it back to basics with Environmentalism 101.

If you care about the environment, climate change, public health, and protecting the places and people you love, this is for you. 

We’ve compiled books, movies/documentaries, and podcasts that can help you learn more about environmental issues, better understand the systems behind them, and find inspiration for action.

Whether you’re just getting started or looking to deepen your knowledge, these are resources to help you grow as an environmental advocate.

Books

Want to build a stronger foundation in environmental issues? Start with a good book.

Silent Spring

Written by Rachel Carson, this groundbreaking book exposed the environmental harm caused by pesticides, especially DDT. It helped spark the modern environmental movement by revealing how human actions were damaging ecosystems and public health.

Braiding Sweetgrass

In this blend of science and storytelling, Robin Wall Kimmerer weaves Indigenous wisdom with ecological knowledge to show a more reciprocal relationship with the natural world. The book emphasizes gratitude, respect, and interconnectedness as essential to environmental stewardship.

The World Without Us

Alan Weisman imagines what would happen to Earth if humans suddenly disappeared, exploring how cities, infrastructure, and ecosystems would change over time. It highlights both the resilience of nature and the lasting impacts of human activity on the planet.

What if We Get it Right?

In this forward-looking work, Ayana Elizabeth Johnson explores hopeful and actionable visions for addressing the climate crisis. The book centers optimism, creativity, and justice as key ingredients for building a sustainable future.

All We Can Save

​​Edited by Ayana Elizabeth Johnson and Katharine Wilkinson, this anthology brings together essays and poems by women leading climate work. It offers a powerful, collective vision for climate action rooted in equity, resilience, and community.

Movies

Sometimes a film can make an environmental issue feel real in a way nothing else can.

The Plastic Detox

This documentary explores the environmental and health impacts of plastic pollution while following individuals attempting to reduce plastic use in their daily lives. It highlights both the scale of the problem and practical solutions for creating a more sustainable future.

The Story of Stuff

This short film breaks down the lifecycle of consumer goods, from extraction to disposal, revealing the hidden environmental and social costs of mass consumption. It encourages viewers to rethink their habits and advocate for more sustainable systems.

FernGully: The Last Rainforest

Set in a magical rainforest, this animated film follows a fairy and a human who work together to stop destructive logging and save their home. It delivers a strong environmental message about conservation and the importance of protecting ecosystems.

Erin Brockovich

Based on a true story, this 2000 movie starring Julia Roberts follows a determined legal assistant who uncovers a major case of water contamination affecting a small community. Her persistence leads to a landmark legal victory against a powerful corporation.

Gasland

This documentary investigates the effects of fracking on communities across the United States. Through personal stories and striking evidence, it raises serious concerns about environmental damage and public health risks.

Podcasts

Want to learn on the go? Podcasts are a great way to stay informed and inspired.

Cleaning Up Dirty

This podcast from Clean Air Action focuses on exposing environmental injustice and pollution, highlighting the communities most affected and the fight for accountability. It combines storytelling with advocacy to push for cleaner, healthier environments.

Drilled

An investigative true-crime style podcast about climate change, examining the history of fossil fuel companies and their role in spreading misinformation. It uncovers the people, politics, and strategies behind decades of climate denial.

Sustainable(ish)

A practical and approachable podcast that explores how individuals can live more sustainably without aiming for perfection. It emphasizes small, realistic lifestyle changes that collectively make a meaningful impact.

Dismantled

A podcast that dives into breaking down systems of environmental harm and injustice, often centering frontline voices and grassroots activism. It explores how communities are working to challenge and rebuild inequitable structures.

The Energy Gang

A lively, expert-driven discussion on the latest news and trends in energy, climate policy, and clean technology. The hosts analyze complex topics with insight and humor, making the energy transition accessible and engaging.

Outrage + Optimism

A podcast that blends candid conversations about the climate crisis with a focus on solutions and hope. Hosted by influential climate leaders, it explores how urgency and optimism can work together to drive change.

The energy shocks rippling from the war in Iran have prompted countries, from Cambodia to Peru, to embrace remote work. Leaders in Europe are now joining the push as they look to curb consumption of oil. 

Read more on E360 →

Over the past two decades, oil and gas pipelines have emerged as potent political symbols. In 2019, Jason Kenney ran a successful provincial election campaign in Alberta with the slogan “Jobs – Economy – Pipelines.” In 2025, oilsands producers bought...