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La Via Campesina’s Quarterly Podcast returns for its second edition of 2026, looking back on April–June, from the memory of Eldorado do Carajás to renewed resistance across continents.

The post Podcast: 2026 Quarterly Newswrap | April– June Edition appeared first on La Via Campesina - EN.

Jessica Skalka, 37, rounded the corner of a homemade bar in her dad’s garage, passing a framed collage of cutout newspaper clips marking the end of the 99-day strike at British Petroleum’s Whiting, Indiana, refinery in 2015. A row of championship banners for the Chicago Cubs, Bears and White Sox hung high across one wall, while a light-up “Donnie’s Man Cave” sign glowed nearby. An air conditioner hummed in the corner in the Northwest Indiana home as the first July heatwave pushed outdoor temperatures into the mid-90s. 

She picked an empty blue-and-orange Bears-themed bucket from the counter, shook it, and asked, “No candy today?”

“Yeah, well, I’m not working right now,” said Donald Skalka, 62, from across the garage.

The empty candy bucket was yet another reminder of how much life had changed over the past few months. Until mid-March, father and daughter worked at BP’s sprawling plant in Whiting, Indiana, the largest inland oil refinery in North America, located on the southwestern shore of Lake Michigan, a half-hour drive from downtown Chicago.

The BP Whiting refinery as seen in March. The facility produces approximately 440,000 barrels of crude oil every day. Erin Hooley / AP Photo

There, Donald had spent nearly two decades working his way up to a job in the control room, where he monitored the refinery’s operations from behind a bank of screens. The plant processed approximately 440,000 barrels of crude oil every day, and Donald kept the electricity and steam-generating machinery at the plant running. Donald’s son worked there, too, as did Jessica, and Donald’s longtime girlfriend, Renee Pleitner, whom he met during his onboarding and is a third-generation refinery worker. 

For the last four months, the Skalkas, Pleitner, and approximately 800 other workers represented by United Steelworkers Local 7-1, or USW, have been locked out of the refinery without pay and with no clear indication of when they’ll return to work.

Unlike strikes, in which unionized workers advocate for themselves by refusing to work, lockouts are employer-initiated. During a lockout, management can prevent workers from returning to their jobs to withhold wages. Lockouts are generally seen as a hardline tactic during labor disputes and tend to be rare, especially in the refining business, which requires continuous production and a highly skilled workforce.

Now, longtime refinery workers worry Big Oil is experimenting with a new playbook to break union power, undermine national collective bargaining, and remake its workforce. They also worry that the dispute could have ripple effects far beyond the picket line and threaten not only workers and their families, but the health and safety of the surrounding community — a concern due to four flaring events, a fire, and a major power outage in just four months.

USW Local 7-1 member Alan Leon pickets outside the Whiting refinery in July. Leon is one of 800 unionized BP workers currently locked out of their jobs. Candace Dane Chambers / Sun-Times.

BP began negotiating with the union in early January ahead of the previous contract’s expiration at the end of the month. But two months into discussions, after 98 percent of USW Local 7-1 members voted to reject what the fossil fuel company called its last, best, and final offer, it issued a lockout order. The proposal would have frozen wages, weakened safety protections, eliminated jobs, and expanded the use of artificial intelligence to monitor employees, according to the union. 

In an emailed statement to Grist, BP objected to the union’s characterization of its demands. “Our proposals are not unique or novel,” wrote BP spokesperson Cesar Rodriguez. “Most of what we are seeking has already been tested and implemented elsewhere.”

The lockout also “allowed for a safe and orderly transition of operations,” Cesar said. The union’s 24-hour notice requirement to strike and disrupt refinery operations  “presented safety and operational risk,” BP wrote in an earlier statement, and necessitated a continuity plan. 

Oil companies have had a banner year following the onset of the U.S.-Israel war on Iran. Chevron, Shell, and ExxonMobil have all reported record-setting profits, making more than $36 billion over the past three months. This week, BP announced quarterly profits of $5.7 billion, more than double the previous quarter.  

For Skalka, the March email notifying him that he wouldn’t be returning to work until further notice was gutting. 

“The gamut of emotions when I had to face my family, it was a lot,” he said.

From left: USW Local 7-1 members Don Skalka, daughter Jessica Skalka, and girlfriend Renee Pleitner stand outside their home in Munster, Indiana. Candace Dane Chambers / Sun-Times

Skalka had inspired his children to follow in his footsteps. Born and raised in the northwest corner of Indiana, known for its concentration of factories, steel mills, and refineries, most of his family had worked at industrial facilities. His father worked at cement factories and later built parts for the nearby steel mills. An uncle was a shipbuilder on the East Side of Chicago. He followed suit. After spending a few years working on the railroads, he took a job at Whiting. 

He was eventually entrusted with an important role at the refinery. From the control room, he was responsible for identifying broken pumps, mechanical hiccups, and mystery leaks, all of which, if not caught in time, could mean a major fire or a multimillion-dollar headache for BP. Accidents and outages can also spike regional gasoline prices. A power interruption at the facility in April led to gas prices surging regionally by 40 to 80 cents per gallon. 

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“There’s a little bit of danger to it,” he said. “When you swipe in with your time card, you have to bring your A game.” 

All the same, he loved the job — and his daughter noticed. 

It was an exciting, breakneck-paced lifestyle, and the pay was good. She peppered her dad with questions, applied, took a qualifying test, passed, and eventually earned a spot. Donald Skalka Jr., Skalka’s son, spent approximately a decade working at a nearby steel mill. When an opportunity at the refinery came up a year and a half ago, he took it. It was a decision his father encouraged.

“He’s one of the 800 like the rest of us, and he’s going, ‘Dad, I don’t know if I should’ve listened to you.’ Well, I didn’t know at the time that was going to happen,” Skalka said.  “At the time, on paper, everything seemed better; you’re trying to have a better quality of life.”

USW Local 7-1 member Don Skalka looks at photos related to his organizing framed at his home in Munster, Indiana. Candace Dane Chambers / Sun-Times

The lockout has reshaped his home life in other ways too. Jessica found temporary work. Her brother returned to a job at the mill. Donald and Renee are holding out, living on a budget that keeps shrinking. Besides leaving the candy bowl in the garage empty, they’ve swapped cable for streaming and are using rabbit-ear antennas for free local channels. They also paid their utility bills months in advance to avoid a power shutoff in the future.

“You get rid of the non-essentials right away,” Skalka said. “The thermostat stays higher, there’s less in the grocery cart, you don’t eat out obviously hardly at all anymore, 

Most days they take it easy. They pass the time filling poster boards with pictures of good times on the picket line this year and during previous standoffs. Sometimes, they visit Jessica’s home, which has a pool — otherwise they picket. Among Skalka’s picketing duties is bus driver; he pilots the union’s second-hand minibus, a stout, white vehicle, shuttling picketing union members between four different entrances. Union members have been assigned shifts to protest — four shifts a day, four protesters a shift. The schedule has allowed workers to find other employment and extend their ability to hold out during the lockout.

Donald goes on his off days too, when Pleitner is on the schedule, and she does the same for him. “We just kind of make it a family event,” Skalka said. 

By now, he’s used to the new routine. What he’s still wrapping his head around is a new, more aggressive tack from his employer — one that has pushed his family, friends, and coworkers to their limits. In recent months, the company and the union have blamed the other for alleged altercations. USW workers have filed police reports in two instances involving picketers who allegedly ended up pinned beneath a car. And the BP spokesperson alleged that union members committed unlawful acts. The tension has been building for months.

“This time it seems they’re in a union-breaking mode,” he said, “They’re following a playbook.”

A “fat cat” sits at a USW Local 7-1 picket site outside the BP Whiting refinery in July. Candace Dane Chambers / Sun-Times

Union leaders trace the origins of BP’s strategy to Texas. In 2021, ExxonMobil, the nation’s largest oil and gas company, locked out approximately 650 unionized workers from its Beaumont, Texas, refinery when they rejected a “last, best, and final offer,” which would have frozen wages and ended some union seniority rights. At the time, the Beaumont workers were already operating outside the framework of the National Oil Bargaining Program, a national effort dating back to the 1960s to negotiate industry-wide standards for wages, health care, and workplace safety. Today, the program covers about 30,000 refinery employees across two-thirds of the nation’s refining capacity.  

The program exerts leverage by aligning approximately 200 refinery bargaining units around the same contract timelines, preventing unions from being pitted against each other, and establishing a national standard. Without that collective leverage, the Beaumont refinery workers were at a disadvantage. The Texas lockout lasted 10 months and ended in March 2022. When workers returned to their jobs, they did so under a weaker contract that gave Exxon authority over all job assignments, stripping the union of its previous role in determining a quarter of them. In the course of the 10-month lockout, approximately 20 percent of workers left the refinery for good.    

According to Eric Schultz, president of the USW Local 7-1, BP hired the architect of the Exxon negotiations, Jordan Marcks, as a director of employees and labor relations, while that lockout was ongoing. Schultz sees similarities between BP’s proposal and Exxon’s plan for the Texas refinery. For one, BP is pushing a contract term that would put the Whiting refinery out of step with the National Oil Bargaining Program. It is also looking to eliminate jobs and union oversight.

“They obviously liked that playbook,” he said. “They’re trying to bring that flavor up here to Northwest Indiana,” Schultz added.

When reached for comment about Marcks’ employment history and alleged tactics, the BP spokesperson said the company “does not comment on personnel matters.” Marcks did not respond to a request for comment. 

USW Local 7-1 members picket outside the BP refinery. Unionized workers have been assigned shifts to picket. Candace Dane Chambers / Sun-Times

BP has brought in an unknown number of temporary workers — some from as far away as Arkansas, Louisiana, and Texas — to replace the locked-out workers, according to Schultz. They’re being paid handsomely. Union wages run on average at about $54 per hour, but a union spokesperson said the new workers are being paid up to $127 an hour plus benefits for a six-month stint.

BP did not comment on how many temporary workers it’s currently contracting at the Whiting refinery. “Compensation is a personnel matter, and BP typically does not comment on personnel matters,” said Rodriguez. 

Mike Smith, the chair of the National Oil Bargaining for the United Steelworkers, said it’s not totally clear yet whether the lockouts reflect a new tack for Big Oil. “Whether this is an individual’s idea who happens to have been involved in both of those lockouts, or if this is a strategy — that’s still to be determined,” he said. 

Union members have been taking turns to picket, allowing them to find other work while the fight with BP plays out. Candace Dane Chambers / Sun-Times

With the workers locked out, the squat union hall has transformed into an all-hours crisis center. Makeshift shelves in a corner carry everything from simple groceries like canned food and pasta to diapers and baby formula. The formula and diapers are typically the first to go, according to Michelle O’Shaughnessy, a union member who has been helping run the improvised pantry since the lockout started. 

A lot of the goods available for union members on a daily basis are there thanks to community donations. Amazon boxes arrive daily. So too do notes of support from across the country. The brother of a retired Whiting USW member mailed in a $20 bill all the way from Arizona to contribute to the strike funds. 

The local community has also rallied behind the refinery workers. “We have some faithful restaurants who are very good to us,” O’Shaughnessy said. Beggars Pizza in Whiting has been dropping off 10 pizzas to the union hall every Monday, as do Aurelios of Hammond on Tuesdays and Center Lounge, which has been bringing in meals on Wednesdays. 

Union members can also get help filling out unemployment applications at the center. The union has a strike fund that helps pay some bills, but members do not receive cash payments or salaries. Other organizations have also stepped up to assist with mortgage payments and help apply for SNAP benefits.

A check-in table at the USW Local 7-1 office in Whiting in July. Candace Dane Chambers / Sun-Times

Last month, Hammond Mayor Tom McDermott announced he was returning $20,000 in BP sponsorship money for the local Festival of the Lakes celebration. Not long after, Pierogi Fest in Whiting announced they would also return BP’s sponsorship money and set up donation boxes throughout the festival to collect funds for members to pay their bills. And the Lake County Council and Lake County Board of Commissioners passed resolutions announcing their support for the locked-out workers.  

The backlash against BP is far from local. State treasurers from Illinois, California, Colorado, and Connecticut signed onto a letter in April urging BP’s Chief Executive Officer, Meg O’Neill, to consider the national implications of the ongoing lockout. “The costs of prolonged disruption will not be contained within this dispute,” the letter said. “They will be borne by households, workers, and communities across the country, including those that sustain BP’s long-term presence and success in the U.S.”

While the fight plays out, Skalka is hunkering down, preparing for a long road back to work. He’s not sure if he’ll get to put his BP uniform on next month or in three months. What he does know is that he, his family, his nearly 800 USW brothers and sisters, and the rest of Northwest Indiana are determined to win.

“We’re still going to keep living our lives; it’s not gonna deter the hardworking people in Northwest Indiana,” Skalka said. “They’ve got a good fight on their hands, and we’re gonna give it to them.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Inside the nearly 5-month labor lockout at an Indiana refinery on Aug 6, 2026.

Utah’s solar generation eclipsed all other electricity sources for the first time ever in May, the culmination of a slow but steady years-long shift away from coal. Energy experts are calling it a win for the environment and the state’s economy. 

Photovoltaic panels in Utah produced nearly 1 terawatt hour in May 2026. That represented nearly a third of all electricity generated in the state that month, according to data from Ember, a global energy think tank. Natural gas generated 32 percent, coal generated 28 percent, and wind 2 percent.

“The trend of more and more solar in Utah is wonderful news for air quality, it’s wonderful news for the climate, and it’s wonderful news for jobs and the economy,” said Dan Schroeder, a physics professor at Weber State University who regularly checks energy data.

Schroeder attributes the trend to several large solar farms coming online in recent years. The 2,500-acre Green River Energy Center in the central part of the state became operational this spring, and includes 400 megawatts of solar generation and 400 megawatts of battery storage. Excelsior Energy Capital’s Faraday Solar project in Utah County, the state’s second-largest county,  started providing up to 685 megawatts for the Meta data center there last fall. The Elektron Solar Project, an 80-megawatt photovoltaic farm, began sending electricity to Salt Lake City, Park City, and Summit County in June 2024.

Solar also supports nearly 8,000 jobs in Utah, according to the latest information from the Solar Energy Industries Association. The state is home to 132 solar companies, including 54 solar developers and 23 solar manufacturers. Investors committed $1.5 billion to Utah’s solar market in 2025 alone.

Oil and gas extraction, by comparison, accounted for 1,291 jobs in the state in 2025, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Coal mining accounted for 1,059 in 2023, the most recent year the bureau has data for that industry. Utah had another 1,905 jobs in coal and petroleum product manufacturing last year. 

The rise of solar power has helped the state wean itself off a dependence on coal. In 2017, coal generated between 64 percent and 78 percent of electricity in Utah, depending on the month. By 2023, it started accounting for less than half of the state’s power sources in certain times of the year. This spring, it was less than a third. 

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Electricity generation is complicated, however, and solar won’t represent a third of Utah’s portfolio every month. But with its sunny, dry climate, “Utah still has room to grow its solar percentage,” Schroeder said.

He pointed to California, which saw nearly 51 percent of its electricity generation come from solar panels in May, the most recent month that Ember has data — showing Utah has much more room to grow.

“We’re going to see milestones like this increasingly happen,” said Logan Mitchell, a climate scientist and energy analyst with Utah Clean Energy.

About 51 percent of the new utility-scale electricity generation added to the country’s grid is expected to come from solar this year, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. The country is likely to add another 43.4 gigawatts of solar, 24.3 gigawatts of battery storage, and 11.8 gigawatts of new wind power in 2026, compared to just 6.3 gigawatts of natural gas generation and zero new coal capacity.

Some of Utah’s electricity gets exported to other states, and some of its solar farms serve a single customer, like the project in Utah County that has a contract with Meta, the parent company of Instagram and Facebook.

Mitchell pulled the numbers from the state’s largest electricity provider, PacifiCorp, which is the parent company of Rocky Mountain Power. Turns out, another renewable energy source has seen a surge in generation in the region — wind power.

Wind blew past all other energy sources in PacifiCorp’s portfolio for Utah, Wyoming, and Idaho in December and January for the first time, according to data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

“Wind plus solar is on a tear right now,” Mitchell said. “We may have achieved liftoff.”

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And the two power sources complement each other, Mitchell said, since wind generation is highest in the winter months, and solar produces the most electricity in the summer.

Most of PacifiCorp’s wind generation comes from facilities in Wyoming, according to Jona Whitesides, a spokesperson with Rocky Mountain Power. He said the recent sweep in wind power likely comes from the company’s investment in new turbines, including 400 megawatts added to the grid last fall at PacifiCorp’s Rock Creek II facility.

“A lot of days we are using more wind,” Whitesides said. “There are no fuel costs there; it’s essentially free.”

The Trump administration is phasing out tax incentives for wind and solar projects, however, calling them “expensive and unreliable.” But renewables combined with battery storage increasingly produce some of the cheapest, cleanest, and most consistent energy sources in the country, Mitchell said, and are not subject to the price spikes and uncertainty brought by global politics. What’s more, burning fossil fuels like coal and natural gas, which is mostly composed of methane, creates pollution and contributes to a warming planet. 

Mitchell said he keeps a running list of the ways a warming West is hurting Utahns at home. A record-hot spring followed by a cold snap caused fruit farmers to lose their crops, for example. Utah also saw virtually zero snowpack over the winter, setting the stage for an explosively bad wildfire season and uncertainty about the state’s future water supply. Emergency room visits from tick bites are also on the rise in the West, Axios reports, as milder winters and earlier onset of warm temperatures help the insects thrive.

“In order to reduce those impacts in the future, we need to be reducing our emissions,” Mitchell said. “And we need to be doing it faster.”

Still, the shift in priorities at the federal level caused PacifiCorp to abandon plans to build more wind and solar projects in the next two decades, according to its latest Integrated Resource Plan update. The pivot has earned the utility criticism from renewable advocates like Utah Clean Energy.

Whitesides called the plan a “snapshot in time” that is constantly revised depending on energy costs, along with federal and state policies.

“It didn’t make financial sense to move forward with new renewable resources at this given time,” Whitesides said. “In two years, we could have a different administration. It may bring back more renewables.”

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This story was originally published by Grist with the headline In a first, Utah got more power from solar than any other source on Aug 6, 2026.

From Élisée Reclus and Peter Kropotkin to Rachel Carson, Murray Bookchin, and André Gorz: the anarchist tradition understands ecology not as top-down conservation, but as a practice of cohabitation. Simon Guyomard and Édouard Jourdain trace this overlooked lineage through to today’s ZADs and Rojava, and ask what it means to inhabit the world without dominating it.

Although a consensus is forming as to the necessity of an ecological approach, ecology has been politically neutered and, in many cases, appropriated by state and commercial worldviews. As a result, there is an urgent need to reexamine the critical traditions that have theorised the relationship between nature and society, not as a matter of management or expertise, but as a fundamentally political question.

Among these traditions, anarchism’s unique contribution is often overlooked. Yet it was one of the first approaches to think about human emancipation and the preservation of the environment as two inextricable dimensions of the same societal project. This link can be traced back to the very first formulations of anarchist thought in the nineteenth century.

Anarchism thus enables us to think about ecology in a different way: not as top-down conservation policy, but as a founding practice of cohabitation, in which questions of power, ways of inhabiting the world, and the legitimacy of authority play out.

Ecology without masters

From the very early stages of Europe’s industrial revolution, radical criticisms were made of the effects of industrial civilisation on the environment and on human beings. Utopian socialists like Charles Fourier were quick to critique the ravages of capitalism on nature. Dominant socialist lines of thought, particularly Marxism, did not dwell on ecological issues.

It was the anarchists who developed the first real arguments connecting the conditions of emancipation to the preservation of the environment. While this crucial conception can be read into the works of the early anarchist thinkers such as Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and Mikhail Bakunin, the true theoretical foundations of the convergence of anarchy and ecology were laid by two anarchist geographers towards the end of the nineteenth century.

Élisée Reclus (1830–1905) was a French geographer exiled as a Communard. He was the author of the monumental Nouvelle géographie universelle (1875–1894) (published in English as The Universal Geography) and L’Homme et la Terre (1905–1908). Reclus’s geography and anarchism were intrinsically linked: understanding human societies, he believed, required an understanding of how they fit into their natural environment. This led him to develop the concept of mesology, which took account of the settings in which various organisms interact.

Anarchism was one of the first approaches to think about human emancipation and the preservation of the environment as two inextricable dimensions of the same societal project.

His magnum opus L’Homme et la Terre is considered one of the first formulations of political ecology avant la lettre. Reclus could already see the ravages of industrial agriculture and of capitalism on environmental balances. The quality of human life, he wrote, depends on our societal choices regarding the earth: “The truly civilised man, understanding that his own interests are bound up in the common interest and with that of nature itself, acts in a completely different fashion. He repairs the damage committed by his predecessors, helps the earth rather than brutally attacking it, and works to beautify as well as improve his land … Having become both ‘the conscience and consciousness of the earth’, the man who is worthy of this mission thus takes on a share of responsibility for the harmony and beauty of the nature that surrounds him.”1

Reclus’s concept of the relation between humans and the environment was thus inseparable from an ideal of social justice. Being aware of the interconnected nature of different forms of domination, he was also a vegetarian and a feminist. His influence was later rediscovered by the libertarian ecologists of the 1970s, who saw him as their forerunner.

At the same time, the Russian prince-turned-anarchist Peter Kropotkin (1842–1921) was developing a naturalistic approach to social theory. Like Reclus, Kropotkin was a geographer by training and had explored Siberia. He was struck by the cooperation he observed in nature. In 1902, he published Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution, a work of popular science in which he opposed the Social Darwinism of his time. Kropotkin highlighted the importance of cooperation and mutual aid in the animal and human worlds, seeing it as a natural law just as fundamental as laws of competition.

For Kropotkin, the spontaneous cooperation in nature acted as the empirical foundation of anarchism: if mutual assistance was a factor in evolution, he reasoned, then libertarian social structures founded on voluntary association and mutual aid were not only moral, but in accordance with human nature.

Kropotkin not only transposed natural laws onto society but also developed a critique of nineteenth-century industrial centralisation. In Fields, Factories and Workshops (1899), he suggested decentralising production by combining agriculture and industry at the local level, in order to reduce the waste and alienation resulting from large-scale capitalist industry. Foreshadowing modern ecological ideas, Kropotkin advocated for a society made up of a collection of autonomous communities that satisfied their own needs in a sustainable manner, by integrating agricultural and manufacturing work, and returning to local short supply chains.

These two writers are among the figureheads of a tradition which was remarkable among other socialist schools of thought from the middle of the nineteenth century for the way it integrated ecology into a revolutionary perspective.2 These anarchists focused primarily on practical interdependencies, which led them to see nature not as a trove of resources to be exploited but as a collection of human habitats integral to how societies worked. Rather than an anthropocentric vision of dominating nature through reason, the anarchists espoused an ethics of cohabitation, with politics rooted in ecosystems themselves.

Their radical rejection of the state, understood as a hierarchical structure of seizure, standardisation and separation, went hand-in-hand with an early critique of modern land management, authoritarian planning, and government. They saw the state as a rapacious power that destroyed the organic forms of human societies and their relationships to their surroundings. This political approach to land led them to imagine forms of ecological federalism, where each community would adapt to its own ecological conditions, as opposed to an administrative universalism that ignored the diversity of environments.

Another link between anarchists and political ecology is in their relationship to technology. Rather than a promethean fascination with mechanisation, the anarchists had a warier attitude influenced by direct experience of the alienation of workers and the dispossession of artisans. By railing against all-out productivism, they differentiated themselves from the mainstream forms of socialism that, to varying degrees, conflated human liberation with an indefinite increase in the ability to transform the material world.

Anarchism valued a frugal lifestyle, technological autonomy and self-sustainability uncoupled from the quantitative obsession with growth. The relationship between early anarchism and science was also different to the technocratic instrumentalism that prevailed in a certain strain of Marxism: rather than relying on a single foundational body of knowledge, they favoured a vernacular epistemology, including practical know-how and sensory understanding, rejecting academic science’s claims to a cognitive monopoly.

The anarchist conception of history thus differed fundamentally from linear historical materialism, in which the progress of productive forces was the key to historical development. Anarchists rejected the idea of an arrow of time leading inevitably from ancient to modern: for them, history was full of forks in the road, about-turns and situations in which the old and the new coexist. This refusal of teleological temporality opened up the possibility of an ecological conception of time, sensitive to cycles, rhythms, and regenerations.

From the 1890s to the 1910s, activists advocated for changing our way of life away from industrial capitalism: return to the land, nudity, healthy eating, etc. This movement, referred to as anarcho-naturism, gained some popularity among individualist anarchists during the Belle Epoque. In France, a grouping of libertarians known as “les naturiens” coalesced around publications such as Le Naturien, in which theorists such as Henri Zisly and Georges Butaud advocated for “deserting industrialism” and a radical return to the natural wild. Rejecting bourgeois conventions, they enthused about life in small rural communities, vegetarianism, and nudity, and denounced the modern city as artificial and corrupting.

In Spain, anarcho-naturalism was at the heart of the libertarian movement in the 1920s and 1930s. At the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (“the National Confederation of Labour”, CNT) in Zaragoza in 1936, just before the Spanish Revolution, the delegates even discussed the status of naturist communities in future society. Aware of the presence of many vegetarians and nudists among the Andalusian anarchist peasants, the CNT planned to allow these groups to live outside of industrialisation and to negotiate specific economic agreements with them. Many Spanish anarchist peasants had in-depth knowledge of their local environment, which they sought to preserve while also improving communal productivity, rejecting the brutal methods of capitalist agroindustry.3

In Mexico, libertarians such as Ricardo Flores Magón linked the fight for Tierra y Libertad (“Land and Liberty”, a popular slogan and the title of his 1916 play) to the protection of communal indigenous land from capitalist exploitation. In Argentina and Brazil, anarchists also took part in peasant demonstrations against excessive deforestation and land-grabbing by foreign companies.

Anarchists saw the state as a rapacious power that destroyed the organic forms of human societies and their relationships to their surroundings.

Peasant, vernacular, and insurrectionary ecology was not a knee-jerk conservative defence of the old ways, but rather a form of political innovation where the self-management of land, the pooling of resources, and the reclaiming of agricultural know-how were part of a broader conceptualisation of the ecological reshaping of the social world. As the anarchists got to grips with the ravages of capitalism and the exodus from the countryside, the ecological question was transplanted into the very structures of the towns and cities. As town planning began to emerge, the rejection of domination was connected with a reflection on spatial forms of liberty.

From municipalism to the ZADs

From the 1950s onwards, early warning signs of the ecological crisis began to appear: chemical pollution, runaway urbanisation, nuclear threat, and more. Then, in 1962, the American writer Rachel Carson published Silent Spring, a bestseller that denounced the destruction that pesticides wrought on nature. That same year, Murray Bookchin, an American militant anarchist, pseudonymously published Our Synthetic Environment, which attracted less attention, but offered a radical critique of industrial pollution and capitalist productivism. A worker-turned-teacher, Bookchin was one of the very first people to formulate a comprehensive ecological critique from a revolutionary perspective.

In a 1964 article, “Ecology and Revolutionary Thought”, Bookchin stated that ecological critique must form an integral part of social critique: the survival of humanity required a revolution to abolish not only capitalism, but also humanity’s domination of nature. His key idea, which he developed in Post-Scarcity Anarchism (1971) and other works, was that the ecological crisis was rooted in society’s hierarchical and authoritarian structures. Thus, “what literally defines social ecology as ‘social’ is its recognition of the often overlooked fact that nearly all our present ecological problems arise from deep-seated social problems.”4 In other words, humanity’s domination of nature follows from the domination of humans over other humans.

In order to reach a balance between humans and their surroundings, Bookchin envisaged a society structured by cooperation between natural communities (i.e. communities not delineated by the state or a coercive political authority). This would be achieved through libertarian municipalism, in which the citizens of a community would control economic production in order to meet their basic needs and preserve the environment.

This idea led other anarchist thinkers to focus on the concept of regions. The American anarchist Peter Berg, for example, coined the term “bioregionalism”. This perspective was shared by all the libertarian thinkers engaging in political ecology (Jacques Ellul, Bernard Charbonneau, Ivan Illich, etc.), who “wanted to build, here and now, decentralised, self-administering, and self-governing societies on a human scale. Rather than a sudden, dramatic revolution, they wanted to establish a parallel structure of small, self-managing groups, brought together on an affinity model.”5

The degrowth movement that followed the publication of The Limits of Growth in 1972 also had strong libertarian underpinnings, theorised in the French context by André Gorz, who put forward a radical critique of the society of work and consumption. Gorz advocated for individual autonomy, which he saw in terms of self-determination of a sufficient standard of living, and warned against the appropriation of the ecological emergency by the state or companies in order to increase technocratic and capitalist domination. Today, figures such as Serge Latouche and Paul Ariès advocate for re-localisation, direct municipal democracy and the abolition of consumer society, positions that are very close to Bookchin’s libertarian municipalism or Kropotkin’s communalism.

In the 1960s and 1970s, an assortment of social experiments brought together libertarian ideals and ecological issues, via rural intentional communities such as Longo Maï in France and self-managing urban projects. These collectives rejected private property, settled on land where they practised organic agriculture, developed sustainable artisanal technologies, and lived outside of capitalist systems. At the same time, local environmental battles, especially over the Larzac, forged alliances between farmers, ecologists, and libertarians, and involved radically democratic forms of civil disobedience. This transnational dynamic sketched out the rudiments of a practical eco-anarchism, anchored in the land, defying state control, and inventing eco-technological, non-hierarchical forms of collective living.

The 2010s saw the emergence of the phenomenon of zones à défendre (“zones to defend”, ZADs), the most famous of which was in Notre-Dame-des-Landes near Nantes from 2009 to 2018, in which wooded wetlands were occupied to prevent the construction of an airport. Within an alternative microsociety of around fifty dwellings spread over 1,600 hectares, the inhabitants of the ZAD organised themselves into horizontal communities of about a dozen people. Each established comprehensive self-management of the territory they occupied: decision-making general assemblies, temporary dwellings, collective farms, bakeries, and freely accessible workshops.

Many saw the ZAD as an enduring experiment in self-sufficient anti-capitalist society, emphasising collectivity, voluntary simplicity, and care for the earth. ZADs also took root in Sivens (against a planned dam), Bure (against a nuclear waste storage depot), and elsewhere. Each of these occupations was a concrete instantiation of the intersection of the ecological struggle (preserving wetlands, forests, etc.) and the anarchist project (inventing ways of living without the state or private property).6

Nevertheless, the ZADs were controversial even within the anarchist movement, as had sometimes been the case with the free communities in the nineteenth century: Is it realistic to seek to create spaces within territory that remains under state control? Would it not be better to concentrate on more comprehensive strategies to subvert capitalism? Such debates are also found throughout the ecologist movement, as demonstrated by the foundation of Extinction Rebellion in 2018, with anarchist tracts advocating for a break away from the state and the economic system in favour of local, self-managed solutions.

The collective Les Soulèvements de la Terre (The Earth Uprisings Collective, SLT) has struck out in a different direction, with a horizontal and protean organisation inspired by libertarianism. It was created in 2021 and became a household name in France after the widely reported demonstration in Sainte-Soline in March 2023. The SLT campaigns bring together anarchist militants and ecologists, forming common cause with local social struggles while seeking to disarm those responsible for the ecological catastrophe. The collective, which practices direct action and civil disobedience (occupation, sabotage, etc.), has hundreds of local committees, all of which are active in society with the support of trade unions, political parties, and environmental associations.7

Freedom is not something that is taken from the world, but is instead part of it, allowing unique forms of life to coexist in the long term without dominating one another.

The twenty-first century has other large-scale testing grounds for the eco-anarchist ideal, although we must be careful to understand the nuances of specific situations. One of the most notable is what has been attempted in Syrian Kurdistan. In 2012, the Kurdish population began to put in place a democratic confederalist system explicitly inspired by the ideas of Murray Bookchin. The autonomous cantons of Rojava have local assemblies, agricultural cooperatives, and egalitarian people’s militias. Their goal is to establish a feminist, ecological, and democratic society, without a nation-state, in extreme conditions. Despite war and blockades, Rojava has begun reforestation, permaculture and environmental education programmes, as well as measures to reduce dependence on oil; it has also created agricultural cooperatives, communal nature reserves, and renewable energy projects, all managed by grassroots communes.

Living without dominating

Where classical Marxism(s) subordinate ecological questions to the development of productive forces, and liberalisms naturalise the exploitation of resources in the name of progress, some libertarian thinkers have constructed an integrated critique of social domination and our domination over nature. In opposition to anthropocentric and productivist ways of seeing the world, they have developed an ecopolitical vision of autonomy, combining social justice, rootedness, an ecosystem-wide focus and horizontal institutions.

But anarchism and ecology cannot be resolved into a stable synthesis, or one treated as a simple thematic addition to the other. Instead, the place where they meet is an essential locus of tension, in which the fundamental questions of political thought play out in ever-changing forms: What is a habitable world? How legitimate is authority? What structures are fair and just for whole ecosystems and enable living beings to live alongside one another?

The major theoretical advantage of anarchism is found in its close links with ecology, precisely because it prevents these questions being answered based on the standard categorisations of modern politics. As Baptiste Morizot indicates, “It is quite another matter: it is the call of the interdependences which indicate the limits to the range of possibilities that the human democratic collective can explore.”8

Neither the abstract individual of liberalism, nor the organic community of nationalism, nor even the teleological dialectic of Marxism, offers a sufficient foundation from which to operate. The standard tools of sovereignty, law and contracts cannot encompass the entire natural world. It is thus necessary to re-politicise materiality, treating it not merely as a simple natural constraint, but as an ontological framework of which human institutions are one modulation among others.

From this point of view, anarchism, which thinks about power as a contingent relationship, is particularly well-suited to thinking about ecological normativity. It is not a question of basing norms on nature (which would descend into authoritarian naturalism), nor of constructing yet another green doctrine, but rather of making ecology a pragmatics of the communal, of sufficiency. It is a radical critique of established forms of power, capable of opening up a fresh direction in which freedom is not something that is taken from the world, but is instead part of it, allowing unique forms of life to coexist in the long term without dominating one another.

This article first appeared in Esprit, published in cooperation with CAIRN International Edition. This English version is taken from Eurozine.

1. Élisée Reclus, “De l’action humaine sur la géographie physique”,  Revue des deux mondes, no. 54 (1864): 763, accessed December 3, 2025, https://www.revuedesdeuxmondes.fr/article-revue/de-laction-humaine-sur-la-geographie-physique/. ︎
2. See Serge Audier, La Société écologique et ses ennemis: Pour une histoire alternative de l’émancipation (La Découverte, 2017). ︎
3. See Chris Ealham, Anarchism and the City: Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Barcelona, 1898–1937 (AK Press, 2010). ︎
4. Murray Bookchin, “What is Social Ecology?” in Environmental Philosophy: From Animal Rights to Radical Ecology, ed. M.E. Zimmerman (Prentice Hall, 1993), 354. ︎
5. Patrick Chastenet, Les Racines libertaires de l’écologie politique (L’Échappée, 2023). ︎
6. See Sylvaine Bulle, Irréductibles: Enquête sur des milieux de vie, de Bure à Notre-Dame-des-Landes (UGA Éditions, 2020); and Margot Verdier, Le Commun de l’autonomie: Une sociologie anarchiste de la ZAD de Notre-Dame-des-Landes (Éditions du Croquant, 2021). ︎
7. Juliette Piketty-Moine and Noé Sotto, ‘Les Soulèvements de la Terre: Reportage dans un comité local,’ Silence 528, no. 1 (2024): 38. doi:10.3917/sile.528.0038. ︎
8. Baptiste Morizot, Ways of Being Alive, trans. Andrew Brown (Polity, 2022). ︎

Fake shopping apps, anti-vaxx dating sites and business as usual through climate disasters are stark reminders of the surreal lengths we'll go to preserve a sense of normality, and how readily corporations will profit from it.

URGENT ALERT: Stop Police Harassment and Intimidation in Kasibu, Nueva Vizcaya See statement by CEC

Yes to Life No to Mining calls for the immediate withdrawal of all police personnel from Kasibu

Yes to Life No to Mining (YLNM), in solidarity with the barricading communities of Kasibu, Nueva Vizcaya, strongly condemns the continued presence of the Philippine National Police (PNP) at the people’s anti-mining barricade in Barangay Paquet and calls for the immediate withdrawal of all police personnel from the area. We also call on the international community to echo these demands through their own statements of solidarity and by boosting the statements of those most impacted. 

The Center for Environmental Concerns- Philippines describes the situation in their statement: 

At around 11:00 AM on 5 August 2026, more than 30 PNP vehicles arrived at the community barricades in Kasibu under the leadership of Police Brigadier General Mariano C. Rodriguez, Regional Director of Police Regional Office 2, and PCOL Paul T. Bometivo, Provincial Director of the Nueva Vizcaya Provincial Police Office. According to local organization Alyansa ng Novo Vizcayano para sa Kalikasan (ANVIK), police officers demanded the removal of the barricades, claiming they were built on a municipal road. Residents maintained that the barricades stand on privately owned and titled land. Despite this, the PNP left seven armed police officers at the Paquet barricade while police units continued patrolling other barangays within the 4,456-hectare exploration area of North Luzon Mineral Resources Corporation (NLMRC).

YLNM affirms the people of Kasibu and all communities’ right to say no to extraction on their lands and territories!

Yes to Life No to Mining affirms the people of Kasibu and all communities’ right to say no to extraction on their lands and territories. Extractive projects cannot move forward without consent and we see this as representative of a larger pattern of extractive development enforced through militarized intervention against peaceful resistance. 

Environmental defenders take action at great risk to themselves and must be protected from criminalization. These defenders took up barricades in the context of a justice system that has failed to protect the environment or listen to the people of Kasibu and Nueva Vizcaya more broadly. This police harassment is not an isolated incident. It is part of a pattern of intimidation that we, as members of the international community, denounce. We support the right of local Indigenous peoples and farming communities to determine what happens to their land, especially as mining interferes with local land uses and visions for livelihood.

This is not an isolated incident but part of a broader pattern of harassment

It is especially disturbing to hear of SLAPP suits filed against community leader Lei Jin Dugay and lawyers Atty. Edgardo Balgos and Atty. Fidel Santos for their advocacy work. These are overt attempts to intimidate those who question NLMRC’s activities. 

We echo the calls of the CEC and call upon the PNP to immediately withdraw all police personnel from the community, cease all acts of harassment and intimidation, and respect the rights of Indigenous Peoples and residents of Kasibu. We likewise call on other government agencies to heed the long-standing demands of affected communities by suspending NLMRC’s exploration activities and reviewing the validity of its exploration permit.

 

Is your community, organization, or network interested in becoming a YLNM member? Would you like to know more about us? Please send an email enquiry to membership[at]yestolifenotomining.org

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The post URGENT ALERT: Stop Police Harassment and Intimidation in Kasibu, Nueva Vizcaya appeared first on Yes to Life No to Mining.

In its collective declaration, the Mesoamerican Women’s Articulation of CLOC-LVC denounced what it described as fascist policies expanding across the region.

The post CLOC Mesoamerican Encounter Highlights Popular Peasant Feminism and Calls Against Fascist Policies appeared first on La Via Campesina - EN.

It is a tough time to be in South Africa trying to keep the lights on. Across the country, households are feeling the squeeze as electricity costs continue to rise. That’s why we are calling on Government to expand the FBE grant to 350 kWh per month with publicly financed renewable energy. However, most of us don’t know the ups and downs of electricity pricing. In this article, we unpack the proposed changes to electricity pricing, what they could mean for ordinary South Africans, and explore how public investment in renewable energy could help lower electricity costs. 

On 29 July 2026, Cabinet approved the publication of the Revised Electricity Pricing Policy (REPP) and a draft Electricity Sector Market Transformation Position Paper for public comment. Government presents these reforms as a step toward a more transparent and competitive electricity sector. 

While officials frame this as a major step forward, there is a lot to unpack. We need to understand what is being proposed and what it could mean for energy affordability and energy justice. We are concerned with electricity prices, but we are most concerned with energy access, climate justice, and ensuring that every person in South Africa can access safe, reliable, and affordable energy.

 

Understanding tariff unbundling

For many years, electricity tariffs appeared as a single price, making it difficult for consumers to understand what they were actually paying for. Cabinet argues that one of the key features of the revised pricing policy is greater tariff transparency through the unbundling of electricity costs into separate components: generation, transmission, distribution and retail activities.

When you pay for electricity, the charges may include:

1. Energy charges
   • This is the cost of the electricity you use, measured in cents per kilowatt-hour (c/kWh). It covers the costs of generating electricity and operating power stations.
2. Network charges
   • These charges pay for the transmission and distribution infrastructure, including power lines, transformers, substations, maintenance, and system operations that deliver electricity to homes and businesses.
3. Capacity-related charges
   • Recent tariff reforms have introduced separate charges intended to help recover the cost of maintaining sufficient capacity to meet demand, regardless of actual energy consumption.
4. Social and public-interest support mechanisms
   • This means using electricity pricing to help people who need it most. It includes helping poorer households pay for electricity, extending access to rural communities, and supporting programmes like Free Basic Electricity. 

Eskom is also introducing “Easy Electricity” purchase options. These aren’t new prices, but voluntary “packages” designed to make budgeting easier for prepaid users. Eskom says this option will allow customers to choose electricity amounts, measured in kWh, rather than rand values when buying prepaid tokens.

 

What the draft pricing reforms are intended to do

The revised pricing policy forms part of broader electricity sector reforms following the Electricity Regulation Amendment Act, 2024, and Eskom’s restructuring. The proposed reforms seek to ‘modernise’ the electricity sector and create a more competitive market environment. 

Government says the reforms aim to:

• Increase transparency
  • Tariffs will be unbundled and allocated across generation, transmission, distribution, and retail activities.
• Enable greater competition
  • In simple terms, the government wants to create an electricity market where more companies can generate and sell electricity, rather than relying mainly on Eskom. The hope is that greater competition will lead to a more efficient and reliable electricity system.
• Attract investment
  • Government hopes that new regulatory rules and cost-reflective pricing will encourage private investment in new electricity generation and network infrastructure. Cost-reflective pricing means charging electricity customers a price that reflects the actual cost of supplying electricity, rather than keeping prices low through subsidies or cross-subsidies.
• Supports virtual wheeling
  • The reforms would make it easier for electricity generated in one place to be delivered to customers somewhere else using the existing electricity grid. This means people and businesses could buy electricity from a wider range of producers, even if they are not located nearby.  

 

The affordability crisis remains: why Free Basic Electricity needs urgent reform

The proposed changes to South Africa’s electricity system could bring benefits, but they won’t automatically guarantee affordable electricity for low-income households. In several countries, governments have found that even where competition increased and private investment flowed into the sector, low-income households continued to struggle with rising prices and energy poverty. In some cases, governments had to step in by introducing additional subsidies, social tariffs, price protections, or debt-relief measures to protect vulnerable consumers.

Many South Africans already struggle to afford electricity. Unless government provides support for low-income households, the proposed changes could leave many families behind and make energy poverty even worse.

Free Basic Electricity (FBE) is one of the main ways government helps ensure that low-income households have access to electricity. It is designed to help people who need it most, including pensioners, unemployed people, single-income households, and families surviving on very little to zero income. Experts estimate that around 10 million households qualify for the programme, yet only about 2 in every 10 eligible households actually receive it.

Many organisations, researchers, and community groups agree that South Africa’s Free Basic Electricity programme needs to be expanded.

We are calling on government to increase Free Basic Electricity from 50 kWh to 350 kWh per month. This is the minimum amount a household needs to live with dignity—to keep the lights on, safely cook and store food, heat water, and even run a small business from home to generate an income.

Today, many families spend more on electricity than they do on basic foods like maize meal or bread. Expanding Free Basic Electricity would help ease this burden and ensure more households can meet their basic needs.

These are the realities that should shape South Africa’s electricity policies. The draft pricing reforms are now open for public comment. This is an opportunity for communities, workers, faith groups, civil society organisations, and ordinary South Africans to have a say in the future of our electricity system.

Electricity is more than a service we pay for. It keeps food fresh, powers schools and clinics, creates jobs and livelihoods, and helps families live with dignity. As South Africa reshapes its electricity system, the real question is not only how the market should work, but who it should work for.

Join the #FreeBasicElectricity campaign community and work alongside organisations, community leaders, and activists to help shape, strengthen, and grow the campaign for affordable electricity.

The post Changes to Our Power: What South Africa’s New Electricity Pricing Reforms Mean for Us appeared first on 350.

For 50 years, the Endangered Species Act has defined "harm" as not just injury to individuals but to the habitat on which they depend. By narrowing that definition, the Trump administration is leaving hundreds of species at risk of extinction.

Read more on E360 →

I'm so angry I'm almost on fire Channel Comment brendan 6th August 2026 Teaser Media

The spectre of socialism is haunting America . . . Bizarrely enough in 2026, a new Red Scare has taken over American politics, with the GOP, the Democratic Establishment, plenty…

Wowza, rare glimmer of good news. We take a moment to honor the stunning Michigan victory of Abdul El-Sayed, who was outspent 12-1 by his opponent's millions from establishment Dems, Zionist PACS and corporations and still managed to win even though he is a progressive Muslim who calls genocide genocide and wants Medicare for all in a Trump state that isn't communist New York. Ha. What millions in dark money buys you these days: "Sweet fuck all, as it turns out."

El-Sayed's inspiring win came against a candidate, Haley Stevens, who was bankrolled by over $60 million from party leaders and outside money from a murky nesting doll of super-PACS and shell corporations but whose campaign still had the audacity to bill her as “the grassroots choice of Michigan working families.” Total spending on the race in a key swing state was about $80 million, most from fat cats, making it "the fattest cat in the history of primaries." El-Sayed reportedly got about $4.6 million in outside money; Stevens and Netanyahu got about $60 million, the plurality of it from AIPAC's United Democracy Project (sic) super PAC - the most they've dumped into a single race, making it what observers call AIPAC's biggest defeat. From I Fucking Love Australia: AIPAC shoved 30 million dollars up Michigan's arse, and Michigan shat it straight back out."

Born in Detroit in 1984, Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed was raised by his father Mohamed, an Egyptian immigrant, and his stepmother Jackie, whose Michigan roots go back to the 1800s. After graduating from the University of Michigan Phi Beta Kappa, he earned an MD from Columbia and a doctorate in public health from Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, worked as an epidemiologist and became the youngest health official in a major American city when he was appointed Director of Detroit's Health Department, gutted rwhen it was privatized during the city’s bankruptcy, at age 30. Rebuilding it, he went after corporate polluters, stripped lead out of schools, starting offering free glasses to kids in need, expanded Narcan access, and spearheaded a program cancelling up to $700 million in medical debt for 300,000 state residents.

Faced with that resume, AIPAC spent their millions on an ad blitz that managed not to mention any of his policies, or even Israel, though he won the first-ever political endorsement from Jewish Voice For Peace. Instead, they focused on the issues that really matter: They attacked El-Sayed for criticizing the Obamas, allegedly helping Trump win, and sitting for an interview with a streamer they don’t like, Hasan Piker. If he wins the general election against the GOP's carpetbagging empty suit Mike Rogers, he'd become the first Muslim in the Senate. His longtime message to Dems: Stop compromising, ban ICE, end sending arms to Israel, Medicare for All, no more forever wars, get dark money out of politics. On election night, at a podium reading, "MIchigan Is Not For Sale," he celebrated "the movement we were able to inspire," and "the idea that we could take our government back."

El-Sayed's victory, while slimmer than predicted, was seen as pivotal; noted Bernie Sanders, "This is an election between Abdul and the billionaire class.” And the candidate the establishment called "unelectable" won with the endorsement of the United Auto Workers, "the beating heart of Michigan labor." His win was the biggest but not the only news out of Michigan: Sunrise Movement co-founder and data center opponent William Lawrence also took the primary for Michigan’s 7th Congressional district. They join progressive wins elsewhere: Zohran Mamdani in New York. Katie Wilson in Seattle. Three Mamdani-backed candidates in New York primaries, two against longtime incumbents. Melat Kiros in Colorado. Troy Jackson in Maine. It's still a long tough road ahead. But take heart from spineless ghoul Mike Johnson: “The insurgent left is on the rise."

As if we didn’t need another case for building more homes — turns out, it reduces driving.

New planned housing is expected to cut the number of miles driven in California, according to a new study released on Thursday.

Researchers from UC Berkeley and UCLA analyzed the state’s housing plans to understand how changes in supply affect vehicle miles traveled. They found that building more homes can eliminate up to 1 percent of miles driven statewide, inching towards California’s official goal of a 25-percent drop by 2030.

Recommended Letter From Bogotá: How A Great World Capital Puts Housing, Transit and Public Space First Sophia Lebowitz July 29, 2026

Transportation researchers agree that decreasing vehicle miles traveled minimizes pollution, eases traffic congestion, and mitigates roadway fatalities. In some studies, less driving has brought money-saving and public health benefits, too.

“Many existing neighborhoods do have opportunities for people to be able to drive less,” said Zach Subin, one of the study’s researchers and an Associate Director at UC Berkeley’s Terner Center. “There’s very clearly an opportunity to … solve the housing shortage by directing new housing to these places.”

Now, research confirms that the benefits of reducing driving are achievable through building more housing. By growing the neighborhoods where public transit is reliable, walking is convenient, and shorter drives are possible, more Californians can enjoy car-light and car-free living.

The results are an encouraging sign that the state is making material progress towards ending car dependency. They don’t, however, capture its full potential, nor reduce driving to a livable standard.

Recommended California Climate Funding Fight Pits Transit and Housing Advocates Against Oil Industry Giveaways Damien Newton May 26, 2026

More strategic housing placement could reduce vehicle miles traveled by as much as 6 percent per capita, well-above the 0.9-percent currently expected. To reach that more ambitious goal, the study claims that cities would need to locate new housing with the sole intent of reducing driving, which they do not currently do. 

They may not be fully equipped to do so, researchers suspect.

California uses a top-down process in planning for new housing, with mandated growth goals for each city and county. First, state officials conduct a Regional Housing Determination, an eight-year projection of needed housing growth in every region. Regions are then on the hook for their allotted number of homes.

Each region then divides its target number amongst its municipalities based on current supply and expected demand. Finally, every municipality must then pass a state-approved Housing Element that demonstrates how they plan to build new housing, and where it will go.

California requires its cities to build housing, but cities decide where and how to build.

Cities are the focus of the state’s struggle to more dramatically reduce driving. Regional governments, the study finds, are sufficiently investing in housing production in cities and counties where residents drive less on average. But local governments aren’t paying the same attention to their car-light neighborhoods.

Subin theorizes that competing priorities and insufficient state support could both curb cities’ ability to plan more strategically. He notes that the study did not conclude a primary rationale for slowed local-level improvements, and that each municipality had its own unique struggles. However, he still sees clear opportunities for improvement.

“[Cities] can’t just do it on their own,” Subin stressed. “The state really needs to step up in terms of, not just guidance, but high quality data and technical assistance.” The study also recommends a prioritization of state-issued goals to help local governments stay on track.

California has long charted the nation’s path for climate action. To reach its ambitious carbon reduction goals, and to reduce other pollutants, traffic, and roadway fatalities, the state must continue to build. It won’t succeed, however, if cities can’t get with the program.

• The stopgap spending bill recently passed by the U.S. Senate would allow $38 billion in transportation funding to expire Oct. 1, because it does not extend the Biden administration’s infrastructure act. (News From the States)
• Vision Zero is a natural extension of the car-safety legislation the U.S. government passed in the 1960s. (Vox)
• Uber’s defense in sexual assault lawsuits is to blame the victims. (New York Times)
• Past EPA data made it clear that electric vehicles greatly reduce carbon emissions compared to gasoline, even when generating the electricity is accounted for. Now the EPA has stopped collecting that data. (The Equation)
• The Urbanist rounded up all the insane things the Trump administration has been doing lately regarding transportation.
• Street design is as important is zoning in encouraging more housing. (Planetizen)
• Sound Transit is installing fare gates at its busiest stations to boost revenue collection. (KOMO)
• The L.A. Metro is expanding a program that incentivizes households to drop down to one car. (The Source)
• Pittsburgh is stepping up enforcement against drivers blocking sidewalks and bike lanes. (WPXI)
• City of Pittsburgh employees who work downtown will receive free transit passes. (WESA)
• Omaha launched a $5 million relief fund for businesses affected by streetcar construction. (WOWT)
• As places with temperate climates get warmer, there’s a lot they can learn from cities in Southern Europe and the Middle East, such as the need for shade and shelter instead of wide-open paved spaces. (Building Design)
• Brisbane may not be the most walkable city, but it is “permeable,” meaning it’s inviting to explore on foot. (Architect)
• Ontario is a test case for what happens when automated traffic enforcement cameras are removed — speeding there surged. (CityLab)

China’s use of coal for electricity grew in the first half of 2026 as a record amount of wind and solar power was wasted through curtailment, new research has found.

The world’s largest greenhouse gas emitter brought 30 gigawatts (GW) of new coal power capacity into operation in the six months to June and coal-fired generation rose 3% after falling last year, according to a report by the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA) and Global Energy Monitor (GEM). Only 2.7GW of coal power was retired in the same period. 

The coal expansion stems from a surge in power plant approvals that followed power shortages caused primarily by high coal prices in 2021, when blackouts and factory shutdowns hit roughly 20 Chinese provinces. Local governments responded by fast-tracking new coal projects as insurance against future outages.

A further 274 GW of coal capacity – equivalent to roughly a fifth of China’s existing coal fleet – is already either under construction or has permits to be built, meaning much of the sector’s expansion is locked in for years, the report says.

• Aug 5, 2026 Clean Energy Frontier Southeast Asia’s fragile grids threaten billions in clean energy investment Renewables developers need reliable electricity infrastructure and stable policies to help the region meet climate goals and surging demand for power Read more
• Aug 4, 2026 Comment Is FOMO undermining climate diplomacy? The negotiating community has not become 20 times larger, but the COP has – and the rising number of participants, from politicians to business executives, is getting in the way of the task at hand Read more

“Climate concern”

Qi Qin, the report’s author, said the coal lock-in is a “climate concern”. “After coal power plants are built, they will seek revenue and operating hours for decades and that can crowd out clean power and slow the retirement of the older coal power units,” she added. 

The coal buildout is happening at the same time as Beijing signals a gradual shift in its energy rhetoric. In a document published last April, the Chinese government called for the country to “reasonably control” both China’s capacity to generate electricity from coal and, for the first time, how much electricity it actually generates from coal.

China has also pledged in its latest five-year plan to cut carbon emissions per unit of gross domestic product – known as carbon intensity – by 17% between 2026 and 2030. It plans to reach net zero by 2060.

But, according to Qi, there is still a real gap between the direction of national policy and what is happening on the ground.

Growing renewables curtailments

While China generated less than half of its electricity from coal for the first time in the six months to last June, growing demand for electricity meant coal power generation still rose 3.4%, reversing a roughly 1% decline recorded in 2025, the report said. 

Available clean electricity from solar and wind, which have seen a record expansion in China, would have been more than enough to meet the extra demand and drive coal power down if it had been fully used, the report said. Instead, the amount of clean electricity wasted kept growing.

Estimated rates of curtailment, the intentional reduction of electricity from a source, for wind and solar were up by about a half in the six-month period compared to last year, wasting the equivalent of Indonesia’s annual electricity output. 

Coal’s protected status

Researchers said that was caused by the Chinese grid’s inability to absorb the additional clean electricity, in addition to energy contracts and pricing mechanisms skewed in favour of coal power. 

Chinese coal generators are required to sign long-term contracts covering a fixed share of the previous year’s output, now standing at 70%. Qi said that, out of fear of electricity shortages, regulators introduced these arrangements to protect coal power plants by guaranteeing them predictable prices and utilisation rates.

Additionally, China has also begun paying coal plants to stand ready to generate electricity, rather than for actually running, through new capacity payments introduced this year.

China unveils underwhelming emissions-cutting target for 2035

Qi said that, while each of these mechanisms has a legitimate purpose on its own, they now combine to give coal power excessive protections. “When renewables are abundant, they [coal operators] don’t have the incentive and are not required to ramp down,” she added. 

The report suggested lowering, or even suspending, coal-specific contract minimums in provinces that are experiencing clean energy being wasted or prolonged periods of zero or negative electricity prices. That would help coal transition to a more flexible backup role and facilitate the integration of renewables, the researchers argued.

They also urged the Chinese authorities to halt permits for new coal power projects and reassess those that have already been permitted, while favouring grid expansion, energy trade across provinces and storage as ways to boost energy reliability.

The post China’s coal power rebounds as record clean energy goes to waste appeared first on Climate Home News.

Hundreds of union registered nurses, community allies, and elected officials rallied in Portland, Maine to demand the release of Debora Kapisha, RN, a nurse at Maine Medical Center who is currently detained by ICE. They scored a major first victory by successfully blocking her transfer from Massachusetts to Louisiana, where she would have been far from her family, legal counsel, and support network.

This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Karin Kirk

It’s hot. Fans and air conditioners are humming in homes, offices, commercial buildings, and factories. July is the most electricity-intensive time of year in the U.S., and the grid is working hard to keep up.

In many places, high electricity demand equals high pollution. That used to be true in New Mexico, but the state’s electricity supply flipped from majority climate-warming fossil fuels to majority renewables in just five years. Spurred by an ambitious clean energy law called the Energy Transition Act, utilities have been busy building solar panels, wind turbines, batteries, and transmission lines. A major coal plant was retired and demolished. Solar panels proliferated on homes, schools, and businesses.

And even while New Mexico was building out its clean energy future, electricity prices remained cheaper than average.

A case study in cleaner electricity

New Mexico’s largest utility is the Public Service Company of New Mexico, or PNM. Only five years ago, most of PNM’s cooling needs were met by coal and gas, which made up 83% of its electricity generation in July 2021.

But the state’s abundant sunshine now provides much of the region’s electricity.

The golden line on the graph below shows grid-scale solar energy production in PNM’s territory every day for a week. The sun generated 41% of the total electricity the week of July 6, when I did this analysis.

Batteries deliver stored sunshine in the evening

The next graph shows electricity stored and generated by utility-scale batteries. During the daytime, the line dips below zero when the batteries are pulling electricity off the grid to charge up.

In the Southwestern U.S., electricity is cheap during sunny days because everyone’s solar panels are cranking out electrons at the same time. The utility could try to sell excess solar energy to other regions, but it’s not worth much. It’s far better to store it for later.

Summer evenings are hot, even as the sun eases toward the horizon and solar production wanes. That’s when PNM’s battery fleet comes to life, delivering the solar energy stored a few hours earlier. The green line spikes upward as the batteries kick into gear.

By around midnight, the batteries are discharged. But metaphorically speaking, so are most people. Electricity demand drops off as everyone heads to bed and temperatures cool off for the night.

Bring on the wind

Sunshine and batteries aren’t quite enough to power everything 24/7. The next big player is wind, shown with the blue line on the graph below. Note how the wind blows strongest in the evening – it’s the perfect complement to solar in this region. Wind accounted for 20% of electricity generation during the week shown below.

New Mexico’s evening wind is also helping out Arizona and California as a result of the recently completed SunZia project. Located in central New Mexico, the project’s 916 wind turbines generate electricity and a 550-mile, high-voltage transmission line carries it westward.

Still some fossil fuels – but a lot less

Only five years ago, fossil fuels were the main characters in PNM’s electricity generation. Now they’re the supporting cast.

The brown line on the graph below shows electricity generated from natural gas, a fossil fuel composed primarily of climate-warming methane. Little gas is needed during the day, thanks to solar energy. In the evening, gas generation picks up, though it’s still generating less than batteries and wind.

The steady black line shows coal generation. Coal plants run best when operated at a constant pace, because frequent ramping up and down causes them to run less efficiently and can lead to more fatigue on aging equipment.

All told, coal and gas made up 38% of the electricity supply the week of July 6, with renewables generating 62%.

It’s worth noting that July’s heat drives the highest rates of fossil fuel use for PNM. About half the days in the past year saw renewables generating 70% or more of the daily electricity need, and in late spring of this year, renewables routinely met more than 80% of demand.

A transformation in just five years

Compare the chart above to the one below from 2021, when coal and gas power plants generated nearly 80% of the total electricity. Every day, the utility ramped up gas power plants to meet the evening peak in electricity demand. Solar and wind were relatively small contributors, totaling just over 20% between them.

So how did this transformation happen? The answer is in part two of this story, coming Monday.

A note on data

The data comes from the Energy Information Administration’s Hourly Grid Monitor. Note that not all of the electricity shown in these graphs is used by PNM. Some of it is exported to other regions, and PNM also imports some electricity into its service territory. Nevertheless, the data paints a picture of how different sources of electricity generation blend together to provide power through the day and night.

This article first appeared on Yale Climate Connections and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

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