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Visitors to the Palo Alto Baylands Nature Preserve, captivated by gliding birds overhead and golden hills across the Bay waters, could be forgiven for failing to notice that the preserve is also home to the Bay’s newest levee. 

Most levees look like steep, barren embankments or riprap-clad seawalls, designed to prevent flooding by adding extra feet of height. But this project, though it shares a name, is a different type of infrastructure altogether. Seeded with over 35 species of native plants, the site is a pilot for what’s known as a horizontal levee, or living levee, blending into the estuary’s natural scenery as it spreads its feet of added height over a longer area. 

In stark contrast to a traditional levee, the Palo Alto Horizontal Levee Pilot Project’s natural appearance and gradual slope are designed to interact with Bay waters the same way natural estuaries do. 

“When you look at levees that are along the bay front, a lot of times they’ve got really steep faces and big, huge rocks in front of them to protect them from wind waves,” explained Mark Lindley, lead engineer on the Palo Alto living levee. “By having this flat, gradual slope with really dense vegetation on it instead of having rock, the waves break on that slope like they do on a beach.” 

The project is part of a growing trend in California’s Bay Area of using this type of green infrastructure to provide both flood mitigation and habitat restoration. Completed in 2017, the Oro Loma Horizontal Levee near Hayward, California, was the first of its kind and informed the design of the Palo Alto project, and others. There are around a dozen in various stages of design and development around the Bay.

But the Palo Alto pilot project is the first to be hydrologically connected to the Bay. Beneath the plants, soil, and gravel layers, plumbing connects the slope of the horizontal levee to the Palo Alto Wastewater Treatment Center across the street, allowing treated wastewater to irrigate the levee’s plants. As it does, the plants remove nitrogen from the water before it then filters into the Bay. Nitrogen, which can lead to harmful algal blooms in excess, is generally high in wastewater — though, the water from the facility currently meets regulations to be released into the Bay, said Samantha Engelage, senior engineer for the City of Palo Alto. The added treatment is purely a bonus for water quality. 

A sign explains the horizontal levee pilot project to visitors at the Baylands Nature Preserve. Visitors are also encouraged to submit photos to help researchers monitor the site. Charlotte Burks

By mimicking the natural world, the horizontal levee also provides the conditions native species need to thrive. One beloved Bay Area resident that may benefit from the approach is the salt-marsh harvest mouse, affectionately known as “salties.” The cinnamon-colored rodents, which fit in the palm of a hand, climb vegetation to escape rising tides each day. But due to encroaching development, they’ve been listed as endangered for decades — and their niche habitat also makes them vulnerable to the changing climate. “All you need is a couple of really, really bad storm and tide events to knock out a [local] population,” said Katie Smith, a wildlife biologist and saltie expert. 

By design, the horizontal levee will restore the vegetation and habitat that salties and other estuary wildlife rely on. According to Smith, the plan for the levee appears to create the “optimal potential option for salt-marsh harvest mice.” 

Stretching just 500 feet along the shore, the pilot project restores only a small portion of salties’ habitat — and it does not provide the full flood control needed at the Baylands. But it will provide something else: data. Over the next five years, researchers from the United States Geological Survey, universities, and local nonprofits will monitor qualitative benefits, such as recreational use, and quantitative benefits, like impacts on biodiversity and water quality. The results could help justify the higher costs often associated with green infrastructure projects like the horizontal levee, explained Engelage. 

The project has been almost a decade in the making. And although the levee is now visible to observant visitors at Baylands Nature Preserve, it is not fully operational yet. According to Engelage, delays in the project have sprouted from complexities in connecting the plumbing from the wastewater treatment plant to the levee. 

But its gentle slope is already acting as a flood break. And it is clear that for Bay Area residents big and small, the additional protection of this levee and others like it could not come too soon. In the Bay Area alone, sea level is projected to rise 3 to 6 feet by 2100. More imminently, the forecasted El Niño weather system could bring the Bay 6 inches of temporary sea level rise — a taste of what future decades may hold. 

“Twenty years from now, what we see at king tides is just going to be a normal high tide,” said Lindley, referring to the highest tides of the year. “Those areas that we’re seeing flooded at king tide, they’ll be flooded every day.” 

Correction: An earlier version of this story misstated Samantha Engelage’s title.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline A new type of levee is taking root in Northern California on Aug 11, 2026.

This coverage is made possible through a partnership between Grist and BPR, a public radio station serving western North Carolina. 

Hush Sinn delivers needles, naloxone, and other medical supplies to people in the mostly rural mountain communities of Madison County, North Carolina. Sinn does this through Holler Harm Reduction, a grassroots organization that strives to minimize the risk of overdose and infection in a region where many residents are still recovering from the devastation of Hurricane Helene.

Sinn, who uses the pronoun they, believes the nonprofit, often known simply as “Holler,” has prevented a lot of tragedy. But nearly two years after the storm they and other harm reductionists have noticed a troubling pattern.

“While overdose rates are still trending down, we get these weird spikes,” Sinn said. “And the spikes we get, we kind of consistently are able to relate back to Helene.” Financial stress, ongoing trauma, and unstable housing have disrupted some people’s recovery and thrust others into dangerous, even deadly, patterns of substance use.

Sinn’s observations reflect a broader pattern across the region. A Pennsylvania State University study published last month found that severe flooding was associated with higher overdose death rates in economically distressed Appalachian counties — increases that can persist for at least a decade after the water recedes.

Kristina Brant, the study’s lead author, began the research after watching health-care providers struggle to maintain addiction treatment and harm reduction services during catastrophic floods in eastern Kentucky in 2021 and 2022.

“After such a huge disaster, especially in a small community where so many people wear so many hats, the same person that provides one public health service is also going to be asked to jump in on flood recovery, right?” she said. Brant began to understand services could be interrupted for a long, long time, and wondered what that might mean for both those in long-term recovery and those actively using opioids.

Brant’s team analyzed federal records of opioid overdose deaths and severe floods in rural Appalachia, comparing 118 counties that experienced major flooding between 2000 and 2017 with 101 that did not.

The researchers found that overdose deaths began rising in the years after an inundation and remained elevated for at least a decade. Over that period, annual overdose deaths in flooded counties increased by about 28 percent, while overdose mortality rates rose by 26 percent compared with the year before the flood. These changes were most pronounced in economically distressed and lower-income counties.

The findings prompted Brant’s team to ask why the effects endured for so long. Interviews with health-care providers, harm reduction workers, and others involved in the response to Kentucky’s 2022 disaster identified several factors, including disrupted treatment and harm reduction services, prolonged housing and economic instability, and the lasting effects of trauma. 

Read Next Hurricane Helene shattered lives — and the systems that keep people sober Katie Myers

“It’s important to have a number of important ingredients in your life, like access to a safe home, like access to a well-paid, meaningful job, like access to social support,” Brant said. “And for many people, the flood upended those things.” 

One clinic Brant spoke with closed after the flood because the costs of reopening were simply too great. Flood-related disruptions can also interrupt treatments like methadone, forcing some people to return to illicit opioids to stave off the unpleasant and often dangerous effects of withdrawal. After weeks or months in treatment or recovery, that return to use can be especially dangerous because people may not realize how much their tolerance has changed. 

Losing a job, stable housing, or reliable access to food can take a heavy toll on people’s mental health and increase the risk of an overdose, said Cassie York. She works in behavioral health at Mountain Community Health Partnership in Yancey County, North Carolina. The flooding that followed Helene killed at least 10 people in the county and caused landslides that destroyed 1,400 homes. Another 2,300 were heavily damaged.

“I think the main issue here, and probably not just here, is a lack of resources in general,” York said. “Housing, which has always been a shortage here, is even more so since the hurricane.” 

Addressing the instability that so many people are still dealing with two years after Helene is what harm reduction is all about, Sinn said. “We’re also seeing so many people still living in trailers,” they added. “These things that were supposed to be temporary are now permanent, you know?”

Brant believes people like Sinn and York who work directly with affected communities should be involved in disaster planning and recovery from the start. That’s something health-care providers have also begun to publicly support. 

“When it comes to things like flood preparedness conversations or flood recovery conversations, it’s not the case that often a substance use service provider might have a seat at that table,” she said. “Anything that could make care easier to access generally, every day, for rural people, would also help to limit disruptions after disaster.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Floods can leave communities facing higher overdose deaths for years on Aug 11, 2026.

Amid plantation monocultures and industrialized farms built to maximize production at the expense of social and ecological costs to the public, there are also many communities where the economy and ecology are not in conflict.

This blog was a collaboration between the Environmental Paper Network, Fórum Carajás, and the Global Forest Coalition.

The promise of “green steel” has become an attractive narrative in global efforts to decarbonize heavy industry. After all, the steel industry is responsible for around 7% of global energy-related carbon dioxide emissions. Companies highlight claims of reduced carbon emissions, renewable charcoal, and sustainable forestry as evidence that steel production can become environmentally friendly.

In Brazil, some steel producers market eucalyptus-derived charcoal as a renewable, low-carbon or even carbon-neutral substitute for fossil coal. However, behind these claims lies a reality that many rural communities in Brazil know all too well: land conflicts, environmental degradation, and threats to traditional livelihoods.

Illustrating this contradiction is Aço Verde do Brasil (AVB), a Brazilian steel producer that has 50,000 hectares of industrial eucalyptus plantations for charcoal production, and has declared its factory in the state of Maranhão the “world’s first carbon neutral steel plant”. However, long-standing conflicts over land with communities in the area show why industrial decarbonization cannot be assessed through carbon accounting trickery alone. It must also be judged by its consequences for impacted territories and communities.

Formiga Community Faces Intimidation

The community of Formiga in the Baixo Parnaíba region of Maranhão has been in a dispute with AVB over approximately 600 hectares of land for several years. Formiga residents claim the land as theirs under community ownership laws, and argue they hold documents asserting their rights over the disputed area. However, AVB also claims the land as its own, and plans to clear it, in order to expand its eucalyptus plantations.

Earlier this month, Formiga residents were unexpectedly visited by a large group of armed military police officers after AVB filed a complaint alleging that community members had occupied company land. The community rejects this characterization and says that the police contingent arrived without a search warrant.

Mayron Régis, from Fórum Carajás, an NGO that supports local residents and a member of the Biomass Action Network (BAN), explains that “the allegation has no basis. The Formiga community is in a dispute with AVB over 600 hectares and, for some time, residents refrained from planting on this land because of threats made by the company,” he says. “But they decided to begin planting again because they are farmers, and farming is what they know and how they sustain themselves. In response to that decision, the company fabricated this complaint as a way of preventing residents from continuing to cultivate the land.”

The accusation is unfounded. The dispute concerns approximately 600 hectares of land, officially registered in the rural property registry of the national land agency INCRA as owned by the local community.

However, the company claims the land too. For a considerable period, Formiga residents avoided cultivating the area because of threats allegedly made by the company. As farming is the primary source of livelihood for Formiga residents, their collective way of life depends on cultivating their traditional lands. For the community, choosing to cultivate the land was not an “invasion”, but them exercising their right to work the land and sustain themselves, on land they understand to be their own. Rather than seeking dialogue, AVB chose to continue its campaign of harassment and intimidation by filing a complaint that resulted in police intervention. For the community, this represents another attempt to prevent families from exercising their rights.

Communities under pressure across Brazil

 

Events in Formiga are not an isolated example, but rather part of a wider escalation of territorial pressure in the region. Across Brazil, rural communities frequently report that legal action, police operations, and land disputes are used to pressure residents who challenge large-scale agribusiness and industrial projects. As Mayron explains:

“Over the past few weeks, what we have seen in the Baixo Parnaíba region of Maranhão is a considerable increase in attempts to intimidate traditional communities, alongside incursions into traditional territories, particularly by eucalyptus companies and soy growers. It gives the impression that this is all being coordinated. In response, communities in the region are coming together in order to resist the expansion of soy and eucalyptus monocultures, and the landgrabbing and intimidation they bring.”

In 2025, the Pastoral Land Commission (Comissão Pastoral da Terra –  CPT) recorded 1,593 rural conflicts in Brazil, 75% of which involved land. The region of Maranhão led the country in recorded cases of violence related to land, with 190 occurrences. The Commission warns that, even when the total number of recorded conflicts falls, violence against communities remains persistently high.

Photo shared in WhatsApp groups by Mayron Regis from Fórum Carajás

Green rebranding and historical impacts

The current conflict in Formiga reflects the historical harm caused by steel production in Maranhão, which the company is trying to cover up through its environmental branding efforts. A 2023 investigation by Veja, updated in 2024, examined the rebranding of Gusa Nordeste into AVB and contrasted the company’s carbon-neutral claims with the environmental and social legacy of the steel and pig iron industries in Açailândia, where AVB’s steel plant is located. The report described how pollution has affected more than 1,000 residents of Pequiá, a community living next to AVB’s steel plant and a number of pig-iron plants. It also looked at numerous previous legal actions taken against steel companies in the municipality, and historical environmental complaints involving the company.

Veja also reported that the carbon-neutral certification publicized by AVB helped open the way for two green-bond issuances in 2021 and 2022, which together raised R$650 million for eucalyptus planting associated with the production of its branded “green steel.” This indicates that environmental labels are not merely a matter of public image or branding: they also facilitate access to substantial financial resources and support the territorial expansion of plantation-based supply chains.

In its response to Veja, AVB rejected the suggestion that its transformation amounted to greenwashing. It described the charcoal it uses as “biocarbon”, and presented it as a renewable and carbon-neutral alternative to fossil coal. The company stated that it had stopped producing pig iron (which steel is produced from) in Açailândia in 2020, that its newer steel production processes were cleaner, and that it continuously monitored environmental conditions and complied with agreements reached with Maranhão’s environmental authorities.

What is “Green” Coal?

The charcoal used by companies such as AVB is often described as “green coal”—a term referring to charcoal produced from eucalyptus plantations under “sustainable forest management” rather than from native forests.

Unlike mineral coal (coal extracted from mines), eucalyptus charcoal is made by harvesting fast-growing eucalyptus trees, carbonizing the wood in kilns, and using the resulting charcoal as a reducing agent in steel production.

Because eucalyptus can be replanted, companies argue that this charcoal is renewable and significantly reduces greenhouse gas emissions compared to fossil coal. This is one of the reasons Brazil has become internationally recognized for producing steel with a “lower carbon footprint” than many other countries.

However, calling this product “green” is misleading, even if only carbon emissions are considered. Purely on the basis of emissions, burning charcoal actually results in more atmospheric carbon emissions than burning coal per unit of energy. However, international carbon accounting loopholes allow companies to ignore the emissions from burning biomass, including producing and burning charcoal.

Whether using biomass from plantations rather than native forests produces genuine emissions reductions depends on what is counted: the previous use of the land, changes in vegetation and soil carbon, plantation establishment, harvesting, fertilizers and pesticides, transport, emissions from charcoal kilns, repeated rotations and the time required for newly planted trees to absorb the carbon released, among many other factors and impacts. Biomass is therefore not automatically renewable, sustainable or carbon-neutral simply because trees can be replanted.

The Hidden Costs Behind “Green” Charcoal

Investigations by Deutsche Welle and Mongabay have documented the social and environmental impacts associated with the rapid expansion of eucalyptus plantations in Brazil. Several indigenous-focused organisations have also denounced the practice throughout the country.

A November 2025 briefing by the Latin America Working Group of the Biomass Action Network estimates that Latin America produces around 10 million tonnes of charcoal annually, mainly for the steel industry. Brazil alone produces approximately 7 million tonnes a year (almost all of it from wood grown in industrial eucalyptus monocultures) and around 90% of the country’s charcoal is consumed by the iron and steel sector. It documents how industrial biomass supply chains are linked to land concentration, territorial conflicts, water stress, biodiversity loss, precarious labour and corporate control over extensive areas of land. Some of the most significant impacts include:

Water depletion

Eucalyptus grows extremely quickly and has a high demand for water. Communities living near extensive plantations have reported declining stream flows, disappearing springs, and increasing water scarcity. Although water availability depends on several environmental factors, researchers have raised concerns that large monoculture plantations can significantly affect local hydrology, especially in already vulnerable regions.

Biodiversity loss

Replacing diverse native ecosystems with vast eucalyptus monocultures reduces habitat for wildlife and simplifies landscapes that previously supported rich biodiversity. While plantations contain trees, they do not provide the same ecological functions as native forests. Eucalyptus monocultures are uniform production systems designed for repeated harvesting.

Land concentration

The expansion of industrial eucalyptus plantations often concentrates land ownership in the hands of large companies. This limits access to land for small-scale farmers, traditional communities, and Indigenous peoples, increasing social inequality and intensifying land conflicts.

Community livelihoods

For rural communities, land is not simply an economic asset—it is the basis for food production, culture, memory and collective identity. When access to farmland is restricted or communities face legal intimidation, food security and rural livelihoods are directly threatened.

A green image cannot ignore biodiversity and human rights

Reducing emissions in steel production is an important goal. However, producing “green steel” using charcoal is clearly green in name only, no matter which perspective it is looked at. Climate solutions cannot come at the expense of communities living on and from the land.

A truly sustainable transition must consider not only carbon accounting but also respect for human rights, land tenure, biodiversity, and water resources. If “green steel” depends on practices that displace communities, restrict access to farmland, or generate environmental degradation, then its sustainability claims deserve careful scrutiny.

The situation faced by the Formiga community reminds us that the transition to a low-carbon economy must also be a just transition—one that protects both the climate and the people whose lives are most directly affected by industrial expansion. As global demand for “green steel” continues to grow, governments, investors, and consumers should look beyond corporate sustainability labels and ask a broader question: green for whom?

Photo from Fórum Carajás’ Instagram.

Istilah “hujan scatter” kerap muncul dalam percakapan komunitas permainan slot untuk menggambarkan kemunculan simbol scatter secara berulang dalam satu sesi. Bagi member VIP, fenomena tersebut sering dianggap sebagai pengalaman yang menarik karena scatter pada sejumlah permainan dapat berfungsi sebagai pemicu fitur bonus, free spin, atau mekanisme permainan tambahan. Namun, di balik istilah yang terdengar menggiurkan itu terdapat sistem matematika yang tetap bekerja secara acak.

Status VIP biasanya berkaitan dengan program loyalitas yang diberikan sebuah platform kepada pemain berdasarkan aktivitas tertentu. Fasilitasnya dapat berbeda-beda, mulai dari layanan pelanggan khusus hingga penawaran promosi. Karena itu, predikat VIP sebaiknya tidak langsung dipahami sebagai akses khusus menuju kemenangan. Kemunculan scatter tetap bergantung pada mekanisme permainan yang telah ditetapkan pengembang.

Memahami Fenomena Scatter

Secara sederhana, scatter merupakan simbol dengan fungsi khusus dalam permainan slot. Berbeda dari simbol pembayaran biasa, scatter pada beberapa judul dapat membuka fitur tertentu ketika muncul dalam jumlah atau pola yang memenuhi ketentuan permainan. Ada pula permainan yang memberikan pemicu bonus berdasarkan kombinasi simbol tersebut.

Ketika scatter muncul beberapa kali dalam rentang permainan yang relatif singkat, pemain sering menyebutnya sebagai “hujan scatter”. Istilah ini lebih tepat dipahami sebagai gambaran pengalaman bermain daripada indikator bahwa permainan sedang memasuki fase kemenangan. Setiap putaran pada permainan yang menggunakan sistem acak tetap memiliki hasil yang independen sesuai rancangan matematisnya.

Pemahaman tersebut penting agar pemain tidak keliru menafsirkan rangkaian scatter sebagai tanda bahwa putaran berikutnya pasti menghasilkan bonus. Pengalaman sebelumnya tidak secara otomatis mengubah probabilitas pada putaran selanjutnya.

Mengapa Pengalaman VIP Terasa Berbeda?

Program VIP dapat memberikan pengalaman yang lebih personal. Pemain mungkin memperoleh akses layanan pelanggan yang lebih responsif, informasi promosi yang lebih terstruktur, atau berbagai fasilitas loyalitas sesuai kebijakan platform. Faktor-faktor tersebut dapat membuat aktivitas bermain terasa lebih nyaman.

Namun, kenyamanan layanan dan peluang mendapatkan scatter merupakan dua hal berbeda. Kompetensi dalam memahami permainan justru terlihat dari kemampuan membedakan fasilitas administratif dengan mekanisme permainan. Pemain yang memiliki pengalaman panjang biasanya tidak hanya memperhatikan hasil, tetapi juga memahami aturan, volatilitas, batas taruhan, serta ketentuan bonus sebelum mengambil keputusan.

Pengalaman Harus Diimbangi Informasi

Cerita tentang member VIP yang memperoleh scatter berkali-kali memang menarik untuk dibahas. Akan tetapi, pengalaman individual tidak dapat dijadikan bukti bahwa pola serupa akan dialami pemain lain. Dalam konteks permainan berbasis peluang, hasil yang pernah terjadi bukan jaminan untuk sesi berikutnya.

Pendekatan yang lebih rasional adalah membaca informasi permainan secara menyeluruh. Perhatikan aturan fitur, nilai taruhan, mekanisme bonus, dan batas dana yang telah ditentukan sejak awal. Dengan begitu, pengalaman bermain tidak semata-mata bergantung pada ekspektasi terhadap scatter.

Pada akhirnya, “hujan scatter” lebih tepat dilihat sebagai fenomena yang muncul dari mekanisme permainan dan keberuntungan pada sesi tertentu. Status VIP mungkin menghadirkan fasilitas tambahan, tetapi tidak menghapus unsur probabilitas. Pemahaman terhadap cara kerja permainan, transparansi informasi, serta pengelolaan anggaran menjadi fondasi yang jauh lebih penting. Dengan perspektif tersebut, pembahasan mengenai scatter dapat ditempatkan secara proporsional: menarik sebagai pengalaman, tetapi tetap perlu dipahami sebagai bagian dari permainan yang mengandung risiko.

The European automotive industry is slipping deeper into crisis. While this decline has external drivers such as US tariffs and Chinese overcapacities, it is also “made in Europe” in many ways. Can new policy measures save the industry from its woes?

Since 2020, electric car sales have gained momentum, and until 2025, it was widely believed that the era of the combustion engine would soon be history.

While Europe is certainly on the way towards electromobility, this is not a linear process: there are constantly ups and downs with new concerns emerging. There is also much uncertainty in a complex and turbulent geopolitical context in which multilateralism is eroding and “zero-sum-game” perspectives are becoming dominant.

The initial fear about electromobility was that it would lead to job losses, as building battery electric vehicles (BEVs) is less labour-intensive than producing vehicles with internal combustion engines (ICEVs). While some of our earlier publications at the European Trade Union Institute demonstrate that employment loss is indeed a direct consequence of electrification in the powertrain sector – and to a lesser extent in automotive manufacturing at large – the aggregate employment effect across the entire automotive ecosystem is expected to be neutral.

Although this aspect of the transition is certainly important, the greater concern about the future of the automotive industry is how the EU can position itself in a completely new economic geography defined by the EV era and fierce geopolitical rivalries. In this context, the main question is whether EU manufacturers can maintain their core competence and market share.

The developments of the last few years indicate that this is not the case, with the EU automotive sector slipping deeper and deeper into crisis.

A crisis how deep?

With 2.5 million jobs, the automotive industry is not only the largest employer in European manufacturing  – supporting a total of some 13.6 million European jobs – but its transition is also the most complex. The green and digital transformations it faces are intertwined with global value chains that are fully exposed to changing geopolitical realities.

Although fast-track electrification started out as a policy-driven process, there is already a strong business case for the industry to embrace it, and the future competitiveness of each automotive location depends on its ability to adopt the new technology. Unfortunately, it has taken a very long time for incumbent EU car manufacturers to realise that their leading market position in combustion engine technology – and diesel in particular – is not transferable to the era of electric vehicles, where much of the added value will come from batteries and software. Dysfunctional emissions regulation and zig-zagging industrial policies have not helped either.

Transport is the only major sector in the EU economy in which greenhouse gas emissions have risen rather than fallen over the last few decades: since 2010, emissions have grown by 9 per cent. Reversing this trend to meet the EU’s 2040 emissions target and achieve net-zero by 2050 is a formidable challenge.

The reasons for this failure are multiple. The European policy framework for the decarbonisation of road transport has been far from optimal, often hindering the green transition by favouring large and expensive vehicles. Many European carmakers have also been slow to embrace the shift to electromobility, and now face a loss of market share in both domestic and export markets.

Despite this, the European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association (ACEA) reported a 1.8 per cent increase in new car registrations in 2025 compared to 2024, even though the number remained 17 per cent below the 2019 level. In the first half of 2026, a further increase of 5.7 per cent took place.

Since 2020, the share of petrol and diesel vehicles in car sales has continued to fall, reaching 22.2 per cent and 7.5 per cent respectively in the first half of 2026. Meanwhile, the share of hybrid electric vehicles (HEV) grew to 37.2 per cent in the same period, and that of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEV) reached 9.2 per cent. Most importantly, sales of fully electric vehicles picked up again in 2026 to reach 20.7 per cent.

These trends illustrate that, while the initial momentum in the shift towards electromobility has been broken, the trend is again upward. But is Europe reaping any benefits?

Figure 1. New car sales by fuel type in the EU (2020-2026 first half), shares (%). Source: ACEA (2026) 

The number of cars produced in the EU grew modestly (by 0.3 per cent) in 2025 (up in Germany and France – by 2.3 per cent and by 15.5 percent respectively – but down in Italy by 22.9 per cent). At the same time, production numbers in 2025 remained 18.7 per cent below the 2019 level, again with significant differences between countries (down by 10.3 per cent in Germany, 38 per cent in France, and 56.7 per cent in Italy).

The automotive industry’s woes become more apparent when looking at the latest trends in foreign trade of cars. While the EU maintains a significant trade surplus in the sector (76 billion euros in 2025), the number shrank by nearly 9 per cent last year. It is noteworthy that 2025 was the first year when the EU’s balance in vehicle trade with China turned into a deficit (with 15.1 billion euros in imports and 8.5 billion euros in exports).

2023 2024 2025 per cent change (2025/2024) Imports  80,266   74,231  71,872 -3.2 Exports  169,802  157,731  147,901  -6.2 Balance  89,536  83,500 76,028 -8.9 Table 1. EU car trade surplus narrows as exports fall faster than imports (2023–2025, €m). Source: ACEA (2026) based on Eurostat data
Note: figures refer to EU trade with non-EU countries.  

The picture looks worse if we look at the trends with the EU’s two most important trading partners, China and the US. Compared with 2024, EU exports (in value) to the US in 2025 shrank by 21.4 per cent, while exports to China saw a staggering 43-per cent drop.

The import side does not look any better, although here a big difference appears between the value and volume of imports. In 2025, total EU car imports from China only grew by 4 per cent when measured in euros, but when measured in volume (number of units), the increase was 30.7 per cent, reaching over one million cars. In other words, cars imported from China surpassed the number of cars produced in France that year. Data for 2026 show an acceleration of the increase. For instance, imports in May 2026 grew by 65 per cent compared to the same month last year. Figure 2 also shows that, between 2021 and 2025, the number of cars the EU imported from China grew by 270 per cent.

Figure 2 EU new car imports from China, number of units. Source: ACEA (2026) 

A further concern in Europe is that China’s share in the European car market is rapidly increasing, having reached 7 per cent in 2025, up from 5 per cent the previous year. Data for the first half of 2026 reveal that China’s share increased further to 10 per cent. This means that the expansion of the EU market in 2026 benefited manufacturers in China, while EU manufacturers suffered a 3-per cent market share loss (with Japanese carmakers also losing 2 per cent).

This is worse than it may initially appear. A report by the Rhodium Group shows that despite punitive tariffs introduced from October 2024, sales figures for made-in-China BEVs in 2025 ​​bounced back to pre-tariff levels. At the same time, the sale of Chinese-made PHEVs and ICEVs – which are only subject to the 10-per cent basic tariff – accelerated. A recent report by Transport & Environment (T&E) supports the view that the 2024 tariffs backfired, showing that they only curbed imports of China-made EU BEVs. While, as of early 2026, made-in-China cars dropped to 17 per cent of BEV sales in the EU, down from a peak of 22 per cent in 2024, the decrease is due to fewer imports of China-made EU cars. The share of Chinese brands in made-in-China car imports grew from 35 per cent in 2024 to 54 per cent by early 2026. T&E also projects that without further policy change, weaker EV targets in the EU would increase the market share of Chinese carmakers in 2035 to 30 per cent of BEV sales in the bloc. 

European manufacturers’ loss of market share also results from their choice to focus business strategies on premium market segments, abandoning the production of smaller, more affordable entry-level electric cars. If the European automotive industry cannot produce affordable clean EVs, this will not only add to inequality in clean mobility but also pose a threat to high-quality jobs in European automotive manufacturing.

EU policy responses

In March 2025, the European Commission launched its Industrial Action Plan for the European automotive sector to boost demand for European EVs. The plan includes a law to green corporate fleets and measures to encourage national incentives schemes and social leasing for electric cars. The declared objective is to maintain a strong European production base and avoid strategic dependencies.

However, the Commission caved in to industry lobbying, providing flexibility regarding CO2 targets. An amendment to the CO2 Standards Regulation for cars and vans enables car manufacturers to meet their compliance targets by averaging their performance over a three-year period (2025-2027), offsetting shortfalls in any one or two years with excess achievements in the other year(s).

The EU Automotive package, launched at the end of 2025, also chose short-term competitiveness over long-term goals. It opened possibilities for plug-in hybrids, range extenders, and ICEVs to remain part of the automotive landscape beyond 2035. The International Council for Clean Transportation estimates that this could slow down EV adoption, with BEV shares expected to drop from 61 to 44 per cent by 2030. Regarding corporate vehicles, mandatory targets are set at the member state level to support the uptake of zero- and low-emission vehicles by large companies. In the run-up to 2035, carmakers will benefit from “super credits” for small, “affordable” electric cars made in the EU.

Meanwhile, the Industrial Accelerator Act (IAA) proposal published in March 2026 seems more like damage control than a strategic initiative. Made in Europe (MiEU) criteria are limited to public interventions and procurement decisions and do not include labour conditionalities. EVs will be required to have green steel, while 70 per cent of their components, excluding batteries, will have to be produced in the EU.

The main purpose of the initiative is to put made-in-China vehicles at a disadvantage in Europe, and to address the growing use of Chinese components in European vehicle production. As Europe struggles to build a competitive battery industry, European carmakers are increasingly sourcing inputs from China. Beyond defining content thresholds and determining what countries (beyond EU member states) will qualify as having MiEU origin, a major challenge is how these requirements would actually be applied in the sector and what exactly the scope of the measures will be. Once the IAA is finalised and the transition period has passed, member states would be required to procure MiEU vehicles exclusively as part of their public procurement, to restrict financial incentives (both EV grants and as part of corporate fleets) to Made in Europe vehicles, and to provide CO2 supercredits only to small BEVs made in Europe.

Several important factors limit the IAA’s effectiveness. Timing is one, as measures are not expected to take effect before mid-2027. Scale is another, given that public procurement accounts for less than 2 per cent of the passenger car market. Supercredits for small BEVs and low-carbon steel requirements matter less for Chinese firms, as they generally have strong CO2 fleet balances. On the other hand, the Corporate Fleet proposal is particularly important. From 2028 onward, member states would be allowed to provide financial support only to corporate fleets operating low-emission and EU-made vehicles. Notably, this would not fully lock Chinese exporters out of the largest demand segment, but put them at a significant disadvantage, and around 30 per cent of the market would remain fully open. And even within the protected segments, original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) would face higher costs to remain eligible for support due to local content requirements. It is also uncertain whether EU manufacturers would be able to provide all the required elements of the value chain.

In summary, measures of market protection would indeed raise a barrier for Chinese manufacturers, but the EU is still lacking in bold, forward-looking, actionable initiatives to prop up European producers. For instance, the bloc’s 1.8-billion-euro Battery Booster Facility is modest when held up against the investment needed to close gaps with global competitors.

As the bankruptcy of Northvolt – a flagship EU project – and the subsequent cancellation of more than 100 GWh of battery capacity illustrate, what the EU automotive industry needs most is investment and innovation; protecting the status quo will not help. Short-term, defensive measures, such as the decision to give carmakers two extra years to comply with the 2025 car CO₂ emission targets, are harmful. The weakening of the zero-emissions target in 2035 is an even bigger blow, as it opens the door to high-emission combustion engine vehicles and undermines the future competitiveness of EU carmakers in electromobility, in particular with regard to Chinese BEVs. These are confusing signals both to the industry and consumers, and divert investment away from electrification at a time when European manufacturers urgently need to catch up with Chinese EV-makers. OEMs have already written off tens of billions of investments into electric vehicle development and launched new combustion engine projects.

Trade unions fight back

Even if 2025 was not a year of crisis in terms of production and sales for the EU automotive sector, it certainly was so in terms of employment. Loss of market share and competitiveness is putting the future of EU automotive jobs at risk.

While the number of car registrations and vehicles produced in the EU in 2025 grew somewhat, production value has seen a downward trend over the last several years. In Germany – the EU’s biggest producer and market – production value in 2025 shrank for both car makers and suppliers (down by 1.1 per cent and 4.3 per cent respectively). Employment fell sharply too: manufacturers cut 18,000 jobs (3.6 per cent of all positions), while suppliers laid off 29,000 (11 per cent of employees). Employment trends were also downward in the EU as a whole, with the European Association of Automotive Suppliers (CLEPA) reporting 54,000 losses among EU suppliers for 2024, and a further 22,000 in the first half of 2025.

A series of layoffs and company closures illustrates this trend, as a Eurofound study from early 2025 shows. In 2024, restructuring announcements in the EU automotive industry were dominated by job contraction, with a forecast net loss of 53,669 jobs in the EU, not including Volkswagen’s December 2024 announcement about a 35,000 reduction of its workforce in Germany by 2030. In 2026, Volkswagen management was considering expanding the workforce reductions up to 100,000 by 2030. Further examples include the closure of Audi Brussels in February 2025, which led to a loss of 3,000 quality jobs, and the shutdown of Ford Saarlouis in Germany in 2025, affecting 3,600 employees. But how have trade institutes responded?

In Germany, IG Metall – the country’s dominant metalworkers’ union – and works councils have sought to expand their existing repertoire of collective bargaining and company policy instruments in order to co-manage change. In this regard, collective agreements for securing the future and competitiveness (in short, “future-oriented agreements”) have emerged as the main tools to protect workers’ rights. The 2021 round of collective bargaining in the metal and electrical industries provided works councils, IG Metall, and employers with a collective framework to regulate measures to realise innovations, improve competitiveness, reskill employees, and achieve their continued employment. IG Metall has carried out successful projects to tap into new, previously unorganised workers, such as at the Tesla factory near Berlin. It has also managed to foster creative and disagreement-led company target-setting processes, including at the Mercedes site in Marienfelde, near Berlin. Moreover, works councils at Mercedes have successfully expanded the scope for codetermination.

In terms of content, future-oriented agreements comprise three elements: first, concessions on the part of employees, for example on the subject of working hours; second, a temporary exception from redundancies in operational areas. These processes form the framework for the third element, namely negotiations conducted jointly by management and works councils on the future use of the individual sites. Although these processes are organised at plant level, they are integrated into the coordination structures operating within the company. This practice provides proof that managing change in a forward-looking manner is possible. That said, future-oriented agreements don’t guarantee success.

The developments of 2024 in Volkswagen, where management withdrew from longstanding job security commitments, illustrate this clearly. In an unprecedented move, the company announced it was considering two plant closures in Germany, putting aside the employment guarantees contained in its “2016 Pact for the Future” that was viewed as an example of codetermination and responsible just transition practices. In December 2024, Volkswagen AG, IG Metall, and the works council reached a final agreement on a socially responsible reduction of the workforce by more than 35,000 across the company’s German locations by 2030.

On the other hand, collective social agreements are not a new collective bargaining instrument, but one that has experienced a revival in the wake of site closures and transformation-related pressure on workforces. This is demonstrated by recent collective bargaining disputes at various Continental and Vitesco sites; at the Ford plant in Saarlouis, where production came to an end in 2025; at the Japanese supplier Musashi; and at the supplier GKN Driveline.

The collective social agreement concluded by IG Metall for the closure of the Ford plant in Saarlouis is one of the most comprehensive and generous among such agreements in Germany. Out of the 3,600 employees affected, 1,000 will be kept until at least 2032 and assigned to different projects (Ford car parts and battery recycling, among others), while 1,400 workers will move to a transfer company for further qualification and skills development (18 to 24 months with a compensation of 80 per cent of their previous salary). The rest of the workers are entitled to severance payments.

The stakes

The particular challenge for the automotive industry is that it is undergoing multiple and intertwined changes at the same time, including decarbonisation, the digitalisation of both product and process, the automation of production, and the complete reorganisation of automotive value chains. This is leading to fierce competition between production locations for new developments, with decisions often being focused on labour costs and resulting in relocations and job losses.

How workers can shape the complex restructuring processes of the European automotive industry is decisive for making this transition just, as well as for achieving zero-carbon mobility. Despite its lower labour demand, electrification is the lesser threat to EU jobs; what is most important is how (and to what extent) EU manufacturers manage to keep up with clean mobility needs. This is about re-defining the competitiveness of a key industrial sector in the new era of electromobility under geopolitical pressures from both the East and the West.

In a turbulent and challenging geopolitical environment, market protection is necessary and useful only if it is instrumentalised to foster innovation and technological catching up. Carrying on the old business model of building ever bigger, heavier, and more expensive cars (even if often under hybrid or plug-in hybrid cover) would be a massive failure. Giving up already binding legislative commitments, like the 2035 ban on combustion engine cars, is not only bad for the climate but also jeopardises the medium- and longer-term future of European automotive jobs.

Policy also needs to push towards a more comprehensive transformation of mobility systems. The whole system of national subsidies for both the production and sale of BEVs must be reconfigured to support more affordable BEVs and electromobility services, with a clear priority for social groups most dependent on cars and, recently, most excluded from car ownership.

Emotional meat eaters Channel Comment brendan 11th August 2026 Teaser Media

In western Kenya, youth organising through Farm Labour Solidarity Building is reshaping how communities value agriculture, collective work and indigenous knowledge.

The post Under the Mango Tree: Youth Solidarity and the Seeds of Peasant Agroecology in Kenya appeared first on La Via Campesina - EN.

The recent publication of reflections by former members of the International Socialists (IS) and its youth group, Red Tide, is a welcome, if overdue, recollection of the successes and failures of building a socialist presence in key industries and among high school students in the United States in the 1970s.

From the Free Speech Movement to the Factory Floor (Haymarket Books) offers first-hand accounts of those who sought to implement a rank-and-file strategy with varying degrees of success as they sought to bring socialism from below to key sectors of the U.S. working class.

Unfortunately, the opening for turning some of the militancy of that period into a socialist base was shut midway through the decade by global conditions that proved insurmountable for the IS, as well as the mass movements of that period.1For a broad outline of the period, as well as a summary of IS labor strategy, see Joel Geier, “When Socialists Joined the Rank-and-File Upsurge.” Largely missing from the collection, though, is the perspectives debate that tried to address how these material changes undercut the IS strategy, requiring an altered approach for building a socialist base. The debate is important because it gave birth to the International Socialist Organization (ISO), whose more measured perspective allowed it to carry forward the project of socialism from below during a decades-long working-class retreat.

Strategy under stress

The IS was founded in 1969 near the peak of nearly two decades of mass social movements and deepening radicalization. By the mid-1970s the conditions that gave rise to this period had changed. By 1976 it was becoming clear to some that the general perspectives and strategy that had guided the IS since its founding no longer fit. After a four-month debate with the IS majority over its “mass work” perspective en route to a “workers’ combat organization” and a deepening commitment to strategic implantation of comrades in key industries and unions, the minority, or Left Faction (LF), was expelled in the opening session of a Special Convention held in Detroit in March 1977. After the expulsion, 52 members of the LF convened at the Veterans’ Memorial Building to establish the framework of a new organization, the International Socialist Organization (ISO). The debate leading to the expulsion focused on strategy and tactics, not the foundational principles defining socialism from below.

Although the current period does not replicate the 1970s, there are many reasons that a new generation of socialists looks to the IS experience of building independent rank-and-file organizations in key industries and unions during the 1970s. Two current organizations—Teamsters for a Democratic Union (TDU) and Labor Notes—are rooted in the IS work of that decade. Both reform organizations were supported by the LF/ISO from their beginning. So, why did the IS expel a third of its members in 1977? The arguments over the 1976–77 IS perspectives provide lessons that the current generation of socialists might find useful in their efforts to build organizations and to construct a perspective that fits the current period and avoids some of the mistakes of the past.

Mass movements prepare the way

It is important to understand the context that led to the founding of the IS in 1969. A mass movement for Black civil rights in the United States and an international antiwar movement against the U.S. imperial war in Vietnam pulled millions into radical activity. In addition, a second wave women’s rights and liberation movement emerged, followed by a movement for gay rights and liberation. These, too, had international links. But it was the uprising of students and the largest ever workers’ general strike in France in May 1968 that captured the imagination of a new generation of radicals looking for revolutionary possibilities. Besides the May events in France that nearly toppled the government, cracks in the Eastern bloc, anti-colonial struggles in Africa, and guerilla insurgencies in Latin America reinforced revolutionary aspirations.

The year 1968 was the watershed year of this period. Beginning with the Tet offensive by the National Liberation Front in Vietnam in late January, which exposed the lie that the U.S. military was winning its war there, and ending with the election of the Republican, Richard Nixon, to the presidency with a plurality of less than one percent of the vote, 1968 screamed for fundamental change. Between Tet and Nixon’s election came President Lyndon Johnson’s near abdication, two assassinations (Dr. Martin L. King, Jr and Robert F. Kennedy), mass uprisings (France, Czechoslovakia), guerrilla struggles (Latin America), and wide disaffection with the Democratic Party after it nominated the war supporter and Johnson’s vice president Hubert Humphrey to challenge Nixon. This turbulent year exposed many of the cracks in the international system of capitalist exploitation, which could no longer impose its will on the masses unopposed.

By the end of 1968, the search for how to organize for revolutionary change was well underway. A generation of activists informed by their experiences now looked for a blueprint, or at least a model, for how to make a revolution. Many looked to the Cuban and Chinese guerilla achievements for guidance. Others looked back to 1917 and the first successful worker-led revolution in Russia. Most of the models were top-down, substituting self-appointed leaders and organizations that would make the revolution for the masses. Working-class self-emancipation (Bolshevism) in Russia had been replaced by a bureaucratic and self-appointed ruling class (Stalinism).2https://www.marxists.org/archive/harman/1967/xx/revlost.htm Reconnecting workers to the tradition of self-emancipation was never going to be easy, but it was worth a try in the context of mass social movements in the United States and Europe, as well as anti-colonial struggles in the South.

Following the breakup of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) in the summer of 1969, the International Socialist Clubs (ISC) and remnants of several SDS chapters (Seattle, Austin, Chicago, Baltimore, Ann Arbor) met over Labor Day weekend that year in Ann Arbor, Michigan, to lay the groundwork for a national organization. By the end of the year, convinced that the period of radicalization had entered a new stage, the IS was launched, setting its sights on joining the working class. What happened in the effort to build a revolutionary workers’ organization as the period of radicalization began to ebb over the next decade is a history that is both instructive and cautionary. It is the history of the International Socialists and its successor organizations, the ISO, and a third organization, Solidarity.

Revolution in the air

Before neoliberalism, globalization, or financialization entered the lexicon, workers in several sectors of the U.S. economy flexed their muscles—sometimes with their union’s blessing, more often in opposition to official leaderships. For the Left this period became known as the “rank-and-file rebellion.”3Aaron Brenner, Robert Brenner, Cal Winslow, eds., Rebel Rank and File: Labor Militancy and Revolt During the Long 1970s. (New York: Verso, 2010); Dan Labotz, Rank-and-File Rebellion: Teamsters for a Democratic Union. (New York: Verso, 1991).In tandem with a growing restlessness and outright insubordination in the military as the war in Vietnam dragged on, an upsurge of workers challenged the status quo and the post–World War II narrative of upward mobility and middle-class status.4David Cortwright, Soldiers in Revolt: GI Resistance During the Vietnam War (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2005). Soldiers who were drafted into a war they only half believed in came home to a country deeply divided. Beneath the flag-waving and imperial chest-thumping a new attitude was born.

The endless war in Vietnam, along with the drive for profits at home, produced a consciousness of resistance among many frontline soldiers and workers alike. A growing attitude emerged that challenged the bosses in factories and officers in Vietnam. Soldiers increasingly refused to follow dangerous orders for a war that seemed pointless (or which they opposed on political grounds). Officers who gave reckless orders became targets for fragging (battlefield assassination).5Allthatsinteresting.com. Gina Dimuro, May 14, 2020.

In factories and warehouses resistance was often expressed individually through “work-to-rule” slowdowns rather than coordinated actions, but united unofficial strikes, often led by rank-and-file militants, were not uncommon. Wildcat strikes grew in this period, accounting for a third of work stoppages, with the 1970 postal strike being the largest (with more than 200,000 workers taking part). Miners struck several times in the decade without official notice and gave birth to Miners for Democracy to fight the corrupt Tony Boyle regime in the United Mine Workers.

Between 1968 and 1971, strikes and labor reform movements reached historic proportions. In auto plants, Black-led shop floor organizations like the Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement (DRUM) fought the company on the factory floor and racism in the union. Even during the 1974 recession there were nearly as many strikes as in the peak year of 1970.6Brenner, Brenner, and Winslow, Rebel Rank and File, 141.

Against this background a revolutionary current emerged. Elements of this current could be found in the early sixties, but it was the watershed year of 1968 when the radicalization broke explosively into the open internationally.7Philipp Gassert and Martin Klimke, eds., On the Edge of World Revolution. (Montreal: Black Rose Books, 2018); Chris Harman, The Fire Last Time: 1968 and After. (London: Bookmarks, 1988). Millions of young radicals began to draw revolutionary conclusions from their experiences. It was now time to create the organizations necessary to effectively challenge the status quo of war, hunger, and inequality. Revolution was certainly in the air and nourished a generation eager for change. The May events in France suggested that rebellion was growing in the working class—the material force capable of challenging the capitalist system.

Berkeley ISC leaves campus for the factory floor

The Independent Socialists at the University of California, Berkeley under the leadership of the Marxist scholar Hal Draper was the dominant Left organization there in the 1960s, and played a leading role in civil rights, free speech, and peace movements. Loosely affiliated with ISC groups in Chicago, New York, Ann Arbor, and Baltimore—many of whose members had been comrades in the Young People’s Socialist League and the Student Peace Union—the Berkeley ISC student leaders Joel Geier and Mike Parker determined it was time to establish a national revolutionary organization committed to the principles of workers’ self-emancipation: workers’ control of their workplaces, a government democratically elected from councils of workers, and a movement of workers tied to “neither Washington nor Moscow,” but to international socialism. This socialism-from-below orientation differentiated the ISC/IS from most of the emerging revolutionary groups that identified with the so-called actually existing socialist states of China, Cuba, and the Soviet Union. In the end, it was Maoism that attracted the largest following of the 1970s radicals in the United States.

With the inspiration of the French May, and cracks in the Eastern bloc coinciding with the breakup of SDS in 1969, Geier and Parker broke with Draper, who believed that a national organization was unsustainable and that the period of radicalization had peaked.8https://www.marxists.org/archive/draper/1971/alt/alt.htm Further, he considered their rank-and-file strategy to be effectively dual unionism and therefore divisive. Meeting over Labor Day 1969, with representatives from various student clubs (including the ISC) and SDS affiliates, the foundation for a national organization was outlined.9https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/document/is-us/IS-documents/69/69-09.pdf By the end of 1969 the IS had coalesced with a perspective to move off the campuses and join the industrial working class. Toward that goal, Detroit was chosen as the national headquarters and a monthly paper, Workers’ Power, would lead the way.

While it would take a series of internal arguments to cohere the organization, by 1973 the IS was on its way to carrying out its perspective of implementing the rank-and-file strategy.10Kim Moody, In Solidarity: Essays on Working-Class Organization in the United States (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2014), 75–148. The implementation rested on getting jobs in key industries: auto, steel, telephone, and trucking (freight and parcel) were the initial priorities, followed by postal workers in the wake of their impressive wildcat strike. The plan was to establish rank-and-file caucuses in the affiliated unions and to cohere a group of workers who would be a pole for a new kind of orientation,workers’ control of the workplace.11https://solidarity-us.org/rankandfilestrategy/ This would necessarily involve challenging the existing union leaderships that operated under the principle of business unionism—collaboration with the bosses—which had been firmly established in the post–World War II era.

In brief, the perspective of sending students into strategic industries, building opposition groups in unions, and educating a layer of worker-militants to commit to socialism was a monumental undertaking for an organization of less than 300 members. Nevertheless, with commitment high, promising objective conditions, and some early, if modest, successes in locating like-minded workers, any doubts about the strategy were marginalized.

Successes drive the perspective

One measure of success was the number of rank-and-file organizations built in the targeted industries. By 1975, there were four auto caucuses, five Teamster rank-and-file newspapers, and three caucuses in telephone and steel. In addition, teachers in New York and the Bay Area were active in opposition groups in their respective unions. With the help of a targeted pamphlet, The Struggle for Workers’ Power!, and regular Workers’ Power paper sales at main post offices, several postal workers joined the IS in this period.

A significant breakthrough came in 1976 with the Master Freight Agreement (MFA) campaign, led by Teamsters for a Decent Contract, an ad-hoc group of IS implants and fellow militants in the freight industry, as well as United Parcel Service (UPS) workers. The campaign was spread through rank-and-file newspapers and organizations to some twenty cities, and successfully established a national opposition group in the Teamsters Union that materially helped shape a contract outside official union channels.

This success led to a national rank-and-file organization, TDU, launched in September 1976. Its main orientation targeted both local and national leaderships of the Teamsters, offering a rank-and-file alternative. TDU soon established itself as the main reform group in the Teamsters Union and the organization to affiliate with if you wanted to challenge entrenched leaderships in your local.

In tandem with TDU, embedded IS women working at UPS in Cleveland launched their own organization: UPSurge. Based on their experience, they targeted the company rather than the union leadership with a newspaper, UPSurge, and built opposition groups among drivers and package loaders. Their success in the Midwest brought them in touch with a rank-and-file group in Louisville, Kentucky, that boosted UPSurge’s credibility among Teamsters. Targeting company bosses instead of union heads eventually led to friction within the IS Teamster fraction and became a sharp divide in the perspectives debate in 1976–77.

Successes mask underlying conditions

By the time of the 1976 National Convention in July, the IS could point to several successes in implementing the overall labor strategy. Not only had the freight workers been instrumental in building a successful national contract fight, but in the process they had established a viable national rank-and-file organization, TDU. That success led to a handful of key rank-and-file leaders joining the IS, though few stuck beyond the formation of TDU, especially as an economic recession took hold, leading to layoffs and a dampening of militancy. The mass civil rights movements and women’s and gay liberation movements also were forced to retreat to defend their gains.

Independent rank-and-file organizations were replicated in other targeted industries around the country: telephone workers in New York, Louisville, and Seattle, autoworkers in Detroit, California, and New Jersey, steelworkers in Gary and Pittsburgh, and UPS workers in multiple cities showed what was possible. Overall, the successes covered over the many objective and subjective difficulties that were beginning to erode nearly two decades of militancy and protest. As from a flea on the back of an elephant, the view from a limited vista did not produce a picture of the whole animal. The ride was thrilling, but the destination could not be strategically determined with the small forces at hand, despite the high-level of commitment from IS comrades. Nevertheless, the leadership of the IS was prepared to claim success for its perspective at its 1976 Convention in Dearborn, Michigan, and take the next step—mass work.

Misreading the tea leaves

While there were many implementations of the rank-and-file perspective of which the IS could be proud, they were not sufficient to declare victory. Nevertheless, at the 1976 Convention held in the ballroom of the Dearborn Hilton, the national leadership declared that the IS was ready for the “next step in our mass work perspective… In mass work on shopfloors and around economic issues, we try to give a lead to the backward, reactionary, and cowardly workers as well as to the militants.”12https://www.marxists.org/history. “Mass Work, Politics, Building the Party,” 1976 Executive Committee document.

From an orientation on the “militant minority” to a declaration that the IS was now ready to do “mass work” with a membership no larger than 342 (according to the 1976 National Secretary report), raises the question: Who was leading whom? This triumphalist assessment of the organization’s accomplishments suggested that nothing was wrong with the overall perspectives outlined in the 1975 IS pamphlet The Struggle for Workers’ Power, which boldly projected that in the 1976–77 bargaining round,

[W]e will become a workers’ combat group in the lead of a growing rank-and-file movement or be set back severely.

…By three years from now we want [the workers] to be the leadership of the IS, and a working class and black leadership, which has already started the process of constructing factory branches.

We want to double our membership by the next convention [1976]. In the next 2-3 years, we want to have the core of a party—worker cadres, factory branches, national rank and file movements, a weekly paper, a theoretical journal, a strong youth group, and a working class and black leadership.

This outline for the next period was far ahead of the concrete achievements and completely overlooked the material forces at hand. Even if the membership had doubled by 1976, it would still be well short of the numbers needed to carry out these tasks. Indeed, many at the 1976 convention felt that militancy was beginning to wane, though to voice caution without a clear alternative would have led to isolation, or worse. According to National Secretary Glenn Wolf, adherence to the “Workers Combat” perspective would become a condition of membership.13Notes from Steve Leigh, November 1976 joint meeting of Portland and Seattle IS branches.

Radical period begins to ebb

Internationally much had changed since the founding of the IS. By 1974, the Portuguese revolution was in abeyance and in Chile the socialist government had been crushed by a military coup with the help of the CIA. In 1975, the US retreated from Vietnam, thus ending the antiwar movement. The Black Power movement, which gave rise to the Black Panther Party in 1966, was under physical attack as early as 1969 from local and national law enforcement and was slowly being driven to the margins. An Indigenous movement was literally gunned down by federal agents in South Dakota in 1973. These early warnings signaled that defending and building movements would require a growth in solidarity not seen since 1968.

Even the promise of workers’ power seen in the numerous wildcat strikes and other forms of resistance to the boss’s relentless drive for profits was beginning to wane. An economic downturn in 1973–75 and corresponding layoffs had already weakened militancy in the manufacturing sector.14Monthly Labor Review, September 1983.

Domestically, the election of Democrat Jimmy Carter to the presidency in 1976 signaled a shift from the pro-labor Roosevelt era to a program of deregulation and a neoliberal agenda favoring profits at the expense of workers’ needs. Layoffs soon became the norm as capital looked for cheaper locations to retool, either overseas or in the non-union south. Neoliberalism replaced New Dealism as the framework for exploitation, producing a consciousness of self-preservation rather than a spirit of rebellion and solidarity in workplaces.

In retrospect, it is clear now that the IS perspective had reached its limits by 1976. The leadership’s assessment at the Convention that year exaggerated successes and projected a triumphant period ahead. While there were doubters at that convention, they were unprepared to challenge the perspective openly. They did, however, begin to lay the groundwork for a counter-narrative, which would culminate in a formal factional challenge later that fall.

Employer’s offensive

Before turning to the debate that challenged the IS leadership’s perspective, it is important to note the fundamental shift of capital that was underway by the mid-1970s. No longer was capital prepared to invest in the old manufacturing systems, especially in steel, communications, transportation, and auto. The international challenge from one-time foes Japan and Germany forced U.S. manufacturers to close old production systems and seek new locations to retool for profitability.

In the heartland of U.S. manufacturing from St. Louis to Boston, factories and mills were shuttered, giving rise to what became known as “the rust belt.” Jobs that had once given many workers a middle-class life disappeared. International competition for profits now dominated. Workers, especially in the heartland, were the victims. From the promise of a home, a couple of cars, and college for the children, manufacturing workers suddenly found themselves on the dole.

Known as “the employers’ offensive,” this period not only wreaked havoc on manufacturing workers’ lives, but reverberated throughout the working class. Restaurant workers who catered to auto workers, for example, lost their jobs. Detroit, the city built by the auto industry, lost more than 300,000 residents, or 20 percent of its population, in the 1970s. When mortgages couldn’t be paid, whole blocks of houses were abandoned and fell into disrepair, thus hollowing out the city. Weed patches replaced yards, and one-third of schools were shuttered.

Besides the damage inflicted by corporate restructuring, Carter and Congress legislated pro-capital measures to assist in this restructuring. For example, removing regulations on telephone, airlines, and trucking gave rise to cutthroat competition and lower wages. Jobs that moved to the south, where new auto plants were built, were now union free. Wages fell by more than half. Frustrated resistance often turned against foreigners (primarily Asians) for “taking American jobs,” thus replacing solidarity with xenophobia.

By 1980, with the election of Republican president Ronald Reagan, the rout of labor was well underway. To drive home the point that a new era had arrived, Reagan fired striking air traffic-controllers in 1981. Organized labor’s response was to rally in Washington, DC with more than 400,000 workers eager to challenge Reagan’s anti-worker assault. Unfortunately, official union leaderships looked not to solidarity on the picket line, but rather to a march to the ballot box to elect Democrats to Congress in 1982, ignoring the fact that it was a Democrat in the White House six years earlier who had ushered in the offensive against workers. Not only was this a blow to any meaningful resistance to the employer’s offensive, but it initiated doubts in the viability of workers to bring about positive social change through their own initiative.

Warning signals begin to pile up

Yet even before Reagan and the full extent of the employer’s offensive was known, some in the IS began to see the limits of the group’s perspective, especially in its aim of building a “workers’ combat organization” through “mass work.” One clue to these limits seemed obvious to the UPSurge comrades. While UPSurge had built an impressive rank-and-file organization, especially in the Midwest, it was not strong enough to meet the Teamster leadership’s threat to help the bosses fire workers who continued their wildcat strike in 1976.

But it was more than the weakness of UPSurge that signaled the limits of the IS perspective. It was the material pressures on the industrial cadre to adapt to their work environment that exposed the limits of implantation, especially as militancy waned and U.S. manufacturing retooled. Consciousness was shifting away from militancy and solidarity toward self-preservation and adaptation to the emerging neoliberal conditions.

Not comfortable with the exaggerated assessment of the IS leadership at the 1976 convention, and with some prodding interventions from Canadian comrades in attendance, several IS cadre began to question the road ahead. At first, these were informal gatherings of a handful of comrades who mostly asked questions: Why were we only able to recruit a few militants from our rank-and-file work? Why were Workers’ Power sales declining? Are we missing struggles apart from the targeted industries that might be more receptive to our politics? In the wake of the convention several comrades were unconvinced of the strategic role of the mass work perspective and the leadership’s insistence on sticking to the strategy of implantation in strategic industries when layoffs were the order of the day.

Two leading members, Cal Winslow, the industrial organizer, and Barbara Winslow, the women’s organizer, were alarmed by the exaggerated perspective and sought guidance from comrades they had worked with in the British IS in Coventry in 1969. Early in September 1976, the Winslows headed for London, where they met with leaders of the British IS, newly named the Socialist Workers Party (SWP). Here they learned that the British were also alarmed at the IS’s exaggerated industrial perspectives.

Upon returning, the Winslows approached several comrades to determine if a formal opposition should be organized to raise concerns about the mass work perspective. With fifty-eight initial endorsers, the Left Faction assembled in Yellow Springs, Ohio, in early November. Twenty-two members attended the first meeting, along with two comrades from the Canadian IS who had witnessed the debate at the Dearborn convention. A Red Tide representative also attended.

The discussions at this first meeting led to the commission of three documents: “A New Course for the IS,” “Women’s Liberation,” and “Black Liberation.” A later document addressed the Portuguese Revolution, charging the leadership with an exaggerated assessment of the Portuguese Revolutionary Party’s strategy. However, most of the discussion held in branches throughout the four months of debate that followed centered on the leadership’s insistence on doubling down on mass work and sending comrades into the targeted industries even though hiring was at a near standstill.

The Left Faction perspective

On December 8, 1976, the Left Faction submitted a counter-perspective, “The New Course for the IS.”15Marxist Internet Archive, IS Documents Archive, Special Bulletin 3, December 11, 1976. Page numbers in brackets. The twenty-two-page document opened with the following assessment: “We believe the IS is in a deep crisis. The organization’s perspectives have failed. The organization’s politics and policies are shifting to the right.”

Countering the leadership’s assessment that the IS was ready to take the next step toward “a workers’ combat organization,” the LF offered a grim appraisal of the primary areas of work. The auto fraction submitted a sobering report: “We recruited and held no one from the plants in the past nine months. In the same period, we lost a number of members” (p. 6). The telephone fraction efforts were going nowhere and “there is deep demoralization and confusion among those who carry on.” From the steel fraction: “There is dissension in the fraction” (p. 7).

Even amid the major successes—the National Master Freight Contract campaign, the founding of TDU, and the UPSurge-led wildcat strike—the leadership admitted that the IS presence had been “liquidated for a prolonged period of time.” In concrete terms this meant that Workers’ Power had ceased to be integral to the activity of building rank-and-file organizations. The “New Course” charged, “More and more the organization takes on the characteristics of a ‘sect’ in its isolated existence, its frenzied activity, its endless internal meetings, its big talk, to no listeners” (pp. 4-5).

The document went on to argue that the IS’s strategy for building a revolutionary socialist current in the U.S. working class by taking jobs in key industries and challenging do-nothing union leaders was a “substitutionist” perspective that had led to a conservatized and demoralized cadre. Further, it challenged that objective conditions were ignored, thus making any weaknesses or failures of the mass work perspective  “the fault or short comings of the members: a voluntarist load that has crushed many fine comrades” (p. 9).

Whether or not the LF’s assessment of the leadership’s perspective was exaggerated, it nevertheless was a strong indicator that a debate was in order, especially considering the unease among most members in the organization that recruitment had virtually ceased. This fact was especially disconcerting when “mass work” became the description for all IS initiatives, no matter how minor.

The LF argued that the leadership’s adherence to a mass work perspective was confusing: “The IS cannot have it all ways. It cannot, at the same time, orient to the left bureaucracy, and to the ‘cowards and reactionaries’ in the rank and file, and also to the militant minority, in particular to the special demands and struggles of the oppressed” (p. 8).

Black and women’s issues were often lost when adhering to the tenets of mass work. In practice the mass work perspective strengthened “the conservative tendencies already strong in our industrial work.” In other words, the IS was missing its audience.

The principle of “every factory must be our fortress” that “must be the key to building a successful revolutionary workers’ party” (p. 10) in the long run, was acknowledged by the LF, but, they argued, “To reduce the question to one of white-collar vs. blue-collar or workers vs. students misses opportunities in the short-term, especially when conditions have changed.” In addition, “There is no way that a group of 300 can either chart the course of the class struggle, nor can it expect to impose ‘consistency’ on history” (p. 11).

The IS was substituting itself for the lack of militancy among the workers of industries it had chosen as key to the class struggle. Both the mass work perspective and the focus on strategic economic sectors were stand-ins for the real struggles of workers, wherever they might break out. By not coming to grips with the objective conditions, argued the LF, opportunities were being missed to build the organization. Many industrialized members in the targeted sectors, let alone long-time militants, were exhausted and demoralized. “Industrialization conservatizes the individual members and leads to conservatism in the entire organization. It focuses the attention of the organization not on the working class, but on its own middle-class members,” the LF noted. In short, “industrialization is a pessimistic, conservative and a substitutionist strategy” (p. 15).

Perhaps the most serious charge leveled at the leadership’s perspective was that, despite the rhetoric of being “best fighters for Black liberation,” there was little concrete attention paid to Black struggles, nor to training the few Black people who had joined the organization. In fact, the most serious Black work was left to Red Tide, which led a campaign to free a framed Black student, Gary Tyler, from a specious shooting charge. The LF believed it was the adherence to seeking jobs in targeted industries strategy that hampered a consistent plan for Black work, or for that matter, serious women’s work.

By 1976, there was plenty of evidence that the IS perspective had run its course and was only being maintained through a “pseudo-bolshevism” and a perverted interpretation of “democratic centralism”—orders from the leadership without the political backing sufficient to convince the membership that it was on the right track.

In reality, the perspective developed over the life of the organization had ceased to either attract new recruits to the IS or inspire many of its most committed adherents in the organization. It was time to change course.

Key to the perspective advocated by the LF was Workers’ Power, arguing that the small size of the IS required it to maximize its resources with concrete propaganda. Rather than tailing “a nonexistent ‘mass’ audience, at the lowest common denominator,” the paper must be “directed to the advanced workers, those in struggle” wherever they might be—not necessarily in predetermined industries. Furthermore, the paper could prove in practice how real democratic centralism works, when “it actually carries our political ideas” and is used as “our chief interventionist tool” (p. 20).

The LF proposed an outward-looking strategy: “It must turn to the actual struggles of the working class. The IS must develop local perspectives based on the actual conditions in each city and workplace” (p. 21). As the LF pointed out, the best guide for revolutionaries, especially with small numbers, can be found in Farrell Dobbs’ books of the Minneapolis Teamster’s struggles of 1933–34. The LF saw the Communist League’s approach in the 1930s as a model for the IS.

The SWP-UK intervenes

Even before the LF was organized or produced documents, the Central Committee of the British IS/SWP raised the alarm in a six-page letter to the National Committee of the IS in September. The main thrust of its concern was the “triumphalist” assessment of the national Teamsters contract campaign, as well as other efforts in building rank-and-file organizations. They cautioned against the immodesty and exaggeration of the leadership’s perspectives. In blunt terms they also dismissed the focus on strategic industries.

To drive the point home, they offered James Cannon’s observation on the first real success of Trotskyists in the United States:

Our comrades in Minneapolis began their work in the coal yards and later extended their organizing campaign away from the general drivers and helpers. That was not a preconceived plan worked out in the general staff of our movement. The drivers of Minneapolis were not by far the most decisive section of the American proletariat. We began our real activity in the labor movement in those places where the opportunity was open to us. It is not possible to select such occasions arbitrarily according to whim or preference. One must enter a mass movement where a door is open.

In short, the letter argued that the leadership’s perspective was “grossly exaggerated” and was in danger of driving the organization “into increasingly false political positions in an attempt to conceal what will become a growing gulf between pretensions and reality.” Unfortunately, this intervention from a fraternal organization was characterized as traitorous, thus branding any opposition as hostile to the IS project even before the LF emerged.

Was a split necessary?

Was the LF’s call for a new strategy so out of bounds that the majority needed to jettison nearly a third of its membership? In retrospect the split seems indefensible, especially given the conditions of the period and the collapse of the IS less than two years after the debate.

By the end of the four-month debate, both sides were exhausted and ready to move on. In lieu of expulsion (Item 1 of the Special Convention Agenda), the LF proposed a seven-point resolution to avoid a split, including disbanding the LF and accepting the majority perspective without demanding positions on the Executive Committee, even though it represented a third of the organization. Behind the scenes, though, including an Executive Committee meeting with an IS/SWP representative, it was clear that the two sides were ready to go their separate ways and prove in practice their perspectives.

It should also be noted that a small middle faction (Workers’ Power) argued for a compromise. This group, which included the well-known Teamster rank-and-file leader Pete Camarata, left the IS a year later. Soon after, the IS ceased to exist.

Conditions determined perspectives post-split

The guiding politics of “socialism from below” as a principle for revolutionary organization was never in question by any of the contending forces, only how to implement it under unpredictable conditions.

While the IS continued into the mid-1980s (and founded Labor Notes in 1979), its paper Workers Power ceased publishing in October 1978. The ISO and its paper Socialist Worker survived for 42 years and grew to be what was, perhaps, the largest revolutionary Left organization in the United States during the period of long retreat. The ISO strategy focused on campuses, especially those with an activist core. For example, anti-apartheid in South Africa and anti-Gulf War struggles helped radicalize students post-1970s. Through this strategy the ISO was able to introduce student activists to the occasional worker struggles that emerged during the 1990s such as the Caterpillar tractor and Staley sugar strikes in central Illinois and the Hormel meatpacker’s strike in Minnesota.

Several years after the IS collapsed, some of its members, along with recently expelled members of the Socialist Workers Party (US), launched the organization Solidarity, with a perspective of regrouping sections of the Left committed to struggles from below.16The ISO was not one of Solidarity’s targets for regrouping the Left. Solidarity continues to operate as a small socialist feminist organization with a bimonthly magazine, Against the Current.

For any organization aspiring to cohere the self-activity of workers, the lessons—good and bad—from the IS’s decade of trying to build rank-and-file organizations are worth examining. However, the internal debate that concluded that period is integral to understanding the full IS story.

Conditions had significantly changed since the IS’s beginning, and the organization had neither the numbers nor the influence needed to carry its ambitious perspectives forward. In some ways, the IS was a victim of its successes, which blinded it to forces much more decisive than a handful of militant rank-and-file organizations and their socialist backers.

One lesson that stands out from the successes and failures of the IS in the 1970s is the need to temper revolutionary objectives with a measure of modesty. The accomplishments of the IS are inspiring and instructive, but overestimating those accomplishments was fatal for the organization.

Nevertheless, as From the Free Speech Movement to the Factory Floor illustrates, the comrades of the IS, who gave it their all, found the decade they joined the rank-and-file upsurge a meaningful part of their lives, rich with lessons for the current generation of socialists.

Opinions expressed in signed articles do not necessarily represent the views of the editors or the Tempest Collective. For more information, see “About Tempest Collective.”
Featured Image credit: Rafaelgr; modified by Tempest.

The post The promise of workers’ power appeared first on Tempest.

• If the chicken is biking and the egg is building bike infrastructure, new research shows that the egg comes first. Bike lanes and bike parking both lead more people to cycle to work, according to a French study in the journal Transport Policy. (Momentum)
• Road usage charges like Hawaii’s that rely on annual odometer readings are simple and non-intrusive, but they don’t take into account where and when those miles were driven. (Traffic Technology Today)
• Modern, connected urban transportation systems commonly leave out parking garages, resulting in a lot of unnecessary cruising around looking for parking. (Route Fifty)
• Planetizen is running a three-part series on traffic congestion.
• European right-wingers are just as in love with cars as their American counterparts. (The Loop)
• A bike- and pedestrian-friendly extension of 15th Street in Midtown Atlanta is set to open by the end of the month. (Urbanize Atlanta)
• The Atlanta Beltline, often blamed for gentrification, is building more affordable housing and starting a down payment assistance program. (WABE)
• Indiana Gov. Mike Braun is opposed to a lane reduction on a bridge connecting the state to Louisville. (WDRB)
• Cuyahoga County, Ohio is considering raising parking rates for the first time in a decade. (Cleveland Plain Dealer)
• Signal Cleveland has lots of details about pending transit cuts.
• A pickup truck driver intentionally ran down two people on a Memphis sidewalk. (News 3)
• A Philadelphia state representative is introducing a bill to ban self-driving buses. (Billy Penn)
• A public transit YouTuber exposed massive cost overruns on the L.A. people mover project. (Hollywood Reporter)
• A Denver man is tracking down all of the stamps left by his grandfather, who poured the concrete for many of the city’s sidewalks. (Rocky Mountain PBS)

Donald Trump’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) rolled into Santa Monica today to hold a hearing on the federal government’s plans to open up California’s coastal waters to oil and gas drilling, floating nuclear power plants (really!), rocket testing, and other questionable uses. Trump is using NOAA to challenge California’s – and only California’s – right to protect its coastlines.

Needless to say, California is not taking this lying down. Tribal leaders, environmental groups, local political leaders, and others gathered in the courtyard for a noon rally before the 2 p.m. meeting to tell the Trump Administration that California’s coast is not for sale.

“We know what is best for Los Angeles County, for California, and for our nation,” argued Los Angeles County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath, after arguing that the Trump Administration is intentionally pushing policies that hurt Californians. “If they wanted to really help our communities, they would release billions of disaster aid to help our coastal communities desperate to rebuild their lives after the Palisades Fire.”

At the rally before the hearing, speaker after speaker took to the podium to denounce not just the idea that politics is clouding California’s environmental regulations, but just the opposite: that political concerns were pushing the administration’s attacks on California to the benefit of Trump’s political donors.

“We’ll keep fighting, but we know what’s going to happen today,” stated Congressman Dave Min (D-Irvine). “A bunch of you are going to go in and give your testimony, and this rigged review is going to come to the conclusion that has been preordained.”

Trump’s Plan

The Trump administration is reopening a federal review of California’s Coastal Management Program, raising the possibility that the state could lose some of its longstanding authority to protect its coastline should he succeed.

The program, which has been federally approved since 1978, operates under the federal Coastal Zone Management Act. It gives California a role in reviewing federally regulated projects that could affect the state’s coastal resources, including projects in federal waters. The California Coastal Commission, State Coastal Conservancy, and San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission all play roles in implementing the program.

That authority has allowed California to challenge or modify projects ranging from offshore oil development to pipelines, desalination facilities and rocket launches. Despite Trump’s claim that the state should lose its rights because of “environmental extremism,” the Coastal Commission has reviewed thousands of federally regulated projects over the decades, but has opposed only a small percentage of them.

NOAA is conducting a new review of the state’s coastal program after Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick accused California of using its coastal authority to obstruct projects favored by the administration for political reasons.

Among the examples cited by federal officials is California’s opposition to expanded SpaceX rocket launches from Vandenberg Space Force Base. SpaceX has been firing test rockets from the base for the last half dozen years. But, the state has asked for more oversight of all rocket launches marines from Vandenberg accidentally fired 155-millimeter artillery shells over a major freeway in Southern California.

State officials, however, argue that the review is part of a broader effort to remove obstacles to the Trump administration’s plans for the coast, particularly its push to expand offshore oil and gas drilling.

Speaking at today’s hearing, Wade Crowfoot, California Secretary for Natural Resources, noted that after states were given greater purview in enforcing environmental standards for projects nearly six decades ago, the states participating in the Coastal Zone Management Act have approved 95% of the federally requested projects. In that same time, California had approved 96% of the projects.

Crowfoot continued with the theme that the federal review is more about politics and Trump’s feelings towards California than about policy.

“Americans across the country share the concerns we do about the health and safety of our coasts. The Trump Administration proposed expanded offshore oil drilling in the states of Florida, North Carolina, South Carolina, and California. When leaders of three states expressed strong concerns on behalf of their constituents, the federal government backed off those proposals…Yet they continue to target California,” he testified. Florida, North Carolina, and South Carolina all voted for Trump in 2024.

The administration has proposed opening federal waters off California to new oil and gas leasing, something that has not happened in decades. It has also sought to restart the Sable pipeline, which has been shut down since the 2015 Refugio oil spill. Recently, the government spent billions of dollars to stop wind farms and other renewable energy projects from being built.

California’s coastal program was already reviewed under the previous administration. NOAA’s 2024 review included public meetings and stakeholder input, and a draft report completed in 2025 found that California had successfully implemented and enforced its federally approved program. The Trump administration nevertheless ordered another review.

If the federal government ultimately determines that California’s program does not comply with federal requirements, it could seek changes to the program or move toward decertification. That could weaken the state’s ability to challenge federal projects and put federal funding connected to the program at risk.

The confrontation is unusual enough that legal experts told the Los Angeles Times they were unaware of another instance in which the federal government had stripped a coastal state of its rights under the Coastal Zone Management Act. What happens in California could therefore establish a precedent for the relationship between the federal government and coastal states elsewhere.

Gabrielino Tongva & Chumash activist and singer Tina Orduno Calderon sings a welcome song at the Rally to Protect the California Coast. To listen to the song, click here. You Can Still Submit Comment

Californians who want to push back against the Trump administration’s effort to weaken the state’s coastal protections have a relatively simple place to start: tell the federal government what you think. You can submit your own comment electronically, here.

While the only in-person meeting was held (or is being held depending when you’re reading this) today, there are virtual meetings tomorrow and Wednesday, August 11 and 12. For more details on those meetings, click here.

“Trump is threatening California’s coast in pursuit of reckless offshore oil and gas extraction to pad the wallets of his corrupt oil cronies,” Newsom said in a statement. “We won’t stand by while Trump sidelines the people who rely on and care for California’s coast. Now is the time to make our voices heard. Give the Trump administration an earful.”

You can read the state’s official comments, here.

Hoo boy. With the approach of what bleakly promises to be "the super-Islamophobic midterms," the Bigot-In-Chief is letting his racist freak flag fly by attacking Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, whose smarts, strength, hotness, accomplished wife and Michigan win clearly terrify him. Cue charges of "communist," "man of hate," and, probs soon, AI slop featuring suicide vests. Meanwhile, El-Sayed, a far sharper tool in the shed, has embraced the charge they represent "(two) America’s": The ads write themselves.

Planet MAGA, of course, is already so delusional Trump just boasted of his "Great Poll Numbers," which now sit at rock-bottom lows of 38% to 33%. For a bunch of hacks led by a fragile narcissist who's never seen a scapegoat he didn't relish, the fantastical goes hand-in-stubby-hand with the fear-mongering: vandals in the Reflecting Pool, domestic terrorists at No Kings, migrant caravans, lunatic Bolsheviks, weird names or just brown-or-black skinned success, more terrifying to many of these losers than any threat of extremism. Enter, in peril, the high-achieving epidemiologist, health official, author and "Muslim boogeyman" El-Sayed. “Expect them to throw the whole bigoted kitchen sink at El-Sayed," says Mehdi Hasan. "This will be the anti-Zohran Mamdani campaign on anti-Muslim steroids."

Unsurprisingly, it began in earnest the minute the good doctor won Michigan's against-the-odds primary against establishment Dem Haley Stevens. He'll face off against GOP Rep. and racist ijiot Mike Rogers, who of course has rushed to call the U.S.-born-and-bred El-Sayed "anti-American" and - pulling the same juvenile "Barack Hussein Obama" crap to undermine his legitimacy - to use his full, scary, def-not-in-Kansas-anymore name Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed. But Abdulrahman, who doesn't suffer fools gladly, has brutally pushed back. "With a name like mine, I never thought running for office would be possible," he said at a campaign event. But if "Mike" wants to focus on his 11-letter (a lot!) first name, he just wanted to remind him, "If you don’t know how to say it, keep the name out of your damn mouth.”

In moronic lockstep, MAGA's bigots, brown shirts and zealots have followed suit with "cartoonishly Islamophobic attacks." They use his full name and say he's a "socialist," which they can't define but anyway he isn't. Anti-trans goon Nancy Mace charges, “Every single Muslim holding public office (is) a Trojan Horse and a threat to national security and our republic," and woe is us when "our granddaughters are wearing burkas to school." Vapid scumbag JD calls him a "crazy" guy who doesn't want Trump's rip-off, oligarch-run "prosperous economy" and flings "personal insults" at Vance's family, though hours later Trump attacked El-Sayed's wife, who is U.S.-born and thus not an alleged Einstein Visa immigrant third wife who somehow after 30 years here can still barely speak English. Maybe it was an Epstein Visa?

As usual, Trump has eagerly led the racist, vulgar charge. Along with a communist man of hate, he's also called El-Sayed a "jihadist" from a rigged, "strictly Third World" state who's "full of shit." It turns out El-Sayed is also "the absolute best at casually burning Trump to the fucking ground": Asked about the barb, El-Sayed snapped back, “At least I don’t let mine go in the middle of the Oval Office." And as with another smart, quick, non-white guy who's way above his pay grade and lives rent-free in his wee puerile mind, he likes to sneeringly recite, often stumbling, the full, scary name of a guy who this time actually would be the first Muslim U.S. senator. Presumably, the ketchup really hit the White House walls last weekend when El-Sayed said he'd had "a really good conversation" with Obama about "what we need to do to win."

Above all, the bigot for all seasons pivots to the trope of anyone Arabic - El-Sayed's parents immigrated from Egypt - being anti-Semitic. "He doesn't love Jewish people," babbles Trump. "He hates them with a passion that burns in his heart." In fact, El-Sayed has plainly, repeatedly said he opposes not Jews but Israel's genocidal policies, AIPAC and the dark U.S. money that abets both: "I believe in equal rights to peace, dignity and self-determination for all people." That call for equality under the law has nothing to do with anti-Semitism, notes Peter Beinart; cognizant of history. he also warns that a political party or ideology willing to be "nakedly bigoted" toward any group of people, in this case Muslims, in order to maintain power would, if the politics were to shift, "do the same thing to Jews in a heartbeat."

Obviously, such subtlety is beyond the dim-witted likes of Trump and his MAGA zombies, who alone could look at Dr. El-Sayed and his (one) wife Dr. Sarah Jukaku, a psychiatrist whose parents emigrated here from India, and see a threat. Both are U.S.-born-and- raised doctors with undergrad degrees from University of Michigan, where they met, and advanced degrees from Columbia and Oxford. In his book Healing Politics, El-Sayed offers a rigorous framework for understanding systemic medical and political failure, and building conditions for lasting healing. He also calls Jukaku his “rock" and praises the "quiet confidence" that led her to work with people confronting pain. "I struggled to learn who I was,” he wrote of their earlier selves. “Sarah did not. She danced with her emotions. I wrestled with mine." The couple has two daughters.

No wonder, then, a needy, hollow rapist, con-man, bully and aspiring tinpot dictator, routinely raking in billions while kids go hungry and stuffed into a cheap tux for his fellow billionaire felons, posted a photo of himself with his tacky, mail-order, call-girl wife in a tight dress with "redacted Epstein files written all over it" - both smirking, "We're richer and be better than you and just ignore our vile name appearing in those pedo files thousands of times" - alongside the other couple, warmly smiling after a pancake breakfast in a diner, El Sayed in a t-shirt, Jukaku in a hijab so she must be a terrorist (though Trump, suspect, is wearing a cat.) The caption for the side-by-side pics, which only the spectacularly tone-deaf Trump could remotely imagine as a mic-drop: "Two VERY DIFFERENT America’s (sic).” Umm. Sure.

Kudos to El-Sayed, prince among men, who didn't even stoop to pick the low-hanging fruit of Trump's "grammatical shitbaggery" - one comment: "What a maroon" - emblematic of a proudly semi-literate GOP somehow come to power in our debased America without understanding how apostrophes work. Instead, El-Sayed went for the meat of the matter. "Yeah, he's right," he told CNN. Swiftly, he embraced the campaign-ready concept of two Americas: "Trump's vision, the one you're living in right now (in) which your overlords are two people who don’t like each other, but join in the interest of making billions of dollars off of you...Or two people who genuinely love each other, enjoyed some pancakes together, and want to come together to build the kind of America where they can raise a family and know that family is going to have the good things."

Those "good things" - health care, good jobs, clean air and water, a relatively level playing field to replace gross inequality, a country where people can live peaceably together "with their sisters and brothers" - are what he and his wife want for their kids, and he wisely gauges most of the rest of us do too. And no, he says, rebutting GOP charges, it's not "radical" to believe people should be able to afford groceries, have health care, partake in free elections. Also, he and his wife actually "like each other," he adds; as to the couple in the "very different" America, "From what I've heard, it's a bit of a rocky road." As mid-terms loom. “They are going to try to paint me as a certain thing, (but) America is a lot bigger than (these) very small people make it out to be," he says. "They all think we won't step up and fight...We fight for each other."

@abdulelsayed

They all think we won't step up and fight... They think they're the biggest, baddest bully on the playground... That they're going to show up and we're going to run away...

In our latest, we talk with Prof. Valena Beety, Professor of Law at Indiana University, about her new book “Pink Crime: Fighting Against the Criminalization of Motherhood, Pregnancy, and Queer…

EWG applauds California’s phase-out of toxic herbicide linked to Parkinson’s and other diseases Anthony Lacey August 10, 2026

SACRAMENTO – The Environmental Working Group today applauded the California Department of Pesticide Regulation’s announcement that all manufacturers of pesticide products containing paraquat-dichloride have voluntarily cancelled their registrations that allow them to sell paraquat in the state.

The decision starts the phase-out of one of the most toxic weedkillers in use in California agriculture. It’s a major step toward protecting farmworkers, agricultural communities and the environment from a highly toxic herbicide linked to Parkinson’s disease, thyroid disease, childhood leukemia, non-Hodgkin lymphoma and birth defects.

“California is sending a powerful message that there is no place for paraquat in modern agriculture,” said Bernadette Del Chiaro, EWG’s senior vice president for California. “The fact is, farmworkers and nearby communities have been unprotected from the health threats of paraquat making this decision long overdue. 

“That, along with the tragic spill in Dorris put the writing on the wall that paraquat’s days were numbered,” said Del Chiaro. 

In March, a large container of paraquat fell from a truck in the northern California town Dorris, spilling roughly 60 gallons of the chemical onto a major roadway and into the surrounding community. Citing the risk of exposure to airborne paraquat releases, officials ordered a lockdown affecting about 600 residents, including those at a local elementary school. 

Del Chiaro praised the California Legislature, in particular former Assemblymember and now Rep. Laura Friedman (D-Calif.) and leading voices like Dolores Huerta that ultimately led to today’s announcement through the enactment of AB 1963 in 2004. EWG sponsored the legislation, which required DPR to prioritize the scientific reevaluation of paraquat.

Using paraquat is banned in more than 70 countries, and earlier this year Vermont became the first U.S. state to prohibit its use. 

“Paraquat is bad news for farmers, farmworkers and public health,” said Del Chiaro. “We applaud today’s announcement and urge other states to follow the lead of California and Vermont and ban this toxic crop chemical once and for all.” 

###

The Environmental Working Group is a nonprofit, non-partisan organization that empowers people to live healthier lives in a healthier environment. Through research, advocacy and unique education tools, EWG drives consumer choice and civic action. Visit www.ewg.org for more information.

Areas of Focus Farming & Agriculture Family Health Toxic Chemicals Paraquat California Press Contact Alex Formuzis alex@ewg.org (202) 667-6982 August 10, 2026

Thirty-seven senators recently signed a letter to President Trump vehemently opposing his recent monument reductions and standing up for Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante. That letter sent a clear message: our national monuments must not be attacked, diminished, or treated as bargaining chips.

But Trump’s attacks don’t stop at monument boundaries. The wild public lands surrounding and connecting many national monuments in Utah are part of the same remarkable redrock landscape and deserve lasting protection.

Please thank your senator(s) for signing the letter while also urging them to cosponsor America’s Red Rock Wilderness Act, landmark legislation that would protect more than 8 million acres of wild public land in Utah as wilderness, including lands within the national monuments.

Thank your senator(s) for defending the monuments and ask them to cosponsor America’s Red Rock Wilderness Act

Trump’s attack on the monuments is part of a broader effort to weaken protections for public lands across Utah and the West. The Red Rock bill offers a powerful response: permanent congressional protection for the canyons, mesas, badlands, and other desert wild lands that make this region so extraordinary.

The lands proposed for wilderness designation under the Red Rock bill provide critical wildlife habitat and migration corridors, protect cultural resources, and preserve intact desert ecosystems. Cosponsoring this visionary legislation is one of the clearest ways lawmakers can show they are serious about defending America’s public lands from attacks now and in the future.

Please contact your senator(s) now and ask them to cosponsor the Red Rock Bill. If one or both of your senators have already cosponsored, they’ll just receive a thank-you message.

The Senate sign-on letter is an important public rebuke of Trump’s actions on Grand Staircase-Escalante and Bears Ears. Now let’s build on that and make sure Congress protects the surrounding redrock wilderness lands that are essential to the future of these landscapes.

Thank you for taking action!

The post Thank Your Senator(s) for Defending National Monuments in Utah, Ask Them to Cosponsor ARRWA appeared first on Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance.

A woman was killed on Market Street on Friday. A recent report shows a higher number of severe and fatal crashes in San Francisco than when the city first took its Vision Zero pledge over a decade ago.

A new study from a coalition including the Vision Zero network and the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety concludes that the core problem is that cities take the pledge to reduce traffic fatalities and serious injuries to zero, but then don’t integrate it into all aspects of planning. The “Safe System Success Stories: Proactive Injury Prevention in Transportation” evaluates projects in 13 cities by their ability to reduce crashes. It’s a template for how all cities should look at all projects.

“Across the board, across the city, cities need to make changes and align decision-making and all their funding decisions, all policy decisions, with traffic safety priorities,” explained the Vision Zero Network’s Leah Shahum. “Most cities are not doing that yet; San Francisco is not alone in that.”

More from the study:

Put simply, speed kills. Kinetic energy is the central driver of injury in road collisions. As the amount of kinetic energy in a crash increases, whether through higher velocity or greater mass, the human body is less able to tolerate the forces released. Kinetic energy risk can be managed by reducing how often and how far people drive (exposure), limiting operating speeds and vehicle mass (severity), and reducing how often road users are placed in conflict (likelihood of a crash).

The three levers from the study

According to Shahum, those three safety levers need to be considered in every bit of planning. New York City’s congestion pricing was one successful planning example cited in the study. By charging drivers to enter the city’s most congested area, it reduces the number of cars and vehicle miles traveled, reducing exposure. It encouraged a switch to bicycles. And of course it reduces how often users are placed in conflict “by enabling street space to be repurposed for bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure. Such infrastructure separates pedestrians and cyclists from motor vehicles, reducing opportunities for conflicts.”

Closer to home, San Francisco’s Van Ness BRT also pulled all three levers because it created…

…dedicated, center-running transit lanes, reduced general-purpose lanes from three to two in most segments, narrowed lane widths, added median pedestrian refuges, programmed signals with leading pedestrian intervals, and restricted left turns for private vehicles at most intersections. These changes reduced conflict points, shortened pedestrian crossings, improved transit operating speeds and increased person throughput without roadway expansion.

Projects that don’t meet the safety criteria, she explained, simply shouldn’t be built. Shahum cited an example from Santa Rosa, which nixed a long-planned road-widening because it clearly increased exposure. “It’s not just about a project there or a project here, it’s about changing how we make decisions about widening,” she said. “If a project fails on delivering on safety, you can’t use it as an excuse that something’s been in the pipeline for a long time.”

Shahum confirmed there’s a parallel with equity-based planning, where cities require themselves to ask whether a project exacerbates disparities before it can proceed. Unfortunately, Caltrans and county departments of transportation continue to build projects that are in conflict with Vision Zero goals. Think of all the ramp widenings, which increase speeds and exposure to wrecks.

“City planners need to be unafraid and unapologetic about taking things off their plan and off the funding cycle if it’s not going to improve safety,” said Shahum.

Be sure to check out the report.

This website is dedicated to guiding your participation in both the CSIPM Forum 2026 and the 54th Plenary Session of the Committee on World Food Security (CFS 54). Please visit this web page frequently, as it will undergo regular updates.

CSIPM Forum 2026

Bringing together our collective voice for food sovereignty ahead of the CFS 54th Plenary Session. In-person event for social movements, civil society and Indigenous Peoples’ organisations. 

When: 17 and 18 October 2026, from 8:00 – 18:00

Modality: In-person

Where: Università Roma Tre, Aula Magna del Dipartimento di Architettura.  Rome, Italy. 
Piazza Orazio Giustiniani 4, 00153, Roma https://maps.app.goo.gl/cLRMbKVpDLP9hJnu9

Deadline to register: 4 October 2026 

Interpretation to English, Spanish and French will be ensured. 

We strongly encourage you to book your accommodation as early as possible. 

Register here JavaScript is disabled in your browser. To access our ticket shop without JavaScript, please click here.

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About the CSIPM Forum

Register by 4 October 

The CSIPM Forum is a two day, in-person event that takes place in Rome, Italy,  annually ahead of the CFS Plenary Session. It is open to all interested civil society and Indigenous Peoples’ organisations participating in CFS processes, as well as orgnisations wishing to engage in them. 

At the Forum, participants engage in a wide range of debates to assess past processes, to consolidate common policy positions and to identify key challenges and steps forward in our interactions with the CFS, and other civil society spaces and platforms whose work intersect with the right to food and food sovereignty struggle. This environment enables participants to consolidate, refine, and formalize their stance and key messages, which are subsequently presented at the CFS Plenary Session.

The Forum is also a platform for accountability, where Coordination Committee members openly share updates on their work, achievements, and undertakings.The Forum also hosts a Public Session open to CFS Member States, UN agencies, researchers, students, the press and the general public.  More information is available at www.csm4cfs.org

Agenda

Will be published in early October. 

CFS 54th Plenary Session 

• When and where: : 19 to 23 October, 2026. At FAO Headquarters, in Rome, Italy. 
• Who can participate: The Session is open to members of the Committee, participants and observers. 
• Interpretation:  The Plenary will be conducted in Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish. 
• Modality: Hybrid 
• Registration: Please register sending an email to  CFS54-Registration@fao.org before 7 September 2026, including the following information: 
  • • • • • • Full name, as it appears in your passport/ ID  
            • Organization 
            • Official title
            • Address
            • Email address 
            • Indicate you are part of the CSIPM 
            • Attach a recent passport-size digital photograph.

Important: Please keep in copy the CSIPM Secretariat at cso4cfs@gmail.com and  betsy.diaz.millan@csm4cfs.org 

Personalized links to access the meeting will be made available by the CFS upon receipt of the above information. 

Visit the CFS 54 Plenary dedicated website for updates. 

What is the CFS Plenary Session

The Plenary is held annually and is the central body for decision-taking, debate, coordination and convergence by all CFS members and participating actors at a global level on issues pertaining to food security and nutrition and on the implementation of the Voluntary Guidelines to Support the Progressive Realization of the Right to Adequate Food in the Context of National Food Security. 

About the CFS 54th Plenary Session

 The Plenary will begin with opening statements by UN high-level representatives, followed by the presentation of the Report “The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World (SOFI) 2026”, a panel discussion comprising regional perspectives on the findings of the SOFI report, the presentation of the outcomes and recommendations of the Second International Conference on Agrarian Reform and Rural Development (ICARRD+20), the presentation of the CFS summary report on Collaborative Governance, as well as of the outcomes of the CFS High-Level Forum on Harnessing Artificial Intelligence, Digitalization and Data Governance for Food Security and Nutrition. A Satellite Session on Empowering Women Farmers for Food Security and Nutrition will also be held on the margins of the Plenary. 

 Additionally, the Committee will initiate discussions on the next Multi-Year Programme of Work (MYPoW) 2028-2031, drawing on the Note on Critical, Emerging and Enduring Issues for Food Security and Nutrition prepared by the High Level Panel of Experts on Food Security and Nutrition (HLPE-FSN). The Plenary will also be invited to consider and endorse the annual update of the rolling section of the current CFS MYPoW, and to select the theme for the 2028 HLPE-FSN Report. 

The agenda will further include a session to discuss and share views on the High Level Panel of Experts on Food Security and Nutrition (HLPE-FSN) Report on Preserving, Strengthening and Promoting Indigenous Peoples’ Food and Knowledge Systems and Traditional Practices for Sustainable Food Systems. 

In addition to a session to discuss progress, challenges and ways to improve the use of CFS policy products, a Global Thematic Event on Empowering Family Farmers to Strengthen Sustainable Food Systems and Achieve Food Security and Nutrition will take place and will provide an opportunity to take stock of progress in the use and application of selected CFS policy recommendations, while contributing to the objectives of the UN Decade of Family Farming (2019-2028). 

Background documents, timetable and provisional agenda

Visit the CFS 54 Plenary dedicated website for updates.  

The post Registration to the CSIPM Forum 2026 and CFS 54 Plenary Session appeared first on CSIPM.

This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Jeff Masters

When a weak 45-mph tropical storm named Harvey moved through the Lesser Antilles Islands in August 2017 and then petered out in the central Caribbean Sea, no one could have suspected that the meager clump of clouds that remained would go on to become the second-costliest weather disaster in world history. But after crossing Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula into the Gulf of Mexico, Harvey was rejuvenated, rapidly intensifying into a ferocious Category 4 hurricane that hit Texas just north of Corpus Christi.

Harvey's true mischief came after it stalled inland as a tropical storm for two days, dumping at least 40 inches of rain across a gigantic area from Houston to Port Arthur — larger than the entire state of Delaware. The storm total of 60.58 inches (1,534 mm) at Nederland, Texas, was the heaviest single amount ever recorded from a tropical cyclone or its remnants in the U.S. With damages of $164 billion (2026 USD) — mostly from flooding, Harvey became a historical catastrophe exceeded only by Hurricane Katrina of 2005.

When all of Harvey’s rainfall runoff rushed toward the ocean, it encountered the blocking influence of seawater being pushed inland by the persistent onshore winds of the tropical storm, creating a significant compound flood event — coastal flooding that resulted from a combination of storm surge and river runoff unable to drain into the ocean because of the storm surge waters piled up against the coast.

A similar setup could cause an even worse catastrophe in the future. Climate change is causing more intense, slower-moving hurricanes, increased rainfall, and higher sea levels. But traditional risk assessment methods typically consider one hazard at a time — ignoring compound flood events — leading to an underestimation of the danger. If we include all the ways climate change will likely increase flooding, the future flood risk along significant portions of the U.S. Gulf and Atlantic coasts is nearly certain to make them unlivable by late this century, even under a moderate global warming scenario.

How climate change worsens the danger

A 2023 study looking at the flooding from Harvey near Port Arthur, Texas, found that 19% of the flood area occurred because of compound flooding. Under a global warming scenario where a repeat of Harvey hits with an additional sea level rise of 0.57 meters (1.9 feet), accompanied by 18% more total rainfall — plausible in 2050 — this area would increase to 33%. A potential sea level rise of 1.6 meters (5.2 feet) and an additional 50% in total rainfall, plausible by 2100, would cause the compound flooding area to rise to 46%, increasing the number of structures impacted by about a factor of 23 compared to 2017, causing tens of billions in additional damage.

Figure 1. Storm-total rainfall from Hurricane Harvey, August 24-31, 2017. Harvey dumped over 40 inches (yellow colors) in Houston, with isolated amounts over 50 inches (pink colors) south of Houston and northwest of Port Arthur. Image credit: NOAA.

There are three main ways climate change can increase flood risk along the U.S. Atlantic and Gulf coasts:

1. An increase in the frequency of more intense hurricanes and ones moving more slowly at landfall, which will dump more rain
2. Increased heavy rainfall because a warmer atmosphere holds more water vapor
3. Sea level rise

The relative importance of these three factors in a future warmer climate will vary depending upon the location, according to a 2022 study. This study found that across the Gulf of Mexico and Florida coastlines, the increase in rainfall was expected to be the largest driver. For parts of the Southeast and mid-Atlantic, the increase in the number of intense or slow-moving hurricanes would predominate. And along the upper mid-Atlantic and New England coastlines, sea level rise will dominate the future compound flood risk.

Figure 2. The main driver of compound flooding on the U.S. coast. Across the Gulf of Mexico and Florida coastlines, the increase in rainfall is the largest driver (yellow colors), while the increase in storm frequency (of more intense, slow-moving storms) has the largest impact for parts of the Southeast and mid-Atlantic (blue). Along the upper mid-Atlantic and New England coastlines, sea level rise causes the most impact (green). Locations with no clear main driver are labeled NA (gray). (Image credit: Gori et al., Tropical cyclone climatology change greatly exacerbates US extreme rainfall–surge hazard, Nat. Clim. Chang. 12, 171–178 (2022), https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-021-01272-7, open access)

Sea level rise has already led to a massive increase in flood risk

Sea level rise from all causes – for example, human-caused climate change, natural tectonic processes, and subsidence from groundwater pumping — has already led to a massive increase in the risk of damaging coastal flooding from storm surges alone, according to a 2026 study, Human-driven sea-level rise has quadrupled the frequency of coastal sea-level extremes since 1900. Relative sea level rise from all causes made a 100-year coastal flood in 1900 into a one-in-five-year flood or less by 2005 in Key West, Jacksonville, Atlantic City, and Maine. Because sea level rise is accelerating, the odds of coastal flooding will increase even faster than the increases already observed since 1900.

Flood risks are growing

Charleston, South Carolina: What was a one-in-10-year coastal flood in 1901 occurred 17 times in 2025.
Galveston, Texas: What was a one-in-10-year flood in 1904 occurred nine times in 2024.
Atlantic City, New Jersey: What was a one-in-10-year coastal flood in 1911 occurred 10 times in 2024.
Miami, Florida: What was a one-in-10-year coastal flood in 1931 occurred 14 consecutive days during the "king tides" of October 2025.
Key West, Florida: What was a one-in-10-year coastal flood in 1913 occurred an astonishing 26 out of 27 days during the "king tides" of October 2025; what was a one-in-100-year flood in 1913 has occurred three times in the past 10 years.

Data: NOAA

Dramatic rises in compound flood risk are coming

A return period refers to how often we can expect a weather event of a given severity to occur. For example, we use rainfall statistics from NOAA to compute how often a flood with a 1% chance of occurring in a given year will recur — which is defined as a one-in-100-year storm, with a return period of 100 years.

A 2022 paper, Tropical cyclone climatology change greatly exacerbates US extreme rainfall-surge hazard, studied the odds of a truly extreme compound flood event — a one-in-100-year storm surge occurring at the same time as a one-in-100-year rainfall event. Historically, the return period of such an event was about once every 200-500 years along the coastlines of the Gulf of Mexico and southeast Atlantic (up to the Chesapeake Bay), shifting to once every 1,000 years or even less frequently along the New England coastline.

But under an extreme global warming scenario for the year 2100, these odds would generally (with some exceptions, see Fig. 4) increase by seven- to 36-fold in the South and 30- to 195-fold to the north — a massive rise in extreme flood risk. Although this result was for an extreme global warming scenario, the strong signal found implies that a significant increase in extreme flood risk would occur even in a moderate global warming scenario.

Figure 3. The return period in years in 2005 for what was a one-in-100-year flood in 1900 because of relative sea level rise. Data is plotted from the 2026 paper, Human-driven sea-level rise has quadrupled the frequency of coastal sea-level extremes since 1900. For example, a 100-year coastal flood in 1900 in Jacksonville, Florida, and Atlantic City, New Jersey, was a one-in-two-year flood by 2005 (red circles with the number "2" in them). This change in flood risk is for sea level rise alone — additional increases in flood risk because of changes in precipitation are not included.

The greatest rises in risk were to the north, because climate change is expected to bring greater increases in extreme precipitation closer to the poles. This was also the finding of a 2020 study, More meteorological events that drive compound coastal flooding are projected under climate change, which predicted that the greatest increases in compound flood threat should occur north of 40°N latitude.

Figure 4. The change in return period for an extreme compound flood, defined as a one-in-100-year storm surge occurring at the same time as a one-in-100-year rainfall event, under an extreme global warming scenario. Left side of table: the return period in the historical climate (1980-2005). Right side: return period in the 2070-2100 period under an extreme global warming scenario, using the median value from eight different climate models. The return period increases by a factor of 14 to 265 for these nine cities. Data taken from the supplemental materials in: Gori et al., Tropical cyclone climatology change greatly exacerbates US extreme rainfall–surge hazard, Nat. Clim. Chang. 12, 171–178 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-021-01272-7.

Main cause of future increased compound coastal flood risk: more intense and slower-moving hurricanes

The model used in the 2022 study projected that the top 10% of most intense hurricanes would, along the majority of the U.S. coast, increase in intensity by 15-30% and move 20-30% slower in the future compared to the historical period. “The increase in storm intensity coupled with the decrease in translation speed drives an increased likelihood to observe both extreme rainfall and extreme storm tide in the future,” the authors wrote. 

A substantial inland compound flood risk along the Gulf of Mexico coast

Rivers draining into the Gulf of Mexico have seen large increases in their maximum streamflow in recent decades (commonly 20-40% increases), making them susceptible to increased compound flooding. A 2021 paper found long-term increases in the frequency of compound storm surge and heavy rainfall flooding along the rivers of the northeastern Gulf of Mexico. Surprisingly, these compound flood events were largest a good distance inland, near the limit of where tidal influences stopped — not at the coast where compound events are usually expected. A 2026 study focused on North and South Carolina also found a considerable expansion of the threat of compound flooding inland in a future warmer climate.

A Hurricane Sandy-like compound flood event: five times more likely by 2100?

Hurricane Sandy in October 2012 caused devastating surge-driven flooding across heavily populated coastal areas in New York City, resulting in more than $91 billion (2026 USD) in damages. A 2024 paper, Climate Change Contributions to Increasing Compound Flooding Risk in New York City, found that a Sandy-like event can be expected about once every 150 years in the present climate. But climate change — through sea level rise and an increase in hurricane strength and rainfall — can be expected to make a similar storm about a one-in-65-year event by 2050, and a one-in-30-year event by 2100, under an emissions scenario slightly higher than the trajectory humanity is currently on.

Increased compound flood threat from hurricanes earlier in the season

A 2022 paper, Earlier onset of North Atlantic hurricane season with warming oceans, found that initial threshold dates of continental U.S. named storm landfalls have trended earlier by two days per decade since 1900. Modeling work suggests that the length of hurricane season will continue to increase because of climate change. A 2017 study found that a hurricane season that was two months longer (May-December) would increase the number of flood-risk days by 28-180% along rivers in four Southeast U.S river basins.

Figure 5. Predicted water levels at the Carrollton gage on the Mississippi River in New Orleans as of July 10, 2019. The river was running high, at 16 feet above sea level, and the city’s levees protect the city to a height of 20 feet. The storm surge from Hurricane Barry was predicted to reach that level on July 13. The last time water levels that high were observed at this point on the Mississippi was in the Great Flood of 1927. Image credit: NOAA.

As I wrote in a 2019 post, New Orleans’ Achilles Heel: A Hurricane Storm Surge During a Mississippi River Flood?, a trend toward earlier hurricanes increases the risk of storm surge moving up the Mississippi River that could overwhelm the levees in New Orleans, since the river tends to run high in late spring and early summer. This situation was feared in July 2019, when Hurricane Barry sent a storm surge up the river when the river was already running high from early-summer runoff (Fig. 5). Fortunately, Barry ended up delaying its intensification into a hurricane until after it passed the mouth of the Mississippi, resulting in a storm surge that was not as high as initially forecast.

Other compound hurricane threats

Climate change is likely to make two other types of compound hurricane threats more severe. One of these was covered in my previous post, The emerging danger of post-hurricane heat waves (2026). In addition, more intense hurricanes with higher winds and heavier rains have the potential to create a double-whammy of high-end wind damage and extreme inland flooding simultaneously, overwhelming infrastructure and emergency preparedness and response efforts that could have handled one of these hazards alone, but not both together.

A preprint of a 2026 paper that has not yet undergone peer review, Global Warming Amplifies Inland Compound Risks From Tropical Cyclones, found that when comparing the recent climate (1981-2020) with an extreme climate-change projection for later this century (2061-2100), the annual probability of compound wind and precipitation extreme hazards ranking in the 99th percentile globally increases by 61-115% within 100 kilometers of the coast, and further escalates by 92-204% in areas 100-500 kilometers inland. This inland amplification is driven by more intense landfalling hurricanes and the increased moisture available caused by the 7% increase in water vapor holding capacity of the air per degree Celsius of warming. Hurricane Helene’s impact in 2024 in western North Carolina can be regarded as a harbinger storm in this regard.

Coastal areas becoming unlivable

A 2020 paper, Sea-level rise exponentially increases coastal flood frequency, found that for the most susceptible sites around the U.S., the odds of a one-in-50-year coastal flood “are likely to double approximately every five years into the foreseeable future.” This finding took into account not just storm surges from hurricanes but also from more common coastal storms such as Nor'easters. According to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, most coastal engineering works in the U.S. are designed for return periods of 50 to 100 years, so the increase in flood risk at so many sites represents a drastic increase in vulnerability. And if high-end sea-level rise projections of one meter (3.28 feet) by 2100 come true, sea-level rise will likely cause "once-in-a-lifetime" coastal flooding events to occur nearly every day before 2100. (NOAA's 2022 sea level rise forecast gives 50% odds that sea level rise along the contiguous U.S. coast by 2100 will exceed 0.7 meters.)

Figure 6. The return period in years in 2050 for what was a one-in-100-year flood in 2005 because of relative sea level rise. Data is plotted using data from the 2020 paper, Sea-level rise exponentially increases coastal flood frequency, in combination with observed and predicted sea level rise from The Virginia Institute of Marine Science annual Sea Level Rise Report Cards. For example, a one-in-100-year coastal flood in 2005 in Key West, Florida, is predicted to recur every 0.04 years (two weeks) by 2050 (red circle with the number "0.04" in it). This change in flood risk is for sea level rise alone — additional increases in flood risk because of changes in precipitation are not included. The forecasts out to 2050 are generated using the observed acceleration trend fitted with a quadratic curve (since sea level rise is increasing exponentially, and a straight-line linear fit is not appropriate). Note that these forecasts are not based on a climate model and may be underestimated.

If we now add in the massive additional increase in flood risk resulting from compound flooding, good luck trying to insure your home. The huge increase in climate change-induced flood risk from sea level rise, heavier rainfall, and stronger/slower-moving hurricanes is nearly certain to force abandonment of portions of the U.S. Gulf and Atlantic coasts by late this century, even under a moderate global warming scenario. A 2026 study, The Growth Effects of Natural Disasters: Evidence From A Novel Global Dataset Over 1970-2023, found that a one-in-100-year flood reduces GDP by about 0.5%, so it is easy to see how the coast could quickly become unlivable if once-in-a-lifetime floods are occurring nearly yearly in low-lying regions. Indeed, hurricane flooding has already led to the unofficial abandonment of several U.S. communities, and a number of others are already at significant risk, which I will detail in a series of future posts (spoiler alert: Barrier islands are high on the list).

https://bsky.app/profile/drjeffmasters.bsky.social/post/3mnhxhqjjtc2g

The only recourse we will have is to spend vast amounts of money to defend the most important places and retreat from or abandon the rest. A society-shaking mass migration of millions of Americans away from the coast is inevitable in future decades because of increased climate change-induced flood risk. The trigger for the beginning of this exodus may be only a few years away. To understand what’s coming, I recommend reading my 2024 post, When will climate change turn life in the U.S. upside down?

Related posts on sea level rise

• Book review: “On the Move” is a must-read account of U.S. climate migration (2024)
• Book review: “The Great Displacement” is a must-read (2023)
• Part one of my three-part sea level rise series: How fast are the seas rising? (2023)
• Part two of my three-part sea level rise series: Eight excellent books on sea level rise risk for U.S. cities (2023)
• Part three of my three-part sea level rise series: 30 great tools to determine your flood risk in the U.S. (2023)
• Bubble trouble: Climate change is creating a huge and growing U.S. real estate bubble (2023)
• How sea level rise contributes to billions in extra damage during hurricanes (2022)

Bob Henson contributed to this post.

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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In 2026, Bryant Dossman, PhD, joined Audubon as the new director and principal scientist of the Audubon Everglades Research Station (AERS) in Tavernier. Hailing from Newark, New Jersey, his...

THE SHELL LEAKS FILES SLF-2007-025 The Sakhalin Papers XV: The $20 Billion Shock — When Shell’s Flagship Project Blew Its Budget

Archive reference: SLF-2007-025
Collection: The Sakhalin Papers
Principal records: Shell Stock Exchange Release of 15 May 2003; Shell Sakhalin II Project Schedule and Cost Update of 14 July 2005; Royal Dutch Shell Annual Report and Form 20-F for 2005; Shell SEC filings of 21 December 2006
Supporting record: Contemporaneous financial and energy-industry reporting; Russian government statements; later English High Court proceedings concerning proposed UK export-credit support
Evidence standard: Shell’s own filings are treated as the primary record for Shell’s estimates and corporate position. Russian government claims, press interpretations and allegations concerning political motivation are identified as such. No court is represented as having adjudicated responsibility for the Sakhalin II cost overrun.

Introduction

On 15 May 2003, Shell publicly presented Sakhalin II Phase 2 as an approximately $10 billion investment.

The scale was extraordinary. Shell described it as the largest single foreign direct investment project in Russia and what was then thought to be the world’s largest integrated oil and gas development. First LNG cargoes were planned for the second half of 2007. Shell held 55% of Sakhalin Energy Investment Company, with Mitsui holding 25% and Mitsubishi 20%.

Just over two years later, on 14 July 2005, Shell issued another formal Stock Exchange release.

The estimated cost was no longer approximately $10 billion.

Sakhalin Energy now provisionally anticipated Phase 2 investment costs “of the order of $20 billion”, including planned development and drilling activity through 2014. LNG deliveries were pushed into the summer of 2008. Shell emphasised that the estimate remained under review, but the scale of the change was unmistakable.

The number had effectively doubled.

And under Sakhalin II’s unusual Production Sharing Agreement, this was not merely Shell’s problem.

It was about to become Russia’s problem too.

The $10 Billion Project

The documentary starting point is unusually clear.

Shell’s May 2003 Stock Exchange release, subsequently lodged with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission, stated that Sakhalin Energy had received shareholder support to launch Phase 2. The project’s Supervisory Board, which included representatives of both the company and the Russian Federation, had unanimously approved the development proposal.

Shell put the required investment at approximately $10 billion.

That development involved two new offshore platforms, a gas-processing facility, roughly 850-kilometre oil and gas pipeline systems, an oil export terminal and Russia’s first LNG plant, designed to produce 9.6 million tonnes of LNG annually. First LNG was planned for the second half of 2007.

Mitsui’s own SEC-filed announcement on the same date independently recorded a total Phase 2 development budget of approximately $10 billion and LNG shipments beginning in 2007.

There is therefore little ambiguity about the publicly announced baseline.

Approximately $10 billion was the figure attached to the investment decision.

14 July 2005

Shell’s formal announcement two years later was carefully worded.

Sakhalin Energy “provisionally” anticipated investment costs around $20 billion. The estimate was described as work still in progress and subject to shareholder review and confirmation. The figure covered planned development activity, including drilling through 2014.

But the announcement was nevertheless extraordinary.

A project publicly associated with a $10 billion investment decision in 2003 was now carrying a provisional estimate approximately twice that size.

Shell also moved expected LNG deliveries to summer 2008.

The company said Sakhalin Energy and its shareholders were pursuing mitigation measures and would work with Russian authorities and state experts on revised plans and budgets.

This last point would prove important.

The revised budget could not simply remain an internal Shell accounting exercise.

Russia was one of the parties whose approval mattered.

Shell’s Own Diagnosis

Contemporaneous reporting provides additional detail about what Shell executives believed had gone wrong.

The Guardian reported on 15 July 2005 that Malcolm Brinded, then head of Shell’s Exploration and Production business, attributed the escalation to a combination of currency movements, rising steel costs, difficulties associated with pipeline river crossings and environmental permitting. He acknowledged that the project’s budget and timetable had been materially underestimated.

Industry reporting similarly recorded that the $20 billion estimate was being treated by Shell as a provisional revision requiring further review rather than a finally approved project budget.

This distinction matters.

The July announcement did not mean that the Russian government had already approved $20 billion of recoverable expenditure under the Production Sharing Agreement.

It meant Shell and Sakhalin Energy had concluded that the project they were building was likely to cost dramatically more than previously expected.

Approval of the revised plans and budget remained another matter.

The Annual Report Removes Any Doubt

By the time Royal Dutch Shell published its 2005 Annual Report and Form 20-F, the language had become more direct.

Shell recorded that Sakhalin Energy had announced Phase 2 investment costs estimated at $20 billion and described the change as representing “very substantial cost overruns” compared with previous estimates. The same report stated that construction was approximately 60% complete by the end of 2005 and that LNG deliveries were expected to begin in 2008.

Chief Executive Jeroen van der Veer went further in his introductory message.

He acknowledged “large cost overruns” on Sakhalin II and said Shell intended to learn lessons from them.

This is therefore not a cost-overrun allegation derived from environmental campaigners, hostile journalists or Russian officials.

Shell itself recorded the overruns in its audited corporate reporting.

The argument begins only when one asks why they happened, who should bear them and what consequences followed.

Not Every Extra Dollar Was an Environmental Cost

It would be misleading to imply that the doubling arose principally from the Western gray whale controversy discussed in SLF-2007-024.

Shell and contemporary reports identified a much wider set of pressures: steel and other materials inflation, contractor costs, foreign-exchange movements, Russian inflation, difficult frontier construction conditions, river crossings, engineering challenges and regulatory requirements.

The project itself was immense.

Two offshore platforms had to operate in a region of severe weather, seismic risk and sea ice. Twin pipeline systems crossed most of Sakhalin Island. Processing, liquefaction and export facilities were being created on a scale Russia had not previously attempted for LNG.

Environmental changes, including pipeline-routing and permitting issues, formed part of that history.

They were not the entire explanation.

That evidential boundary is important.

The Most Awkward Week in the Timeline

The timing of the cost announcement created an additional problem for Shell.

In early July 2005 — only days before the $20 billion disclosure — Shell and Gazprom had agreed the broad principles of an asset swap.

Under the proposed arrangement, Gazprom could acquire 25% plus one share of Sakhalin II while Shell would receive a 50% interest in Gazprom’s Zapolyarnoye-Neocomian development. Any difference in valuation would be balanced with cash or other assets. Shell’s 2005 Annual Report subsequently recorded those terms.

Then came the cost announcement.

Contemporaneous reporting recorded an immediate reassessment by Gazprom of the proposed transaction’s valuation. UPI reported that Gazprom demanded reconsideration of the swap terms after Shell disclosed the scale of the cost increase.

This sequence has sometimes invited suspicions about what Gazprom knew and when.

The available record requires caution.

Shell told journalists that Gazprom had been informed before the public announcement that costs were rising. The evidence examined here does not establish that Shell deliberately concealed the scale of the overrun from Gazprom while negotiating the swap.

What is established is the sequence:

the proposed asset swap was announced;

the $20 billion estimate became public shortly afterwards;

and the valuation of the proposed transaction immediately became contentious.

The original swap was never completed in the form envisaged that July.

Why Russia Cared About Shell’s Costs

Sakhalin II was being developed under a Production Sharing Agreement signed in 1994.

Sakhalin Energy’s own description of that agreement states that the Russian Federation retained sovereign ownership of the oil and gas resources while Sakhalin Energy supplied the investment needed to explore and develop them. The PSA replaced much of the conventional tax-and-licence framework with contractual arrangements governing the project over its lifetime.

By 2006, the size and recoverability of Sakhalin II expenditure had become a direct point of confrontation with Moscow.

Russian Natural Resources Minister Yuri Trutnev publicly said that plans to increase reimbursable costs were unacceptable to the Russian side and warned that Russia could lose billions if project expenditures continued to rise. Those statements were Russian government claims about the financial consequences; they were not independent audited findings establishing a precise loss to the Russian state.

But Shell’s later filings confirm that cost recovery itself became a subject requiring agreement with the Russian authorities.

That is the crucial documentary fact.

From Project Overrun to State Dispute

This is where Sakhalin II ceased being an ordinary megaproject cost story.

If Shell had merely been constructing an entirely private project at its own financial risk, the principal questions would have concerned shareholder returns and project economics.

But Sakhalin II operated under a contract with the Russian Federation.

Accordingly, arguments over which expenditures belonged in the project budget and how those costs should be treated under the PSA had consequences for both investors and the state.

By September 2006, Russian officials were publicly connecting the cost escalation with their wider dissatisfaction over Sakhalin II. Oil & Gas Journal recorded Trutnev’s objection to increased reimbursable costs and his assertion that Russia was obliged to protect its interests.

Contemporaneous press reporting increasingly described the dispute as involving both environmental compliance and economics. The Wall Street Journal reported that Russian authorities were explicitly linking their scrutiny of Sakhalin II with the project’s cost overrun.

The motives behind the later regulatory campaign remain contested.

The existence of the budget dispute does not.

The Financing Context

There was another audience watching Sakhalin II’s mounting problems: international lenders and export-credit agencies.

Shell had been seeking major external financing for the development. The subsequent English High Court judgment in Export Credits Guarantee Department v Friends of the Earth recorded that approximately $650 million in UK-backed project finance support had been sought and that the scheme was regarded by ECGD as sufficiently complex and sensitive to require consultation across government departments.

That litigation concerned access to environmental information.

It did not adjudicate the Sakhalin II cost overrun or determine whether Shell had mismanaged the project.

But the judicial record demonstrates how extensively the project was being scrutinised outside Shell and Russia while its cost estimate was escalating.

Commercial lenders, state export-credit agencies, environmental experts, Shell’s shareholders and the Russian authorities were all examining different aspects of the same development.

A $10 billion revision was impossible to isolate from that wider scrutiny.

Shell Was Still Committed

Despite the scale of the problem, Shell did not publicly retreat from Sakhalin II.

Its July 2005 filing stressed the substantial resource base — 17.3 trillion cubic feet of gas and one billion barrels of oil — and noted that more than 75% of LNG capacity had already been sold under long-term contracts. Construction was already well advanced.

Malcolm Brinded said Shell remained committed to completing the development and delivering value both to shareholders and Russia.

The economics had deteriorated on the cost side, but rising oil and gas prices provided a countervailing benefit. Contemporary reporting records Brinded making precisely that point.

Sakhalin II was therefore not regarded by Shell as an abandoned or economically worthless development.

The problem was how to finish it — and under what ownership, budget and political conditions.

December 2006: The Budget and the Ownership Change Converge

The documentary climax came on 21 December 2006.

Royal Dutch Shell filed two highly significant announcements.

In one, Shell, Mitsui and Mitsubishi said they had reached agreement with the Russian Ministry of Industry and Energy concerning the amended Sakhalin II budget and cost recovery. Shell stated that the Production Sharing Agreement would continue and that the amended Phase 2 budget was expected to receive Supervisory Board approval.

In the other, Shell announced a protocol under which Gazprom would acquire 50% plus one share of Sakhalin Energy for $7.45 billion in cash.

Shell’s stake would fall from 55% to 27.5%. Mitsui’s would fall from 25% to 12.5%, and Mitsubishi’s from 20% to 10%. Gazprom would become the controlling shareholder.

The two developments occurred on the same day.

One settled the immediate argument over budget and cost recovery.

The other ended Shell’s majority control.

That juxtaposition is central to the Sakhalin II story.

This Does Not Prove a Forced Expropriation

The political circumstances surrounding Gazprom’s entry have generated strong language ever since.

Contemporaneous Western reporting frequently portrayed Moscow’s environmental and regulatory campaign as pressure designed to force Shell to surrender control. Russian officials, by contrast, publicly presented their actions as enforcement of environmental obligations and protection of the state’s economic interests.

The documentary evidence examined in this instalment demonstrates intense pressure, a serious budget dispute and a fundamental ownership change.

It does not, by itself, prove that every regulatory action taken by Russia was fabricated solely to obtain Sakhalin II.

Nor does it establish that Shell freely chose the final ownership structure in circumstances equivalent to an ordinary arm’s-length transaction.

Those are questions requiring the regulatory and political record examined in the next files.

The correct documentary position is narrower:

Shell began Phase 2 as the 55% controlling shareholder of a project publicly estimated at approximately $10 billion.

The project’s estimated cost rose to approximately $20 billion.

The Russian government challenged the treatment of project expenditure and cost recovery.

By the time agreement was reached on the amended budget, Gazprom was simultaneously entering the project as majority shareholder.

Those facts require no embellishment.

What Is Established

Shell’s own SEC-filed documents establish that Sakhalin II Phase 2 was publicly associated with an approximately $10 billion investment when the development decision was announced in May 2003. First LNG was then planned for the second half of 2007.

Shell’s 14 July 2005 filing establishes that Sakhalin Energy subsequently anticipated costs around $20 billion, including development and drilling through 2014, and expected LNG deliveries in summer 2008. The estimate was still provisional and subject to review.

Shell’s 2005 Annual Report later characterised Sakhalin II as suffering substantial cost overruns and recorded management’s intention to learn from them.

It is also established that the increased costs became a point of dispute with Russian authorities, particularly over reimbursable expenditure and the project budget.

Finally, Shell’s December 2006 SEC filings establish that agreement over the amended budget and cost recovery coincided with a protocol transferring majority ownership of Sakhalin Energy to Gazprom for $7.45 billion.

What Is Alleged or Contested

Russian officials alleged that the increasing recoverable costs could deprive the Russian Federation of very large sums of anticipated revenue.

Those statements were part of the dispute and should not automatically be treated as independently established calculations.

Western journalists, environmental organisations and other critics subsequently argued — sometimes explicitly — that Russia’s environmental enforcement campaign was being used as leverage to force Shell and its Japanese partners to surrender control to Gazprom. Russian authorities disputed that characterisation and maintained that legitimate environmental and financial interests were at stake.

This instalment does not resolve that dispute.

It establishes the economic circumstances in which it arose.

What Remains Unresolved

The public documentary record does not permit a precise allocation of the extra approximately $10 billion between inflation, currency movements, contractor escalation, engineering complexity, environmental mitigation, regulatory delay, inadequate original estimating and other causes.

Nor does the material examined here establish that any particular Shell executive knowingly approved an estimate he or she believed to be false.

Shell’s own public record supports the conclusion that the original budget and schedule proved seriously inadequate.

That is different from proving intentional deception.

Similarly, the close timing between the Gazprom asset-swap discussions and Shell’s July 2005 cost disclosure raises legitimate historical questions, but the evidence examined here does not establish deliberate concealment of the revised cost from Gazprom.

Those distinctions should remain intact.

Commentary

There is a temptation, looking backwards, to treat the $20 billion announcement merely as another milestone on the road to Gazprom’s takeover.

That understates it.

The cost escalation fundamentally altered the political economics of Sakhalin II.

When Shell committed to Phase 2 in 2003, it was presenting Russia, investors, customers and potential lenders with a development costing approximately $10 billion.

Two years later that number had become approximately $20 billion.

For any megaproject, that would be serious.

Under a Production Sharing Agreement involving a sovereign state, it was explosive.

The consequences reached beyond Shell’s shareholders because Russia disputed how much of the enlarged expenditure should be recognised for project-budget and cost-recovery purposes.

At the same time, Shell was attempting to bring Gazprom into the project through an asset swap.

Then environmental enforcement intensified.

Then negotiations changed.

Then Gazprom entered not as the anticipated 25%-plus-one-share partner but as the owner of 50% plus one share.

It would be simplistic to say that the cost overrun alone caused Shell to lose control.

The record does not support such a single-cause explanation.

But it would be equally difficult to understand the 2006 confrontation without it.

The $20 billion shock changed Sakhalin II from an extraordinarily difficult engineering project into an increasingly difficult political bargain.

And by the end of 2006, Shell was no longer the party holding the controlling hand.

Source Record

The principal documentary records are Shell’s own corporate filings with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission.

The 15 May 2003 Stock Exchange release records the Phase 2 investment decision, Shell’s 55% interest, the approximately $10 billion investment estimate and the planned second-half-2007 first LNG cargo.

The 14 July 2005 Shell Sakhalin II Project Schedule and Cost Update, also filed with the SEC, records the provisional approximately $20 billion estimate, drilling through 2014, the revised summer-2008 LNG timetable, continuing budget review and consultation with Russian authorities.

Royal Dutch Shell’s 2005 Annual Report and Form 20-F subsequently described the Sakhalin II increase as a substantial cost overrun and recorded both the Gazprom asset-swap proposal and Shell management’s acknowledgement that lessons needed to be learned.

The 21 December 2006 Shell Form 6-K filings record agreement with the Russian Ministry of Industry and Energy concerning the amended budget and cost recovery and, separately, the protocol under which Gazprom would acquire 50% plus one share of Sakhalin Energy for $7.45 billion.

Contemporaneous reporting from The Guardian, The Wall Street Journal, UPI and Oil & Gas Journal provides additional evidence concerning Shell’s publicly stated explanations for the escalation, Gazprom’s reaction and the Russian government’s objections to increased reimbursable expenditure. These reports are used as contemporaneous reporting rather than as substitutes for Shell’s primary filings.

The later High Court judgment in Export Credits Guarantee Department v Friends of the Earth [2008] EWHC 638 (Admin) provides the judicial record concerning proposed UK project-finance support and government consideration of Sakhalin II. That litigation concerned environmental information disclosure and made no finding on responsibility for the cost overruns.

Archive disclaimer: Cost estimates changed over time and were expressed on differing stages of project definition. The comparison between approximately $10 billion in 2003 and approximately $20 billion in 2005 reflects Shell’s own published figures, but the later estimate expressly included planned development and drilling activity through 2014. Russian government estimates of potential losses are identified as government claims rather than independent findings. Nothing in this instalment alleges fraud, deliberate concealment or unlawful conduct unless expressly attributed to an identified source or competent authority. Site wide disclaimer also applies.

Next Archive File SLF-2007-026 — The Sakhalin Papers XVI: The Environmental Offensive — When Moscow Turned the Screws on Shell

By 2006, the argument was no longer confined to spreadsheets.

Russian environmental authorities began attacking the physical execution of Sakhalin II: pipeline construction, river crossings, water permits, forestry damage and alleged breaches of environmental approvals.

Shell and its partners faced the possibility that key permissions could be suspended or revoked.

Western governments and journalists increasingly suspected that environmental enforcement was being used to force Gazprom into control of the project.

Russia insisted it was enforcing its laws.

Then something remarkable happened.

Once the ownership dispute was resolved and Gazprom obtained the controlling stake, the political temperature surrounding Sakhalin II changed dramatically.

The next file will examine the actual regulatory documents, the allegations made against Sakhalin Energy, what was genuinely wrong on the ground, what remains disputed — and whether the famous “environmental offensive” was conservation enforcement, Kremlin leverage, or an uncomfortable mixture of both.

THE SHELL LEAKS FILES: 10 AUGUST 2026 was first posted on August 10, 2026 at 8:51 pm.
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