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Insects are critically important to our world: They bolster the global food supply through pollination, recycle organic waste, support food webs that sustain countless species, and more. Yet they are...

In a special crossover, Green and Red co-host Prof. Bob Buzzanco joins Jason Myles and Pascal Robert on THIS IS REVOLUTION podcast to talk about the Black Political Class and…

Location: In-office position, in Helena, Montana.  Scope: The Administrative and Development Associate will handle general office tasks and administrative duties, such as organizing schedules and events, entering data, maintaining office equipment, providing basic tech support, and other general operations activities.   Reports to: Chief Financial Officer (CFO)  Compensation: MEIC offers compensation commensurate with skills and …

The post Now Hiring: Administrative and Development Associate appeared first on Montana Environmental Information Center - MEIC.

In April, when the Trump administration first announced it wanted to open the Greater Chaco Canyon region in New Mexico to oil and gas drilling, we asked you to speak up. Following an initial scoping period that generated over 100,000 comments in support of maintaining broad protections for this remarkable place, the Department of the Interior has doubled down on its plans and released a formal Environmental Assessment with a brief 14-day public comment period.

Please take action today and help defend the Greater Chaco Region

After decades of advocacy by Tribal Nations and conservationists, federal protections in the greater Chaco region were finally put in place in 2023 with the establishment of a 10-mile buffer zone shielding the Chaco Culture National Historical Park from new oil and gas leasing. The administration is now considering two options, neither of which is acceptable: revoking protections entirely or shrinking the buffer to just 5 miles.

In either scenario, thousands of cultural sites would be exposed to drilling. Although only 15-20% of the area has been surveyed, archaeologists estimate that as many as 12,000 cultural sites lie within the areas the Trump administration plans to open to leasing and exploitation. Indigenous communities already living with the health impacts of over 37,000 nearby wells would face even more industrial development at their doorstep. 

Comments are due this Wednesday, July 29. We encourage you to make your voice heard by using the advocacy action from our friends at New Mexico Wild; they also have a web page where you can learn more about the threats facing Chaco Canyon.

Click here to take action now!

The post Another Chance to Speak Up for Greater Chaco Canyon appeared first on Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance.

Union Jack, which has interests at Wressle and West Newton, has recommended shareholders vote against a proposal to remove the board.

The company has called a requistioned general meeting for next month (August).

This follows a resolution by two investors holding more than 14% of voting rights to remove the three current directors: David Bramhill, Joseph O’Farrell and Zac Phillips.

The investors, described by Union Jack as requisitioners, are former board members, Craig Howie and John Americanos. They have also tabled a resolution for their reappointment as directors.

In a statement today, Union Jack said:

“The Company will today post a circular to shareholders convening the Requistioned GM [general meeting] and outlining the unanimous recommendation by the Company’s board to directors to vote against all the resolutions to be proposed at the Requisitioned GM.

The statement added:

“The Board believes that the Requisition is misguided, ill-timed and destined to lead to a destruction in value for the Company’s shareholders.”

The requisition notice was dated 7 July 2026, less than a week after a takeover offer by Reabold Resources.

Union Jack’s statement continued:

“by proposing the Resolutions just six days after the announcement of the all share offer by Reabold Resources plc, the Requisitioners are simply being opportunistic by seeking to replace the Board during the Offer process without providing the Company’s shareholders with the opportunity to realise a control premium.”

Union Jack also announced it had reconvened the previously postponed annual general meeting. This was adjourned on the day it was planned, 26 June 2026, because of the Reabold takeover offer. The AGM will now be held after the requistioned meeting.

The requisitioned meeting will be at 11am on 24 August 2026 at the offices of Keystone Law, 48 Chancery Lane, London WC2A 1JF.

The reconvened AGM will be held on the same date and place, at 12 noon, or as soon as the requisitioned meeting has ended.

Farm Service Agency County committees are a critical component of the day-to-day operations of USDA/FSA and allow grassroots input and local administration of federal farm programs.

The post 2026 FSA County Committee Elections appeared first on RAFI.

As we write this, deadly wildfires are actively burning across Spain, France and many other countries, with tens of thousands of people evacuated and firefighters risking their lives on the frontlines. Our thoughts are with everyone who has lost a loved one, a home, or a community to these fires, and with every firefighter, emergency worker and volunteer out there right now.

When the world burns

A wildfire is an uncontrolled fire that burns through forests, grasslands, or brush, usually started by a spark — lightning, a downed power line, a discarded cigarette, an agricultural burn gone wrong — that finds fuel dry enough and weather hot, dry and windy enough to let it spread. Fire has always been part of many ecosystems. Some landscapes even depend on regular, low-intensity burns to stay healthy. The problem isn’t that fires happen. The problem is how much bigger, faster and more destructive they’ve become.

Data from just this year confirms the trend. Between January and April 2026 alone, wildfires burned more than 150 million hectares of land worldwide — about 20% above the previous record set in 2020, and roughly double the same period in 2024. The fires weren’t confined to one region: they broke out across continents, fed by the same mix of heat, drought, wind and human ignition, all amplified by a warming climate. Forecasters also expect a rapid swing toward El Niño conditions through the rest of the year, a pattern that has historically lined up with severe fire activity in Australia, Indonesia, the Amazon and parts of North America.

This summer, the crisis has moved to Europe, and it is still unfolding. A punishing run of heatwaves has left the Mediterranean tinder-dry, and fires have already killed at least 16 civilians and three firefighters, and forced more than 320,000 people from their homes across Spain and France alone — with more people being evacuated by the day. Both France and Spain have seen the number of wildfires more than double compared to last year: France has already passed 115,000 hectares burned this year, a national record, with the Gironde fire alone consuming around 42,000 hectares — one of the largest fires the country has seen since the Second World War — while Spain is currently fighting one of its largest wildfires on record near Madrid, which had burned more than 111,000 acres as of late July and remains active. The European Union has activated its largest firefighting mobilization ever, with firefighters and aircraft pre-positioned across a dozen countries for a season that is far from over.

The same heat has driven fires across North Africa: in Tunisia, over 900 fires were recorded within 72 hours, and in Algeria, more than 100 people were hospitalised.

Wildfires have spread across Canada too, with smoke reaching large parts of the US. Toronto’s air quality ranked among the world’s worst, and hospitals reported an increase in ER visits related to the fires.

More than just flames

The most obvious damage a wildfire does is the most visible one: homes destroyed, forests reduced to ash, people killed trying to flee or fighting the fire itself. But wildfires kill in a second, quieter way, one that reaches people who never see a flame: smoke.

Wildfire smoke is loaded with fine particulate matter, known as PM2.5, small enough to slip past the body’s defences, enter the bloodstream, and trigger inflammation throughout the body. Globally, wildfire smoke particles are estimated to cause 677,745 deaths every year, with almost 39% of them children under age 5, and the Lancet Countdown 2025 report puts the toll from fine particles at over 100,000 premature deaths a year worldwide, with the burden unevenly distributed between continents. Sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia are consistently the hardest-hit regions. The smoke from a single fire season can carry a global cost: Canada’s 2023 wildfires alone were linked to an estimated 82,100 premature deaths worldwide, with smoke drifting across North America and Europe. In the United States, researchers estimate wildfire smoke could contribute to as many as 24,100 deaths every year, and a separate study found that wildfire smoke in California was responsible for over 50,000 deaths between 2008 and 2018, with an economic toll above $430 billion. Scientists have found that almost no system in the body is spared: smoke exposure has been linked to heart disease, stroke, dementia, worsened asthma, complications in pregnancy and even harm to the brain.

Smoke doesn’t respect borders, either. It can travel thousands of miles from its source, blanketing cities that are nowhere near an active fire in a toxic haze. That means the health burden of wildfires falls on far more people than the ones who lose their homes, and it falls hardest on children, older people, outdoor workers and anyone with an existing respiratory or heart condition.

The fire weather triangle

Fires need three things to spread: fuel, oxygen and heat, plus the wind to push them along. Climate change is altering nearly every one of those conditions. Hotter temperatures dry out vegetation faster, turning forests and grasslands into ready-made fuel. Longer, more intense droughts strip moisture from soil and plants months before fire season even starts. Changing rain patterns mean wet seasons that once kept landscapes green are arriving later, or not at all. And in many regions, the same warming atmosphere that’s supercharging heatwaves is also strengthening the winds that carry embers and flames for miles ahead of a fire’s front.

Scientists call this combination “fire weather,” and it’s expanding. Fire seasons are starting earlier and ending later across the Northern Hemisphere, giving landscapes less time to recover between blazes. None of this means every fire is caused by climate change. It means the climate crisis is making the conditions for extreme fires far more likely, far more often, in far more places.

The fossil footprint

Wildfires are becoming more frequent, more intense and harder to contain. Satellite data show that the frequency of the most extreme wildfire events more than doubled worldwide between 2003 and 2023, with the six most extreme years on record all falling within the last seven. A separate global assessment found that the extent of forest fires has grown by around 40% over the past two decades, while the intensity of the world’s most extreme fires has roughly doubled over the same period. This pattern is linked to a hotter, drier atmosphere: warmer temperatures dry out vegetation, lengthen fire seasons and create the conditions extreme fires need to spread. And that hotter atmosphere has a direct, identifiable cause.

Burning fossil fuels — coal, oil and gas — causes that increase in carbon (CO2) which drives global heating. No other source can account for it: not volcanoes, not clouds, not solar cycles. Methane is the same story: fossil fuel extraction and use cause around 35% of human-caused methane emissions, with agriculture and waste accounting for the rest. The emissions of these both gases is clearly driven by fossil fuels: this is no longer a matter of  debate.

The coal, oil and gas industries have massively profited from an economic model that forces people to use fossil fuels, and they continue to profit from it. Reports have proven that they knew the damage they were causing since at least the 1970s, and that, instead of abandoning their business model, they actively worked to disinform the public. They still do. We keep burning fossil fuels because they choose (and they chose then) to use their power for that purpose.

While we may not be able to stop wildfires completely, we can reduce their severity and frequency by stopping the fossil fuel industry. We must demand our governments to switch to cleaner energy, and cut the financial flows that allow this industry to still exist. If you haven’t yet, join us in these demands!

More from the Fossil Fuels Did This series:

• Fossil Fuels Did This: Heatwaves
• Fossil Fuels Did This: Tropical Cyclones
• Fossil Fuels Did This: Floods
• Fossil Fuels Did This: Drought

The post Fossil Fuels Did This: Wildfires appeared first on 350.

This is a re-post from The Climate Brink

A graph has been making the rounds on social media showing the average number of days per weather station above 95F, 100F, and 105F across the contiguous US since 1895. It comes from CFACT analyst Chris Martz, drawing on raw data from NOAA’s Global Historical Climatology Network daily dataset (GHCNd), and it shows the 1930s towering over everything since. The implication is that extreme heat in the US is nothing new, and that all the recent fuss about record temperatures is overblown.

It is a compelling figure. The 1930s Dust Bowl really was an extraordinary period of extreme heat in the US, and no amount of correction for changes in measurement techniques over time makes it go away. But the graph is also a case study in why you cannot naively count threshold exceedances in raw daily station data and call it a climate record. Its results rest on two well-documented thermometer problems that artificially depress modern hot day counts, plus a station network that happens to be oversampled where the Dust Bowl happened.

Reproducing the viral chart

To start with, let’s reproduce the figure properly. Rather than averaging whatever stations happen to be reporting in a given year (the station network grew from a few hundred stations in 1895 to many thousands today, with big shifts in where they are located), I selected the 543 GHCNd stations in the contiguous US with long, near-continuous maximum temperature records over the full 1895-2025 period,1 gridded them to 2x2 degree cells, and computed an area-weighted national average.

Average number of days per year at or above 95°F, 100°F, and 105°F over the contiguous US, 1895–2025, from 543 long-record GHCN-Daily stations (raw, unadjusted TMAX), averaged on a 2°×2° grid with cos(latitude) area weighting.

Here we see the same basic story as the viral version: a huge spike in the 1930s (1936 alone averaged 33 days at or above 95F across these stations), elevated values through the mid-1950s, and nothing since that comes close. So the Martz figure is not fabricated, and its shape is not an artifact of the changing station network. To be fair to its author, counting hot days in raw data really does produce this picture.

The problem is what “raw” means here.

Two thermometer problems, both pointing the same way

Raw sounds virtuous, like unfiltered honesty. But the US cooperative observer network has changed in two important ways over the past century, and both changes bias hot day counts downward in recent decades relative to earlier ones.

The first is time of observation bias. Volunteer observers read and reset their max/min thermometers once a day. In the early 20th century most did so in the late afternoon, near the hottest part of the day. An afternoon reset means a very hot afternoon can get counted twice: once for the day it happened, and again the next day if the following afternoon is cooler, since the thermometer still holds yesterday’s peak. Over the 20th century the network gradually shifted to morning observations (better for measuring precipitation), which does not double count heat. Vose et al (2003) documented how this shift alone imparts a spurious cooling trend of a few tenths of a degree in US records, and the double counting directly inflates hot day counts at afternoon-observing stations.

The second is the thermometer switch. In the mid-1980s NOAA replaced liquid-in-glass thermometers in wooden Cotton Region Shelters with electronic maximum-minimum temperature sensors (MMTS) at most cooperative stations. Quayle et al (1991) showed the new sensors read maximum temperatures around 0.4C (0.7F) cooler than the old shelters. This produced a one-time step change at thousands of stations that landed right at the start of the modern warming era. When your threshold is a hard cutoff like 95F, a step down of nearly half a degree C removes a lot of days.

Homogenization algorithms (like NOAA’s pairwise method, Menne and Williams 2009, or the Berkeley Earth approach, Rohde et al 2013) detect and correct these breakpoints by comparing each station to its neighbors. Our 2016 paper validated these adjustments against the pristine, purpose-built US Climate Reference Network and found they perform well. While NOAA does not have daily homogenized data (they only provide monthly homogenized data), Berkeley Earth does. So let’s compare the raw hot day count to the same metric computed from Berkeley Earth’s homogenized daily maximum temperature fields.

Days per year at or above 95°F over the contiguous US. Top: raw GHCN-Daily data from 543 long-record stations, gridded and area-weighted. Bottom: Berkeley Earth homogenized daily TMAX (1°×1°, area-weighted over CONUS), with the dashed line showing the same calculation restricted to the grid cells containing the long-record stations. Absolute values differ because gridded fields smooth out local extremes; the shapes are the meaningful comparison.

The two datasets agree that the 1930s were exceptional. Where they disagree is the modern era: in the homogenized data, recent decades rival the Dust Bowl years CONUS-wide, with 2011 (16.1 days) actually edging out 1936 (14.0 days) as the biggest year in the Berkeley Earth series.

We can make the comparison cleaner by putting each series relative to its own 1951-1980 average:

Days ≥95°F, 11-year running means, with each series shown relative to its own 1951–1980 average. Red: raw GHCN-Daily long-record stations. Blue solid: Berkeley Earth homogenized daily TMAX over the full CONUS. Blue dashed: Berkeley Earth restricted to the grid cells sampled by the long-record station network.

The raw and homogenized series track each other closely for the first 85 years, through the Dust Bowl peak and the cool 1960s and 70s. Then, right around 1980 (just when the MMTS transition began), they split. The homogenized data rises to around 1.4 times its mid-century baseline while the raw data stays flat at roughly 1.0. The raw data does not exaggerate the 1930s, but rather erases the last 40 years of increases in extreme heat.

The dashed and solid blue lines in the figure are also worth a closer look. The dashed line averages the Berkeley Earth data over only the 130 grid cells where our long-record stations actually sit; comparing it to the raw series is the fair like-for-like test, since the places are the same and data adjustments are the only difference. The solid line averages over the whole country, and the gap between the two exposes a sampling problem rather than a data problem. Century-old stations cluster in the Midwest and East, which is precisely where the 1930s heat was centered and where extreme daytime heat has increased the least since. Averaged over the long-lived station locations, even in homogenized data, puts the 1930s roughly 45% above the last two decades. If we average over the full contiguous US, however, that gap shrinks to about 10%.

Locations of long-lived weather stations used in the reproducing the viral Martz figure. Note that these tend to oversample the Midwest region where dust bowl temperature extremes were most pronounced. A Dust Bowl story, not a national one

There is a second, subtler issue with interpreting the viral graph: geography. Long-record stations are heavily concentrated in the Midwest and East (only 116 of our 543, around a fifth, sit west of 100W), which happens to be exactly where the 1930s heat was centered. Let’s break the country into NOAA’s nine US climate regions and look at each one separately, using the spatially complete Berkeley Earth data.

Days per year at or above 95°F for each of NOAA’s nine US climate regions, 1895–2023, from Berkeley Earth homogenized gridded daily TMAX (1°×1°), area-weighted within each region. Thin lines are annual values; bold lines are 11-year running means. Note that the y-axis scale differs by region.

The Dust Bowl turns out to be a story about three regions. In the Upper Midwest the 1930s averaged around 15 times as many 95F days as the last two decades (3.4 vs 0.2 per year), in the Northern Rockies and Plains around 9 times (2.8 vs 0.3), and in the Ohio Valley around 4 times (8.7 vs 2.1), with 1936 the record year in all three.

Everywhere else the present rivals or beats the past: the South is essentially tied (22.4 days in the 1930s vs 22.7 over 2000-2023, with 2011 the biggest year in the record), while the Southeast (14.7 vs 11.1 days), Southwest (4.9 vs 3.9), and West (4.6 vs 3.6) all see more 95F days now than in the 1930s, with the two western regions peaking in 2020. (The remaining two regions, the Northeast and Northwest, average less than one 95F day per year throughout the record, too few for meaningful comparisons.)

The mid-century spike in that average comes almost entirely from three regions in the middle of the country. This makes physical sense: the Dust Bowl heat was tied to a specific regional catastrophe, a multi-year drought amplified by human-induced land degradation (Cook et al 2009), with bare, desiccated soils driving daytime temperatures to levels those same fields have not approached since. A record set during an ecological disaster in one part of the country is not evidence that the whole country, much less the planet, was hotter. The national chart is really being driven by a distinct regional anomaly.2

Meanwhile, the thermometers all agree it is warming

Finally, it is worth stepping back from the hottest afternoons of the year, which are a noisy, bias-sensitive sliver of the temperature record, and looking at what US temperatures as a whole are doing. The figure below shows annual average maximum, minimum, and mean temperatures for the contiguous US from NOAA’s homogenized nClimDiv dataset.

Contiguous US annual average daily maximum (TMax), minimum (TMin), and mean (TAvg) temperature anomalies relative to 1901–2000, from NOAA nClimDiv, 1895–2025. Thin lines are annual values; bold lines are 11-year running means.

All three are unambiguous. Since 1970, maximum temperatures have warmed at 0.52F per decade, minimums at 0.51F per decade, and the average at 0.51F per decade (all p < 0.0001), with the last decade roughly 2F above the 20th century baseline. The 1930s show up here too, but as a modest bump in maximum temperatures far below present (as the dust bowl event was largely limited to summer TMax temperatures, with a much smaller effect on the remainder of the year). Extreme daytime heat in summer is one of the places where the US warming signal is weakest (a real and interesting scientific result, related in part to agricultural intensification and irrigation in the Midwest (Mueller et al 2016), but it is not representative of the climate system as a whole.

Zooming all the way out

One last piece of context. The contiguous US covers less than 2% of the Earth’s surface, and as we saw above, even within the US the Dust Bowl signal is regional. So what does the very same chart look like for the planet as a whole? The figure below reproduces the design of the viral graph (days at or above 95F, 100F, and 105F) using the Berkeley Earth daily data over global land. To avoid mixing climate changes with changes in the locations we measure (global station coverage grew from under 40% of land area in the 1890s to essentially complete today), I restrict the average to the grid cells with continuous century-long records, covering 42% of global land.3

Average number of days per year at or above 95°F, 100°F, and 105°F across global land, 1895–2023, from Berkeley Earth homogenized gridded daily TMAX (1°×1°), area-weighted by cos(latitude) and land fraction. Restricted to grid cells with complete data in at least 90% of years over 1895–2023 (42% of global land area), so that changing station coverage does not affect the trend.

Globally there is no 1930s spike at all: 1936, the year that towers over the US record, comes in at 15.1 days at or above 95F, less than a day above the surrounding years. The Dust Bowl, extraordinary as it was in Kansas, barely registers when averaged over the world’s land. Instead, hot days hold roughly steady until around 1980 and then climb: days at or above 95F are up around 70% between the early 20th century (1895-1924) and the last decade (12.8 to 22.1 per year), days at or above 100F have more than doubled (3.0 to 7.5), and days at or above 105F have nearly quintupled (0.3 to 1.6). The hotter the threshold, the faster the rise, which is exactly what you expect when a whole temperature distribution shifts upward. All ten of the warmest years by the 95F metric have occurred since 1998, and the six most recent years in the series (2018-2023) are all among them.

The US Midwest is one of the few places on Earth where the hottest days of the mid-20th century still stand; picking it as your yardstick for global warming is, to put it charitably, a choice.

So what are the takeaways here?

First, the Dust Bowl was real, and it remains the benchmark for multi-year extreme daytime heat in the central US, in adjusted and unadjusted data alike. Anyone claiming the 1930s heat is purely an artifact of bad data is simply wrong.

Second, it was a regional phenomenon. Break the country into NOAA’s nine climate regions and the 1930s is only exceptional in only three of them (the Upper Midwest, the Northern Rockies and Plains, and the Ohio Valley, at roughly 4 to 15 times recent levels). The four regions where hot days are the most common (the South, Southeast, Southwest, and West) all match or exceed the Dust Bowl today, with record years of 2011 and 2020, not 1936.

Third, raw daily data is the wrong tool for this question. Time of observation changes and the 1980s switch to MMTS sensors both suppress modern hot day counts relative to the past, and the raw and homogenized series diverge almost exactly when the instrument transition happened. In homogenized data, recent decades rival the 1930s even averaged nationally.

Fourth, hot days above a fixed threshold are a narrow and noisy way to look at the data. The overall US warming trend (around 0.5F per decade since 1970 in max, min, and mean temperatures) is robust in every dataset, raw or adjusted, satellite or surface. And globally, days above 95F have been climbing steadily for a century, with no Dust Bowl bump at all: the central US is one of the few spots on the planet where the mid-20th century still holds the record for extreme daytime heat.

The viral chart is built from real measurements, and the heat it shows was real too. But it takes a regional catastrophe, fails to account for changes in instruments and observation times, and presents the result as a national climate verdict. Accounting for the thermometers and the geography, and the US looks a lot like the rest of the planet: the hottest days on record are increasingly the ones we are living through now.

I’ve included a more detailed writeup of the methods and code to reproduce this analysis on my GitHub here.

1 Specifically: stations whose GHCNd TMAX record spans at least 1900 through 2024, keeping station-years where at least 80% of April-October days have a valid, quality-controlled observation, and keeping stations valid in at least 85% of years over 1895-2025. Hot day counts are averaged within 2°×2° grid cells and combined with cos(latitude) area weighting over the 130 cells with near-complete records. The results are insensitive to these choices: stricter completeness screens shrink the network but leave the series essentially unchanged (details and robustness checks are available in the methods writeup on my GitHub). A map of the station network is also available in the repo; note that coverage is much denser east of 100W, a point that becomes important later in the post.

2 This also explains most of the difference between the dashed and solid blue lines in the “days ≥95°F, 11-year running means” figure. The long-record station network oversamples the region where the 1930s were most extreme and undersamples the South and West where recent warming has added the most 95F days.

3 This matters a lot. Computed naively over whatever area has data each year, the global days above 95F triple from ~12 to ~37 days per year, but much of that rise is an artifact of hot regions (the Sahara, the tropics, interior Australia) entering the dataset over time. On the fixed network the increase is a still-substantial ~75% (from ~13 to ~22 days per year). The fixed-coverage region is disproportionately Northern Hemisphere midlatitude land, so this series should be read as “hot days where we have century-long records” rather than a true global land average.

Liz Slooten couldn’t believe how many dead dolphins she was seeing. It was 1984, and the New Zealand-based zoology student was just beginning to study the smallest and rarest dolphins in the world. Now corpses were washing ashore in alarming numbers. Most were found entangled in fishing nets. For others, the cause of death was a mystery.

“We started asking the question, what the hell’s going on here?” Slooten remembers.

More than 40 years later, she’s still asking uncomfortable questions.

Recently retired from the University of Otago, Slooten is a leading expert on the endangered Hector’s dolphin (Cephalorhynchus hectori). As of 2024, there are only 15,000 of these miniature dolphins left. A closely related subspecies, Māui’s dolphin (C. h. maui), teeters on the brink of extinction with fewer than 50 remaining.

An endangered male Hector’s dolphin, around five feet long, jumps out of the water off the coast of South Island in New Zealand. Credit: Steve Dawson, New Zealand Whale and Dolphin Trust

There has long been debate whether Māui and Hector are separate species, but a 2002 study presented genetic analysis confirming that Māui is a subspecies of Hector’s with a bigger skull.

Māui live in the shallow water along the northwest coast of New Zealand’s North Island, at least 100 miles away from the home waters of Hector’s dolphins, in the shallows off South Island.

Both mammals still face the threat of entanglement from set nets and trawling, as fishing has grown into a multibillion-dollar industry in New Zealand, according to a recent report from the International Whaling Commission.

Established in 1946, the International Whaling Commission recommends conservation measures for both whale and dolphin populations. Its scientific committee also conducts population estimates on animals, including Māui dolphins, who are listed as critically endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

Just this March a dead juvenile Māui dolphin appeared along the shore of Port Waikato, a rural coastal town on the North Island of New Zealand just over 90 kilometers (56 miles) from Auckland. The remains were so decomposed that officials were unable to determine a cause of death and were initially unclear on whether it was a Hector or, as DNA later confirmed, a Māui.

“It was heartbreaking and really concerning,” says Christine Rose, the founder and chair of Māui and Hector’s Dolphin Defenders, a nonprofit dedicated to protecting both the country’s endemic dolphins. “We feel it in a visceral sense every time we get a report of a dolphin dying or being killed. Those small populations, with Māui in particular, it’s particularly tragic.”

Both dolphin subspecies, known for their fins shaped like Mickey Mouse ears, are protected under the Marine Mammals Protection Act passed in 1978. This New Zealand law works to preserve all animals in the country’s waters, prohibiting people from harming or killing them without a permit.

On-Board Monitoring

In October 2023, as Māui and Hector’s populations reached dire levels, New Zealand turned to alternative conservation methods by introducing electronic monitoring or cameras on board to watch for dolphins caught in nets.

That bycatch appears to be increasing. In the first year, fishermen reported 12 Hector’s dolphins found dead in trawling nets, later confirmed through camera footage. This is a stark increase: In the 30 years before cameras were put on board, onboard observers reported only two Hector’s dolphins in trawling nets and a single Māui caught in 2012.

The new figure may even be an undercount. Officials often rely on reports from fishermen before reviewing camera footage, and many fishermen do not report when a dolphin is caught, so bycatch numbers may be a conservative estimate, according to the International Whaling Commission report.

While fishermen are required to report when they find a dolphin in their net, they are exempt from “accidental capture.” They only face penalties if they are caught lying to officials in their report. Last March officials charged one South Island fisherman $5,000 after camera footage documented him cutting his nets and allowing a dead Hector’s dolphin to sink to the ocean floor. Initially, he told officials he had not caught any protected species.

This occurred years after the government declined to follow repeated advice from the IUCN and a request from the IWC to expand the no-net zone as far as 20 miles offshore and ban trawling in all dolphin habitats.

Despite calls to ban trawling in dolphin habitat, another former commercial fisherman, Nathan Hines, says, “As a fisherman, there’s never really any hate towards the dolphins themselves.” Hines started his fishing career by working on a wide range of fishing trawlers. During the past 10 years, he owned his own fishing vessel, where he was fishing the “heart of Hector dolphins’ habitat.”

“They’re always a highlight of my day,” Hines says. Lately, he’s been using dolphin acoustic deterrent devices, which are attached to fishing gear, releasing sounds and alerting marine mammals in hopes of reducing bycatch.

There are no requirements to use these devices in New Zealand, though.

Preserving the Subspecies

To try and push the government for stricter conservation efforts, a new generation of researchers is turning to genetic analysis, seeking better strategies for both dolphins. In a 2025 study, an Otago-based team reported it had sequenced the genomes of both dolphins and found no evidence they are interbreeding — an alarming conclusion for the much smaller Māui population.

“We’ve known that the Māui’s dolphin [has] been in trouble for many years,” says study co-author Sebastián Alvarez-Costes, a doctoral student at Otago. “Now we have evidence that they are completely separated. The authorities need the most evidence that you can give them about the populations to then act and protect them.”

 

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Māui’s dolphins split from Hector’s as global sea levels began to rise after the last glacial maximum about 20,000 years ago, when the passage between New Zealand’s two main islands became too deep for the dolphins to comfortably traverse, according to the study.

Despite the extensive genetic evidence that Māui’s and Hectors are separate subspecies, Shane Jones, a member of parliament and the New Zealand Fisheries Minister, continues to deny Māui’s existence, a claim he first stated in 2020.

“There is no Māui’s dolphins,” Jones reiterated on NewstalkZB, a New Zealand-based radio network in September 2025.

That same month Jones implemented an overnight three-month blanket ban on set-net fishing along the Otago coastline on the Southern half of the South Island to reduce the amount of bycatch of another endangered species also endemic to the country, the yellow-eyed penguin, known as hoiho. He then extended the ban an additional nine months.

On the radio show, Jones said the issue of Māui’s conservation is different, because “there is no such thing,” despite evidence showing otherwise. Jones did not respond to The Revelator’s request to comment.

Māui’s dolphins are slightly larger than Hectors and 40% less genetically diverse due to their isolation and small numbers, the study found. This makes them highly susceptible to the risks of inbreeding, including reproductive failure and diseases like toxoplasmosis. The International Whaling Commission report did find that the threat of toxoplasmosis, which killed two Māui’s dolphins in 2013, is declining.

The population is now so small, though, that “every single dolphin mortality is significant,” says Chris Parsons, an independent dolphin researcher who was not involved in the study.

The tragedies go beyond the dolphins themselves. They are regarded by the Indigenous Māori people as Taonga, a word meaning “treasure” that the Māori apply to anything that carries cultural significance.

“The Tribes have responsibilities of looking after the dolphins,” says Alana Alexander, a dolphin researcher and study author who has Tribal lineage and says this influences her work. “It heightens my sense of obligations to making sure that what I do is both useful for the dolphins but also for the Tribes.”

To try and push for better efforts beyond the conservation efforts that got their start in 1986 — largely based on research by Slooten, who was just starting her doctoral studies at the time — Rose’s group is now taking matters internationally. This January Māui and Hector’s Dolphin Defenders filed a lawsuit in the U.S. Court of International Trade to push the U.S. government to enforce the Marine Mammal Protection Act and ban the importation of seafood from any foreign fishery that harms or kills marine mammals in excess of U.S. standards.

Protecting these dolphins is a multigenerational effort. Back when Slooten first started her studies, her team autopsied 61 dolphins between 1984 and 1986. Ten were found on beaches with no known cause of death, and 51 dolphins were caught in fishing nets. Interviews with fishers confirmed the problem.

“It became immediately clear: There was no way that that was sustainable,” Slooten says.

The rules that Slooten originally helped instill have helped somewhat, slowing population decline, and the remaining Māui dolphins are younger, a median age of eight years old as of 2021, a hopeful sign of population recovery, according to Rochelle Constantine, another study author. But overall population levels haven’t rebounded.

Part of the problem is that these dolphins, which researchers thought primarily stayed within seven miles of the coast, now stray as far as 20 miles offshore in some areas — beyond the government-determined protected areas — where they are threatened by all sorts of fishing-related activities, including gill, set and trawling nets, as well as seismic testing, mining, and tourism.

Future of Conservation

For Māui’s dolphins the situation has never been more dire. Even standard efforts like captive breeding may be too risky to implement, as the stress of capturing the animals can sometimes kill them, as it did during a tragic incident with critically endangered vaquita dolphins, according to Slooten.

Researchers say we need to stop using fishing nets in Hector’s and Māui’s habitat. If we do not, the ultimate risk is extinction, which could have cascading effects on food webs in coastal waters.

“You [are] basically removing one of the most important predators,” Alvarez-Costes says. “You are losing history and a species that is sacred for the local community.”

Hines says he thinks we could develop better deterrent devices. “I believe with the right research and the right money put into it, it wouldn’t be hard to get that interactions with Hector’s dolphins down to zero, and then everyone wins.”

It’s unclear if the government will move forward with these recommendations. A few months ago, Slooten and other researchers met and discussed the dolphins’ risk assessment. With their findings, they could implement new conservation efforts, but the next International Whaling Commission meeting isn’t until 2028, two years from now.

Māui dolphins do not have time to wait.

“They could go extinct at any time. They’re just treading water,” Constantine says.

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

The Te Awa Tupua Act: An Inspiration for Communities to Take Responsibility for Their Ecosystems

The post Another Māui Dolphin Dies as Scientists Search Their DNA for a Path to Survival appeared first on The Revelator.

Opinion By KAY MATTHEWS

The article in the July 25 New Mexican, “U.S. defense bill would accelerate plutonium pit production, with possible increase at LANL,” states that “All three New Mexico representatives voted against the defense bill, which has become a flashpoint over the war in Iran. Only six Democrats in the House voted for the bill. Members of New Mexico’s congressional delegation didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment Friday about the plutonium pit provision.”

The New Mexico delegation voted against the bill because it ignores the resolution they voted for to stop funding the Iran War and because the bill included Section 219 that combines or “integrates” the Israeli military with the U.S. military, compromising U.S. sovereignty. The bill awards $1.5 trillion to the Defense Department, a 60 percent increase. Kudos for them for the negative vote.

But they wouldn’t respond to the question about the plutonium pit production because, to my knowledge, no New Mexico congressional member has ever questioned, or god forbid, opposed pit production at LANL. I often refer to Pete Domenici, New Mexico Senator from 1973 to 2009, as LANL’s biggest cheerleader. Apparently, his nickname was “Saint Pete” among staff and reporters.  He chaired the Senate Budget Committee and the Senate Energy Committee and made sure funding made its consistent way to LANL.

But Domenici served before the decision to change LANL from a research lab to a pit production lab. That credit goes to the entire New Mexico delegation back in 2017— Senators Tom Udall and Martin Heinrich and Representatives Michelle Lujan Grisham and Ben Ray Lujan. When the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) was doing an initial assessment about how to restart the production of pits after the closure of Rocky Flats, the only pit production facility, the agency initially gave LANL a negative assessment. Udall, Heinrich, and Lujan wrote a letter to NNSA claiming the assessment was flawed and that LANL was the appropriate lab for pit production. Lujan, on the Armed Services Committee, put language in the defense bill that LANL would produce 30 pits per year, with surge capacity beyond that. When NNSA ultimately decided on a two-site plan of LANL and Savannah River, in South Carolina, all the of delegation, including Lujan Grisham, objected to NNSA halting the long-planned modular expansion of LANL’s facilities and urged it to abandon the Savannah River option in favor of investing fully in LANL’s modular facilities as originally endorsed by both Congress and the Nuclear Weapons Council.

The only time I know that a New Mexico congress person spoke up about LANL’s weapon mission was when Tom Udall, then a New Mexico representative running for Senator Pete Domenici’s seat, was criticized for voting for a reduction in weapons-related funding for LANL. Seventy percent of LANL’s budget was then spent on “core nuclear weapons research and production programs.” Udall called for diversified mission at the Lab that included “renewable” energy programs, for which the House had recently allocated an additional $638 million to the energy budget for renewable energy research and production at LANL. But then Tom got elected Senator and joined the chorus of unlimited funding for weapon production at LANL.

In the March 2025 issue of La Jicarita, Suzie Schwartz interrogated the February LANL release of its Economic Impact Study, where it painted a rosy picture of all its economic development initiatives and programs that help stimulate business growth and create jobs. Ironically, the results of a previous study by the University of New Mexico Bureau of Business and Economic Research, commissioned by LANL to show the lab’s economic impact on northern New Mexico, contains data demonstrating the Lab had a negative fiscal impact on Santa Fe, Taos, and especially Rio Arriba County. LANL requested those statistics be removed from the final study.

Both National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) reviews of projects that will determine the extent of  pit production, the Site-wide Environmental Impact Statement for LANL and the Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement for both LANL and Savannah River, have received overwhelming opposition from New Mexicans. At all the public hearings for both projects, those who commented were opposed to new pit production and the escalating nuclear arms race that the Trump administration is pursuing. When will the New Mexico congressional delegation, all Democrats, stand up in support of their constituents? The rationale of LANL as the economic engine of New Mexico is a lie and the congressional delegation’s support of endless funding for LANL is revelatory of its complicity in that lie.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Bureau of Land Management has approved an AI data center on national public land that was originally approved for a solar energy project, without conducting a new review or taking public comment on the switch. The project is believed to be the first data center approved on BLM-managed public lands. However, the project is relying on prior approval for not a data center but a solar energy project, swapping out an energy-generating project for one that would consume more energy than the entire neighboring community of Boulder City, Nevada.

Townsite Solar 2, LLC, the project developer, originally received approval in 2023 to build a solar energy and battery storage project on a BLM-managed parcel within the city limits of Boulder City. Earlier this year, TS2 amended its application to develop a data center instead, which the BLM approved without seeking public comment on the new proposal. “We’ve had no conversations, there’s been no chance for the community or for the city to provide any input to the federal government,” said Boulder City spokesperson Lisa LaPlante. “This feels so unprecedented for us to have a project placed in our city without the chance to weigh in.”

The BLM justified its approval by claiming that a solar project and a data center are “substantially the same,” noting similarities in acreage, perimeter, construction time, and the size and shape of the facilities. Relying on this rationale, the BLM used a Determination of NEPA Adequacy to transfer the 2023 analysis and approval to the amended project. “It’s an extraordinary and liberal interpretation of existing law and regulations,” said Mike Ford, a former high-level official at the BLM.

According to reporting by Heatmap, the bait-and-switch approval may have had some help from the Bernhardt Group, the lobbying firm led by former Interior Secretary David Bernhardt. Lobbyists from the Bernhardt Group were hired by Arevon, one of Townsite Solar’s financial backers, around the time when Townsite Solar 2 was preparing to shift from a solar project to a data center, though Arevon denies hiring lobbyists for the Townsite Solar project specifically.

“This was a bait and switch,” said Olivia Tanager, director of the Toiyabe Chapter of the Sierra Club. “If we allow this precedent to stand, the fear is that this could promulgate throughout not just Nevada, but all over the country in the interest of expediting data centers.”

Quick hits Pueblo leaders, New Mexico lawmakers speak out to protect Chaco Canyon

High Country News | Source NM

This desert oasis is a biological wonderland. Trump’s border wall threatens to destroy it

The Guardian

The U.S. has acknowledged Bears Ears and Grand Staircase as sacred for over a century, but keeps stripping away protections

The Conversation

Trump admin eyes massive coal reserves under federal lands

Inside Climate News

Lawmakers propose blocking controversial quarry expansion that threatens hot springs

Colorado Sun | Denver Post | Grand Junction Daily Sentinel | Westword

As climate lawsuits advance, the oil industry enters ‘panic mode’

Grist

Colorado River reservoirs hit record lows as Trump admin threatens major cuts

CBS News | USA Today

Cheatgrass is invading the best sagebrush left in the West. How can Wyoming hold the line?

WyoFile

Quote of the day

The question before us is simple: What kind of legacy will we leave? Will we choose short-term extraction, or will we choose to protect one of the most important Indigenous cultural landscapes in North America, a place whose meaning reaches far beyond any single administration?”

—Cochiti Pueblo Governor Phillip Quintana, High Country News

Picture This

@usinterior
High in the Olympic Mountains, the alpine tarns of Upper Royal Basin reflect some of the most rugged scenery at @Olympic_nps.
Jagged peaks and clear water = not a bad place to stop and stare for a while.
Photo by Hwei Ling Ng @thenomadicartist Featured image: Aerial view of Boulder City, Nevada, and nearby Lake Mead, Doc Searls/CC BY 2.0

The post Trump admin swaps out solar project for data center on BLM land appeared first on Center for Western Priorities.

Blue foods can be complex; consumers can easily be overwhelmed. With so many species, preparation methods, and marketing claims. Because of size, scale, and accessibility, the ocean remains a largely invisible part of the food system for many consumers. Not everyone can walk down to the dock and watch a local fisherman coming in with the catch of the day.

And yet, the importance of blue foods for people and the planet is simple: we must navigate complexities by educating consumers while encouraging science-based fishery management and transparent verification along the seafood supply chain.

The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization’s (FAO) recent State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture (SOFIA) 2026 report paints a complex but encouraging picture on the state of our wild capture fisheries. While overfishing persists as a serious global challenge—with the share of fish stocks classified as biologically sustainable declining slightly to 62.4 percent—the report also demonstrates that we already have a solution: sustainable management of fisheries.

The SOFIA report shows more than one-third of the global population gets at least one-fifth of their animal protein from blue foods. The report indicates that global trade in aquatic animal products reached $184 billion, rivaling the value of all other animal proteins combined.

Simultaneously, new data from the world’s largest survey of more than 20,500 seafood consumers revealed increased awareness and optimism about the state of the world’s oceans. The survey, done in partnership with the Marine Stewardship Council and GlobeScan, details environmental and seafood awareness and understanding from consumers in 23 countries.

The data show that consumers appear to increasingly understand the challenges and opportunities facing oceans and fisheries. While 58 percent of Americans correctly recognize that overfishing is more widespread today than it was 50 years ago, 17 percent believe fish populations can never recover from overfishing, and another 25 percent remain unsure.

The reality is that fish populations can and do recover when fisheries are managed sustainably. Around the world, there are countless examples of depleted fisheries rebuilding through science-based catch limits, strong monitoring programs, and collaboration among fishers, scientists, governments, and environmental organizations.

Seafood consumers have increased confidence that positive change is possible; 51 percent believe our oceans can be saved from irreparable damage over the next 20 years, up from 41 percent in 2024.

And consumers in the United States increasingly want to be part of that future. The survey found that 58 percent of U.S. seafood consumers say purchasing products with ecolabels aligns with their personal values. Participants report taking actions such as reducing plastic use and seeking seafood they believe to be sustainably sourced. Shoppers are increasingly noticing ecolabeled products, rising from 28 percent in 2024 to 40 percent in 2026. Awareness of the MSC blue fish label similarly increased from 28 percent to 35 percent.

As consumers navigate increasingly complex and crowded seafood aisles, independent certification and ecolabels help provide confidence that sustainability claims have been verified by a credible third party. 60 percent of seafood consumers say ecolabels increase their trust in brands, while sustainably sourced seafood continues to rank among the most important purchase considerations, following quality, health, and price.

And consumers recognize their choices can make a difference. Market demand for responsibly sourced seafood sends important signals throughout the supply chain, rewarding fisheries that invest in sustainable practices and encouraging broader adoption of effective management.

At the same time, concern about ocean health remains high, with nearly nine in ten U.S. seafood consumers worrying about the state of the world’s oceans. And that concern is warranted. Overfishing persists in many regions, and the SOFIA report highlights significant disparities between areas with strong management systems and those where management capacity remains limited.

The challenges facing our oceans are real, but so are the solutions. Science-based fisheries management, independent verification, robust monitoring, and collaborative action have repeatedly demonstrated their ability to rebuild fish populations and support thriving fishing communities.

Awareness and optimism are essential ingredients for the long-term work of protecting oceans and ensuring that sustainable seafood remains part of our future. The survey data represents a win for fisheries and businesses and all partners prioritizing healthy oceans and sustainable seafood for future generations. This awareness and optimism can buoy us, knowing we are making a difference, and sending positive market signals to fisheries. After all, a rising tide lifts all boats.

The benefits of blue foods are simple: they provide sustainable protein to a growing global population, foster global food security, and secure and provide livelihoods, among many other benefits. The onus is on us to produce and use these resources sustainably to ensure we have them for the future.

Articles like the one you just read are made possible through the generosity of Food Tank members. Can we please count on you to be part of our growing movement? Become a member today by clicking here.

Photo courtesy of Geoff Trodd, Unsplash

The post Op-Ed | Blue Foods Already Feed the World: In the U.S., Awareness and Optimism Grow appeared first on Food Tank.

In a summer of record heat waves, France and Spain are now facing wildfires that have forced the evacuations of more than 300,000 people. Scientists say that a sharp swing from wet to dry weather, a signature of climate change, helped fuel the blazes.

Read more on E360 →

People have three weeks to comment on the controversial Rosebank development, Britan’s biggest undeveloped oil and gas field.

A public consultation by the government runs until 17 August 2026.

The Rosebank field, 80 miles north west of Shetland, was granted a licence by the Conservatives. But this was ruled unlawful by Scottish courts in January 2025.

That decision followed the landmark Finch Ruling at the Supreme Court, which established that environmental impact assessment for fossil fuel projects must account for the emissions produced when extracted fuel was burned.

These emissions, known as scope 3 or downstream, were included in a resubmitted document for Rosebank in 2025.

The new energy secretary, Miatta Fahnbulleh, is expected to decide whether to grant consent for the field after the consultation. Her decision will be based on the revised environmental impact assessment.

Rosebank is estimated to hold more than 480 million barrels of oil. Some estimates suggest it would release emissions totalling 254 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent over its lifetime. This is said to be equivalent to nearly 70% of the UK’s entire annual emissions in 2024. This would make it incompatible with the UK’s legally-binding climate commitments, campaigners have said.

Opponents have argued that the field would not lower UK energy bills or improve energy security because 90% of reserves are oil destined for international markets. They have stated that the field’s small gas reserves could reduce UK gas import dependency by just 1%, if none were exported.

At the weekend, the Guardian reported that production at Rosebank, if approved, could be delayed after equipment from a rig was accidentally dropped into the North Sea in April 2026.

The field operator, Adura, now expects production would be delayed from the end of this year to sometime in 2027, the Guardian reported.

The Rosebank development is in two phases.

• Phase 1 involves drilling four production and three water injection wells.
• Phase 2, dependent on results of phase 1, involves drilling a further 3 production and 2 water injection wells.

Wells would be connected by new flowlines to a redeployed Floating Production Storage and Offloading vessel (FPSO). Gas would be exported from the FPSO to a new gas export pipeline connecting to the existing West of Shetland Pipeline Systems. Oil will be offloaded using tankers.

Consultation details

Official notices of the consultation were published in Shetland Times, Aberdeen Press & Journal and the Daily Telegraph earlier this month.

All representations should quote reference number ES/2022/001 and be made to:

• OPRED@Energysecurity.gov.uk
• Business Support Team Offshore Petroleum Regulator for Environment & Decommissioning Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, AB1 Building, Crimon Place, Aberdeen AB10 1BJ

The energy secretary’s decision will be published here (see link).

Rosebank is currently owned by Adura (a joint enterprise of Shell and Equinor 80%) and Ithaca Energy (20%). Energy Voice reported last week that Adura has called for voluntary redundancies among staff at its Aberdeen headquarters. It is not known how many job cuts are planned.

Links to government notices and official documents on Rosebank

Guide to Rosebank by the campaign organisation, Uplift

• A public consultation on the Jackdaw gas field, also owned by Adura, is due to finish on 10 August 2026. The Guardian reported earlier this month that, if approved, Jackdaw would create just 27 direct full-time jobs.

27 July 2026

Kpong, Ghana — The Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives (GAIA Africa) and the Green Africa Youth Organization (GAYO) have commenced the in‑person segment of the Africa Zero Waste Academy 2026, a flagship program dedicated to training the next generation of zero waste practitioners, following the successful rollout of the online program last month.

Now in its second year, the Academy equips participants with practical skills to design localised zero waste systems that reduce emissions, create green jobs, and protect community health. 1, 200 climate and waste practitioners from across Africa applied, with careful selection ensuring gender and geographic diversity.

Globally, over 2.1 billion tonnes of municipal solid waste are generated annually. Localised solutions—such as organic waste management and separation of waste at source—are proving vital in tackling the waste crisis and its impacts on climate, biodiversity, and livelihoods.

Accra’s designation by the United Nations as one of 20 Cities Towards Zero Waste in March 2026 highlights the growing importance of zero waste models. GAYO’s award-winning Zero Waste Accra Project played a central role, preventing organic, plastic, and electronic waste from ending up in landfills and curbing methane emissions.

“This is not just about managing waste better; it’s about rethinking systems for climate resilience, green jobs, and community health,” said Ama Asiedu, GAIA Africa Zero Waste and Climate Program Associate.

The Academy is built on the understanding that waste and people are deeply connected. It introduces a way of thinking that protects and improves the lives of everyone who handles or is affected by waste. This work must be done through a lens of justice. By upholding human rights, safeguarding the livelihoods of waste pickers and waste workers, and designing systems that prevent harm from the very beginning.

‘’Zero waste is a systems transformation agenda that challenges us to rethink and redesign the economic and material systems that generate waste,’’ explains Fathia Selasi Charway-Glover, Project Coordinator, Zero Waste Cities, at GAYO. ‘’Achieving zero waste requires intentional investment in people, knowledge, policy coherence and inclusive infrastructure that recognises waste as a resource rather than a liability. The Academy represents a critical investment in that transformation by building the technical capacity and cross-sector collaboration needed to accelerate the transition towards a circular economy.’’

Participants have completed a five-week virtual program covering movement building, waste characterisation, and monitoring frameworks. This week’s in-person session in Ghana consolidates their learning with expert presentations and site visits to Zero Waste projects in Accra.

“We believe each participant has a vital role to play in shaping sustainable practices and policies within their communities. The insights and knowledge exchanged here will drive significant change towards achieving a Zero Waste Africa,” added Ama Asiedu.

About the Africa Zero Waste Academy

The Africa Zero Waste Academy, by GAIA Africa, is a capacity-building initiative that equips climate and waste practitioners with the skills to implement Zero Waste solutions. By fostering the next generation of leaders, the Academy empowers communities to reduce waste, curb emissions, and build sustainable livelihoods across Africa.

Press contacts:

Ibrahim Khalilulahi Usman | khalil@no-burn.org

The post Africa Zero Waste Academy Champions Next Generation of Zero Waste Leaders to Tackle Climate Crisis  first appeared on GAIA.

If done right, the rapid growth of artificial intelligence and the data centres that support it presents a unique economic opportunity for Alberta and Canada. But, as we argue in this submission to the Alberta Electricity System Operator’s (AESO)...

Contains spoilers. As a fan of animation and Daniel Chong’s “We Bare Bears,” I was so delighted when I saw the first teaser for Hoppers...

The post What “Hoppers” tells us about organizing  first appeared on Spring.

A hush has fallen over the Democratic Party — a “climate hush,” to be precise. The phrase captures the push within the party to focus more on the high cost of living and less on the planetary crisis, in hopes of addressing a popular diagnosis of why Democrats lost the 2024 presidential election to Donald Trump. Since then, Democratic politicians have been mentioning the subject less on social media and in their press releases. Candidates in this summer’s primaries might have it in their platforms, but it’s the rare candidate who campaigns on it. 

But a new report pushes back against the idea that talking about climate change could cause Democrats to lose votes. The 2035 Initiative, a climate policy research center at the University of California, Santa Barbara, released polling this month that suggests that emphasizing the issue could increase support for Democratic candidates. The release comes ahead of primaries for key states — including Michigan, Minnesota, and Virginia — that could determine whether Democrats regain control over Congress. 

“Our data shows pretty firmly that adding climate change to the mix is neutral to helpful from a political perspective,” said Matto Mildenberger, a political science professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, who worked on the report. His team conducted two surveys this summer with roughly 3,500 total participants, weighted to represent the U.S. electorate with a mix of voters from across the political spectrum. He said it’s the first empirically rigorous evaluation of the “climate hush” hypothesis. 

It’s part of a growing pushback to the climate hushing phenomenon, spearheaded by longtime climate advocate Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, a Democrat from Rhode Island, and a collection of experts studying political science and public opinion. “This is a sort of a sign of where the conversation has moved, in that you do have this really robust effort to attempt to highlight that climate change is something that Democrats should continue to be talking about in a big way,” said Tré Easton, vice president for public affairs at Searchlight Institute, a Democratic-aligned think tank.

Last September, Searchlight argued that the “first rule about solving climate change” was “don’t say climate change,” provocative advice that’s been invoked as an example of climate hushing. Easton rejects that characterization. “It’s just very interesting to see Searchlight treated as, like, the prime climate-husher organization,” he said. “I didn’t know that’s where I worked.” He doesn’t advise never talking about climate change, but thinks candidates should talk about it in the context of energy policy, with Democrats arguing for a climate-conscious approach that balances trade-offs and guarantees the country can meet growing demand for electricity.

Mildenberger’s research, however, points to a more ambitious approach. His polling implies that climate change isn’t as politically toxic as it’s made out to be, finding that about two-thirds of respondents supported a government program to invest in solar and wind energy no matter how its goal was framed, whether that was “addressing climate change,” “developing new energy sources,” or “reducing pollution and protecting clean air.” About 60 percent of the Republicans surveyed would back such a policy, and using the word “climate” didn’t dent their support.

When respondents were asked to choose between pairs of candidates with randomly assigned priorities, they were more likely to pick those who made climate change a top priority, Mildenberger found. Among all voters, it led to a 4.5 percentage point increase in the candidate getting selected, and for those open to voting Republican, it made no difference (though it hurt a candidate’s chances among committed Republicans). The polling also found that people who support climate action are far more motivated to vote on it than people who oppose it, meaning that talking about climate change isn’t likely to lose votes.

The organizations described in the report as scolding Democrats for talking about climate change weren’t convinced the survey results undermined their case. Liam Kerr, co-founder of WelcomePAC — a center-left political action committee that has argued Democrats are “overly focused on climate change” — said in an email that “the Democrats winning Trump voters are mostly those who have followed the opposite advice of the researchers.” In the 2024 election, Representative Jared Golden from Maine advertised that he was “fighting against Biden’s electric car mandate” and “voting to increase domestic oil and gas production,” and wound up getting reelected in a district that voted for Trump by almost 10 percentage points. That same year, Ruben Gallego, a Democratic senator from Arizona, won in a state that voted for Trump by 5.5 points. He released an “all of the above” energy plan to tackle inflation last December and has called for Democrats to talk about energy affordability rather than climate change directly.

Senator Ruben Gallego, a Democrat from Arizona, speaks during a recent press conference on Capitol Hill. Finn Gomez / Getty Images

There’s one thing everyone involved agrees on: Climate change is not a top priority for voters. Mildenberger’s research found that respondents ranked climate change 12th out of 15 issues, way behind the cost of living and health care but ahead of foreign policy and AI. Where you go from there has become a point of contention. In Easton’s opinion, it’s not worth chasing a small electoral benefit on an issue voters don’t prioritize. 

“If I am an operative advising a candidate, and you’re like, ‘I get a very small benefit if I talk about this thing,’ I’m not going to tell you to talk about that thing,” Easton said. “I want to encourage you to try and find a thing that gets you the biggest benefit you can with voters, especially in these hard-to-win places.”

Between the two camps, there’s a fundamental difference in thinking about what will lead to climate action. Can Democrats achieve results by working quietly behind the scenes, keeping climate change out of partisan debates? Or does staying quiet about it reduce the general sense that it’s a vital issue, eroding the political will to do anything about it?

Mildenberger is on the second team, arguing that Democrats will lose the opportunity to act on climate change the next time they’re in power if the subject slips out of the political conversation. “We’re not going to pass a climate policy bill, or prioritize it, or do what we need to do to solve this problem if there isn’t debate and conversation and attention to the issue,” he said. He pointed to the debate over how to address climate change in the lead-up to the 2020 presidential election as creating the momentum for former President Joe Biden to pass the Inflation Reduction Act in 2022, a package of green incentives that was the country’s widest-ranging climate law in history, at least until Republicans repealed most of it last year.

Others argue that climate policymaking can be “quiet” — small interventions tucked away into bigger bills without drawing the attention of the media, where it can be drawn into polarized debates. “The more that something is viewed as a pet political project of a particular political party, the more something is viewed in the partisan lens, the harder it is to achieve durable policy success on that particular thing,” Easton said. 

Easton thinks that climate change is so ingrained in the Democratic Party, it’s not going anywhere, even if politicians don’t mention it very often. Zohran Mamdani, the mayor of New York City, barely mentioned climate change in his campaign, but Easton said he doesn’t doubt Mamdani’s commitment to taking action. And in the end, Democrats can’t act on climate change, or anything else, unless they’re voted into office.

“I get it — if the cause of your life is fighting climate change and this is what you’ve devoted your career to, I understand why you want to put out work like this [survey],” Easton said. “The cause of my life is making sure that autocrats and authoritarians don’t win our government again. And hopefully when the folks who defeat those autocrats and authoritarians get in power, they will do work on any host of important things, including climate change.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline ‘Climate hushing’ has swept the Democratic Party. New polling suggests it’s a mistake. on Jul 27, 2026.

"July 25, the International Day of Afro-Latin American, Afro-Caribbean, and Diaspora Women, is a day of struggle and resistance"

The post Dominican Republic: July 25 Is a Day of Struggle and Resistance appeared first on La Via Campesina - EN.