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Mines approved with less public input and more environmental risk under Trump

The Trump administration is rushing to permit mines on federal public lands across the west without safeguards to protect our land, air, and water. Mine projects are being fast-tracked without public comment periods or proper environmental studies. Tribal consultation and endangered species protections are under attack. 

State laws and regulations are more important than ever to hold the line in the face of federal deregulation and corruption. But one county in California is considering giving up its control over any project that the Trump administration approves. 

California counties provide local oversight for proposed mines

California law requires that mining projects, including those on federal public lands, go through county permitting to minimize environmental impacts. Mining projects must comply with the Surface Mining and Reclamation Act and the California Environmental Quality Act, as well as other state laws and regulations that require tribal consultation, protections for endangered species, and for the Western Joshua tree. 

Taken together, these laws and regulations ensure tribes and the public are informed of potential impacts, and that decision-makers have the best information to protect California’s public lands.

San Bernardino County is considering revising its mining regulation. The County calls this a standard update, but sloppy drafting risks giving up local oversight for projects that have approval from Washington D.C. 

Because federal requirements are weaker than California’s, this means new mining projects will be approved without the public’s knowledge, and with serious impacts to treasured public lands, air, and water. These changes could make it easier for companies like Dateline Resources to mine in Music Valley, on the border of Joshua Tree National Park.

Opportunities to act

The San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors is holding a public hearing on the revised mining regulations at 9 a.m. on Tuesday August 18th. This is the first of two readings of the mining regulations ordinance.

If you live in San Bernardino County, please take action here and tell the board to deny the ordinance until it is revised.

For even more impact, you can give your oral comment in person or virtually at 385 N. Arrowhead Ave., 1st Floor, Covington Chambers, San Bernardino, CA 92415 or remotely by telephone. Online registration is available by clicking “Register to Speak.”

People who are not San Bernardino residents can help by spreading the word. Please reach out to friends in San Bernardino County to let them know what’s happening.

A mining claim in Music Valley in San Bernardino County

The post Don’t let San Bernardino County permit mines without public input appeared first on Earthworks.

Canada’s public health care system, which provides essential health services without regard to ability to pay, is one of our most cherished social achievements. Indeed, public opinion polls consistently show that medicare is the single feature Canadians most associate with our national identity. Support for universal public health care is thus an important element of Canadians’ response to the challenges to our economy and sovereignty posed by U.S. President Donald Trump.

However, the medicare system is under threat from inadequate funding, long wait times for some services, and ongoing pressure from investors to privatize services. In Alberta, new laws allow parallel private provision of key health care services (including diagnostic tests and some surgeries). Other provinces (such as Ontario) are also pushing privatization. Always underlying privatization efforts is the claim that Canada simply cannot ‘afford’ the big costs of the public health care system.

At the recent summit meeting of Canadian premiers held in Charlottetown, P.E.I. in July, premiers discussed the challenges of financing health care and called on the federal government to hold a national summit on future health funding. At the summit, Centre for Future Work Director Jim Stanford made a presentation to the premiers on the economic benefits of public health care. He stressed that health care ranks as one of the most important industries in Canada: it creates jobs, generates incomes, supports widespread economic spillovers, and is one of Canada’s leading sources of innovation and new technology. These benefits have to be considered alongside the costs of providing essential health services.

Here is the presentation which Stanford gave to the premiers. It drew on findings from a recent report Stanford prepared for the Canadian Federation of Nurses’ Unions, titled The Economic Benefits of Canada’s Public Health Care System. The report quantified the important ways in which public health care supports employment, incomes, economic growth, and government revenues. Seen this way, health care should be redefined as an investment—not just a cost item on provincial budgets.

Key findings from the report include:

• Health care is one of Canada’s largest and most dynamic industries.
• It employs 1.9 million waged or salaried employees, and hundreds of thousands more self-employed practitioners, specialists, and contractors.
• Health care production accounts for about 8% of Canada’s total value-added (GDP), and over 10% of total employment.
• Health care workers earn $120 billion per year in wages and salaries.
• The health care system purchases $51 billion worth of supplies and inputs from a complex and far-reaching supply chain (composed mostly of private businesses).
• Health care accounts for over $7 billion in annual research spending, the second highest of any Canadian industry.
• Because health care is not highly integrated in international trade, it is relatively protected from global disruptions and shocks (like the effects of U.S. trade policies).
• Universal access to quality health care unlocks many other economic benefits including: more flexible labour markets (workers are able to change jobs without fear of losing health coverage), enhanced longevity and well-being (supporting more labour force participation and higher productivity), and improved ‘social capital’ (safe and inclusive communities where interactions can occur more securely and efficiently).

In sum, health care cannot be understood solely as a ‘cost.’ It is also a powerful economic engine: a source of growth, jobs, incomes, tax revenues, and well-being. Understanding and appreciating the economic benefits of the universal public health care system can reinforce public and fiscal support for its maintenance and improvement.

Please see the full report here.

The post Health Care is an Economic Engine, not Just a Cost Item appeared first on Centre for Future Work.

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On August 7 both Statistics Canada and the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics released their monthly labour force reports (for July). The stark contrast in the two trends certainly strengthens Canada’s hand in ongoing trade talks with Trump. Canada created 75,000 jobs in July. The U.S. lost 23,000 jobs by one measure (the payroll survey of employers), 87,000 by another (the household survey of workers).

But the longer-term trends also refute Trump’s chaotic economic and geopolitical policies. Since January 2025 (his second inauguration), US employment has declined by 1.0% (by the household survey), the unemployment rate has grown, and the participation rate (which has been much lower than Canada’s for years) has fallen much more.

In Canada, employment rose 1% in the same time, the unemployment rate fell, and the participation rate (which reflects both demographic and cyclical factors) declined 0.4 percentage points (one third as much as in the US). Even in manufacturing, the target for Trump’s tariffs, the US has lost more jobs than Canada since Trump returned to office. This is also true in the high-profile auto sector, which Trump claims should completely relocate to the US: it is losing jobs much faster in the US than in Canada.

Real wages are growing in Canada, but falling in the US. This reflects both strong wage growth here, and slower inflation. 

Trump’s policies were never about protecting American workers. They are about weaponizing popular discontent and misdirecting it against foreigners—rather than against the billionaires whose interests he promotes. The longer he’s in power, the weaker the US economy becomes, the worse off are American workers, and the more dismal do his mid-term prospects appear.

Also, the worse the US economy gets, the weaker is Trump’s bargaining position in trade talks (including with Canada and Mexico). With Republicans down badly in the polls as mid-term elections approach, Trump’s tariff war is losing credibility at home quickly.

In short, Trump’s pledge to use “economic force” to annex Canada is backfiring badly. Labour market trends show both that Canada’s economy is more resilient than most expected, but also that Trump’s bargaining position will weaken as more US jobs are lost to his misguided tariffs.

Centre for Future Work Director Jim Stanford discussed the July employment numbers, and the contrast between Canada and the U.S., on CBC News Network with host Lien Yeung.

One nerdy data note: The US releases its payroll and household surveys the same day. The series differ for various reasons, such as self-employment & agriculture (not counted in the payroll data), and multiple job-holding (which inflates payroll employment). US household data has been weaker than payroll data under Trump’s second term, in part because it does count agricultural employment (which has been hurt badly by Trump’s repressive immigration policies).

Canada’s payroll data (from the SEPH series) comes out a few weeks later than the household survey data discussed above, so we can’t make a direct Canada-US comparison for payroll employment in July yet. For May (the most recent Canadian payroll data), Canadian payroll employment was up 0.5% from January 2025, vs a 0.4% increase in the US (both seasonally adjusted). That gap will have widened since May, which will be confirmed when the July data comes out for Canada.

The post Canada-U.S. Employment Contrast Shows Trump’s Tariffs are not Working appeared first on Centre for Future Work.

More than 6,500 people have signed a petition demanding that FERC reject the Mountain Valley Pipeline expansion as state concerns remain unresolved.

RICHMOND, VA — On Friday, August 7, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) issued its Environmental Assessment (EA) for Mountain Valley Pipeline’s (MVP) proposed “MVP Boost” expansion. While the assessment concludes that the project does not “significantly [affect] the quality of the human environment,” critics say the EA leaves a variety of critical questions unanswered. Additionally, the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality has suspended its review of MVP’s proposed compressor station permit due to inconsistent filings. The DEQ also raised concerns about environmental justice and community outreach to MVP, which the company has not resolved. Now, more than 6,500 people have signed a petition urging FERC to reject the MVP expansion. 

“As a resident in Elliston, we already have the trains, which are a situation in themselves that block us in where we can’t get out,” said Penny Nunes, an Elliston, Virginia resident. “Now we’ve got gas in the pipe. I find it interesting that our firehouse is in the blast zone. You can see from the blast zone: a trailer park, housing development, and ROWE Furniture, a business with about 500 employees. As soon as they put gas in the pipe, I thought about moving. But I am not gonna move. I’m gonna stay here, and I am gonna fight as hard as I can to stop this. And for FERC to do something that Virginia DEQ said is incomplete, that’s one agency stepping on the other. DEQ is right: you got a problem, you gotta fix it. But FERC may just ignore our problem and go on with it.” 

The MVP Boost proposal would drastically increase gas capacity on the 303-mile Mountain Valley Pipeline system and add a new 136,900-horsepower compressor station in Montgomery County, Virginia, near homes, farms, a busy railroad crossing, and an environmental justice community in Elliston. FERC is reviewing the industrial water use associated with this major fossil-fuel project, even as Virginia faces mounting concerns about industrial water use prompting state lawmakers to call a special session on stronger water protections. 

“The people of Elliston, Virginia deserve clean air and a safe, healthy community,” said Russel Chisholm, Managing Director at Protect Our Water, Heritage, Rights. “EQT and MVP’s massive Boost expansion and data center fever dreams directly threaten that safety while recklessly pushing the planet toward a future of more fire, flood, and displacement. People everywhere are fighting back – and prevailing – against these greedy projects by saying, ‘Enough is enough.’”

The Montgomery County Board of Supervisors previously found the proposed site unsuitable, citing safety concerns that the evacuation route from the site would be blocked by train traffic. For community members, that one concern does not resolve the bigger question: whether it is appropriate to place a massive fossil fuel compressor station in a community already burdened by pollution and safety risks.

“Time and time again, FERC commits itself to an unreality where massively polluting and unsafe fossil fuel projects somehow pose no significant threat to the environment or the neighboring communities who must shoulder the burden,” said Joshua Vana, Director of ARTivism Virginia. “A rational review of the dangers posed by MVP Boost and its Swann Compressor Station should alarm any conscious person. Whether it be harmful air pollution dumped on an environmental justice community in Eastern Montgomery County, the cumulative impacts of drastically increasing MVP’s methane emissions in a world that’s on fire, or gambling on the safety of an already compromised pipeline – this project is nothing more than another bad idea from MVP, meant to cash in during a time of gross environmental deregulation, nauseating corruption, and an intensifying stench of skyrocketing corporate profits. This project must never be built.”

MVP Boost also comes after years of concerns surrounding the existing Mountain Valley Pipeline, including state violations, safety orders, and construction impacts that residents say underscore why further expansion should not be approved. Community and environmental advocates say the federal government should not advance the project while Virginia’s permit process remains paused and local opposition remains overwhelming.

“FERC is trying to build on a foundation that DEQ has already found to be flawed,” said Zander Pellegrino, Senior Field Manager at Chesapeake Climate Action Network. “MVP wants to lock us into outdated fossil fuel infrastructure and decades of climate pollution when we urgently need to transition to clean energy. It is unacceptable that the company is trying to do so on the back of environmental justice communities that have clearly said they do not want this project in their neighborhoods. FERC should stop MVP Boost and reject this dangerous expansion before it puts more communities at risk.” 

The EA was issued by FERC Friday, August 7, 2026, followed by a comment period ending on September 6, 2026, and a Federal Authorization Decision deadline on November 5, 2026.

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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 Thousands Urge Feds to Reject “MVP Boost” While Virginia DEQ Suspends Impact Review appeared first on Chesapeake Climate Action Network.

PEER, DarkSky International, the American Bird Conservancy, and Environment America — represented by Earthjustice — filed a formal Application for Review asking the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to reverse its Space Bureau’s approval of Reflect Orbital Inc.’s Earendil-1 satellite.

Earendil-1 is a commercial satellite that will reflect sunlight back to Earth at night.

The Space Bureau granted Reflect Orbital’s application on July 9, 2026, finding it served the public interest and fell outside the environmental review requirements of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) — the federal law requiring agencies to study the environmental effects of major actions on the United States before granting approval.

Selling Sunlight After Dark

Reflect Orbital’s business model is to sell sunlight at night for uses such as replacing streetlights, extending outdoor work hours, and powering solar arrays. To do this, Earendil-1 will unfold a mirror roughly a tenth of an acre wide at 600–650 km altitude and steer reflected sunlight to chosen spots on the ground. A single Earendil-1 satellite is expected to project a beam roughly 5 km (over 3 miles) wide as it sweeps the ground, with scattered light extending further still.

Although Reflect Orbital’s FCC application covers only this one satellite, the company has called this a “crucial testbed” for a much larger operation, with publicly stated plans to scale up to 50,000 satellites by 2035.

Why This is a Problem

In March, PEER and other groups filed comments with the FCC opposing Reflect Orbital’s original application for approval. In last week’s Application for Review, the groups say the Bureau didn’t adequately address a number of issues, including:

• Eye damage — a DarkSky technical report found the reflected light could be intense enough to injure eyes faster than a person could blink or look away.
• Astronomy disruption — the American Astronomical Society warned that even one pass could saturate telescope detectors and cost extended observing time; roughly 80% of astronomers surveyed in 2025 expected satellite constellations like this one to affect their work.
• Aviation and road safety — the Air Line Pilots Association, representing over 80,000 pilots, said Reflect Orbital’s own safety analysis was inadequate to address glare risk to aircraft.
• Wildlife harm — roughly a third of vertebrates and most invertebrates are light-sensitive at night; the scientific record links artificial light to disrupted migration and breeding, threatening species already protected under the Endangered Species Act.
• Human health — nighttime light suppresses melatonin and disrupts circadian rhythms, with peer-reviewed research tying this to elevated risk of obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and certain cancers.

An Environmental Review is Necessary

Our main request is for the FCC to reverse the Space Bureau’s order and require a full, lawful environmental review — an Environmental Assessment or Impact Statement — before Earendil-1 is authorized to operate at all.

At a minimum, we argue, the FCC needs to place 16 binding conditions as part of its approval, including: an independent scattered-light and sky-brightness analysis; exclusions over national parks, wildlife refuges, and other protected or ecologically sensitive lands; blackout periods during peak bird migration and after midnight; a requirement to get sign-off from affected state, local, and Tribal governments; independent, third-party verifications of the actual beam; and the requirement of a full environmental review before any commercial scale constellation could move forward.

Part of a Bigger Fight Over What’s Allowed in Low Orbit

This filing Application for Review is one piece of a broader push by DarkSky, PEER, and allied groups to get federal regulators to properly review the wave of low-Earth orbit projects before the FCC — including proposals for orbiting data centers.

As companies make plans to launch more than a million data centers into space, the FCC must conduct a thorough review of the risks and impacts of these projects to ensure they are not causing irreparable environmental harm to the United States, and if they are, place conditions on these projects to minimize these harms.

With the space rush on, we must not fall blindly into accepting everything the industry and government tells us. Rather, we must continue to act to make sure federal agencies consider all the risks and impacts of these satellite proposals as part of the approval process.

The Application for Review and mitigations annex are now part of the FCC’s public record (ICFS File No. SAT-LOA-20250701-00129). There’s no set timeline for a ruling from the full Commission.

Nestled in the misty, snow-capped Himalayas in northeast India, the city of Darjeeling — the famed “Queen of the Hills” — has long been synonymous with its legendary tea gardens.

But tea isn’t the only thing you’ll find on these rolling mountains. A “living fossil” also inhabits this landscape: the endemic Himalayan salamander (Tylototriton himalayanus), whose ancestors roamed the Earth with dinosaurs about 160 million years ago.

At first glance these ancient amphibian survivors, all of 6-7 inches (16–18 cm) in length, look like lizards with elongated bodies and long tails. Their broad, blunt-snouted heads, raised ridges across their bodies, and heavily textured brownish-black skin give them the armored appearance of miniature crocodiles.

Locally called the pani kukur — meaning “water dog” in Nepali — the salamander neither barks nor bites.

“In fact, the creature is so harmless that when you pick it up, it gently slips into your palm without a fuss,” says 80-year-old Nar Bahadur Rai from Basti Gaon in Darjeeling’s historic Margaret’s Hope Tea Estate. What fascinates the smiling village elder most of all, though, is that a species with a “Jurassic legacy” exists near his village.

Dwindling Numbers

The octogenarian recalls that as a child, he would find salamanders in abundance across the hilly wetlands or slowly waddling on moist soil, particularly during monsoons.

The nearly 160-year-old Margaret’s Hope Tea Estate in Darjeeling is home to one of the largest breeding habitats of the Himalayan Salamander. Photo: Prasant Kumar Allay, used with permission.

But today they’re far less common. According to the IUCN, which has assessed the species as vulnerable to extinction, many of the salamanders’ wetland habitats have been drained for agriculture or irrigation, or encroached upon by roads and other infrastructure. The introduction of exotic fish into some of these wetlands and unregulated tourism add to the pressure.

An estimated 5,000 individuals may survive in the wild, based on the latest survey conducted across Darjeeling hills in 2025. The species is also distributed in parts of Bhutan and Nepal in the eastern Himalayas, but hasn’t received as much study in those areas yet.

Protecting this species will require protecting more of its habitat — efforts that experts say may depend on recognizing the salamanders as the flagship species of these biodiverse wetland ecosystems.

A Valuable Burrower

Also called the crocodile newt or Himalayan newt, these amphibians inhabit cool, shaded wetlands and forest ponds along the Himalayan slopes, where they breed from late April through the monsoon. Their straight, muscular tails help them swim, while the knob-like granular glands lining their backs deter predators by releasing a milky toxin. In the nonbreeding season, they hibernate on land, burrowing into the damp forest floor beneath leaf litter, rocks, and tea bushes until the first monsoon showers return.

The “lizard-looking” amphibian hibernates beneath leaf litter, rocks, and tea bushes after breeding, before returning to wetlands to mate with the first rains. Photo: Barkha Subba, used with permission.

“These tiny creatures are exceptional bio indicators; their very presence in a wetland is enough to indicate that the ecosystem around is alive,” explains Devesh Pandey, divisional forest officer, Kurseong (an important salamander area). On land, their burrowing through damp earth, leaf litter, and mud makes the soil porous, allowing rainwater to seep through and recharge groundwater, improving water availability in these hilly areas, he says.

Community Stewardship

Although the species remains little studied, Barkha Subba, scientist at Federation of Societies for Environmental Protection, has been spearheading their protection and habitat restoration for the past few years. Her work brings together government agencies, including the forest divisions in Darjeeling and the West Bengal tourism department, nonprofits such as the World Wildlife Fund-India, tea estates, and local communities.

The efforts earned international attention earlier this year as one of the 2026 winners of the prestigious Whitley Award. Often referred to as the “Green Oscars,” the awards honor grassroots conservation programs across the global south and come with £50,000 ($67,000) in project funding.

Standing knee-deep in a wetland, Whitley Award winner Barkha Subba is delighted to gently hold a Himalayan Salamander between her palms. Photo: Deoashis Thapa, used with permission.

The award will enhance Subba’s multipronged approach toward community awareness and stewardship, which will include salamander protection committees across villages to identify and document new salamander sightings while improving degraded habitats.

And since Darjeeling is a global tourist destination that attracts hundreds of thousands of visitors from India and abroad, she’s also training local youths to educate tourists on keeping salamander habitats free of plastic and garbage.

Habitat Restoration

Unlike many declining species, Himalayan salamanders are neither hunted for food nor sought for traditional medicine. According to Subba, the biggest challenge in conserving the species lies not in protecting the amphibian itself, but its habitat. The animals requires pristine, unpolluted waters to thrive, as they tend to return year after year to breed in the same wetlands where they were born.

“But with most of its traditional habitats getting disturbed, fragmented, or disappearing, its viable population is also gradually vanishing,” she says.

Of the 37 to 40 documented salamander breeding sites studied across Darjeeling hills, Subba notes that nearly 80% lie outside protected areas, within tea estates, village commons, and private lands.

“Conserving the species thus cannot solely rely on protected areas,” she says. “Rather its future depends on trust, cooperation, and long-term commitment of the communities who live around these habitats.”

Salamander’s Hope

One of Darjeeling’s largest salamander ponds lies within the historic Margaret’s Hope Tea Estate, established in 1864. Flanked by gently sloping terraced tea gardens and pine trees, this 39,000 square foot (3,654 square meters) swampy wetland holds water throughout the year, fed by local streams and rain.

“The pond, which was once a large lake and is almost as old as the tea garden itself, has been retained in its natural state, with its natural vegetation intact, and is thus a traditional habitat of Himalayan salamanders,” says Prasant Kumar Allay, manager of the tea estate.

The water of the pond is revered by local communities. However, some people have released exotic fish such as carp and guppies into it — an act believed to wash away one’s sins.

“This has made salamander eggs and larvae vulnerable, as they are eaten by the fish,” says Ramesh Rai, the estate supervisor, who stirred up community awareness of this enigmatic species through an article in a local magazine way back in 2005.

Helping Hands

Today Rai has become an adept at “parenting” the salamander eggs, and he leads his team in their protection.

During the peak breeding season between May and July, when females lay gelatinous clusters of eggs on submerged vegetation in the pond, the salamander team from the tea estate carefully collects them before water levels plunge after the rain,s exposing the eggs to direct sunlight.

“This would otherwise dry up the protective jelly around the eggs and they would die,” says Rai.

Close-up of gelatinous Himalayan Salamander eggs attached to native vegetation in the breeding wetlands. Photo: Barkha Subba, used with permission.

The eggs are then transferred to a temporary pond of 55 square feet (about 5 square meters), with an island of vegetation in the middle. The water levels are maintained to keep the gelatinous coating submerged, where it absorbs water and enlarges, keeping the eggs safe until they hatch, explains Rai. After about 12-14 days of careful monitoring, the hatchlings emerge. Rai and his team initially feed them mosquito larvae cultivated by the estate, and later small earthworms as they grow.

A miniature lake dug to protect salamander eggs relocated from the main breeding site at Margaret’s Hope Tea Estate, with a small, vegetated island at the centre to anchor the eggs. Photo: Prasant Kumar Allay, used with permission. Tea Partnerships

Meanwhile, the species is also found in the tea gardens of Tung and Mirik, besides Nakhapani in Gopaldhara Tea Estate.

“We plan to work as a team with the managers for the protection of salamanders and other biodiversity in the tea gardens,” says Subba. She explains that these efforts will also add value to the gardens’ annual reporting for the global Rainforest Alliance Certification, which verifies compliance with environmental and sustainability standards required for tea exports.

Across these tea gardens, protected areas, private land holdings, and community-managed forests, she and her team are restoring critical salamander breeding sites with different stakeholders.

“We have identified the ones that need immediate attention, having dried up, become silted, or been taken over by invasive plants as reeds or exotic fish,” says Subba.

She emphasizes that the key to increasing the number of salamanders in the wild is bringing back their habitats along with the native vegetation. Invasive species like phragmites and other kinds of reeds are uprooted and replaced with salamander-friendly plants such as sweet flag, knotweed, and watercress. Females attach their delicate jelly-coated egg clutches to the broad, semi-submerged leaves of watercress or the stems of knotweed. These native plants anchor the eggs in the stagnant water above the floor of the pond and protect them from predators until they hatch.

Forest Initiative

Meanwhile the Kurseong Forest Division is also working toward declaring the potential salamander habitats of Namthing Pokhari (a biodiversity heritage site), Panchpokhri, and Pokhritar wetlands as India’s dedicated salamander sanctuaries. According to Devesh Pandey, divisional forest officer, these wetlands have been assessed in collaboration with the Zoological Survey of India for pH balance, toxicity, dissolved oxygen levels, surrounding vegetation, and other habitat parameters.

A few artificial wetlands have also been created, with native species to enhance habitat suitability.

Pandey confirms that while the conservation of the Himalayan salamander is being carried out under Subba’s guidance. The Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change has also sanctioned funds for the proposed sanctuary, with Subba as the project’s principal advisor.

Undisturbed Habitats

Some naturally occurring salamander habitats across the hills have acquired cultural and religious significance over generations. Surrounded by vibrant prayer flags and fed by the pure waters of hilly springs, these wetlands are worshipped by local communities as the abode of deities. Subba hopes reviving this heritage will also help protect these habitats.

“This tends to keep such places undisturbed, clean and peaceful where salamander thrives best,” she says. Three such sacred wetlands — Namthing Pokhari, Tiffin Dara in Pokhriabong, and another within the Margaret’s Hope Tea Estate — are also among the sites selected for restoration with the funding from the Whitley Award.

“The joy of seeing these gentle, slow-moving salamanders is when we leave their habitat completely undisturbed and let them do their own thing; after all they have held onto this Earth for centuries,” says 73-year-old Rajendra Prasad Gurung from Mirik, in southwest of Darjeeling. Gurung owns about 3.5 acres of land that appear unkempt, with verdant native foliage such as sweet flags fringing 4-5 marshlands that have been traditional breeding sites for decades.

In winter when they come to land for hibernation, three or four salamanders even come close to his home, “slipping underneath some of the flowerpots,” says Gurung.

From its undisturbed habitat on Rajendra Prasad Gurung’s land, the rare Himalayan Salamander ventures near his house. Photo: Rajendra Prasad Gurung, used with permission.

That said, there are still challenges. With climate change shifting patterns of rainfall and intensity, sudden deluges sometimes can wash away the eggs. Invasive reeds are taking over parts of his land, which need to be removed for native species to thrive.

Getting Tourists to Help

Spillover of plastic pollution from nearby tourist areas also clogs the marshlands.

Making tourists aware of responsible behavior around the fragile habitats of the species is one of the objectives of the Salamander Initiatives of Sukhia, a local collective formed in 2023, about 75 kilometers from Mirik in western Darjeeling.

Members of the Salamander Initiative Sukhia remove plastic and other waste from a tourist site to keep Himalayan Salamander habitats clean. Photo courtesy: Salamander Initiative Sukhia.

“Many of the salamander’s natural habitats are also places of tourist interest in Darjeeling,” says Furba Tshering Sherpa, who has been working on salamander conservation for 15 years and leads the initiative there.

Located about 6,500 feet above sea level, Sukhia Pokhri is surrounded by the majestic Himalayas, draped in tall pine forests interspersed with lakes and wetlands. One such destination, Majhidhura, which holds 7-8 natural habitats of Himalayan salamander, draws flocks of tourists.

“They tend to spend hours here, making videos or taking photographs amid this scenic landscape,” says Sherpa.

In the process, they often end up littering the area with plastic bottles and food wrappers or brushing away the salt that estate managers use to protect plants from the leeches that abound in the region. Sherpa and his fellow members are often seen explaining the species to tourists through life-cycle charts, videos, and still photographs. They point out how such indiscriminate behavior disturbs the ecosystem and makes the water salty, which may eventually destroy the salamander habitats.

The recently formed Majhidhura Salamander Protection Committee, which works with the Forest Department’s Joint Forest Management Committee, is a step ahead in engaging village heads, local vendors, and taxi drivers catering to the tourists, community members, nonprofits to protect the species and its habitats in the region. The vendors and drivers are being trained to act as tourist guides and regulate the entry of visitors, especially during the three months of breeding season.

Meanwhile the first Himalayan Salamander Festival was held on May 30. The event brought together government agencies, researchers, scientists, conservation organizations, local communities and other stakeholders from across the region to learn of the latest state of conservation and exchange ideas for the future. Organized by FOSEP, the festival aimed to draw up a practical and inclusive conservation action plan, ensuring no one is left out of the deliberations.

“We all thus become the guardians of our salamanders and ensure they continue their ancient legacy,” says Sherpa.

This year’s “Green Oscar” winner, Barkha Subba, could not have been happier.

“The transformation from ‘your’ salamander to ‘our’ salamander today has made my work with the local communities all the more fulfilling and meaningful,” she says with a smile.

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

‘Tortoise Guardians’ Protect Rare Giants

The post Tea and Salamanders appeared first on The Revelator.

Three Interior department staffers told POLITICO they watched officials routinely shred official documents and use disappearing Signal messages, even for routine scheduling, to keep communications from being preserved as the Federal Records Act requires. “They’re terrified of written records,” one former official said. Two other former officials said Interior Secretary Doug Burgum used a private email account for department business. Interior staff described a “culture of secrecy” under Burgum, who wanted to add a secure conference room, or SCIF, near his 6th floor office even though Interior already has a SCIF three floors below.

The secrecy concerns extend to Interior’s own watchdog office. The department has allegedly installed Dennis Kirk, a co-author of Project 2025’s federal workforce chapter, inside its Office of Inspector General, but declined to confirm the hire. Kirk arrives at an office that has had no Senate-confirmed inspector general since January 2025, when President Trump fired 17 inspectors general across the government without giving Congress the 30 days’ notice federal law requires.

“Interior’s watchdog was fired, left vacant for eighteen months, and is now hosting one of the architects of Project 2025. At least five investigation requests from members of Congress are sitting in that office right now, and its integrity has been compromised,” said Center for Western Priorities Executive Director Aaron Weiss. “Congress cannot outsource its constitutional oversight duty to an inspector general’s office taken over by the White House.”

Border wall crews move into Big Bend and onto Tohono O’odham land

Federal contractors began border wall construction work inside Big Bend National Park on August 4, prompting Texas lawmakers to call for a pause. Days later, the Tohono O’odham Nation in Arizona posted no-trespassing notices against border wall contractors on Tribal land and said it may pursue arrests, escalating a long-running fight over construction on Tribal territory.

Quick hits Lake Mead hits lowest water level on record as Colorado River crisis deepens

CNN

Opinion: My hometown went up in flames. It won’t be the last

New York Times

Meet the army of amateur archivists racing to save US history in national parks

The Guardian

Trump says there was ‘some contractor error’ during Reflecting Pool renovation

The Hill

‘No Trespassing’: Tohono O’odham Nation warns border wall contractors

Arizona Republic | 12 News

Opinion: The assault on public land is accelerating. Idaho’s votes can stop it

Idaho Statesman

Photos: This is what the new rush to mine America looks like

TIME

Haaland: I helped restore protections for Bears Ears. Now it’s at risk again

Outside

Quote of the day

Washington is looking at the Imperial Valley and saying that’s just a desert, that’s just wasteland… It has been mandated by the United States government and the state of California to annihilate the California Indians since the Gold Rush, and I’m still watching it today.”

—Carmen Lucas, a 90-year-old from the Kwaaymii Tribe in California who has been fighting mining developments for over two decades, TIME

Picture This

@factpostnewsBulldozers sent by Trump have begun tearing up Big Bend National Park to build a border wall through the protected public land. The Trump administration waived dozens of environmental laws to permit the construction.

Feature image: Doug Burgum, Kathryn Burgum, and Donald Trump at the opening of the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library, X.com

The post Burgum directs staff to shred documents, installs Project 2025 author as Interior watchdog appeared first on Center for Western Priorities.

As the RPM team embraces socialist traditions with a summer break, we flag choice recent and archive reads and preview an exciting autumn to come

The post August pause and autumn updates appeared first on Red Pepper.

Set beneath the living canopy of Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary’s ancient cypress forest, this outdoor exhibit brings large-format photography into the landscape that inspired it. On view from November...

Open Letter: Climate crisis affects every First Nation, every community, and future generations alike

Source

Amidst the profound sadness of Javier and Esther's loss, we believe that their example and legacy will continue to beat strongly throughout the peasant movement for food sovereignty.

The post Until Always, Javier and Esther appeared first on La Via Campesina - EN.

Oceans globally recorded their hottest July ever last month, according to a new analysis. The severe ocean heat was evident around Europe, which is coping with a scorching summer.

Read more on E360 →

Climate campaigners warned that record high temperatures and a strong El Niño is resulting in severe drought in many countries, hitting crop yields and raising food prices. 350.org urged governments to move fast to protect farming communities and consumers, and mobilize the necessary funds through higher, permanent taxes on fossil fuel profits.

As the world’s top oil and gas companies banked $93 billion in second quarter profits, the UN warned that 49 million people may be facing acute hunger due to an exceptionally strong El Niño fueled by climate change.

Anne Jellema, 350.org Executive Director said:

“Our leaders’ response has to be swifter and stronger than El Niño. We already know that global heating is supercharging extreme weather damage, and the public wants polluters to pay for it. With Big Oil’s earnings skyrocketing while a global food crisis looms, now is the time to act. The only way to stave off a humanitarian disaster is to make those causing it pay upfront — before even more damage is done.”

Most of the Caribbean is currently suffering a moderate to severe drought triggered by El Niño, with conditions expected to get worse in the next few months lasting until early 2027.

Amira Odeh Quiñones, 350.org Caribbean Organizer said:

“Here in Puerto Rico, some households only have water three days a week. Historic amounts of sargassum seaweed due to record ocean temperatures are reducing fishermen’s catches. We’re already experiencing dramatic losses in agriculture due to drought and extreme heat. Local farmers are harvesting less, and the price of imported food is rising. Even if we contributed the least to the climate crisis, we are suffering from its harshest effects.”

In Indonesia, nearly 93% of the country had recorded low rainfall by mid-July and droughts have been recorded in almost 500 locations amid El Niño. An increase in forest fires has also been observed, even though Indonesia has yet to enter its wildfire season.

Sisilia Nurmala Dewi, 350.org Indonesia Manager said:

“Water scarcity is resulting in crop failures, and food price increases will soon follow. El Niño has been forecast since March — the government must be able to deliver a reliable, well-governed early warning system to farmers and at-risk communities before impacts hit. We urge the Prabowo government to impose a permanent windfall tax on fossil fuel companies to help raise funds for affected communities. Our leaders can’t just watch people go hungry while fossil fuel companies gorge on profits.”

In the United Kingdom, farmers are experiencing their worst harvests in years as a result of a heatwave gripping many parts of Europe. Farmers have warned that the country may be facing shortages in certain foods due to drought conditions.

Ellie May, 350.org UK campaigner said:

“Britain is baking, and farmers are paying the price. This punishing heatwave isn’t a one-off — it’s constantly rising food bills and food shortages we’ll face again and again unless we act. The oil and gas giants driving this crisis are raking in record profits. It’s time the UK government made polluters pay their fair share, so farmers and communities can weather what’s coming.”

In East Africa, Uganda’s worst drought in decades has already caused 19 deaths and a food crisis, while meteorologists warn that El Niño will trigger severe flooding in the region in October.

Ruth Agala, 350.org East Africa Organizer said:

“Farms are drying up, families are going hungry. Women and girls carry a double burden as they trek for long distances in search of food, water and firewood. While oil and gas giants rake in massive second-quarter profits and push forward with planet-heating projects like the East Africa Crude Oil Pipeline, ordinary Africans are left to pay the price. African governments must hold fossil fuel companies accountable with a windfall profits tax that can be used to finance a community-centered, just energy transition. We need public money to solve the problem, not subsidize it.”

Using the waste created by one of the world’s staple foods, researchers have made a filter that can clean water. They converted discarded rice husks into a sponge-like filter that can remove polluting industrial dyes such as the ones released by textile, leather, and other industries.

The low-cost material could help clean waterways while reducing agricultural waste. The researchers published their findings in the journal Sustainable Chemistry and Pharmacy.

Many industries such as textile manufacturing, leather processing, paper production and aquaculture use synthetic dyes. These industrial dyes persist in aquatic environments for a long time, “diminishing light penetration, disturbing aquatic ecosystems, and polluting drinking water sources,” the researchers write in the paper. Many of these dyes are toxic and some can be carcinogens.

Manufacturers can remove these dyes from wastewater before it is released into the environment. One of the most promising, cost-effective, and sustainable method for the removal of dyes are materials that can adsorb dyes, that is, soak them up on the surface via physical or chemical mechanisms.

 

.IRPP_ruby , .IRPP_ruby .postImageUrl , .IRPP_ruby .centered-text-area {height: auto;position: relative;}.IRPP_ruby , .IRPP_ruby:hover , .IRPP_ruby:visited , .IRPP_ruby:active {border:0!important;}.IRPP_ruby .clearfix:after {content: "";display: table;clear: both;}.IRPP_ruby {display: block;transition: background-color 250ms;webkit-transition: background-color 250ms;width: 100%;opacity: 1;transition: opacity 250ms;webkit-transition: opacity 250ms;background-color: #eaeaea;}.IRPP_ruby:active , .IRPP_ruby:hover {opacity: 1;transition: opacity 250ms;webkit-transition: opacity 250ms;background-color: inherit;}.IRPP_ruby .postImageUrl {background-position: center;background-size: cover;float: left;margin: 0;padding: 0;width: 31.59%;position: absolute;top: 0;bottom: 0;}.IRPP_ruby .centered-text-area {float: right;width: 65.65%;padding:0;margin:0;}.IRPP_ruby .centered-text {display: table;height: 130px;left: 0;top: 0;padding:0;margin:0;padding-top: 20px;padding-bottom: 20px;}.IRPP_ruby .IRPP_ruby-content {display: table-cell;margin: 0;padding: 0 74px 0 0px;position: relative;vertical-align: middle;width: 100%;}.IRPP_ruby .ctaText {border-bottom: 0 solid #fff;color: #0099cc;font-size: 14px;font-weight: bold;letter-spacing: normal;margin: 0;padding: 0;font-family:'Arial';}.IRPP_ruby .postTitle {color: #000000;font-size: 16px;font-weight: 600;letter-spacing: normal;margin: 0;padding: 0;font-family:'Arial';}.IRPP_ruby .ctaButton {background: url(https://www.anthropocenemagazine.org/wp-content/plugins/intelly-related-posts-pro/assets/images/next-arrow.png)no-repeat;background-color: #afb4b6;background-position: center;display: inline-block;height: 100%;width: 54px;margin-left: 10px;position: absolute;bottom:0;right: 0;top: 0;}.IRPP_ruby:after {content: "";display: block;clear: both;}Recommended Reading:The unlikely ingredient that cleans wastewater and turns it into fertilizer: Bubbles. 

 

The team at Florida International University set out to make such an adsorbent from waste rice husks. Rice is the most-eaten food globally. The world produces over 540 million tonnes of rice every year, and discards some 136 million tonnes of the outer husk of the grains.

To make the water filter, the researchers first heat waste husks in a low-oxygen environment. This converts the organic material into biochar, a sponge-like material with a very high surface area and a porous network that can trap contaminants.

But the researchers boosted the performance of the biochar by combining it with special materials called layered double hydroxides, which are clay-like minerals composed of layers of magnesium and aluminum hydroxide sheets with charged ions and water molecules trapped in the spaces between the layers.

In laboratory tests, the material captured brilliant green and malachite green dyes, two commonly used industrial dyes. The material was also reusable. The researchers found that it could be reused at least five times without losing its efficacy. They now plan to test the material on other dyes, heavy metals and various contaminants found in real-world water samples.

Source: Noel Abhick Lawrence et al, Waste-to-resource approach: Sustainable synthesis and life cycle assessment of rice husk char-supported Mg–Al layered double hydroxide for dye biosorption, Sustainable Chemistry and Pharmacy, 2026.

Image: ©Anthropocene Magazine

Headline News:

• “AI Making Renewable Energy Generation More Reliable” • Through real-time analysis of rainfall, wind, solar conditions, and other data, an AI “commander” is making renewable energy generation in China more stable and reliably dispatchable. The model aims to help tackle challenges such as intermittency and instability facing green power output. [China Daily]

Wind turbines in Hunan (Huangdan2060, public domain)

• “Western Europe Sets New Temperature Record As Heat Waves Continue To Pummel Region” • Western Europe experienced its hottest June-July on record as climate change fuels an historic summer of heat, drought, and wildfires across the region, the EU’s global warming monitor said. Europe is warming faster than any other continent. [Euronews]
• “Cadeler In €805 Million Deal For Two New Installation Vessels” • Cadeler signed firm contracts with COSCO Shipping Offshore shipyard for two new T-class offshore wind installation vessels for about €805 million together. Cadeler said the vessels will be built at the shipyard in Qidong, China, with delivery scheduled for 2030 and 2031. [reNews]
• “As Extreme Heat Spreads To The Midwest, The East Coast Remains Hot And Sticky” • Continuing high temperatures in Colorado caused 72 people to be treated for heat-related illnesses at the Tacos and Tequila festival in Colorado Springs, including seven who had to be hospitalized, the Colorado Springs Fire Department said. [ABC News]
• “Are Heat Domes Getting More Common In North America?” • Yes. The number of heat domes in North America has increased every year since 1940, a study found. The rise in heat domes comes with an increase in extreme heat due to human-caused climate change. Their number in northwestern North America is projected nearly to double by 2080. [The Colorado Sun]

For more news, please visit geoharvey – Daily News about Energy and Climate Change.

Decades ago, in order to build up a solid foundation for I-95 through southeast Georgia, construction crews dug some earth near the town of Midway, Georgia, about 50 miles south of Savannah, and left a deep pit. There’s now a public park in that spot, bounded by a tidal creek on one side and the leftover dredge pit on the other. Although the park is more than 15 miles from the ocean, high tide washes up the creek twice a day. Lush marsh grass fills the space between solid ground and the creek, but it’s a different scene along the other bank, where the salt water has steadily eaten away at the land while depositing sediment in the basin. Now, what was once a deep pit is a shallow mudflat with little islands of marsh grass cropping up in the middle, naturally moving in now that the ground is suitable for it.

But the grasses halt abruptly where they reach the small, muddy cliff of the bank — shorn away sharply where the tide has battered it.

“If we walk that way, you’ll be able to see some of the, well, just plain erosion,” said Phil Odom, chairman of Liberty County’s Consolidated Planning Commission, on a recent afternoon. “This is how much it has collapsed. We’ve lost about 6, 8 feet right here.”

Local leaders are hoping to fix that erosion at the water’s edge, and they’re approaching it in a way that considers the lessons of the I-95 construction and prior, failed attempts to address the problem. Instead of putting up a wall or using chunks of concrete to hold the soil in place, the county is attempting to restore the marsh grasses that grow here naturally. Their roots will help hold the soil in place.

“We hope for it to replicate nature,” said Shannon Marino with Zulu Marine, which builds what are known as living shorelines. “When our solutions are done, you should look at it and not really recognize it as a repair or a bulkhead or a solution. It should just look like nature.”

It’s an increasingly popular way to address coastal erosion in the face of rising seas. Georgia is home to more than a third of the connected marsh habitat along the coast of the Southeastern U.S. — hundreds of thousands of acres. It serves as a critical buffer against storms, and it’s broadly protected under state law. But as sea levels rise due to climate change, protecting the existing marsh plants is only one step. 

With the sea level on Georgia’s coast projected to rise 1 to 2 meters in the next 75 years, the marshes will need to move inland too. They’re well equipped to do that, according to University of North Carolina wetland scientist Lori Sutter.

“Because of the magic of salt marshes,” she said, “they’re able to persist in this environment where they’re flooded twice a day, every day.”

But that magic of salt marshes only works if they have somewhere to go. Once a migrating marsh encounters a paved road or a building, they hit a dead end. There’s nowhere for new grasses to take root, which means the rising tide can sweep in unabated, flooding both the marsh and that road or building. 

That’s why a new action plan by a coalition of conservation groups, scientists, government agencies, and coastal communities calls for protecting not just the salt marsh itself, but also the adjacent land. The plan has identified more than 56,000 acres of land in Georgia where marshes will likely migrate that are also currently open to development. 

“That creates this really vast area that you’re trying to conserve, which can be overwhelming,” said Courtney Reich, the coastal director for Georgia Conservancy. Her group is working with Phil Odom and the other stakeholders in Midway and is spearheading the Georgia work under the South Atlantic Salt Marsh Initiative, a multi-state effort to restore and protect coastal salt marshes. 

It’s a roadmap, not a binding policy or seizure of anyone’s land. Instead, the plan’s authors hope it can help landowners and public officials make informed decisions.

“You know, do we want to build up to the edge of the water or do we want to leave room?” Reich said. 

Short-term needs often drive land use conversations, she said. This plan aims to get people thinking about the long view.

Salt marshes by their very nature are always moving. Odom, an avid fisher, has watched Georgia’s dynamic coast change in slow motion over the last 75 years: deep salt water moving into areas that once teemed with marsh grass, marshes in new places, the tide creeping ever higher and leaving the ghostly skeletons of salt-choked trees in its wake. But sea level rise driven by climate change is forcing them to move faster — and adding urgency, because if the marshes can’t respond, Georgia’s coast will be left that much more vulnerable.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline A new plan to preserve Georgia’s marshes: Give them space to migrate on Aug 10, 2026.

Last week, as wildfires tore through southern Europe, TotalEnergies did something that made headlines for all the right reasons. The company announced it would cover fuel costs for French firefighters – both ground vehicles and the aircrafts dropping water on the flames. Nearly 200 employees who volunteer as firefighters were also given paid leave, no holiday days docked, to go help.

It’s the kind of story that writes itself: oil giant steps up for the heroes on the front lines. Except it isn’t a coincidence that the company setting fire to the planet is also the one paying for the water trucks.

No amount of PR pays for a life turned into ashes

TotalEnergies has spent this year positioning itself as the good guy. Back in March, as the war in Iran and Lebanon sent oil prices spiking, the company capped gasoline and diesel prices at its French stations – and kept extending that cap, month after month, through June. It even ran special discounted pricing on Mother’s Day and Father’s Day weekends. The government publicly thanked them for “doing their bit.”

Here’s what that PR campaign conveniently sidesteps: TotalEnergies wasn’t shielding the French public from an unfortunate energy crisis. It was cushioning them from a price shock that its own industry helps manufacture and profit from. And this isn’t generosity: it’s brand management.

The firefighter fuel donations follow the identical logic. At the same time TotalEnergies is filling up water bombers for free,Europe is tallying wildfire damage bills are already projected to be between €15 – 19 billion across France, Spain, Portugal, Greece and Romania – and that figure is expected to climb well higher once the full toll is counted.

As someone born and raised in the South-West, who lived through this year’s Gironde fires and had to be evacuated, let me say it plainly: there is no check Total can write that will bring back my memories, or resurrect the firefighters who died defending our land, or regrow our forests, our land, and the wild animals that the flames reduced to ash.

Wildfires raging in Southern France. Photo: France 24

The real dimension of numbers

Covering firefighters’ fuel bills costs TotalEnergies nothing next to what fossil fuel-driven heat, drought and fire are costing everyone else. And also, it costs them cents if compared to what they are making out of the climate and energy crises they are fueling.

In July, TotalEnergies posted another blockbuster quarter, with adjusted net income around $6 billion for the three months from April to June – a jump of roughly two-thirds compared to a year earlier.

At 350.org, we put it plainly: this isn’t an ordinary earnings report, it’s a receipt for climate chaos. Every spike in fossil fuel prices functions as a kind of tax on ordinary people – driving up the cost of transport, electricity, and food. While governments spend billions subsidizing fossil fuel companies or responding to extreme weather disasters, companies like TotalEnergies reap the windfall from the very volatility they help sustain and pay basically nothing for the climate chaos they feed every day.

So put the numbers next to each other in the equation:

Three months with a $6 billion profit + a wildfire season with a several-billion-euro damage bill and counting = a free tank of gas for the fire trucks.

Something is wrong with this math, isn’t it? This is not “doing its bit.” This is a company spending a fraction of a fraction of its profits to make sure the story people remember is the fuel donation, not the emissions. 

A firefighter battles a wildfire in San Martin de Valdeiglesias, west of Madrid, on Sunday. (Manu Fernandez / Associated Press)

This is not new

The fuel donation and the price cap aren’t the first time TotalEnergies has shown up with a check right after helping create the disaster. The company runs the same playbook again and again: a highly visible, low-cost gesture, timed to a crisis, that gets far more attention than its price tag deserves while the operation actually driving the harm keeps growing in the background. 

Take Mozambique. In February 2026, TotalEnergies donated food and hygiene kits worth around $500,000 to communities hit by devastating floods – less than a dollar per person for the more than 700,000 people affected while leading a $20 billion liquefied natural gas project in Cabo Delgado, in that same country. This is a project which is set to produce billions of tonnes of carbon pollution over its lifetime and one that’s already displaced communities and fueled insecurity in the region. 

You see the same move in its sports sponsorships: campaigners have called out its backing of the Africa Cup of Nations and the 2023 Rugby World Cup as a way to wrap the brand in African pride and sporting joy, even as its fossil fuel expansion across the continent – including the East African Crude Oil Pipeline – drives the very climate breakdown those communities are living through. Even the company’s own rebrand fits the mold: dropping “Total” for “TotalEnergies” and plastering train stations and airports with ads about reinvention and renewables, while fossil fuels still make up the overwhelming majority of what it actually produces and invests in.

 It’s the same trick every time: something cheap enough to repeat, photogenic enough to spread, and warm enough to stick in people’s minds. More importantly, it is built to outshine a business model that keeps expanding the exact crises it shows up to look good after.

Where the real accountability lives

This is exactly why the conversation needs to move from PR gestures to policy – specifically, to strong and permanent taxation. Governments are, right now, negotiating at the UN Convention on International Tax Cooperation, aiming for a global tax treaty by 2027. It’s a genuine opportunity to make oil and gas majors pay not through donated fuel and capped prices, but through binding, permanent contributions that fund the transition out of these crises, for good. 

A global tax on polluters isn’t just about collecting a bigger bill from Total, Exxon or Chevron and calling it justice. Done right, it’s a funding mechanism for the way out. Revenue from a binding global tax can flow directly into scaling up renewables, into grid upgrades, into the transition infrastructure that’s currently starved of investment while fossil fuel majors funnel billions into dividends and buybacks instead. 

And there’s a second, quieter win buried in that shift: every dollar that moves from financing fossil fuel expansion to financing renewables is a dollar that makes oil and gas reserves less economically viable to extract. A global tax that funds the transition doesn’t just make polluters pay for the damage behind them; it accelerates the moment their entire business model stops making financial sense.

The planet, and the people losing their homes and their loved ones to it, don’t need another goodwill press release. They need the money to go where the damage already is but also to weed out the system behind this crisis, and where the future needs it most.

Soraya Fettih is the Global Campaigns Coordinator at 350.org. 

The post A Total Greenwash appeared first on 350.

by David Spratt, first published at Safe Climate Australia

The claim that four billion people could die in a 3°C warmer world has become a powerful climate narrative. But what does the science actually support, and where does evidence end and speculation begin?

The proposition that four billion people or more would be dead if — and more likely, when — global warming reaches 3 degrees Celsius (°C) has gained some currency, mainly due to the 4DB (four billion dead) website and associated activities.

Now, that is half the current global population, and on current warming trends of 0.3-0.35°C/decade, the world will hit 3°C around 50 years from now, perhaps earlier, in part because there is little prospect of a rapid decline in fossil fuel emissions.  So that’s a mind-blowing average of 80 million people a year dying due to climate impacts every year from now to 2075? Is that realistic?

The number of greater than four billion dead at 3°C first appeared in a 2025 report on Planetary Insolvency: Finding our balance with nature, published by the UK Institute and Faculty of Actuaries (IFoA) and the University of Exeter.ing our balance with nature, published by the UK Institute and Faculty of Actuaries and the University of Exeter.

The number appears in Figure 12: Planetary solvency risk impact and likelihood definitions (illustrative) on page 32 of the report.  In this figure, the scale of impacts listed for 2°C of warming include mortality of “>2 billion deaths” and GDP losses of 25%, as well as “>4 billion deaths” and GDP of 50% for 3°C of warming (Figure 1).

Figure 1:  Planetary solvency risk impact and likelihood definitions   (Planetary Insolvency) 

The 2°C estimate is even more startling, because Earth has already hit 1.5°C for all practical purposes, with the average for 2023-25 above 1.5°C, and a strong El Nino likely on the way for later this year which could push annual warming towards 1.7°C for 2026-27. At the current, accelerated warming rate, the Earth will reach 2°C around 2040, just fifteen years from now.

So the figure of two billion dead at 2°C would mean an average of 130 million people a year dying every year from now till 2040 due to climate change?  To my mind, that is simply not credible, and nothing I have read tells me that is a remotely-likely estimate.

Likewise, the risk matrix gives a figure of 1-5% dead (80 to 400 million deaths) for 1.5°C, a level of warming Earth has already reached. Estimates of actual mortality are difficult due to the direct and second- and third-order impacts, such as: hotter-climate > drought > food-shortage > displacement > conflict > mortality, and so on. The 2025 report of the Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change estimated heat-related mortality has increased to an average 546,000 deaths per year, though not all are specifically related to climate heating, and that is only one element of the story.

So it is important to understand what these numbers are, and are not, and where they came from.

There is no qualitative indication in the report as to their source. On page 27, the report acknowledges that “very limited research has been carried out on the potential for large-scale loss of life in relation to these interconnected risks on which to base an assessment”.

I asked a colleague in the UK who had worked with the authors of the report, and he was told that the figures came from the Climate Endgame paper. But its author, Luke Kemp, said this was not the case, and “he confirmed that he does not make any forecasts about mortality in the paper” (emphasis added).

As the caption to Figure 12 says, it is a risk assessment matrix that illustrates general levels of risk. I was told that the authors have now privately clarified that the mortality numbers “are absolutely NOT forecasts or predictions and we don’t use them as such” (emphasis added). But this is now the way that sites like 4BD are using it.

One interpretation would be that the risk matrix was simply indicating orders of magnitude rather than specific projections. So either it was too subtle in its distinctions, and/or it was a bit of a stuff-up in that it was assumed that the four billion figure came from somewhere, but it did not. So there is still a question of how the four billion figure was derived.

I understand there have been suggestions that a correction or clarification be issued, at least saying that the figures “are absolutely NOT forecasts or predictions”. And I had conversations with people working on the 4BD project outlining the story above and why some nuance was necessary in using such numbers, but the die had been cast.

So how can we think about this? One guess is the table was saying that at 3°C, an expert elicitation would find that mortality would likely be in the billions, rather than tens or hundreds of millions. Or alternatively, this was a plausible worst-case scenario, but not derived from models.  As discussed below, that is a reasonable proposition based on other literature. As for two billion dead at 2°C, I can see almost no credible evidence that is even in the ballpark, just half a degree warmer than at present.

Another, likely interpretation is that Figure 12 had used some numbers for GDP loss (in column 1) and had simply applied the same number for mortality (in column 2), so 50% loss in GDP equals 50% mortality. This in itself is a brave assumption: in one case, during the Great Depression — when, for example, US GDP fell 30% between 1929 and 1933 — mortality rates did not increase, and in some cases improved, though there were later adverse outcomes for children born at that time.

So there is no mortality analysis in the table at all, and no epidemiology; it simply flows from GDP impacts.

So where did the 50% decrease in GDP at 3°C come from? An earlier IFoA report in 2023, The Emperor’s New Climate Scenarios, whilst recognising that “climate change is complex, nuanced and characterised by deep uncertainty”, provided a chart of damage functions relating temperature and GDP loss (Figure 9, page 25), and asks “at what point do we expect 50% GDP destruction – somewhere between 2070 and 2090 depending on how you parameterise the distribution”, and that’s around 3°C. Depending on assumptions about when GDP hits zero (called the ruin parameter), the figures could be higher (80%) or lower (30%) because these are abstract models of possible damage functions. So it looks like a 50% loss of GDP was a figure of choice.

So what is the basis of the damage functions? The Emperor’s New Climate Scenarios says that  “Insurance leaders have unequivocally stated that if climate change raises average temperatures to 4˚C above pre-industrial levels most assets will be uninsurable”, and that “without insurance, investment, finance, business slow to a halt – we will no longer have an economy.” (page 27). I find this assumption highly problematic. As insurance premiums rise right now, in some cases dramatically due to extreme climate impacts, many households and small businesses are making decisions to continue to operate without asset insurance.

The only footnote to these statements is a view by one insurance CEO, Thomas Buberl of AXA at a Davos panel, reported by Bloomberg, that at 3-4°C “it’s not insurable anymore”, but what he said was much more specific: he was talking about basement retail premises in New York and Mumbai and that is what the headline said: “Climate change could make your basement uninsurable within a decade”. That is a very narrow and specific base on which to draw a global conclusion.

Now, how much of an economy would be left at 3, 4 or 5°C is a good question, but the method used here is far too narrow. I remember a long time ago James Lovelock saying at 4 or 5°C there may be 500 million people left eking out a miserable existence at the poles, or words to that effect.

To reiterate, it is almost impossible to put specific numbers on such future impacts, due to the radical uncertainty about the social impacts of a physical system that itself is non-linear in many important aspects, characterised by abrupt changes whose specific human consequences are somewhere between difficult and impossible to model, and where quantifying social impacts is of limited efficacy.

Vulnerability and adaptation

Even if future (non-linear) physical changes are well known, mapping their human impacts involves several more degrees of difficulty because the risk (potential damage) varies with exposure and vulnerability. There are three factors:

• Hazard: the physical changes in a climate system subject to abrupt change;
• Exposure: the presence of people, livelihoods and ecosystems in that physical space; and
• Vulnerability: the propensity of these human systems to be negatively impacted due to their sensitivity and/or limited adaptive capacity.

In the uber-rich, low-rainfall Gulf states, for example, whilst unlivable heat is becoming the norm, adaptation paid for by stupendous oil and gas revenue — desalination, 24/7 air conditioning, using flood-lit beaches at night rather than during the day, irrigating date palms, importing almost all the food and most of the labour — reduces vulnerability, even though the whole project seems a bit crazy.

So mortality in a hotter climate will be affected a great deal by adaptation capacities to reduce vulnerability, and that is largely a product of national income, and international assistance.

But there are also hard boundaries that cannot be easily adapted to, for example rice yields diminish once temperatures exceed 35°C at the time of flowering, and by 37°C the damage becomes critical.  By 2050, between one-quarter and two-thirds of rice production capacity will be subject to high or extreme heat stress risk (Figure 2).

Figure 2: Percentage of Rice production 
capacity exposed to heat stress risk 
(PWC: Climate risks to nine key commodities)

Smart adaptation would include moving to a plant-based diet to free a great deal of agricultural land now used to grow livestock and grow feed for livestock, and to reduce methane emissions. A well-planned and managed retreat from low-lying coastal land would also help, rather than just waiting for the inevitable to happen.  And it depends on the nature of international politics. A coordinated global mobilisation to face the coming crisis would yield a very different result from states pretending that climate collapse was simply not on the agenda. Will states cooperate in the face of unprecedented adversity, or close borders and go to war?

The timeline

Another unresolved issue is the time frame. Many impacts do not manifest immediately once a certain temperature level is reached. For example, climate history teaches us that every one degree of warming will likely result in 10-to-20 metres of sea-level rise in the longer term, over many centuries. The fastest rises in the paleoclimate record are three-to-five metres in a century, so the full sea-level rise from 3°C of warming could take a thousand years to manifest, perhaps less and perhaps a good deal more.

So when the figure of “4 billion dead” is raised, is that when the thermometer ticks past the figure “3°C” later this century, or over a thousand years as coastlines, agriculturally-rich deltas and low-lying states drown?  My hunch is that it would be the latter.

A similar issue is the collapse of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation. Whilst a number of recent research papers conclude this tipping point is close at hand, models suggest the process is likely to take 100 years, so once again the exposure increases over that time, and so does the opportunity to reduce vulnerability with adaptive measures, though only up to a point.

Many other system-level changes have similar characteristics.

The world at 3°C

In a 3°C hotter world, large parts of the tropics will suffer “near-unlivable” extreme heat conditions, there will be less rainfall over significant parts of the dry subtropics, and this combined with increased evaporation rates will lead to drying out and desertification across the dry subtropics. New extremes — of rainfall and heat, flooding and drought — beyond human experience and beyond model expectations will occur. And a committed sea-level rise of many metres will be in the slow process of inundating coastal cities and deltas.

Some research, which is contested, suggests 3°C could cut global GDP by half. Last year, Australian researchers concluded that at 3°C, by the end of the century, the estimated harm to the global economy would be 40%, which “could devastate livelihoods in large parts of the world”.  Coral reef systems would be gone, and that alone means coastal ecosystems would only be able to provide 20–50% of the fish protein that they do today for half a billion people around the world.

In 2021, the Australian Academy of Science published a report co-authored by David Karoly on Risks to Australia of a 3-degree warmer world. Amongst other things, it said that at 3°C, heatwaves would happen as often as seven times a year, with events lasting 16 days on average, “fire risk (driven by record heat, dryness and fuel) will increase by 30 per cent or more in south-eastern Australia”, and yields of key crops would reduce “by between 5 and 50%, depending on crop and location”.  Other research estimates that “beyond 2°C warming, the declines in suitable areas for the 30 crops [analysed] become more pronounced – in some cases approaching and passing 50%”.  That in itself would cause global chaos.

A 2020 study on extreme heat found that at 2.7°C, up to 3.5 billion people will be exposed to temperatures outside the “human niche”, that is, the climate conditions that have served humanity well over the past 6000 years. Further research published in 2023 described a zone of near unlivable heat, “a situation found in the present climate only in 0.8% of the global land surface, mostly concentrated in the Sahara, but in 2070 projected to cover 19% of the global land” (Figure 3). Prof. Marten Scheffer said those pushed outside the climate niche might consider migrating to cooler places: “Not just migration of tens of millions of people but it might be a billion or so.” 

Figure 3: Projected zone of heat of “near-unliveable conditions” at 2.7°C global average warming (“Quantifying the human cost of global warming”)

And at 2.7°C, scientists say that  the Arctic would be “transformed beyond contemporary recognition: the Arctic Ocean would be essentially ice free for several months in summer, the area of Greenland that reaches melting temperatures for at least a month would roughly quadruple, and the area of permafrost would be roughly half of what it was in preindustrial times.”

Potsdam Institute Director Prof. Johan Rockstrom says that such a level of warming is “something that humanity has absolutely no evidence that we can cope with… Push ourselves to 2.5°C – we’re in unknown terrain. It would lead to a complete melting of the big ice sheets, which would be a 10-metre sea level rise… There would be a collapse of all the big biomes on planet Earth – the rainforest, many of the temperate forests – abrupt thawing of permafrost, we will have complete collapse of marine biology, we will have a shift of large parts of the habitability on Earth.”

Twenty years ago, a group of US security analysts constructed a 3°C scenario:

“Massive nonlinear events in the global environment give rise to massive nonlinear societal events. In this scenario, nations around the world will be overwhelmed by the scale of change and pernicious challenges, such as pandemic disease. The internal cohesion of nations will be under great stress, including in the United States, both as a result of a dramatic rise in migration and changes in agricultural patterns and water availability. The flooding of coastal communities around the world, especially in the Netherlands, the United States, South Asia, and China, has the potential to challenge regional and even national identities. Armed conflict between nations over resources, such as the Nile and its tributaries, is likely and nuclear war is possible. The social consequences range from increased religious fervour to outright chaos. In this scenario, climate change provokes a permanent shift in the relationship of humankind to nature’ (emphasis added).”

So how many would die, and how many would survive in this 3°C world?

Displacement and mortality 

The “human niche” papers on near-unliveable heat found that these extremes are projected to envelop 1.2 billion people in India, 485 million in Nigeria and more than 100 million in each of Pakistan, Indonesia and Sudan. Many would be forced to move to a more liveable climate. Another study from the same year of 2020 concluded that warming of 2°C could provide more than 500 million people additional incentive to emigrate, whilst warming of 3°C could provide additional incentive-to-emigrate to well over a billion people.

The idea that a billion people may be displaced may seem fanciful, but the UN also agrees with this figure: “Unless we change the way we manage our land, in the next 30 years we may leave a billion or more vulnerable poor people with little choice but to fight or flee.”

The figures may be much, much higher than this, but there are so many variables, so many social unknowns, that any figure can only be a guesstimate by social scientists and security analysts, based on a scientifically-credible scenario.

Climate disruption kills people in many ways, including by direct physical impacts (heat stress, floods, cyclones and other extreme events), by severe food insecurity, through displacement and conflict, by increased disease and poorer health outcomes, and so on.

The 2025 report of the Lancet Countdown on health and climate change reported a 63% increase in heat-related deaths since the 1990s, reaching an estimated 546,000 yearly deaths on average in 2012–21. The higher number of heatwave days and drought months in 2023 compared with 1981–2010 was associated with 123.7 million more people experiencing moderate or severe food insecurity in 124 countries analysed. As hotter and drier weather increases the risk of wildfires, 2024 had a record-high 154,000 deaths from wildfire smoke-derived small particulate matter (PM2·5) air pollution.

What about future mortality rates? Joshua Pearce of the University of Western Ontario says if warming reaches or exceeds 2°C, it is likely that mainly richer humans will be responsible for the death of roughly one billion mainly poorer humans over the next century. This is based on a review of the literature by Pearce and Parncutt, which found mortality costs of carbon emissions converged on the “1,000-ton rule”: an estimate that one future premature death is caused every time approximately 1,000 tons of fossil carbon are burned. Their best- and worst-case figures were 300 million and three billion for 2°C.

By this logic, the mortality range at 3°C would be in the range of 450 million to 4.5 billion.  Of course, this assumes a linear relationship between emissions and mortality, but that assumption is based on observed conditions that are far different from those humans will face in the second half of the century.

It should also be noted that in 2019, Rockström told The Guardian that in a 4°C-warmer world: “It’s difficult to see how we could accommodate eight billion people or maybe even half of that. There will be a rich minority of people who survive with modern lifestyles, no doubt, but it will be a turbulent, conflict-ridden world.”

So four billion dead at 3°C? Immediately or when the full physical and social impacts are realised over many centuries?  Depending on deeply uncertain adaptation and other political responses? Between expert estimates of degrees of magnitude and worse-case conjecture, it’s anybody’s educated guess.

 

 

 

 

Since 2018, the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Peasants (UNDROP) has provided an unprecedented framework to protect their collective rights, seeds, lands, and knowledge.

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