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When my grandma speaks, I hang onto her words with a burning curiosity. Her voice, thick with a lilting twang that could only come from a tried-and-true Oklahoman, wraps around my earliest memories...

This story is published through the Indigenous News Alliance.

When the chief of the Okanagan Indian Band looked down on his community from a helicopter last week, much of what he had known all his life was gone.

Homes had burned. Photographs, memorabilia, and Salish baskets had disappeared with them. More than 30 band members had lost their homes, naspəpʕásəs Dan Wilson said, along with around 200 homes and other structures belonging to non-band members.

“Our loss is measured in the family histories that have been lost — especially the Elders who have lost their homes,” he said.

The destruction left by the Bradley Creek wildfire at nk̓maplqs (the head of Okanagan Lake) comes amid a wildfire season that has repeatedly forced Indigenous peoples across Canada from their homes. As of Tuesday, 601 wildfires were burning across the country, including 113 classified as out of control and another 371 that remained out of control but were being monitored rather than actively suppressed.

Those numbers have translated into a summer of evacuations, displacement, and, in some communities, devastating losses for First Nations. Wildfires have affected at least 81 First Nations and forced 9,131 people from their communities since April 1; 2,524 people remained evacuated as of Tuesday. As fires have threatened communities from British Columbia to Ontario, Indigenous leaders have raised concerns about inadequate firefighting equipment, delays in emergency assistance, and the information used to make evacuation decisions.

In Ontario, a fast-moving fire devastated Namaygoosisagagun First Nation in July as residents fled by boat. At least 12 First Nations in the province have been fully or partially evacuated because of wildfires this summer, according to Chiefs of Ontario. The organization is demanding an independent public inquiry into what Ontario Regional Chief Abram Benedict called a “catastrophic and systemic failure” in the response.

And last week, leaders of Kiashke Zaaging Anishinaabek were still fighting an Ontario government decision to withdraw wildfire implementation and evacuation orders while massive fires remained out of control nearby.

For the Okanagan Indian Band, the immediate danger has eased. The wildfire, which started July 31 on reserve lands near Vernon, British Columbia, had burned about 6,550 acres as of Monday. It was classified as being held over the weekend, meaning it was expected to remain within its existing boundaries under prevailing and forecast conditions. Some evacuation orders have since been rescinded or downgraded.

Although the community faces a long recovery, it “is getting stronger every day,” Wilson said last week. “We’re holding up. We’re very resilient. We have a long history — we’ve been here for 10,000 years.”

Read Next Wildfire season is changing. Spokane is showing how. Sachi Kitajima Mulkey

Wilson praised the band’s firefighters, who were first on the scene and worked alongside provincial wildfire crews. “They went above and beyond. I can’t say enough,” he said.

Wilson said the band’s fire department, which consists of around 30 trained firefighters, was equipped only with a fire truck designed to tackle structural fires. “If we had a proper wildland firefighting truck that’s able to access rough terrain … I’m told that if we had that equipment, our first responders would’ve been able to put that fire out immediately,” he said.

He said that concern was relayed to Mandy Gull-Masty, the federal minister of Indigenous Services.

Wilson noted that the one bright spot from the helicopter tour was seeing the Komasket powwow arbour grounds — as well as the nearby daycare and Nk̓maplqs Iʔ Snm̓am̓ay̓aʔtn Iʔ K̓l Sqilxʷtət Cultural Immersion School — unscathed by the fire. 

The disaster comes five years after the Whiterock Lake wildfire destroyed 10 homes belonging to Okanagan Indian Band members and displaced the community for weeks.

For communities facing this summer’s fires, the challenges have extended beyond escaping the flames. The devastation of Namaygoosisagagun, also known as Collins First Nation, has raised questions about whether the remote community will receive federal recovery and rebuilding assistance. Although its residents are recognized as First Nations people under the Indian Act, Namaygoosisagagun is not recognized as a First Nation. A lawyer representing the community wrote to Gull-Masty that denying it the emergency and rebuilding assistance available to recognized First Nations could threaten its ability to rebuild.

Ontario Regional Chief Abram Benedict also criticized bureaucratic obstacles First Nations encountered while trying to access emergency assistance. On July 30, Chiefs of Ontario called for an independent public inquiry into the province’s response, saying at least 12 First Nations had been fully or partially evacuated during the wildfire season.

“There has been a catastrophic and systemic failure at nearly every level and at nearly every step of this process,” Benedict said in a statement. “We need to know how and why this happened. But most importantly, we need to learn from it so it never happens again.”

Read Next A ‘crisis communication gap’ threatens Indigenous peoples Dionne Phillips

Communication has emerged as another concern. When an out-of-control wildfire threatened Xeni Gwet’in First Nation in British Columbia in April, authorities did not provide emergency alerts in Tŝilhqot’in — the only language spoken by many Elders in the community — leaving the Nation’s own forestry crew to alert them directly.

Sara Wilson, a communications researcher at Simon Fraser University, has described such shortcomings as part of a broader “crisis communication gap,” pointing to language barriers, underfunding, and the exclusion of Indigenous communities from decision-making during emergencies.

Those concerns extend beyond how emergency information is communicated to questions about who decides when a First Nation is safe. That question remained at the center of a dispute last week at Kiashke Zaaging Anishinaabek, also known as Gull Bay First Nation, in northwestern Ontario. The Nation’s leaders objected to the government decision to withdraw wildfire implementation and evacuation orders around the community. “Our members are still at risk and our infrastructure is at risk,” Chief Wilfred King told CBC Thunder Bay.

Several large fires remained near the community, and King said one of the community’s greatest concerns was that one of them could block its only road out, leaving residents trying to flee across Lake Nipigon. “The only escape would be jumping on boats and crossing Lake Nipigon, and that’s not an alternative,” he said.

King said the community was also concerned about delays in receiving information about changing fire conditions. Before residents return, he said, the Nation also must ensure its water treatment and sewage systems are functioning safely.

Ontario’s Ministry of Natural Resources told CBC that changes to evacuation orders would be made only when fires no longer posed a risk, based on advice from fire behavior experts. But King said the provincial order should have remained in place until the community was confident it was safe. He told CBC that Indigenous Services Canada supported the Nation’s decision to maintain its own evacuation order.

At Okanagan Indian Band, support came from other First Nations and Indigenous leaders. Penticton Indian Band and Westbank First Nation opened their communities to evacuees, while leaders from across the syilx Okanagan Nation Alliance reached out.

At an emotional community meeting in Vernon, drummers Bruce Manuel and his sister Trish Manuel, sent by Upper Nicola Band Chief Dan Manuel, performed a closing drum song. Wilson said the response was “really bolstering our spirits here.”

“We say our prayers,” he said. “We have a strong faith in kʷuləncútn, the Creator.”

This story was originally published by IndigiNews and updated with additional information by Grist.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Canada’s wildfire season is taking a heavy toll on First Nations on Aug 11, 2026.

Mollie’s Pack has left the safety of Yellowstone’s borders and entered a hunting area.

For seven weeks this June and July, a crew of curious campers explored Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary’s boardwalk and beyond. 69 local youth, aged 6-16, laughed, learned, and formed lifelong connections...

The author, Betsy Pfeiffer, was a UC Berkeley Goldman School of Public Policy (GSPP) Fellow and Greenbelt Alliance research collaborator between February and May 2026.

How do we help Californians understand that building homes in existing communities is good for commutes, wallets, and the environment? Over the first half of 2026, I had the opportunity to work with Greenbelt Alliance to identify existing housing and climate narrative strategies and develop guidance to increase impact.

To understand how Greenbelt Alliance can communicate this link more effectively to Californians, I consolidated existing research, recent polling done by EMC Research, and stakeholder input into a best practices playbook for communicating about climate and housing in California.

According to polling from 2025, California voters’ top five issues are cost of living, housing, crime, traffic, and climate change. Local land-use policies that prioritize infill development can address four out of five of those issues, but that same poll also showed that most voters don’t understand that connection. When asked what local governments could do about climate change, only 3% of respondents said housing policy, and a third of all respondents had no answer at all.

California has historically prioritized housing development on undeveloped land outside of existing communities—known as sprawl. These policy choices have normalized long commutes while driving up the cost of living, increasing traffic, and undermining Californians’ health and quality of life. These land use patterns also lead to more Californians living in areas that are vulnerable to wildfire and floods, which fuels insurance pressures that drive up housing costs statewide. In turn, pollution and global warming gases from so many long commutes are contributing to climate change.

While the links between housing and climate change are clear to many of us working in the field, they can be difficult to talk about in a way that resonates with the general public. There is a growing body of research on the most effective ways to communicate about the environment and housing separately, but little guidance exists on how to connect them.

Day-to-Day Life Resonates

The single most consistent finding from the research, the polling, and the advocates I interviewed is that messages rooted in tangible, everyday benefits outperform everything else. Quality-of-life messages combine those top four concerns from the poll—cost of living, housing, affordability, and climate change—by emphasizing that more housing in existing neighborhoods means less time in traffic, less money spent on gas, and less impact on the environment.

Shorter commutes, walkable neighborhoods, and living closer to family are messaging winners.

The Environment Belongs in The Story

Environmental messages poll well in California, and research suggests that pairing them with quality-of-life framings strengthens the narrative, but the right environmental angle varies by audience.

Urban Californians, for example, seem to respond most to framings that treat care for the environment or fighting climate change as broad values, not aligned with specific actions.

When speaking to rural and suburban residents, conservation messages, in contrast, may be more effective. And framing matters—”Protecting open space” earned strong support, but “stopping sprawl” did not. This difference reflects a broader best practice principle to link messages to existing concerns and keep the framing proactive and solutions-oriented.

Developing a positive framing for stories about disaster avoidance is a bigger challenge. Fire and flood hazards are among the most effective ways to connect housing and climate change, but to work as a housing development narrative, these messages need to execute a pivot that can be difficult to pull off. Moving from why “not to build” in certain places to “why to build” in others can be difficult to communicate effectively and simply in a single message. For now, wildfire threats and insurance pressures seem to land most powerfully with rural and suburban Californians, but urban residents are beginning to share those concerns as climate impacts reach more of the state.

The research demonstrates that quality of life framing applies broadly, but a more nuanced approach is needed when talking to urban versus suburban/rural audiences. Additionally, staying safe from fire and flood is a promising narrative for all Californians, but the messaging needs to be refined and tested. Finally, simpler is better: trying to combine all of these into a single message risks diluting the impact of each.

The Big Picture

Greenbelt Alliance and allies have the opportunity to shift the current public perspective on both housing and the environment to emphasize that housing is a climate solution. The quality of life plus environment pairing has strong evidential support, but it has yet to be tested. And while stakeholder input suggests that separating audiences into urban versus suburban/rural is a reasonable starting point, it’s an inference rather than a tested finding. 

Encouragingly, Californians already care about what infill housing can deliver: shorter commutes, lower costs, walkable neighborhoods, land protection, and a healthier climate.

Header Photo: View from Berkeley Hills. By Chris LaBasco Photography

The post Build California Here appeared first on Greenbelt Alliance.

Skeptical Science is partnering with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. You can submit claims you think need checking via the tipline.

Are there enough minerals for solar power expansion to help mitigate climate change?

Global mineral supplies are large enough to support solar development for climate change mitigation.

A 2023 analysis of 75 emissions-reduction scenarios found that projected median mineral demand largely remains within known geological resources. Projected median demand for silver was about 68,000 metric tons, compared to 530,000 tons of estimated reserves; cadmium demand was 38,000 tons against 500,000 tons of reserves.

Tellurium may constrain cadmium-telluride panels, a minority of the global solar market, but research suggests improved refining and material efficiency could substantially reduce this strain.

Recycling can further reduce demand for newly mined minerals by recovering silver, copper, silicon, and other components for reuse in future panels. Recent innovations are improving recycling cost-effectiveness, while federal programs continue to support domestic mineral supply chains and recycling research. 

The main challenge lies in expanding production and supply chains, not mineral shortages.

Go to full rebuttal on Skeptical Science or to the fact brief on Gigafact

This fact brief is responsive to quotes such as this one.

Sources

AP News Study: Enough rare earth minerals to fuel green energy shift

Joule Future demand for electricity generation materials under different climate mitigation scenarios

USGS Byproduct Mineral Commodities Used for the Production of Photovoltaic Cells

Yale School of the Environment As Millions of Solar Panels Age Out, Recyclers Hope to Cash In

Resources, Conservation and Recycling Innovating the recycling of silicon-based solar panels with an eco-friendly alkaline leaching process

MIT Climate Can solar panels be recycled?

U.S. Department of Energy End-of-Life Management for Solar Photovoltaics

The White House Fact Sheet: President Donald J. Trump Delegates Defense Production Act Authority with Respect to Recoverable Critical Minerals and Materials That Are Essential to Our National Defense

Columbia Law School Sabin Center for Climate Change Law Rebutting 33 False Claims About Solar, Wind, and Electric Vehicles

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About fact briefs published on Gigafact

Fact briefs are short, credibly sourced summaries that offer "yes/no" answers in response to claims found online. They rely on publicly available, often primary source data and documents. Fact briefs are created by contributors to Gigafact — a nonprofit project looking to expand participation in fact-checking and protect the democratic process. See all of our published fact briefs here.

Layers of red dust coat South Africa’s Saldanha Bay, a legacy of the one billion-plus tonnes of iron ore exported from what was once a quiet coastal fishing town in the 1970s. Now the government wants to turn this area into the “oil and gas hub of South Africa”, but opposition from local communities and civil society could force a change of plan.

Since 2014 South Africa has developed a strategy for taking “full advantage” of its marine resources, known as Operation Phakisa. It has resulted in more than 95% of the ocean off South Africa’s nearly 3,000-kilometre coastline being mapped for oil and gas exploration.

The plan seeks to “drill 30 exploration wells in 10 years”, which it estimates could lead to the production of an average of 370,000 barrels of oil and gas per day over 20 years, with Saldanha Bay earmarked as a key logistics hub. It also aims to develop other marine sectors like aquaculture, maritime transport and ocean tourism.

However, two major court cases against the government and oil giants Shell and TotalEnergies have challenged those plans, as coastal residents, allied with national civil society groups, have pushed back against oil concessions held by the multinationals, arguing they were not consulted, and that towns like Saldanha Bay could face social and environmental harms from the fossil fuel extraction.

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Melissa Groenink-Groves, programme manager at legal nonprofit Natural Justice, said the cases in South Africa could set a precedent for the whole region. “When communities win in the courts, the successes serve as inspiration for other communities to advocate [for] their rights in their own contexts,” she explained.

She added that the legal challenges to Operation Phakisa also develop climate litigation in South Africa, and could impact how environmental impact assessments are conducted going forward.

Globally, as the oil and gas industry sets its sights on the ocean, with over 85% of new discoveries in 2024 made offshore, scientists and activists warn it could threaten marine life and coastal communities, and weaken the ocean’s ability to trap excess heat from the atmosphere, fuelling planetary warming further.

A demonstration against TotalEnergies’ offshore oil exploration effort in South Africa. (Photo: Ashraf Hendricks/GroundUp News) Taking oil companies to court 

About 400 kilometres north of Saldanha Bay, the Aukotowa Fisheries Cooperative, backed by nonprofits The Green Connection and Natural Justice, has taken TotalEnergies to court over its plans to drill for oil and gas in a 30,000-square-kilometre block off South Africa’s west coast.

The oil exploration block is in a biodiverse marine area bordering Namibia and South Africa known as the Orange Basin, which is a “highly relevant” sanctuary for endangered species, according to Nelson Mandela University’s Institute for Coastal and Marine Research.

Among other grievances, the cooperative maintains that the company’s environmental impact assessment was flawed, failing to consider the project’s contribution to climate change, and that the government “placed the profits of a multinational corporation above the livelihoods of vulnerable coastal communities”. The Western Cape High Court concluded hearings in late March and is expected to deliver a ruling later this year.

Walter Steenkamp, chairperson of the Aukotowa Cooperative, is concerned that the oil and gas drilling will lead to increased inequality, asking “for whom is the development? Definitely not for us.”

In a written statement, TotalEnergies told Climate Home News that it “is a responsible operator fully committed to complying with all applicable South African legislation”.

Southeast Asia’s fragile grids threaten billions in clean energy investment

Communities and climate impacts at stake

On the other side of the country, along South Africa’s eastern coastline, community-based nonprofit Sustaining the Wild Coast and partner organisations have since 2021 challenged Shell and Impact Africa’s exploration permit, arguing that the firms had failed to consult impacted communities – a legal requirement under South African law.

Co-plaintiff Sinegugu Zukulu also said in 2022 that “oil and gas will lead to more emissions, and in the face of climate change, this is wholly irresponsible”.

Following two rulings against the companies by lower courts, the case is now before South Africa’s highest Constitutional Court, which has reserved judgment since September 2025. A ruling against the companies would be final, effectively ending the exploration permit.

Legal expert Groenink-Groves said oil exploration applications under Operation Phakisa have been “granted largely without properly assessing the devastating impact an oil spill could have on small-scale fishers, the risks of drilling in ultra-deep waters, [and] without accounting for climate change impacts associated with oil and gas exploitation”.

She added that exploration applications have often failed to consider coastal management laws and in some cases, cross-border and regional environmental risks.

Shell and South Africa’s Department of Mineral and Petroleum Resources did not respond to written requests for comment.

Sinegugu Zukulu, co-plaintiff in the case against Shell. (Photo: Tom van der Schijff) South Africa’s offshore oil ambitions

Fishers around South Africa, many of whom have for generations relied on marine resources for survival, say the country’s offshore oil and gas push is sacrificing their livelihoods for profit.

“Why do they want to destroy our heritage? We can’t afford to say yes to oil and gas because the ocean is our source of life,” said Carmelita Mostert, a member of advocacy group Coastal Links and third-generation Saldanha Bay fisher. 

Yet with unemployment above 30%, alongside high levels of poverty and wealth inequality, the government sees Operation Phakisa as a vehicle for socioeconomic development.

South Africa’s Minister of Mineral and Petroleum Resources Gwede Mantashe has described the court cases as “anti-development”, and claimed that the environmental organisations are funded by the CIA.

Sifiso Dladla, a campaigner with human rights organisation groundWork, argued that the close relationship between the government and the fossil fuel industry – including its more than 3% contribution to gross tax revenue – limits the potential success of movements pushing for an inclusive energy system. Politicians “need money to win elections. Mining companies need the government to protect them,” he said.

Patrick Bond, a political economist and sociology professor at the University of Johannesburg, said Operation Phakisa only makes economic sense if its social and environmental harms are ignored, adding that “if a genuine social cost of carbon analysis were done in any African fossil fuel project, there would be few – if any – able to justify the projects economically”. 

Bond added that efforts by South African communities to oppose oil projects are undermined by public and private financial support for oil companies, including the French government’s $2.8 billion stake in TotalEnergies. 

For Saldanha Bay fisher Mostert, the fight is about protecting the livelihoods of coastal communities. “It is my hope that we can stand strong and protest,” she said. “If oil and gas is not allowed, our lives will be much easier and better – but if oil and gas goes ahead we will be in absolute agony.”

This piece was edited to clarify Patrick Bond’s comment on the international support for oil corporations.

The post South Africa’s offshore oil push meets grassroots resistance in court appeared first on Climate Home News.

With more than two decades of advocacy efforts and many twists and turns, the site known as Tesla Park in eastern Alameda County needs protection once again. 

In 2021, Governor Gavin Newsom, the Legislature, and the California Department of Parks and Recreation reached a $31 million agreement to protect the Alameda-Tesla Expansion Area from off-highway vehicle (OHV) recreation on the land.

We are now asking our supporters to reach out to legislators to ask them to support establishing Tesla as a State Natural Reserve. We need your urgent help because State Parks plans to release the general plan and Environmental Impact Report by the end of the year. We cannot let Tesla’s irreplaceable resource values be damaged by short-term thinking. Send an email to Assemblymember Bauer-Kahan and Senator McNerney in a few easy steps using this action alert!

Tesla has natural and cultural resources of statewide significance that exceed the statute for Reserve classification, from extraordinary biodiversity to an essential critical linkage wildlife corridor to important historic and prehistoric cultural resources. Learn more here. 

Historic Fight

With the mobilization of a coalition of organizations, led by the Save Tesla Park campaign, Greenbelt Alliance helped fight this battle for Tesla Park—and won. The land has rare ecological value and contains an abundance of highly sensitive natural and cultural resources. Learn more here. 

This agreement was part of the 2021 Natural Resources Budget Trailer Bill AB 155/SB 155, which ended plans to expand the Carnegie State Vehicular Recreation Area (SVRA) into the 3,100-acre Tesla Park and provides resources to reallocate this high-environmental-impact activity to a different, more appropriate location. 

For at least two decades, Tesla Park was at risk of becoming a destructive off-highway vehicle/motorized recreation park as an expansion project for the Carnegie SVRA. In 2019, Governor Newsom vetoed legislation that would have preserved Tesla Park, and in June 2021, threatened to line-item veto a Tesla Park protection item in the budget unless it was removed. Ultimately, the Tesla budget language was passed.

Now, this land will become a new unit of the state park system, under the control of State Parks and the Parks and Recreation Commission. A planning process is currently being conducted to determine the classification of Tesla Park as a unit of the park system and its management and use plan, with $1 million allocated to the planning process. 

Greenbelt Alliance and the coalition to Save Tesla Park are working to have Tesla classified as a State Natural Reserve, which can provide low-intensity public access, education, and enjoyment, including hiking, nature appreciation, cultural resource interpretation and tours,
and ensure that its irreplaceable natural and cultural resources are protected forever.

With information from Friends of Tesla Park.

The post Tell Legislators to Make Tesla Park a Natural Reserve appeared first on Greenbelt Alliance.

I went for a run this morning, on a paved trail that runs along a little creek surrounded by a few loblolly pine trees and some red maples, a little bit of urban nature surrounded by houses, streets, and suburbia. It was humid in the early summer morning, with mist steaming up off the concrete […]

Restoration of the Broadford Bridge oil site in West Sussex is due to begin this summer, officials have confirmed.

The Broadford Bridge oil site during operation. Photo: Weald Action Group

The site, near Billingshurst, is subject to two council planning enforcement notices after the operator, a subsidiary of UK Oil & Gas plc (UKOG), failed to return the well pad to farmland.

Broadford Bridge has had no planning permission since March 2024 when West Sussex County Council refused an application for a fifth extension of consent. Before that, the site had been mothballed since 2018.

An operation to plug and abandon two Broadford Bridge wells ended in February 2026.

But the well pad, fencing, gates and soil bunds remain, despite a planning condition requiring the operator to return the site to farmland. West Sussex County Council took enforcement action in January 2025 and February 2026.

A council spokesperson said today:

“Two Breach of Condition Notices (BCNs) were served on 13 February 2026. These remain live and require the operator to remove all associated infrastructure (including buildings, plant, machinery, fencing, gates and other structures) and restore the site in accordance with the approved restoration scheme by 31 December 2026.

“The operator has advised that the intention is for restoration works to commence this summer with a view to achieving restoration by the required date.”

Restoration includes work to clean and remove surface stone layers, take-up impermeable membranes, in-fill drainage ditches and regrade the soil from surrounding earth bunds to return the site to its original appearance and use.

Access application Access track application plan. Source: WSCC/036/26

The restoration timeframe emerged in a new planning application for Broadford Bridge (WSCC/036/26).

The application, to keep the site access track, was submitted on behalf of Sheila Francis by the Zetland planning consultancy which has previously worked for UKOG companies.

It revealed: “the well site is to be restored (Summer-Autumn 2026)”.

The application seeks to retain the 450m track to the well site for “agricultural purposes” and the junction of the track with the B2133 Adversane Lane. The application does not seek to retain the former well pad area and fencing around it.

Comments on the access track application can be made online. The deadline for comments is 20 August 2026. A decision is expected by 21 September 2026.

The National Park Service is reportedly weighing a land swap that would allow a data center to be built inside Prince William Forest Park in northern Virginia, one of the D.C. area’s largest green spaces and a Civil War-era site.

Developer Highland Digital owns an “inholding,” land inside the park’s boundaries that was privately held before the park was established, and was considering building a data center there. But that site has wetlands and streams that complicate permitting, so Highland Digital came up with a workaround: swap its wetland-heavy inholding for other Park Service land nearby that would be easier to develop. It hired lobbyist Jeff Small, a former senior Interior department official in the first Trump administration, to work on the swap in May 2025.

According to the National Parks Conservation Association, the deal looks balanced on paper but actually leaves “the developer com[ing] out ahead” with land “primed for development.” Representative Eugene Vindman’s office asked the Park Service in mid-July whether it even has legal authority to trade park land without congressional approval and says it never got a response, while Highland Digital has since withdrawn a permitting application and scrapped a public meeting without explanation. Since becoming Interior secretary, Doug Burgum has been a vocal advocate of artificial intelligence and data centers.

Huffman, Dexter launch investigation into Energy Fuels execs

Members of the House Natural Resources Committee have opened an investigation into whether Energy Fuels executives traded on advance knowledge of President Donald Trump’s decision to shrink Bears Ears National Monument by more than 90 percent. The company’s CEO, Ross Bhappu, bought 74,000 shares on July 7, the largest insider purchase in company history, and Chairman Bruce Hansen bought 4,000 more the next day, just five days before Trump stripped monument protections from nearly 1.4 million acres, including uranium-rich areas the company has eyed for years.

Representatives Jared Huffman and Maxine Dexter say the company’s lobbying ties to the administration, including a former Trump Interior official on retainer, “may have enabled” Bhappu and Hansen to learn of the announcement early, and they’re demanding Energy Fuels’ communications with Interior, Agriculture, and Defense officials.

Quick hits Opinion: Doug Burgum is the real vandal behind Trump’s failed Reflecting Pool renovation

Daily Beast | Bismarck Tribune

Trump’s fire chief defends crackdown on letting wildfires burn

E&E News

Opinion: Proposed changes to federal oil and gas provisions are bad for public land, private property owners and democracy

WyoFile

Organ Pipe monument closes roads to clear path for 2nd border wall construction

Arizona Daily Star

‘A day of infamy’: Construction bulldozes through Big Bend National Park

GearJunkie

Opinion: Why is Burgum licking Trump’s boots?

Dickinson Press

Six takeaways from the slashing of Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante

Outside

OnX tool connects Montanans to public land comment opportunities

Bozeman Daily Chronicle

Quote of the day

In the desert, there is no more valuable habitat than where the trees grow… In this arid region, diversity and abundance of plant and animal species is nowhere greater… This is what they chose to destroy first.”

—Former Big Bend biologist Raymond Skiles on border wall construction inside the park, GearJunkie

Picture This

@Interior

A single lightning strike can reach temperatures nearly 5 times hotter than the surface of the sun. At White Sands National Park, that incredible heat can fuse gypsum sand into formations called fulgurites, better known as “fossilized lightning.”

Feature image: Trail along creek in Prince William Forest in Virginia; Source: Diana Robinson/Flickr

The post NPS is quietly considering a data center deal inside a Virginia forest appeared first on Center for Western Priorities.

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Meteorologists' report shows record and near-record temperatures across the globe in 2025

Source

Originally published at the “Earth Chxrch” page of Neil Young’s Times-Contrarian. Talen is the religion editor at the Contrarian.  

The distance between our realization and actualization has changed — and it is a tragic dangerous thing that you and I share. Realizing can come in many forms. With the environmental movement the realization was the reading of Silent Spring. (For others among us, it was Edward Abbey’s The Monkey Wrench Gang.) That book by Rachel Carson made the danger from toxic chemicals in the air, water and soil — and our bodies — very real. We saw the danger. We could imagine and fear it. We were motivated to act.

We need to study the distance between realization and actualization, between oppression and revolution, between information and fight-or-flight. That distance, the billionaires and captains of the investor class have discovered, is the key to their control.

The old belief in journalism, and in the courts, and in the common sense of democracy is “If we have the facts, we can act.” In the United States the distance between realization and actualization has become an impassable distance. Our sensory experience of a thing has been blown up and filled with light, with attention-manipulating vibrating light, a bubble of signals the size of Grand Central Station, and we float around inside its delicious weightlessness — and we can’t kill the screen and get out of our chair.

If we become aware of the global heatwave that flared into fires and droughts in the summer of 2023 and is still overheating us, then we have before us endless pages of pixels, featuring the agony and suffering of the innocent of the world. We struggle to walk thousands of miles with climate refugees. We cry with parents of a child overcome by heat. We listen to wise biologists, as systems of natural life die and extinction looms.

So far all this reality on the screen amounts to one big human hesitation. We keep wondering why there is no uprising against the current increasingly silent spring. We are lost in the over-developed realization of danger. Ironically, the realization is increasingly unreal. We are growing a vivid and very convincing realization of a mass mortality event, but we can’t kill the screen and rise from our chair.

The strongmen and the billionaires are aware that AI will gives us as never before the sensation of democracy while pushing any action off the horizon. All-information, all-the-time will leave us overloaded and listless. Big money learned long ago to handle the irony of that in the age of AI. The ordinary computer users would know much more about the truth of their toxins and bullets, union-busting, and tax-evading. But the masters of the universe are secure in the knowledge that we will stay put in our dopamine drop.

Meanwhile the revolution against the Earth killers cannot be put off another day. The disappearance of life of all kinds is only accelerating. The climate change may be irreversible now, but if we don’t try, if we continue to put our hopes in the COP parlays with big oil, if we go on believing that our radical standing up cannot happen — then consumerism, the products and the screens and nonsense wars must prevail. Realize a dead planet with the occasional billionaire bunker…

Now is a moment in our history we cannot get wrong. And there is a battle that can set things right. The data centers multiplying now like an international rash are plundering energy and water, buying off local politicians, and daring us to cross from our realization to our action. The all-partisan uprising against the ugly super-warehouses is heartening. But the State of Virginia already hosts over 600 data centers. This battle may go on for years against the might of Silicon Valley, but in the struggle we will dramatize a clear message… and escape from that cathedral size bubble of pixels.

Will we escape that AI mind-prison? Will we take what we realize over into what we actually do? It’s like remembering how to love.

Remembering How to Love

There would be a moment in the realization-actualization cycle where we could be independent, kill the screen and stand up and walk into media-free reality…. and let’s call that moment The Decision. As the realization becomes the actualization there is a border, a moment when all the information is gathered and we stop, we make the decision to act. We commit.

We shut down the information which favors inactivity, sluggish consideration, endless assessment (although with AI maybe it’s more like a happy druggy sort of drifting… ). When we are finally free of all that, we say “Got It! Let’s Do It! Let’s Go!”

We are simplifying, aren’t we. We are consciously sharpening that learn-decide-act sequence. Why is this important. It’s that this preventable mass mortality event that is taking place — we’re sitting in a chair watching a screen. We could be organizing a drama at the door of Gaza-financing and AI-financing JPMorgan Chase, or we could be singing at a data center-resisting rally, or we could be screaming through the cyclone fence at an ICE concentration camp.

But the screen addiction takes our body far away from the global emergency. In our consumer society nowadays, with the screen the main product, consumerism is in a battle with the crisis of the physical environment. This is a battle for the attention of the consumer.

If the product wins, we lose our lives.

That is the message we tell ourselves at the moment of The Decision, at the start of action. So far for most of us, The Decision and the start of action continue to be a watching-only experience. Even if The Decision is consciously a turning away from this strong medium; even if we know we won’t be able to do our work for the Earth unless we turn away from the screen — chances are we are still watching. Oh yes, lots of the most powerful condemnation of the computer is done at the very computer that is being condemned.

The Revolution Will Not Be Computerized. In the end, we need to sober up. And for most of us, The Decision can’t be vague and shaky. We must make the decision to act with computers or iPhones not in the room.

Let’s practice. Demonstrate to ourselves that we can do it. Practice ending the incoming information. Practice stopping and making the decision. Practice obeying the decision, moving into the action.

Go to the wild Earth every day, walk in the woods, float in the lake. The infinite mystery of the Earth saves us if we let it. That’s the way that the Earth will save herself, taking the humans off-line. Letting us remember how to love.

The post Remembering How to Love Again in the Time of AI appeared first on The Revelator.

Replacing a gasoline car of any age—even a brand-new one—with an electric vehicle will almost always lower overall carbon emissions, according to a new analysis. The findings resolve a key conundrum about making the switch from gasoline to electric vehicles, the researchers say.

Driving an electric vehicle (EV) produces less emissions than driving a gasoline car, and the disparity is growing ever wider as electric grids decarbonize. So it has been obvious for a while that if you’re in the market for a new car the best choice for the environment is an EV. But manufacturing an EV produces more emissions than manufacturing a gasoline car, and this has led to uncertainty about the break-even point.

That is, if you own a gasoline car that works fine now and are considering when to replace it with an EV, should you drive the gasoline car into the ground, staving off the hefty emissions burden of EV manufacture for as long as possible? Or should you replace it as soon as budget allows, and start to reap the benefits of the EV’s much lower operating emissions?

“Even if you scrapped a new gas car, the EV still wins,” says study team member J. Elliott Campbell, chair of the environmental studies department at the University of California in Santa Cruz.  “The environmental advantage of EVs is now crystal clear.”

Campbell and his collaborator Roland Geyer, at the University of California in Santa Barbara, calculated the life-cycle carbon emissions of keeping a gasoline car on the road for 16 years (the typical lifetime of a passenger vehicle) compared to replacing it with an EV.

They considered many different vehicle types and timelines for replacement, as well as electricity sources, individual driving habits, battery size, and other parameters.

Replacing a gasoline car with an EV makes climate sense across a broad range of scenarios, even when the gasoline car is new, the researchers found. Of course, that won’t be affordable for most people. But it’s a stark illustration of the climate benefits of EVs.

 

.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:In a comparison of life-cycle emissions, EVs crushed combustion cars

 

In the analysis, climate benefits were generally greatest when gasoline car was scrapped in year 1, leading to an average 58% reduction in emissions over the 16-year period. It takes about three years of driving an EV to make up for the greater emissions involved in manufacturing it.

“I was shocked that even scrapping a hybrid gives big climate benefits,” Campbell says.

In 92% of the scenarios the researchers ran, replacing a gasoline car or hybrid vehicle with a battery electric vehicle before the end of its lifespan reduced overall carbon emissions. The exceptions: scenarios involving the least efficient EVs drawing power from the dirtiest electric grids; plug-in hybrids; and gasoline cars that are driven very few miles annually.

The energy mix of local electricity grids can shift the break-even point. But across most of the United States, it’s worth replacing even the most efficient gasoline cars early. And for the most common gasoline car models sold in the United States, early replacement makes climate sense even in areas with the dirtiest electric grids.

The benefits of switching to an EV will become even greater in the coming years, as electric grids decarbonize and battery recycling technology improves, which will decrease manufacturing emissions associated with EVs.

Campbell is now working on an analysis of the mass of materials involved in EVs compared to gasoline cars. “An EV has a 0.5 ton battery but a gas vehicle can use 20 tons of petroleum in its life,” he says. Batteries can be recycled, “but once you burn petroleum it’s essentially gone forever.  I think more work needs to be done to explore this material advantage for EVs.”

Source: Campbell J.E. and R. Geyer. “The climate benefits of retiring a fully operational internal combustion engine vehicle.” Science 2026.

Image: © Anthropocene Magazine.

As Brazil cracks down on the illegal clearing of forests, farmers and ranchers are moving into Bolivia, helping to fuel a wave of deforestation in a country where land is cheap and enforcement lax. 

Read more on E360 →

Headline News:

• “Plastic Made From Sugar Can Be An Alternative To Harmful Microplastics” • A Massachusetts lab, CJ Biomaterials, ferments sugar to make plant-based polymers that microbes will consume. These alternatives to traditional plastics made of fossil fuels are seen by some as one of many solutions needed to confront global plastic pollution. [ABC News]

Plastic tableware (Alanthebox, public domain)

• “FEMA Says It’s Providing Water Trailers To Puerto Rico Amid Water Crisis” • The Federal Emergency Management Agency said that it’s providing water trailers to Puerto Rico as the island grapples with a water crisis. The trailers will be distributed for up to 30 days initially, following the Puerto Rican government’s request for federal support. [ABC News]
• “CATL Battery For Electric Aviation Passes Important Safety Test” • CATL, the world’s largest battery maker, has developed a battery for use in electric aircraft. In particular, this battery is designed for passenger eVTOL aircraft (electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft). The battery has now passed an important safety test in China. [CleanTechnica]
• “Drought Declared In ‘Almost Three-Quarters’ Of England, UK Government Says” • Some 71.3% of England is in drought, the UK government said. This year, the nation experienced its driest July on record, with a fifth heatwave and scant rain forecast for the week ahead. Farmers battling low crop yields warned of possible food shortages. [Euronews]
• “Drought Forces Water Restrictions Across Nearly 70% Of France, Government Says” • “As France is experiencing a particularly severe drought, the effects of climate change continue to increase pressure on water resources,” the ministry for ecological transition said, adding that “nearly 70% of French territory is subject to restrictions on water use.” [Euronews]

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

Korean and international civil society organisations have formally called on SK Telecom to end its investment in a cookstove project in Myanmar that has been carried out in collaboration with an abusive military junta, and to put in place a responsible system for managing climate-related risk.

On 11 August, 28 civil society organisations from around the world — including the Myanmar Policy Institute, No Business With Genocide, Plan 1.5 and the Global Forest Coalition — issued a joint letter to Jung Jae-hun, CEO of SK Telecom. Citing the risk of human rights abuses associated with the project and the inflation of its claimed emission reductions, the letter sets out three demands: (1) end the company’s investment in the project; (2) refrain from trading the carbon credits already generated by the project; and (3) establish an internal system to fairly and accurately assess and verify international mitigation projects.

SK Telecom and 11 other SK Group affiliates have invested in the project since March 2018. In February this year, the project became the first in the world to have credit issuance approved under the Paris Agreement Crediting Mechanism (PACM). According to the Korean NGO Climate Change Center (CCC), which runs the project, SK Group has obtained 648,783 credits. Other Korean investors, including Korea Electric Power Corporation (KEPCO), ended their involvement after the military coup in Myanmar. SK Group’s 12 affiliates are now the only companies still invested in the project.

The signatories to the open letter point out that since the 2021 attempted coup, the project continued to be implemented by the Dry Zone Greening Department (DZGD) — an agency under the command and control of the military junta. Justice For Myanmar, a Myanmar civil society group, has criticised this arrangement, stating that “working with them on projects linked to international carbon market mechanisms lends administrative legitimacy to the junta and effectively grants impunity for their crimes under international law”.

The signatories also note that Sagaing, Mandalay and Magway, three of the regions where the project operated and emissions reductions were claimed during the crediting period (January 2021 to May 2022), are among the areas worst affected by military attacks on civilians. They argue that presenting communities as “beneficiaries” of improved cookstoves when the agency running the project is so clearly linked to the very forces attacking those communities is a contradiction.

Zaw Tuseng, Director of the Myanmar Policy Institute, said: “Communities in Sagaing and Magway are living through airstrikes, displacement, the destruction of villages and severe restrictions on movement. Under these conditions, credible monitoring, meaningful consultation and informed community consent cannot simply be assumed. SK Telecom should not use carbon credits generated under such circumstances to claim climate progress. It must disclose its involvement, suspend the use of these credits and support an independent, conflict-sensitive review that listens directly to affected communities.”

Due to the conditions on the ground, no on-site inspection of the project was carried out over the course of the verification process in any of the project’s locations. The project’s verification reports were prepared on the basis of online interviews rather than field verification, citing the difficult security situation caused by the conflict. Although the project presents women as its principal beneficiaries, only a very small number of women were interviewed as part of the monitoring or verification processes.

The signatories also raise the issue of inflated emission reductions. According to analysis by the European think tank Carbon Market Watch (CMW), the project was approved for the issuance of roughly 7.2 times more PACM credits than its actual emission reductions likely warrant. Most of the credits obtained by SK Group, the organisations say, are “junk credits” that deliver no real emission reductions.

SK Telecom itself has acknowledged that the emission reductions claimed by the Myanmar cookstove project cannot be verified. In its 2024 SK Telecom Taxonomy Report, the company classified the project as ‘not Aligned’ under the Korean Green Taxonomy(K-Taxonomy), citing “practical difficulties in verifying the greenhouse gas emission data of cookstoves used in Myanmar.” The project has thus been excluded from the green economic activities SK Telecom reports to investors. Despite this, it has still been allowed to generate hundreds of thousands of PACM credits for SK Group. 

Sooyoun Han, Policy Campaigner at Plan 1.5, said: “If SK Telecom uses credits with no assured emission reductions to meet its obligations under the Korea Emissions Trading Scheme (K-ETS), the environmental integrity of the scheme will inevitably be undermined. And if these junk credits are placed on the market to be used towards a Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC), the Paris Agreement’s 1.5°C goal will only move further out of reach.” She added: “If SK Telecom ends this investment before it is too late and builds an internal system to assess and verify international mitigation projects, it can prevent this from happening again and demonstrate that SK Group’s ‘Double Bottom Line’ — the simultaneous pursuit of economic and social value — is more than a slogan.”

Oli Munnion, with the Global Forest Coalition, said: “If the very first project to be cleared for crediting under the Paris Agreement’s new carbon market scheme is so clearly mired in controversy due to human rights abuses and over-crediting, what hope is there for the thousands of other projects in the crediting pipeline? If claims of “high-integrity” are to have any meaning whatsoever, then the main organisations behind this project—SK Group as financial backers and the PACM Supervisory Body with ultimate responsibility for oversight—must ensure that these junk credits are never used to offset very real and harmful emissions.”  

The organisations have asked SK Telecom’s CEO to respond to the open letter by 24 August.

Signatories:

60+ Climate Action
Adjunct Senior Research Fellow Griffith University
BigWave – Youth Climate Action Group
Biofuelwatch
Blue Dalian
Campaign for a New Myanmar
Carbon Market Watch
Climate Communications Coalition
Colectivo VientoSur
Earth Ethics, Inc.
Extinction Rebellion Korea
Federation of Community Forest Users, Nepal (FECOFUN)
Global Forest Coalition
Global Justice Ecology Project
Green Korea United
Indigenous Environmental Network
Institute for Green Transformation(IGT)
International Campaign for the Rohingya
Korean Civil Society in Support of Democracy in Myanmar
Korean Federation for Environmental Movement(KFEM)
Korean Women’s Environmental Network(KWEN)
Link-AR Borneo
Myanmar Policy Institute
No Business With Genocide
Plan 1.5
Practicing Buddhist Monk’s Association
Rainforest Action Network
Red Dominicana de Estudios y Empoderamiento Afrodescendiente(RedAfros)

Over the last two weeks, oil companies have announced eye-popping profits from the spring quarter. Exxon Mobil pulled in $14.5 billion. Chevron landed $12 billion, its highest quarterly profit on record. Shell posted $9.8 billion — more than twice its earnings from the same time last year.

These profits are largely a product of supply constraints brought on by the war in the Middle East. With the Strait of Hormuz effectively blockaded, oil suppliers have rerouted shipments over land and through pipelines. The resulting supply shortages, constrained refining capacity, and higher transportation costs have driven up oil and gasoline prices, delivering windfall profits for producers. 

But companies aren’t using those profits to drill lots of new wells or explore untapped oil fields. Instead, they’re pocketing the cash and paying their shareholders, experts say. What was once an industry defined by the “drill, baby, drill” ethos is now defined by another term: “capital discipline.” It’s a phenomenon in which rampant drilling and production growth has given way to tightened belts and bigger payouts to investors. 

Oil executives expected a weak financial year in 2026 due to a supply glut, but the closure of the Strait of Hormuz constrained oil production and allowed companies to charge top dollar for use of their refineries outside the Middle East. 

“While we didn’t anticipate the current situation, we were prepared for it,” Exxon CEO Darren Woods said in a July call with analysts, according to the Wall Street Journal. “Despite the temporary loss of approximately 10 percent of our upstream production, we delivered exceptional financial results.”

Chevron executives offered a similar assessment. In July, Chief Financial Officer Eimear Bonner told Bloomberg that the company didn’t adjust their production as prices rose. “We did not change any of our plan,” she said. 

The Trump administration’s focus on “unleashing” U.S. energy is running headlong into oil companies’ growing commitment to financial discipline. For instance, the administration assured the public that oil majors would leap at oil fields in Venezuela after the country’s leader, Nicolas Maduro, was detained in January. But drilling stayed low throughout the administration’s efforts to pry open public lands for oil development, and corporations have been wary and selective about new opportunities in Venezuela. Similarly, even as the administration has opened up U.S. federal lands for drilling, companies have shown only a lukewarm response. As Americans bleed cash at the gas pump, President Donald Trump has even accused oil companies of “making too much money” from the war, unable to otherwise influence them to significantly ramp up their production.

“Oil and gas companies respond more to financial incentives than they do to political signaling,” said Clark Williams-Derry, an energy finance analyst at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis. “They’re going to be looking at their finances first rather than politicians’ demands.”

If the U.S.-Israel war with Iran had occurred in 2012, oil companies might have seen the price spike as a chance to drill more wells. As fracking took off and prices rose during the 2000s, many companies tied their CEO compensation to production growth. Investors poured money into oil companies. But those days of aggressive production eventually ran into price crashes, especially after a Saudi-led coalition of oil-producing countries flooded the market with crude in 2014 and the COVID-19 pandemic sank prices again in 2020. 

In the last five years, as investors soured on drill-happy oil companies, they embraced a new, more disciplined approach to capital expenditure. Investors wanted steadier returns. Rather than rewarding aggressive production growth, they pushed companies to focus on lower-cost drilling, restrain spending, and return more cash to shareholders.

“What is perhaps most telling about the corporate response to the turbulent forces impacting the oil and gas sector is just how little changed [in 2026],” Tom Ellacott, senior vice president of corporate research at Wood Mackenzie, said in a July press release. “Capital discipline has proved more durable than either the bears or bulls expected.”

Drilling in the U.S., as measured by the number of oil rigs, has ticked up during the summer, Williams-Derry noted, but only after the president launched a war in Iran that drove up oil prices. As of June, it had only recovered to the rate recorded at the same point last year, according to data from Baker Hughes, an energy technology company.

In this new mode, Williams-Derry said, international oil companies have used wars, notably the conflicts in Ukraine and Iran, to boost their revenues so they can maintain large payments to their Wall Street investors. In times without price spikes, oil majors collectively took out debt as they paid their investors, their revenues unable to support the payments on their own, according to Williams-Derry’s internal analysis of their cash flow statements. In an ironic twist, oil companies have benefited more from constraints on global oil production than from “unleashing” it.

The climate implications of this new ethos are complicated. Already, oil companies’ tight spending has drawn most of them away from renewable energy investments. France’s TotalEnergies is the one supermajor that has charged ahead with its renewables business, though the Trump administration agreed to pay the company more than $900 million to cancel two offshore wind projects off New York and North Carolina. More discipline may also push companies to capture and resell the leaking natural gas from oil fields because maximizing revenue from existing wells has become more attractive than drilling expensive new ones. And this new attitude could keep oil and gasoline prices higher for longer, maintaining the appeal of electric vehicles and renewable energy sources. (Chinese solar panel and EV exports to some countries have spiked during the war.)

At least one analysis firm, Wood Mackenzie, believes disciplined oil companies could fall behind global demand, causing them to lose a share of the global oil market to nationally owned oil companies like Saudi Arabia’s, potentially changing the politics of energy security for Western countries.

Ultimately, however, this phase of “capital discipline” may only be temporary, Williams-Derry said. No oil company wants to be so disciplined that it begins to decline. Eventually, some growth will likely be necessary. 

Still, those companies have proven as capable of benefiting from energy shocks to U.S. consumers as they are of relieving them, an important note for political actors hoping to rely on oil companies for energy security. 

“At least for now, production of oil is no longer the way executives are getting paid,” Williams-Derry said. “What matters is their ability to generate cash.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline They’re making record profits, but oil companies still won’t ‘drill, baby, drill’ on Aug 11, 2026.