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Long before we strung together the words “national wildlife refuge,” people were already paying attention to what made Alaska’s northeastern corner extraordinary. They saw a landscape where rivers ran wild from the Brooks Range toward the Arctic Ocean, where vast herds of caribou moved across the tundra with the seasons, and where the coastal plain provided essential habitat for polar bears, migratory birds and countless other species. For the Gwich’in people, who have lived across what is now northeastern Alaska and northwestern Canada for generations, this landscape is also home—and the Porcupine Caribou Herd that migrates through it is central to their culture, food systems and way of life. 

That relationship with the land goes back thousands of years. Gwich’in communities have followed the seasonal movements of the Porcupine Caribou Herd across the region, relying on caribou for food and passing knowledge about the animals and their habitat from one generation to the next. The herd’s journey between its wintering grounds and calving grounds on the Arctic coastal plain is one of the great migrations of the North, and for the Gwich’in, the coastal plain is more than important wildlife habitat. It is sacred ground—a place where the caribou give birth and begin the next generation. 

That deep relationship is part of what makes the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge so extraordinary. The Refuge is not an empty wilderness waiting to be discovered or developed. It is a living landscape that sustains people and wildlife together, as it has for generations. 

The story of the Refuge is also part of a much larger American idea: that there should be places set aside not for development, but for wildlife. The National Wildlife Refuge System began in 1903, when President Theodore Roosevelt established Florida’s Pelican Island as the nation’s first wildlife refuge to protect birds from plume hunting. Over the decades that followed, the system grew into a network of hundreds of refuges protecting habitat across the country, from coastal wetlands and grasslands to forests, rivers and Arctic tundra. 

These places serve a simple but increasingly important purpose. Wildlife needs somewhere to live, and people need healthy lands and waters that can sustain them. 

For migratory species, that need is especially clear. A bird may spend one season in Alaska and the next thousands of miles away in another state or another country. A caribou herd may travel hundreds of miles across its range in search of food and suitable conditions. Protecting the places these animals depend on means recognizing that wildlife does not live according to the boundaries we have drawn on a map. 

The Arctic Refuge is one of the clearest examples of what that kind of protection can make possible. In 1960, President Dwight Eisenhower established the 8.9-million-acre Arctic National Wildlife Range after years of advocacy from conservationists including Olaus and Mardy Murie, who understood that the region’s extraordinary wildlife and wilderness values deserved lasting protection. Twenty years later, Congress passed the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, dramatically expanding the protected area and creating the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge we know today. 

At nearly 20 million acres, the Arctic Refuge is larger than many U.S. states. Its landscape stretches from the Arctic Ocean across the Brooks Range and into boreal forests, encompassing mountains, rivers, wetlands and the coastal plain. It provides habitat for the Porcupine Caribou Herd, polar bears, muskoxen, Dall sheep, wolves and hundreds of species of birds, including migratory birds that travel thousands of miles to reach Alaska each year. 

For the Gwich’in, protecting this landscape has always been inseparable from protecting the caribou and the future of their communities. The Porcupine Caribou Herd ranges across Alaska and Canada, crossing an international border that means little to the animals themselves. Its annual migration has sustained Gwich’in communities for generations, and the health of the herd remains closely tied to the health of the lands and waters it travels through. The Gwich’in have therefore been among the strongest and most enduring voices defending the Arctic Refuge’s coastal plain from oil and gas development. Their opposition is rooted not only in concern for a particular ecosystem, but in a relationship with the land and caribou that reaches back thousands of years. 

That history matters because the Arctic Refuge is not simply a place we protect for wildlife that people might someday come to see. It is a place where wildlife continues to sustain human communities, where Indigenous knowledge and traditions remain alive, and where the relationship between people and the land is still visible across the landscape. 

Today, that relationship faces growing pressure. The Arctic Refuge has been targeted for oil and gas development for decades, and efforts to industrialize the coastal plain continue despite the risks to wildlife, ecosystems and the people who depend on them. Yet the reason the Refuge exists in the first place has not changed. This is a place where caribou need room to migrate, where polar bears need habitat to den, where migratory birds return each summer, and where Gwich’in communities maintain a relationship with the land that has endured for generations. 

National Wildlife Refuge Week is a chance to celebrate that idea. Across the country, refuges give wildlife habitat to survive while protecting the lands and waters that sustain communities. They preserve places that might otherwise be lost and maintain the ecological connections that stretch far beyond the boundaries of any single refuge. 

And nowhere is that responsibility more visible than in Alaska. 

The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is part of a much larger story about what we choose to protect and what we choose to pass on. Its future belongs in the hands of the people, communities and wildlife who depend on it—not the oil companies that have spent decades trying to industrialize it. 

When we protect the Arctic Refuge, we are protecting more than a spectacular landscape. We are giving caribou room to migrate, birds a place to return, bears a place to raise their young and Gwich’in communities the opportunity to continue a relationship with the land that has sustained their people for generations. 

That is worth celebrating this National Wildlife Refuge Week and worth protecting for generations to come. 

Photo credit: Dave Shreffler

The Electric Power Research Institute analysis found a dramatic drop in energy storage system failures from 2018 to 2025 amid a host of technology and project improvements. “Early-vintage” systems may require retrofits, however.

The Canadian Deep Geothermal Coalition (CDGC) and ORKIS Energy Cluster Iceland (ORKIS) are pleased to welcome the Joint Statement between Canada and Iceland, which will accelerate geothermal energy innovation and deployment to advance clean energy and energy security.

The agreement establishes an Embassy-led Canada-Iceland geothermal network that brings together the private sector, Indigenous partners and relevant government stakeholders to identify opportunities for collaboration, including in northern and remote communities.

The Joint Statement is an important step forward on geothermal collaboration between Canada and Iceland, complementing the memorandum of understanding (MOU) signed between the CDGC and ORKIS in June 2026. The MOU calls on the CDGC and ORKIS to collaborate in propelling geothermal energy to more widespread development and use.

Specifically, the June 2026 MOU aims to achieve the following:

• Exchange best practices in geothermal development, including in technology and innovation, regulation, financing, and policy;
• Jointly promote investment in geothermal in both Icelandic and Canadian markets, by reaching out to capital markets and institutional investors and garnering the attention of the financial sector;
• Identify opportunities for joint/coordinated research, as well as joint development and/or demonstration projects;
• Develop joint workforce, training, and capacity building to identify skills and the educational pathways required for next-generation geothermal development;
• Collaborate on educational content and communications materials to highlight geothermal energy’s role in the energy transition.

Geothermal energy has been moving forward across the world as next-generation technologies transform what’s possible. Canada and Iceland are actively driving this transformation through innovative technologies and projects. As electricity demand rises amidst growing geopolitical instability, Canada and Iceland can meet the moment by advancing geothermal energy.

“Energy cooperation is one of the most practical ways for Canada to deepen ties with trusted allies. Iceland has shown the world what a country can build when it commits to geothermal, and Canada has one of the world’s most skilled drilling and subsurface workforces. Together, we can move faster than either country could alone,” said Peter Massie, Director of the Geothermal Energy Office at the Cascade Institute. The Cascade Institute acts as Secretariat for the Canadian Deep Geothermal Coalition.

Sverrir Jan Norðfjörð, Managing Director of ORKIS Energy Cluster Iceland, said: “Iceland has spent decades turning its volcanic geology into a reliable source of clean energy and valuable know-how. Canada has the opportunity to develop geothermal on a much larger scale, and by combining Iceland’s experience with Canada’s deep subsurface expertise, we can help move geothermal from proven potential to a major part of the next generation of energy systems.”

To arrange interviews, please contact Jax Jacobsen, Strategic Communications Lead, Geothermal, at the Cascade Institute (jax@cascadeinstitute.org), or Sverrir Jan Norðfjörð (sverrir@orkis.is).

About the Canadian Deep Geothermal Coalition (CDGC)

The Canadian Deep Geothermal Coalition was established in 2025 to bring together organizations committed to advancing deep geothermal energy in Canada. Coalition members span industry, Indigenous organizations, communities, academia, government, technology developers, and other stakeholders united by a shared vision: making Canada a global leader in geothermal energy.

About ORKIS Energy Cluster Iceland

ORKIS Energy Cluster Iceland is a collaborative platform bringing together Icelandic companies, research institutions, public organizations, and other stakeholders working across the energy sector. Building on Iceland’s long experience in geothermal energy, ORKIS supports collaboration, innovation, knowledge-sharing, and international partnerships that help advance geothermal and other sustainable energy solutions. ORKIS works to connect Icelandic expertise with international opportunities and partners, contributing to the continued development and global application of geothermal energy.

The post Canada and Iceland deepen geothermal ties appeared first on Cascade Institute.

EWG statement on California announcing clean energy milestone during 'extreme' heat Anthony Lacey October 13, 2026

SACRAMENTO – California Gov. Gavin Newsom today announced that the state’s power grid met the highest demand for electricity in four years. 

The peak demand on the grid, due to “extreme” heat, was on par with the peaks of 2006 and 2017. It was met without having to conserve energy or take emergency steps.

The Environmental Working Group recently released a report finding climate change is driving up “major” and “extreme” heat advisories between 30% and 145% in parts of the state. Yet soaring electricity costs make home cooling unaffordable for millions, threatening public health.

This dynamic creates an impossible choice for many Californians struggling with affordability: Suffer during hazardous heat or default on electricity bills.

EWG is calling for policymakers to find solutions that tackle both the heat and utility bills. 

One step is doing more to expand consumer access to distributed generation devices, such as rooftop solar or balcony solar, that can help power electricity-hungry air conditioners more cost-effectively and without contributing to climate change or adding strain to the electric grid. 

Newsom last month signed into law an EWG-backed measure that will significantly expand access to balcony solar for millions of Californians. The state needs to take similar actions to continue to lower costs and expand access to solar energy. 

The following is a statement from Bernadette Del Chiaro, EWG’s senior vice president, California:

California kept the lights on – but could consumers afford to run their AC?

With the help of even the smallest solar energy systems, such as balcony solar, millions of California families are turning toward the sun to achieve greater energy affordability and beat the heat with solar-powered AC. 

California should do more to ease restrictions on customer-sited solar energy, lower upfront costs, and put local solar energy devices in the hands of everyone.

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The Environmental Working Group (EWG) 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.

Areas of Focus Renewable Energy California Grid met highest electricity demand in four years without emergency measures Press Contact Alex Formuzis alex@ewg.org (202) 667-6982 October 13, 2026

It has been a hard-fought year for Alaska’s public lands, and few places have felt the pressure more intensely than the Western Arctic. 

Stretching across more than 23 million acres of federal public land, what is formally known as the National Petroleum Reserve–Alaska (NPRA) is one of the largest expanses of public land in the country. It is also one of the most ecologically important places in the Arctic, supporting caribou herds, migratory birds, fish, polar bears, and other wildlife, as well as the Alaska Native communities whose cultures, livelihoods, and traditions are deeply connected to these lands and waters.  

For decades, the NPRA—or what we call the Western Arctic—has been a place where the public has fought to balance the demands of development with the extraordinary ecological and cultural values of the region. 

This year, that balance has been under relentless pressure. 

The Lease Sales 

In March, the Administration held an oil and gas lease sale in the Western Arctic that was devastating to witness. Industry showed up with the money and interest to claim huge portions of this public landscape, with more than 1.3 million acres ultimately leased.  

Familiar names were among the bidders, including ConocoPhillips, which has previously talked about pursuing a “smaller footprint” in Alaska and has relinquished leases in the Western Arctic in the past. ExxonMobil also bid on tracts along the shores of Teshekpuk Lake, one of the most important and ecologically sensitive places in the entire Western Arctic. The largest spender at the sale was Repsol, a foreign Spanish oil company. 

For a region so often invoked in conversations about American energy independence, it is worth taking a close look at who is actually lining up to develop these public lands, and who stands to benefit from doing so. The companies placing bids may have different histories and different corporate strategies, but they share an interest in securing access to some of the most consequential public lands in the Arctic.  

You can read more details in our press release here.  

For those of us who care deeply about public lands, the lease sale was a crushing day. These places are more than mere acreage or parcels available for companies to acquire. The Western Arctic is a landscape of extraordinary scale and ecological importance, and decisions made there reverberate far beyond the boundaries of individual lease tracts. 

But we did not let the lease sale silence us. 

Instead, Alaska Wilderness League and our supporters launched a corporate accountability campaign aimed directly at the companies that had chosen to pursue oil and gas development in the Western Arctic. Thousands of people took to social media to make their views known, flooding corporate accounts with comments and questions and demanding that these companies answer for their plans in the Arctic. It was one way for people across the country to remind these corporations that public lands come with a public interest — and that the American people are paying attention to what happens on them. 

We’re still bringing that energy. Unfortunately, so is Big Oil. 

Opening The Door Wider 

In July, the Bureau of Land Management proposed another major change that could have consequences across the Western Arctic. The proposal, developed with significant input from the Alaska Oil and Gas Association, would make it easier for companies to advance development projects in the Western Arctic while limiting opportunities for public oversight and participation. 

The proposal comes with the familiar trappings of public engagement: a 60-day comment period, public meetings, and virtual hearings. Those opportunities matter, and people across the country have made use of them. But the substance of the proposal raises much larger questions about what meaningful public participation looks like when the rules governing development are being rewritten to make development easier in the first place. 

The Western Arctic deserves careful review of major projects because the stakes are enormous. The region contains wetlands, rivers, lakes, coastal areas, migration routes, and critical habitat that sustain wildlife and communities across the Arctic. Changes to the way development is reviewed can affect far more than a single project or lease block, particularly when they reduce opportunities to evaluate cumulative impacts and hear from the people who know these lands best. 

So we showed up. 

Members of the public packed hearings and meetings, submitted comments, and made their voices heard. More than 80 people testified during the public hearings, calling in from across the country — from Alaska to Maine and communities in between. Their messages varied, but the concern was unmistakable: decisions about the future of the Western Arctic deserve meaningful public scrutiny, and people expect the federal government to listen before making changes that could shape this landscape for decades. 

Those comments have been submitted to the Bureau of Land Management, and the public comment period remains open through November 9. 

If you haven’t yet weighed in, you can take action here. 

A Familiar Playbook 

The proposed BLM rule is only one piece of a much larger effort to change how development happens in the Western Arctic. 

The Administration has also moved toward codifying a categorical exclusion for certain exploratory activities in the Western Arctic, a step that could allow these efforts to move forward without undergoing the full environmental review typically required under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). 

Environmental review is one of the primary ways the public gets to understand what a proposed project could mean for wildlife, habitat, communities, and the broader landscape before decisions are made. It provides a process for identifying impacts, considering alternatives, and bringing information into the public record. 

Eliminating that review means reducing opportunities to ask hard questions before bulldozers, roads, drill rigs, and other industrial infrastructure arrive. 

Taken together, these changes point toward a broader shift in how the Western Arctic is being managed. Longstanding safeguards are being reconsidered or dismantled, opportunities for public participation are being narrowed, and the rules governing development are being rewritten in ways that could make it easier for industry to move forward. 

The Western Arctic has spent decades at the center of debates about how much development is appropriate on public lands and where the lines should be drawn to protect places that are especially important for wildlife and communities. Those debates are not going away, but neither should the public’s role in them. 

This is Public Land 

It can be easy, after another lease sale or another proposed rule change, to feel overwhelmed by the sheer number of threats facing Alaska’s public lands. But the scale of the challenge is also a reminder of why public engagement matters. 

The Western Arctic belongs to all of us. 

It belongs to the people who live closest to it and depend on its lands and waters. It belongs to the caribou that travel across it, the birds that migrate thousands of miles to reach it, and the fish and other wildlife that depend on its interconnected wetlands, rivers, lakes, and coastal waters. And as public land, it belongs to the millions of Americans who may never set foot in the Arctic but still have a stake in what happens there. 

That public interest deserves a voice in every decision that shapes the future of this extraordinary place. 

Sometimes that means showing up when the government hands us the microphone. Sometimes it means creating enough public pressure that decision-makers have to listen. Sometimes it means holding corporations accountable for the choices they make on public lands. And sometimes it means doing all three at once. 

The fight for the Western Arctic has been long, and this year has brought more than its share of difficult days. But across the country, people continue to speak up for these lands. They are submitting comments, showing up at hearings, calling out corporate actions, and reminding decision-makers that the Western Arctic is worth protecting. 

We are deeply grateful to everyone who has stood with us through this fight. 

There is still a long road ahead, and there is still plenty of work to do. But we’re here for it — and we’re not going quietly. 

Photos: © Florian Schulz / visionsofthewild.com

Registered nurses across the country continue to build our union movement, asserting our collective power against a profit-driven health care system and a corporate-aligned federal government. CNA/NNOC announced today that nurses at four hospitals – which in total employ 4,500 nurses and serve more than 1.7 million patients annually – filed petitions over the past week with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) for union elections.

Food technology platform Wonder said it is saving about 5% on energy expenses using stationary plug-in batteries. “Our No. 1 goal was to figure out how we can reduce our utility bills, shave the peaks off of our utility usage,” a senior VP for the company said.

When oil and gas shipments stopped flowing through the Strait of Hormuz at the start of the Iran war, Southeast Asian nations were left reeling as the supply crunch laid bare their acute reliance on fossil fuel imports.

As prices soared, governments in the region scrambled to introduce emergency energy-saving measures – from a four-day work week to curbs on air conditioning. Thailand revived decommissioned coal plants while the Philippines, which imports nearly all of its oil, declared a “national energy emergency”.

But the crisis has also prompted renewed resolve to find a long-term solution to their vulnerability at a time when electricity demand is booming to power the region’s growing industry, cooling needs and the mushrooming of energy-hungry data centres.

At the heart of Southeast Asian nations’ response is a longstanding infrastructure project to connect the region’s power grids by 2045 and enable cross-border trading of clean electricity through a network of underground and subsea interconnectors.

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The plans will allow nations with high renewable energy generation potential to trade surplus power to their neighbours and major demand centres like Singapore, helping to integrate more renewables into the power mix and reduce reliance on fossil fuel imports.

“[It] will give us more energy security,” the Philippines’ energy secretary, Sharon Garin, told a press conference after a meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations’ (ASEAN) energy ministers last week, when they discussed accelerating the delivery of the regional grid as part of measures to respond to the energy crisis.

“The Philippines is rich in solar power, Malaysia is rich in hydropower and Indonesia has geothermal: different countries have different resources. [The ASEAN Power Grid] will optimise the utilisation of renewables to the benefits of each member state,” said Garin.

But turning this decade-old political vision into a reality has been slow, held up by painstaking work to harmonise a patchwork of regulatory and legal frameworks and mobilise the private capital needed to build cross-border infrastructure.

More than $300 billion is needed to expand and modernise the region’s fragile grids to support the projected energy demand increase by 2050. This includes $27 billion required to deliver the cross-border interconnections by 2040, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).

Every year of delay could cost the region billions of dollars in additional fuel costs and lock in new gas infrastructure for decades to come, according to analysis by global energy think-tank Ember.

The building block for energy security

With electrification high on the agenda of the COP31 climate talks in Türkiye next month, there is growing attention on the need to modernise and expand grid infrastructure to cope with growing electricity use and more renewables in the power mix.

Clean electrification and energy efficiency could deliver about a third of cumulative carbon emission reductions between 2026 and 2050, according to the International Renewable Energy Agency’s World Energy Outlook. But delivering that would require doubling annual global grid investment to $1 trillion between now and 2035.

Last month, the UN launched an initiative to accelerate investment into expanding and modernising grids in Southeast Asia and Africa.

A technician walks next to solar panels that partially provide electrical power to the Grand Mosque of Istiqlal in Jakarta, Indonesia (Photo: REUTERS/Willy Kurniawan)

First conceptualised in 1997, the ASEAN Power Grid has gained fresh impetus in recent years as countries turn to renewables to cut their emissions and move away from volatile fossil fuel markets.

Energy supply disruption caused by wars in Ukraine and the Middle East has strengthened the case for regional grid connections. Before this year’s conflict began, the Middle East accounted for 60% of Southeast Asia’s crude oil imports. Competition for fewer, more expensive oil and gas shipments has left Southeast Asia facing a $160 billion energy import bill this year. Based on current policies, this could rise to $400 billion by mid-century.

In the Philippines last week, energy ministers agreed on an enhanced planning framework to deliver the ASEAN Power Grid and made progress on regulatory guidelines.

Garin said ministers were considering accelerating the project’s delivery. “The first study was to connect [by] 2045 – that’s too far,” she said.

A strong business case

The economic benefits of the plan have “captured the political imagination” of leaders in the region, Robert Cooke, grids advocacy lead at the Global Renewables Alliance, told Climate Home News. “The business case is stronger than ever,” he said.

“If countries were to go about building their own separate grids, of course that would be an expensive endeavour. But the discussion around the ASEAN Power Grid includes what costs could we share in building out this grid,” added Tiza Mafira, director of the Indonesia office for the Climate Policy Initiative.

Stronger grids would help the region meet collective targets to increase the share of renewable energy in total primary energy supply from 14% to 30% and in installed power capacity from 34% to 45% by 2030.

Connecting and pooling dispersed renewable resources would also help smooth local power shortages caused by daily and seasonal variations, reducing the need for backup gas plants and battery storage.

The IEA found the ASEAN Power Grid could help unlock some of the 20 terawatts of untapped solar and wind potential across Southeast Asia – an amount around 55 times the region’s current total power capacity.

From lines on a map to shovels in the ground

Rather than building a single unified network, the ASEAN Power Grid is developing cross-border links between neighbouring countries and smaller groups of nations.

As of 2025, nine of 18 priority interconnection projects are operational – accounting for around 10 GW of capacity with an additional 13.7 GW planned by 2040.

A power line channelling up to 200 MW of clean electricity generated from hydropower in Laos to Singapore via Thailand and Malaysia has emerged as a key building block for grid-to-grid trading.

Progress on technical discussions will also help provide the clarity the private sector needs to invest in bankable projects, said Cooke.

In 2025, the Asian Development Bank and the World Bank announced a dedicated funding initiative to support the project.

“The enabling pieces are emerging,” said Monalisa Dimalanta, former chair of the Philippine Energy Regulatory Commission and the National Renewable Energy Board. “But the timelines remain unclear and a 2045 vision cannot answer today’s emergency,” she said.

“A power grid… that exists only on paper will not keep the lights on.”

Singapore: the delivery test

The implications of failing to deliver the ASEAN Power Grid are most acute in Singapore.

Constrained by space, with few renewable energy resources and dependent on gas for more than 90% of its electricity mix, Singapore has emerged as a leading proponent of a regional power grid as it seeks to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050.

To meet its power needs, the city-state aims to import 6 GW of low-carbon electricity by 2035, around one-third of its energy demand – a target which it is set to miss, however.

The plans heavily rely on building interconnectors to import solar power from Indonesia across the South China Sea. Around 40% of the ASEAN Power Grid’s planned interconnections are directed towards Singapore.

Skyscrapers in Singapore (Photo by Ezra Acayan/Getty Images)

Ember’s analysis found that delivering the planned interconnectors by 2035 could enable renewables to meet nearly half of Singapore’s electricity demand. Delays could drop this to only a fraction of the country’s needs, and risk locking in new gas capacity until the 2050s. Without the ASEAN Power Grid, Singapore would need to install an additional 300 MW of gas-fired power capacity to bridge the gap by 2035.

Already home to the largest data centre capacity in Southeast Asia, Singapore’s electricity demand keeps rising, driven by the boom in AI infrastructure. “At one point, [it] either has to build a new gas plant, or it has to get the interconnection to supply that demand,” Lam Pham, an Ember energy analyst and the report’s author, told Climate Home News.

A region at a crossroads

With capital increasingly available, political will is now the biggest risk standing in the way of timely execution, said Pham.

But there are other challenges too, including the lack of frameworks on transmission tariffs and how to share the benefits of clean power trading. “It’s really hard to justify projects without that,” he said.

In addition, climate-fuelled weather events, including extreme heat and tropical storms, pose major threats to the region’s grid infrastructure. Experts say stronger grid interconnection can isolate damage and build the system’s resilience.

Efforts to deliver on the ASEAN Power Grid also come as ministers stressed the “continued importance of oil and gas” for economic development and seek to secure fossil fuel supplies and stockpile oil to prepare for the next crisis.

Despite an acceleration of renewable deployment, particularly solar, coal still generates nearly half the electricity supply in ASEAN member states and dominates the power mix in Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam, while Singapore and Thailand rely on gas.

While these measures might help the region with the immediate crisis, “the long-term answer is more domestic renewable energy, electrification, storage, efficiency and regional power trade”, Dimalanta said.

Main image: An aerial view of the MTerra solar project in the Philippines, set to become one of the world’s largest solar-and-battery developments (Photo by Ezra Acayan/Getty Images)

The post SE Asia speeds up plan for connected clean power grid after oil shock appeared first on Climate Home News.

Farmworker leaders from the CIW (Nely Rodriguez, speaking, and Lupe Gonzalo, to her immediate left)  join plant nursery workers with WeCount! at a press conference on the Planting Justice initiative earlier this year.

Sixteen years ago, the Fair Food Program ushered in a new day for farmworkers in the United States, replacing generations of poverty and powerlessness with a groundbreaking system built to guarantee fundamental human rights in the fields.  The Program’s unique standards include protections against wage theft, sexual harassment, retaliation, modern-day slavery, and — as of just over two years ago — protections the Washington Post called “America’s strongest workplace heat rules“. Today, the Presidential Medal-winning FFP has become a beacon of hope far beyond the fields where it began, demonstrating to workers around the world that even the most deeply rooted abuses can be overcome when workers themselves are empowered to monitor and enforce their own rights.

In recent years, workers and human rights advocates from industries across the U.S. and around the world have traveled to CIW’s headquarters in Immokalee to learn firsthand about the Worker-driven Social Responsibility (WSR) model based on the Fair Food Program — and explore how they can adapt that model to confront abuses in their own workplaces. Among them have been members of WeCount!, a worker-based human rights organization from Homestead, Florida, whose members have long marched alongside the CIW in the Campaign for Fair Food and participated in multiple worker-to-worker exchanges in Immokalee, learning directly from workers on FFP farms how worker-led monitoring and binding market commitments have transformed life in the fields.

Over the past several years, that longstanding solidarity has grown into a deeper collaboration between WeCount!, the CIW, and the Fair Food Standards Council to adapt the lessons of the FFP to another corner of Florida agriculture: the sprawling plant nursery industry. As that partnership has developed, nursery workers have taken the lead in shaping Planting Justice — Sembrando Justicia — a new WSR initiative designed to put workers themselves at the center of monitoring and enforcing their rights, backed by the same binding commitments from the corporations with the power to change conditions on the ground as are found in the FFP. Today, workers are calling on Costa Farms, one of the nation’s largest growers of houseplants, to become the initiative’s first corporate partner.

A powerful new feature article from Grist shines a national spotlight on the latest chapter in that collaboration — and on an industry where the beautiful plants lining floors in Home Depot, Lowe’s, Whole Foods, Walmart and Costco stores across America can conceal a far harsher reality for the workers who grow them. Nursery workers describe extreme heat, inadequate access to clean water, a lack of shade and rest breaks, pesticide exposure, and other dangerous conditions, even as traditional avenues for securing protections have narrowed. But the story is also one of exciting possibility: Drawing on years of organizing and the proven lessons of the Fair Food Program, workers are building a path to safeguarding their dignity in the workplace.

Check out excerpts from Grist’s powerful feature below, and click here to read the full article.

America’s houseplants come at a steep price for greenhouse workers The people who grow houseplants aren’t often thought of as agricultural workers, but they face many of the same hardships — especially in extreme heat.

…Since 2021, WeCount has been advocating on behalf of outdoor workers who lack meaningful protections from extreme heat. Based in South Florida, WeCount previously campaigned for a municipal heat standard in Miami-Dade County, where deaths from heat exposure are estimated to spike by 60% (opens in new tab) during extremely hot periods. But those efforts were cut short in 2024, when industry groups complained(opens in new tab) and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis passed a law preempting local governments from enacting their own heat standards. (DeSantis said such regulations could cause “a lot of problems.”(opens in new tab)

Planting Justice, WeCount’s new campaign to protect outdoor workers across the South, aims to bring corporations like Costa Farms to the table and create consumer awareness around where their plants come from — and the human cost of growing them.

This model of mobilizing for stronger workplace protections is known as worker-driven social responsibility. WeCount’s campaign is heavily inspired by the Fair Food Program, which farmworkers have successfully used for years to boost their labor conditions and is considered the highest standard of labor protections for farmworkers in the U.S. The Fair Food Program, launched in 2011 by the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, has proven effective as a framework for workers to continually surface and address their needs. For example, while access to drinking water is one of the core tenets of the program, this year, workers won the right to electrolyte beverages or supplements year round.

CIW staff provide an on-the-clock, worker-to-worker education session as part of the FFP, on Rancho Durazno

“We know that every year this crisis is getting worse,” said Londoño, referring to how summer temperatures climb year to year, driven by human-caused climate change. “But increasingly, legislative avenues are more and more limited.”

Heat is the deadliest form of extreme weather(opens in new tab). In the U.S., official counts of deaths from extreme heat exposure vastly underreport the scope of the problem(opens in new tab), as a two-year investigation by Boston University and NPR recently demonstrated. For years, labor advocates and community groups have pushed for the creation of a federal heat standard — a set of guidelines that would apply to employers across the country designed to reduce workers’ risk of heat illness. While the Occupational Safety and Health Administration — or OSHA,  the nation’s workplace regulator — seemed to be making progress toward such a rule under the Biden administration, those efforts have since stalled out. Meanwhile, agricultural workers, a category that includes plant nursery workers who handle the greenery directly, are excluded from federal collective bargaining protections under the National Labor Relations Act. And yet, agricultural workers are also more than 35 times more likely(opens in new tab) to die from heat-related complaints than workers in other industries.

The goal of the Planting Justice campaign is for Costa Farms to sign onto a code of conduct developed by workers. The agreement outlines relatively straightforward demands: educating workers and supervisors on the signs of heat illness; providing access to shade, water, and rest breaks; and creating systems for monitoring and responding to heat stress.

Organizers believe the agreement would help directly address issues that workers themselves see on the job. For example, while Costa Farms reports that the company provides access to hydration stations on very hot days, workers industry-wide have reported water with a strong chemical smell, as well as seeing mold in water coolers, said Londoño.

Alejandro Gonzalez, a plant nursery worker originally from Guatemala, told a Florida rally that the summer days have topped 110 degrees Fahrenheit on occasion. “They don’t give us cold or clean water,” Gonzalez said emphatically, in Spanish. “They don’t provide any breaks or shade.”

Eighty-six percent of nursery workers who responded to a survey by WeCount(opens in new tab) reported dangerous incidents on the job, stemming from heat illness, pesticide exposure, and workplace accidents. Over two-thirds reported being entirely denied breaks and days off. The visa conditions of many houseplant workers — dependent on H2-A or other visas, or entirely undocumented — leave them with few rights to recourse, often entirely dependent on their employers for housing, and unable to rely on much of federal labor law for support should they speak out.

Stay tuned for more exciting updates about new WSR initiatives!

Bold is offering local organizers the opportunity to host their own phone banks for our endorsed candidates, and providing our hosts with a “Phonebank ToGo” kit that includes t-shirts, stickers, buttons, and gift cards to buy snacks for your phone bankers!

Fill out the form below to organize your Phonebank ToGo and Bold will arrange to drop off your supply basket. 

Phonebank ToGo Supply Kit includes: 

• Instructions
• Invitation graphic to share on social media
• BOLD Shirts for you and your pals
• Gift card for Dinner and or Snacks
• Gift Card for Butterfly Bakery
• Stickers and Pencils
• Thank you gift for the PhoneBank ToGo Host

How to Organize Your Phonebank ToGo:

1. Choose a BOLD Endorsed Candidate to host a phonebank for:
   Brian Seck
   SuAnn Witt
   Rick Vest
   George Dungan
   Sean Flowerday
   Jess Goldoni
   Carol Blood
   Sara Kohen
   Cindy Johnson
   Cindy Maxwell Ostdiek
2. Pick your date and time!
3. Invite your friends. (This is a virtual phone bank, so you can phone bank from anywhere.)
4. Submit t-shirt sizes for you and all your volunteers on the form
5. We will deliver your PhoneBank ToGo supply basket

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The post Be a BOLD Volunteer: Host a Phonebank appeared first on Bold Nebraska.

The shutoffs — potentially affecting more than two dozen counties, mostly in northern and central California — could continue through Saturday.

Child care workers at Ideal Child Service Group (ICSG), which operates five child care locations across Toronto, were locked out by their employer on October...

The post Child care workers locked out by employer and forgotten by government first appeared on Spring.

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

Does onshore wind power need subsidies to compete with fossil fuels?

Unsubsidized onshore wind is now generally cheaper than building fossil fuel plants.

Cost of energy sources are compared using “levelized cost of energy,” or the average lifetime cost to build and run a power plant divided by electricity produced. A 2026 report estimated the mean LCOE of unsubsidized onshore wind at $68 per megawatt-hour, compared to $90 for new natural gas plants and $124.50 for coal.

Developments like supply chain maturation, improved monitoring, and larger, more productive turbines have allowed the LCOE of onshore wind to decrease by 70% since 2010. 

While recent inflation, rising interest rates, and trade barriers have increased costs across all energy generation technologies, onshore wind is still cheaper than fossil fuel plants and projected to decrease further in the long-term.

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

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

Sources

Lazard Lazard Releases 2026 Levelized Cost of Energy+ Report

IRENA Renewable power generation costs in 2025

U.S. Department of Energy The Future of Offshore Wind Is Big—Literally

IRENA Wind energy

U.S. Department of Energy Experts Predict 50% Lower Wind Costs Than They Did in 2015

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

Please use this form to provide feedback about this fact brief. This will help us to better gauge its impact and usability. Thank you!

About fact briefs published on Gigafact

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

CELDF is launching a new series called Capitalism and Democracy, and we are inviting you to join us!

The post “Common Sense” Newsletter – October 2026: New Series: Are Capitalism & Democracy Compatible? appeared first on CELDF - Community Rights Pioneers - Protecting Nature and Communities.

The state's electricity prices are double the national average, and wildfires are a big reason — but far from the only one. Fresh leadership can show the way on regulatory, financial and operational reform, write experts at GridLab and Energy Innovation.

Commissioner David Rosner said that Duke Energy Carolinas’ proposal offers “meaningful, if imperfect, new protections,” adding that consumer protections are “inadequate across the country” and FERC may need to take further action.

Public lands like Cumberland Island should stay wild, not be handed away to private developers.

This story is part of a larger investigation conducted by an international team of journalists based at The Outlaw Ocean Project, a news organization in Washington, D.C.

Global trade is remarkably efficient at moving things. It carries copper, cars, cameras, and crude oil across oceans and borders with astonishing speed. It takes the product of one country’s labor and ecology and delivers it to warehouses and supermarkets in another with so little friction that consumers barely register the distance.

But some things, intentionally, do not travel down the supply chain. One of them is stench.

Consider the case of fishmeal, the protein-rich powder made from turning wild-caught fish into feed for farmed animals, especially for aquaculture. The foul air produced by fishmeal factories stays in the poorer coastal communities where the fish is unloaded, cooked, pressed, dried, and ground — far from the dinner plates where the seafood gets eaten. Wealthy markets import the benefits of this globally essential commodity, but only after it has been cleaned of certain dirty truths.

In August 2022 at least 50 protesters spilled into the streets of Kayar, a fishing town on Senegal’s Atlantic coast, demanding the closure of a nearby fishmeal plant, Touba Protein Marine. Marching from the fishing wharf to the factory, they carried signs reading “Kayar is sick.” In a video that spread on Facebook, demonstrators chanted, “Time to respect our Kayar.”

The factory, they said, had been built less than a third of a mile from residential neighborhoods, triggering health problems and violating local zoning laws.

Smoke rises from a fishmeal factory in 2025 near a residential community in Callao, Peru. Emissions from fishmeal factories include ammonia, hydrogen sulfide, cyanide, and methane, impacting more than 9.5 million people who live within a mile of the nearly 1,800 fishmeal plants operating in more than 50 countries. Credit: Ministry of Production of Peru

That same year in Vietnam, hundreds of residents on the country’s northeastern coast surrounded another plant and, for days, blasted loudspeakers at it in protest. In India, in 2024, the odor from fishmeal factories spurred protests that lasted more than 100 days, ending in a boycott of local elections and in villagers convening parallel meetings to pass resolutions against the plants.

These uprisings were not set off by the kind of industrial disaster that usually commands global attention. What brought people onto the streets was fishmeal’s foul smell.

My organization, The Ocean Outlaw Project, recently completed a global investigation of this product’s hidden costs. It reveals that the industry’s rancid odor was among the least tracked, most personally intimate, and widely suffered impacts of this growing market. Half of the seafood eaten globally comes from fish farms, most of them powered by fishmeal and fish oil. More than 9.5 million people worldwide, including nearly 1.7 million under the age of 15, live within a mile of fishmeal plants, according to Bait to Plate, an online tool that tracks the fishing and seafood industries.

This satellite image shows a fishmeal factory under construction near densely populated neighborhoods in Senegal in 2020, with thousands of residents living within a half mile of the plant. The country’s zoning rules forbid fishmeal companies from building plants within 500 meters, or about 550 yards, of a residential area.
The Outlaw Ocean Project/Google Maps

The industry plays a major role in global inequity. Despite claims that fish farming offers an ecological and ethical way to sustain a growing global population, accounting for feed reveals a different dynamic — one that resembles a form of food colonialism. Much of global aquaculture produces high-value seafood for wealthier markets by diverting food-grade fish from poorer regions that depend on those species as affordable sources of protein. Roughly 90% of the catch used to produce fishmeal is edible for humans. Most fishmeal plants rely on whole fish rather than processing waste or inedible byproducts, further intensifying local food insecurity in the communities where these fish are taken.

The industry is also unsustainable. At least half of the species landed by the 2,400 fishmeal ships assessed by the investigation were classified by scientific studies as “overexploited” or worse. Most of the vessels in this fleet are purse seiners or trawlers, which deploy vast nets to capture dense schools of fish. Both gear types are associated with high levels of waste, routinely hauling in large volumes of bycatch and nontarget species. At least 165 of the ships in the global fishmeal fleet were bottom trawlers, a particularly destructive form of fishing that uses weighted nets that scrape the ocean floor, destroying virtually everything in their paths.

The investigation involved more than two dozen journalists in as many countries. In our global discussions, neighbors living near fishmeal plants described to reporters experiencing nausea, headaches, eye irritation, dizziness, coughing fits, and loss of appetite. They recounted laundry brought in early to keep the smell from settling into fabric, doors kept shut in coastal heat, sleep broken at night, and a low-grade sense of agitation that comes from never being able to trust the next gust of wind.

“We don’t invite family or friends here because we are embarrassed that we live in a place that smells like it’s rotting,” a man in Songkla, Thailand explained.

The investigation documented more than 70 cases of neighbors complaining about stench from at least 60 plants in 15 countries. In Mar del Plata, Argentina, the smell from fishmeal plants was so bad that tourists visiting a local hotel sometimes had to step into the courtyard to vomit. In Ecuador the odor emitted by fishmeal plants overwhelmed nearby residents and paralyzed the tourism sector. In the southern town of Huaquillas, which shares a border with Peru, residents told a daily newspaper in 2021 that the smell from fishmeal processing was “unbearable” and “impossible to be around.” In Salango, a rural parish on Ecuador’s coast more than 270 miles north of Huaquillas, researchers who sought to attract beach visitors in 2022 acknowledged that it would be an uphill battle because the smell from an industrial fishmeal factory there “generates unpleasant odors that deter tourists and cause them to choose other destinations.”

The foul smell from these plants was more than just a nuisance. The stink corrodes the local economy by undercutting tourism and scaring away restaurant patrons and beach visitors.

The stench is also an indicator of the release of noxious chemicals like ammonia, hydrogen sulfide, cyanide, and methane, which have been known to cause serious health problems, including pulmonary edema. The worst part of the odor is from trimethylamine, or TMA, a colorless gas characterized by a “fishy” smell. In 2021 the Society of Chemical Industry identified TMA as “strongly toxic and carcinogenic.”

Humans’ sensitivity to foul odors is a defense mechanism borne of evolution. As part of a basic survival instinct developed over millions of years, people are repulsed by smells like that of feces, rotting food, decaying flesh, or acrid chemicals. This visceral reaction also brings intense feelings of disgust and anxiety that lead to negative health consequences when these exposures last longer than several minutes, according to a 2016 study from the journal Brain Sciences.

In many countries chemical waste is closely regulated, particularly if it makes people sick or harms the environment. But emitting bad smells is typically seen as more of an inconvenience than an actual environmental or health hazard.

Bad smells are also difficult to measure or regulate. “The technology for detecting and characterizing complex odors has not developed to the level of a reliable surveillance method, which has hindered regulatory frameworks,” stated a 2021 piece in a waste-management magazine written by a group of environmental engineers at Florida Atlantic University.

Though there are many studies focused on the health and environmental impact of specific chemicals emitted by sewage plants, livestock operations, composting facilities, landfills, paper mills, or petrochemical industries, little research has concentrated on the “impact of olfactory nuisance,” according to a 2021 study published in the journal Environmental Health.

Stinky industries like chemical refineries, fertilizer factories, incinerators, and landfills are typically limited by zoning laws to prevent them from being too close to residential homes. In the United States, neighbors near businesses that emit foul odors have sometimes successfully filed complaints under federal nuisance laws, which are designed to protect residents from unreasonable interference with the enjoyment of their property. Between 2018 and 2019, juries in five trials awarded 36 plaintiffs a total of $550 million in lawsuits filed against Murphy-Brown/Smithfield Foods, the largest pork producers in the world. The amount was later reduced due to a state cap on punitive damages. For decades neighbors of the farms in North Carolina, the majority of whom were Black, endured “the piercing, acrid odor of hog manure, reminiscent of rotten eggs and ammonia,” according to one report referenced in the lawsuits.

In 2020 the company asked for a retrial, but the 4th District Court of Appeals upheld the lower court’s verdict. The conditions at the farms, which included “spraying untreated hog waste high into the air — where it then drifts toward nearby homes,” wrote Justice J. Harvie Wilkinson in a concurring opinion, “violated homeowners’ rights to the healthful enjoyment of their property.”

These types of regulations tend to be applied more in wealthier countries, and the vast majority of fishmeal plants are in poorer nations. In Senegal, where there are at least nine fishmeal plants, the investigation found that zoning rules forbid fishmeal companies from building plants within 500 meters, or about 550 yards, of a residential area. But a review of satellite imagery of the country’s plants vis-a-vis homes indicated that companies routinely violated this rule, the investigation found.

Methods for measuring airborne TMA have been around since at least the 1970s. Over the past few decades, however, the more standard approach has involved collecting air samples with what are known as “solid-phase extraction” tubes and then analyzing those samples at a lab using techniques called “liquid chromatography” and “mass spectrometry.” These techniques are precise but pricey, sometimes costing tens of thousands of dollars.

In 2009 a Peruvian scientist named Josué Padilla Lauriano set out to find a cheaper option for testing TMA levels. He focused his research on Chimbote, a city along Peru’s western coast that was not only the world’s largest producer of fishmeal but also ranked as one of the most polluted places on Earth. Using simple air bubblers and a spectrophotometer — standard tools found in nearly every chemistry lab — and adapting a technique originally developed to detect TMA in dead fish, not air, Lauriano and his team spent 20 months collecting samples. Lauriano’s device only cost a few hundred dollars to take measurements. Under local regulations plants were supposed to stay under 12 parts per million (ppm), but Lauriano found nighttime emissions averaging above 17 ppm when the plants cook the most and a maximum reading from a plant that topped 32 ppm.

Even when testing was feasible, many countries did not have emissions standards that included thresholds for foul odors, according to a 2025 paper published in Applied Sciences. “The mechanism of human odor detection is still not fully understood,” which, the paper said, is one reason stench is so difficult to measure and regulate objectively.

The countries that set standards for how much TMA could be released were usually not based on stench or quality-of-life concerns, but instead on the level at which this chemical began to negatively affect human health. In the United States health regulators typically use guidelines between 5-10 ppm as long-term exposure limits. These limits are substantially higher than what a typical person’s nose can detect. TMA can be detected at concentrations as low as 0.0002 ppm, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.

Fishmeal stench is not an unsolvable problem. When factory owners have tried to reduce it, they have usually succeeded. In 2008 in the United States, in 2021 in South Africa, and in 2022 in Yemen, plant owners installed various types of devices, some of them called scrubbers, that researchers later concluded had drastically reduced the foulest-smelling chemicals. Scrubbers are not more common partly because they can cost upwards of US$1 million.

Costs notwithstanding, there are deeper reasons stench stays far away from consumers. In wealthier nations, plant neighbors more often successfully pressure their governments to require odor controls. In poorer nations, people living in the industrial areas where these plants are built usually lack political clout. Their governments are also more desperate for revenue and more reluctant to put up regulatory burdens that may scare away foreign investment. As a result there’s little incentive or pressure for foreign fishmeal producers to fix a problem that does not directly affect their bottom line.

The price being paid by the oceans writ large, and the coastal countries whose resources are being sapped, rarely appear in the balance sheets of the feed and aquaculture companies that profit from this type of extraction. Nor will they appear on the seafood menu. Over a fifth of all marine life pulled from the sea is converted into fishmeal, which is a major factor in why over a third of the world’s stocks are overfished and worsening every year. Despite decades of warnings, this remains a problem that is out of sight and out of mind for the average consumer.

Modern life tends to rank injuries by how neatly they can be photographed, measured, litigated, or charted. Faraway, slow-moving, and intangible harms like stench are the very ones that globalized economies have become especially efficient at disappearing for the customers at the wealthier and tail end of long supply chains.

Or, as the novelist John Berger once asked in another context: “What is the social value of a pain eased?”

(The reporting for this story was part of a larger investigation conducted by an international team of journalists based at The Outlaw Ocean Project.)

The post Foul Fishmeal Factories: The Stench That Rich Nations Leave Behind appeared first on The Revelator.

Indonesia appears to be reversing course on a plan to turn vast swaths of tropical rainforest into rice and sugarcane plantations.

Read more on E360 →

Where should I live? What car should I drive? What should I have for dinner? People are increasingly turning to AI tools such as large language models (LLMs) for advice on questions like these. And the way AI answers such questions has massive implications for climate change, according to a new study.

“Humans have this psychological feature called status quo bias: we like things the way they are and we’re often risk averse. We found chatbots have the same tendency in their advice,” says study team member Seth Wynes, who studies strategies for climate action at the University of Waterloo in Canada. “This status quo bias might be harmless in many areas, but a low-carbon transition requires a rapid change away from existing systems.”

Wynes and his collaborators fed 7,548 queries into at least six different LLMs, a total of 54,888 prompts altogether. Some of the prompts concerned everyday consumer decisions, asking the chatbot to recommend a recipe to cook, a home heating system to install, and a new car to purchase.

Since decision-makers at all levels of government are also increasingly using LLMs for advice, the researchers also engineered prompts about policy tradeoffs in which emissions reductions were pitted against animal welfare, biodiversity conservation, consumer freedom, or equality concerns.

In this part of the study, the researchers constructed multiple versions of the queries so that each of the policy options got a turn to be presented as the status quo—for example, “should we implement a new policy that will reduce emissions although it would harm a threatened species?” versus “should we repeal a policy that reduces emissions but also harms a threatened species?”

When presented with a policy tradeoff, the LLMs were on average 7.5 times more likely to recommend staying the course than doing something new, the researchers found. This status-quo bias was seen regardless of whether the current course of action was pro- or anti-climate, and continues to be present in the most recent AI models.

 

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In the realm of consumer decisions, the results suggest that chatbots provide recommendations more or less in line with current cultural norms. Of the recipes suggested by the LLMs, 36% were vegetarian and 4% were vegan. (Meatless recipes generally have a lower carbon footprint.) Of the home heating system recommendations, 21% were climate-friendly heat pumps.

“I was a little surprised by the way models make recommendations about car purchases,” Wynes says. “Models are four times more likely to recommend buying an electric vehicle if you say you’ve owned one in the past. They also tend to recommend EVs at higher rates for users claiming to be from regions with high EV adoption.”

Exactly why these patterns occur is not clear. Maybe for example the chatbot is being sycophantic and recommending EVs to users who seem to already like and prefer them. What the chatbot is definitely not doing is nudging people towards more climate-friendly choices than they might already be inclined to make.

“For almost every region the rate of EV recommendation is still below the rate of actual adoption in the real world,” Wynes adds. It may be that AI training data are a bit behind the times, so the chatbots’ model of cultural norms is outdated, the researchers suggest. As online purchasing becomes more and more integrated with LLMs, this creates a risk that today’s norms will remain fixed in place, rather than being able to continue to evolve in a greener direction.

Since status-quo bias can be beneficial in some contexts, the researchers do not advocate purging it from LLMs. Instead, developers of climate-relevant AI applications and individuals who use LLMs for advice should be aware of this bias, and engineer their prompts accordingly.

Source: Wynes S. et al. “Large language models exhibit status quo bias in climate-relevant advice.” Environmental Research Communications 2026.

Image: ©Anthropocene Magazine.