News Feeds

This is a re-post from The Climate Brink

Twenty years ago, wind, solar and other non-hydro renewables were close to a rounding error. In 2005 they supplied a mere 2.0% of the world’s electricity generation. By 2015 that had risen to 6.8%, and by 2025 it was up to 19.8%. According to the IEA Electricity 2026 outlook, non-hydro renewables will supply around 21.8% of global electricity in 2026, edging past natural gas (21.6%) to become the second-largest source of power after coal.1

That is a remarkable pace of growth from an industry that barely existed two decades ago. But not everyone is impressed; many commenters on social media have responded to these figures by pointing out that despite the growth of renewables, fossil fuel generation continues to grow as well. They aren’t wrong; global coal generation set a record in 2024. Gas generation reached a new high in 2025.

Their point is that clean energy isn’t replacing fossil fuels at all. It’s simply being piled on top of them to feed an ever-growing appetite for electricity, making this an “energy addition” rather than an energy transition. Global fossil electricity generation around 50% higher today than it was in 2005. Coal generation rose by 3,300 TWh and gas by 3,200 TWh. The world burns more coal for power now than it did when wind and solar started taking off.

This argument has been made in the past both by skeptics of growth and by energy systems modelers. The historian Jean-Baptiste Fressoz argues in More and More and More (2024) that “far from the industrial era passing through a series of transformations, each new phase has in practice remained almost wholly entangled with the previous one.” Coal mining created a huge new demand for timber for pit props, while the oil age ran on steel made with coal. Vaclav Smil has made the same point about today’s clean energy boom more bluntly: ”We use more fossil fuels today than at any time in history… Renewables are not replacing fossil fuels; are joining them.”

The question of counterfactuals

The problem with the “addition” argument is that it compares the world today with the world in 2005, rather than with the world as it would have been without clean energy. Electricity demand has not grown because wind turbines and solar panels were built. It has grown because of what the IEA describes as “rising consumption from industry, electric vehicles, air conditioning and data centers”. Demand growth is located overwhelmingly in emerging and developing economies, which accounted for about 80% of global demand growth in 2025 and an average of 95% over the past decade.

Global electricity demand rose by 75% (13,600 TWh) between 2005 and 2025. That demand had to be met by something. Wind and solar supplied 5,400 TWh of new demand, hydro 1,500 TWh, bioenergy and other renewables 530 TWh, nuclear 85 TWh, and fossil fuels the remaining 6,100 TWh. But over the past decade the balance has shifted sharply toward clean energy. Since 2015, wind and solar supplied 57% of demand growth, compared with 29% for fossil fuels. And in 2025, according to Ember’s Global Electricity Review 2026, “wind and solar grew by 841 TWh, meeting 99% of global electricity demand growth”.

A 2024 study by Brantley Liddle found that “intermittent renewables (solar and wind) have unitary displacement effect.” In other words, each unit of wind and solar power displaced about one unit of coal and oil generation. Fossil generation has kept rising in many years because demand has grown faster than clean energy could be added. That is very different from clean energy failing to displace anything.

And electricity demand will continue to rapidly grow, particularly if we succeed in reducing global emissions by electrifying sectors of the economy that currently burn fossil fuels. Most scenarios where we reach net zero emissions involve a doubling or tripling of electricity generation.

So if we want to assess the real world emissions impact of wind and solar buildout over the past 20 years, the right question to ask is not “did fossil use go down?” but rather “how much higher would it have been?”

A world without wind and solar

To answer this, I built a counterfactual for the global power sector in which wind and solar (and geothermal, which is less than 2% of the total) stopped growing in 2005. In every separate country, their generation is held at 2005 levels, while electricity demand, nuclear, hydro and bioenergy follow their real-world paths.2 The missing clean generation has to come from somewhere, and in this counterfactual it comes from fossil fuels.

The key choice is which fossil fuels are used to fill in the gap. A wind farm in China or India displaces coal, while one in Texas or the UK mostly displaces gas. So rather than assuming a single global fossil mix, the analysis fills each country’s gap with that country’s own coal, gas and oil mix in each year, using data for about 200 countries from Ember. This keeps real-world coal-to-gas switching like what occurred during the US shale gas boom in place, rather than crediting it to renewables.3

Without wind and solar growth since 2005, global power-sector CO2 emissions in 2025 would have been 28% higher, at 16.9 billion tonnes rather than 13.2 billion. This adds up to 3.7 billion tonnes avoided in 2025, which is about three-quarters of the total CO2 US emissions that year (or roughly 1.5x EU emissions).

Between 2006 and 2025, wind and solar avoided about 23 billion tonnes of CO2. The biggest assumption I’ve made is what fossil fuel fills in the gap: if every missing kilowatt-hour had come from gas, avoided emissions would be 15 billion tonnes, while if it was all coal it would have been 30 billion.

This lines up almost exactly with Ember’s own estimate. Using a simpler method (and a 2000 baseline rather than 2005 baseline), Ember’s Global Electricity Review 2026 found that “had wind and solar not grown since 2000, fossil generation would have been 30% higher in 2025, and emissions 28% higher.”

While its true that global electricity emissions have yet to clearly peak, it may well be imminent; emissions went down in 2025 and may be on track to decline in 2026 as well, though rapid increases in demand from vehicle electrification and data centers have made this a bit more challenging.4 But there are many countries in which electricity emissions have already peaked and declined substantially, and where clean energy has played a key role in those declines.

Already replacing fossil fuels in some countries

Globally, clean energy has not yet led to fossil fuel use peaking in the electricity sector. In 2025, fossil generation was essentially flat (down ~0.3%). But that global total hides a lot of country-level variability. In many wealthier economies, where demand has grown more slowly, clean energy has driven real emissions reductions (even when accounting for the outsourcing of some industrial production).

Between 2005 and 2025, power-sector CO2 emissions fell by 75% in the UK, 55% in the European Union and 37% in the United States.

The reasons why differ from place to place:

• In the EU, wind and solar account for about 85% of the decline (512 of 601 million tonnes), even though falling nuclear output pushed emissions up by about 100 million tonnes.

• In the UK, the decline had three main drivers: wind and solar (56 million tonnes), lower domestic generation (58 million tonnes, partly because the UK now imports more power), and the near-elimination of coal, which went from 45% of UK fossil generation to effectively zero (36 million tonnes).

• In the US, switching from coal to cheaper natural gas cut emissions by 682 million tonnes, slightly more than wind and solar (606 million tonnes), while a 12% rise in electricity use added 352 million tonnes. Coal’s share of US fossil generation fell from 69% to 29%.

Without wind and solar growth, EU power emissions would have fallen by only about 16% since 2005 rather than 55%, US emissions by about 17% rather than 37%, and UK emissions by about 53% rather than 75%. In these regions clean energy has not just met new demand, its actually pushed fossil generation down.

What about temperatures?

Avoided emissions translate into avoided warming, but the story here has an important twist. Coal plants don’t just emit CO2. They also emit sulfur dioxide, which forms aerosols that reflect sunlight and cool the planet. A world with more coal would also have had more of this aerosol pollution and the cooling it causes, though exactly how much depends on the use of scrubbers, the sulfur content of the coal, and a number of other factors.

To capture the complex dynamics here, I ran the counterfactual emissions (CO2, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, black and organic carbon, and methane leaked from coal mines and gas supply chains) through the FaIR climate model, using a 841 parameter ensemble constrained to match the climate sensitivity and carbon cycle feedback values assessed in the IPCC AR6 as well as observed warming.

The CO2 avoided by solar and wind growth between 2005 and 2025 has prevented about 0.01C of warming. Adding the methane that would have leaked from the extra coal mining and gas production, the gross effect is larger still. But the extra sulfur that would have been emitted by fossil fuels in that counterfactual world would have masked most of that for now. Taking everything together, the net avoided warming in 2025 is only about 0.002C (−0.008 to +0.009C).

However, this comparison is a bit apples and oranges. Aerosols wash out of the atmosphere within days to weeks, while CO2 persists for centuries (and the warming from CO2 for millennia). Once the extra aerosols clear, the avoided warming from wind and solar deployment to date settles at about 0.01C by 2035. Cooling from sulfur pollution depends on how much is being emitted in a given year, while the warming from CO2 depends on how much has built up over time. So while a new coal plant (in our counterfactual world) would lead to an immediate spike of cooling sulphate aerosols, that effect would be overtaken by warming from CO2 – which will persist long after the coal plant is closed and the cooling from sulfur emissions is gone. Trading a small, temporary cooling from air pollution for permanent warming is a bad bargain, and it comes with catastrophic public health costs of breathing that pollution.

These warming numbers are modest, but they reflect only 20 years of deployment. Much of it is also very recent: 60% of all the emissions wind and solar avoided came in the last five years. The world has emitted roughly 2,600 billion tonnes of CO2 since 1850, so 23 billion tonnes is just under 1% of that total.

More importantly, the 0.01C is only the effect to-date of what has been built so far, assuming the counterfactual world’s extra emissions stopped at the end of 2025. In reality, the wind and solar fleet will keep running and keep growing. At today’s rate, each additional year of operation avoids roughly 3.7 billion tonnes of CO2, and that rate is rising quickly as deployment accelerates.

Addition and displacement at the same time

Clean energy has been an addition to the global power system, but not in the sense the critique implies. It has been added alongside rapidly growing demand that would have existed anyway, and it has displaced fossil generation that would otherwise have been built and burned. Both things are true at once, which is why fossil use can rise while clean energy is still cutting emissions.

Without the wind and solar built since 2005, the world’s power plants would be emitting 28% more CO2 today. Over the long term, the world would be warmer. The warming avoided so far is small (and partly hidden by the side effects of cleaner air), but it grows with every year that clean energy continue producing power. Many countries have already seen their power sector emissions decline, the world as a whole appears to now be on the cusp of absolute declines in electricity sector emissions.

Methods, code and data for this analysis are available over at my GitHub.

1 The 2026 breakdown here is: 10.3% of global generation from solar, 9.1% from wind, 2.2% from bioenergy, and 0.3% from geothermal. Note that the analysis later in the piece looking at what would have happened without clean energy growth excludes bioenergy from its analysis, given the complexity of emissions accounting there.

2 There is a mechanism by which clean energy could in principle add to demand: if cheap wind and solar lower electricity prices, people and firms may use more power. That rebound effect is real, but it would need to be enormous to account for demand growth on the scale seen, and lower cost power can also enable emissions reductions through increased electrification (heat pumps, EVs, etc.). Accounting for a rebound would at most modestly reduce the avoided emissions we estimate.

3 Additional methodological details: Europe is treated as a single interconnected grid, so that Scandinavian wind displaces German and Polish coal and gas rather than fossil plants Sweden doesn’t have. Plants can’t run above realistic capacity factors; where existing plants would be maxed out, the model builds new ones in the fuel each country has been adding. Emissions are calculated from combustion emission factors that vary by country and year, drawn from CEDS, the US EIA and Chinese official statistics, and are net of the emissions from manufacturing the wind turbines and solar panels themselves.

4 Not all electricity demand increases are a bad thing from an emissions standpoint. Vehicle electrification is driving more demand growth than data centers globally, and that demand is coming at the direct expense of oil consumption (and associated emissions).

A letter by the bird of the month: Dear Audubon Southwest, I am honored to be selected as the October bird of the month. It seems my years of doing mid-air flips and spins to catch your attention...

The grant is part of a $45.5 million award package, and will support economic development in coal communities in the 54 Appalachian Kentucky counties

Mountain Association was awarded $2 million by the Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC) in September 2026 for its new project: Strong Foundations: Fortifying the Building Blocks of Economic Development in Appalachian Kentucky.

This award is part of a recently announced $45.5 million award package supporting 47 projects through ARC’s POWER (Partnerships for Opportunity and Workforce and Economic Revitalization) Initiative, which directs federal resources to help Appalachian coal communities expand economic opportunities by creating high-quality, in-demand jobs in multiple industries, attracting new sources of private investment and providing comprehensive workforce services and skills training. 

Mountain Association will use POWER funding to strengthen and expand enterprises in sectors that are foundational to economic development in Appalachian Kentucky. Project activities include deepening support of key economic sectors, including housing and childcare industries, and food access and disaster recovery related businesses and projects. They will also expand access to capital, and implement a new technical assistance approach to more efficiently and effectively meet the needs of small businesses in Appalachian Kentucky.

“For 50 years, the Mountain Association has worked to strengthen the foundation of our local economies,” said Robin Gabbard, President of the Mountain Association. “By investing in essential businesses in these critical sectors, we’re building resilience for the future and helping create lasting jobs.”

As a Community Development Financial Institution, the organization serves small business owners and community leaders with flexible financing to start or grow their enterprises particularly when traditional financing is not an option. They also offer personalized guidance, training, and resources designed to help business and nonprofit leaders succeed and grow sustainably. Their energy experts help businesses and nonprofits reduce costs and plan for long‑term savings, providing bill analysis, energy efficiency and solar assessments, grant application assistance, and financing options. The organization has offices in Berea, Hazard and Prestonsburg.

Mountain Association and partners bring a combined $500,000 in matching funds to the grant. This project will serve 450 businesses, improve 360 businesses with technical assistance, serve 100 participates, improve 80 participants through group training, create 50 new businesses and 150 new jobs, retain 120 existing jobs, and generate $6,000,000 in leveraged private investment over the course of the two-year performance period.

Partners include Appalachian Cradle to Career Partnership, Appalachian Early Childhood Network, Invest606, Kentucky Highlands Investment Corporation, Kentucky Small Business Development Center, and TEK Center.

To date, ARC has invested over $518 million in 605 projects, which are helping to leverage nearly $1.9 billion in additional private investment in coal communities. These investments are projected to have created or retained nearly 54,000 jobs and prepared nearly 190,000 workers and students for new opportunities.

About the Mountain Association: 

The Mountain Association is a 50-year-old nonprofit that invests in people and places in Eastern Kentucky to build a new economy and a brighter future. At the Mountain Association, small business owners and community leaders can access flexible financing to start or grow their enterprises, even if traditional lending options aren’t a fit. Beyond loans, business and nonprofit leaders can also receive personalized guidance, training, and resources designed to help them succeed and grow sustainably. To help businesses and nonprofits reduce costs and plan for long‑term savings, their energy experts provide bill analysis, energy efficiency and solar assessments, grant application assistance, and financing options. The Mountain Association also collaborates with partners to research challenges, share local stories, and advocate for policies that support community‑led growth. For more information, visit www.mtassociation.org. 

About the Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC):

The Appalachian Regional Commission is an economic development entity of the federal government and 13 state governments focusing on 423 counties across the Appalachian Region. ARC’s mission is to invest and partner to strengthen economic development in Appalachia to help the region reach its full economic potential.

The post Mountain Association Receives $2 Million from Appalachian Regional Commission’s POWER Initiative appeared first on Mountain Association.

You may have heard that MEIC and 18 other environmental and public health organizations are being investigated by certain members of the U.S. House Committee on Natural Resources for what they say is the “outsized influence” we “wield over the federal government, law, and natural resource policy.”  Congress calls MEIC a “radical environmental group” because …

The post Statement on Federal Investigation appeared first on Montana Environmental Information Center - MEIC.

By Robin Gabbard, President

My connection to Appalachia didn’t begin when I became a community development professional; it began generations ago. Like many Appalachians, my story is woven into the history of our mountains and the communities that call them home. I chose to spend my career serving Eastern Kentucky because I believe in the people and places that shaped me.

As Mountain Association marks its 50th anniversary, I’m reminded of a truth that has endured through every economic shift and challenge our region has faced: Appalachia’s future has always been shaped by people willing to invest their time, talent, and resources in the places they call home. 

Fifty years ago, the leaders of eight community development organizations came together around a simple but powerful idea that the people of Appalachia were never the barrier to a resilient economic future. Too often, our people and communities lacked the voice, capital and resources, and opportunities needed to turn local ideas into local prosperity. 

That belief became five decades of impact. Since 1976, Mountain Association has been a partner, investor, and catalyst for economic growth throughout Central Appalachia. We’ve invested nearly $95 million across Eastern Kentucky since 2000, provided 66,190 hours of business expertise to 4,628 entrepreneurs since 2013, and facilitated more than 380 energy savings projects. This work has supported small businesses, communities, and nonprofits, and helped launch enterprises that continue to shape the region today.

These numbers reflect meaningful impact, but they tell only part of the story. Over the past five decades, we have watched entrepreneurs build businesses in towns many had written off. We have seen local leaders develop solutions to challenges ranging from food access and childcare to housing and workforce development. We have witnessed communities respond to economic change and natural disasters not by giving up, but by coming together. Those experiences reinforced the belief that resilience is not something communities discover in a crisis. It is something they build every day.

When coal employment declined, communities across Eastern Kentucky created new opportunities in manufacturing, agriculture, tourism, healthcare, arts and culture, and technology. More recently, devastating weather disasters have tested our communities once again. Neighbors help neighbors, local organizations step forward, and towns rebuild.

But resilience requires recovery and persistence. It means preparing for what’s next by strengthening local systems, investing in critical infrastructure, and building the capacity to navigate future challenges. This is why resilience has become central to Mountain Association’s work. Whether we’re helping businesses manage energy costs or supporting solar investments, financing equipment that creates affordable housing, revitalizing downtowns, or investing in people who turn ideas into action, our vision remains the same: helping people, places, and local economies prosper and thrive through change.

As I look across Appalachia today, I see reasons for optimism. Historic buildings are coming back to life, entrepreneurs are creating new opportunities, and community leaders are rallying neighbors around shared visions. These are more than signs of economic progress; they are the foundation of communities where people can build a life, feel welcome, and envision a future. Most importantly, I see people choosing to build their futures here. 

Appalachia has often been defined by what it lacks. Those of us who call it home know a different story. We are creative, determined, ingenious, and generous. We are innovators and problem-solvers, workers, and builders. Above all, we are neighbors, bound together by a deep commitment to one another and to this place. The challenges facing our region are real. But Mountain Association was founded on a belief that remains just as powerful today as it was in 1976: local people, equipped with the right resources and opportunities, can build stronger communities and a more prosperous future. 

If the last 50 years have taught us anything, it’s that investments in people and place matter most. When we trust local leadership, support local ownership, and strengthen communities, we create conditions for lasting prosperity. By investing in our people and strengthening our communities, we are writing the next chapter of the story of Eastern Kentucky together. Appalachia’s greatest asset has never been what can be taken from the region; it is what can be built here. The same mountains that shaped my story generations ago now challenge us to leave something of lasting value for future generations. And I believe our best chapter is still ahead.

To learn more about the Mountain Association, please visit our 50 Years of Impact Report at MtAssociation.org/Fifty.

The post 50 Years Later: How People and Place Continue to Shape Appalachia’s Future appeared first on Mountain Association.

By KAY MATTHEWS

The Carson National Forest is proposing a huge, forest management project on the Questa and Camino Real Ranger Districts called “Truchas to Upper Costilla Headwaters Active Management Project.” It includes 491,942 acres across all of the Questa district south to the village of Truchas on the south end of the Camino Real. The stated goal of the project is to restore a more natural fire regime to the landscape over a 10-year period.

It appears to be promulgated by two directives: the Enchanted Circle  Priority Landscape on the west side of the Sangre de Cristos that was listed as one of the 10 most threatened forest areas for catastrophic fire in the country; and “April 4, 2025 the Secretary of Agriculture determined that the Forest Service may carry out Authorized Emergency Actions under section 40807 of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (PL 117-58) on National Forest System lands that are either, (1) rated as very high or high for wildfire risk or (2) experiencing declining forest health, at risk of experiencing substantially increased tree mortality over the next 15 years from insect and disease infestation, or contain hazard trees posing an imminent risk to public health, infrastructure, and safety.” This is the directive that causes worry under Trump’s Secretary of Agriculture for its potential use for more industrial logging in national forests.

Most of the people I’ve spoken with were unaware of the project until the Carson released the Draft Environmental Assessment (EA). Under Public Involvement in the EA it says that the Carson convened a group of stakeholders that “included State and County entities, Pueblos, two watershed-based groups, and the Philmont Scout Ranch.” This was the Enchanted Circle Treatment Mapping Work Group that met to identify shared forest treatment and restoration priorities. They reference the Appendix for more detailed information of the group’s work. Normally, before the Trump administration’s evisceration of the NEPA process (National Environmental Policy Act), the first step in the EA or EIS process is to send out a scoping letter to all its stakeholders with an outline of the proposed project soliciting input. This step seems to have been excluded in for this project. I’m not assailing the Enchanted Circle Treatment Mapping Work Group, that no doubt contributed informed input to the project, just questioning the process.

The EA includes maps that show the proposed areas for treatment. One map color codes them for forest type: mixed conifer, frequent fire; mixed conifer with aspen; montane/subalpine grassland; piñon juniper sage; piñon juniper woodland; ponderosa pine forest; riparian; sagebrush; sparsely vegetated; spruce fur forest. Another map then rates these designated areas with fuels treatment priorities. On the Questa District, with which I’m less familiar, there are several relatively small areas in first priority red, east of the village of Questa in mixed conifer with aspen and south in the piñon juniper sagebrush. On the Camino Real District, first priority is east of Taos near SH 64 in sagebrush scrubland, near Picuris Pueblo, along SH 518, and with most of the first priority in the southern part of the district in ponderosa pine.

Treatments will include a variety of types: hand or mechanical tree felling on slopes less that 40 percent; tree felling mainly by hand, on steep slopes followed by cable yarding; mechanical tree felling that will include harvesters and forwarders or tree-bunchers; hand thinning with material left for fuelwood gathering; and prescribed fire preparation that will include pruning of ladder fuels, tree thinning mastication, chipping, snag mitigation; and brush removal.

Prescribed fire will be used on 112,865 acres utilizing pile burning to remove slash or fuels created by forest thinning; jackpot (vegetative fuels) burning to remove surface fuels; and broadcast burning to apply fire across the broad area of a burn unit. Prescribed fire would continue over a long-time frame of over 10 years to mimick the natural fire intervals in each forest type. Total prescribed fire acres will vary widely year to year based on weather conditions, funding, and other factors.

There is much more in the EA on post-disturbance treatment, the transportation system, i.e., the use of existing roads, temporary roads, and new roads. If you have a special concern you can easily read through the first 30 pages of the EA to find the section that applies. There are community members who are opposed to the thinning and burning projects that have already occurred on the districts, so the thought of commercial logging probably raises some hackles. In one of the Action Alternatives that was rejected, the Forest Service argued that, following the guidelines of the Carson Forest Land Management Plan, most the of the material will be valued as fuelwood, while the larger timber can be milled for lumber or vigas. The value of larger trees can help offset the cost of proposed treatments, allow additional acres to be treated, and provide economic opportunity to local businesses.

The EA notes the forest restoration and wildland/urban interface projects that have already been implemented, many of which we’ve covered in La Jicarita: Las Trampas; Kiowa Sant Cristobal Wildland/Urban Interface; Pueblo Ridge; and McGaffey Ridge.  Community stewardship projects such as the leñero program could continue to achieve the purpose and need of the project. With the knowledge gained by the people who’ve been working in the forest, hopefully the Forest Service will actively seek their participation in on-the-ground decisions as to specific treatment areas and methods. The recently rejuvenated Tres Rios Watershed Coalition, which organized back in 2018 to promote restoration projects within the larger Embudo Valley watershed, recently recommended specific areas of concern in its comments on the EA. Hopefully other organizations or individuals can provide this on-the-ground feedback in the comments. In an article in the Taos News, Carson Forest Planner Peter Rich told the group that had gathered for a Taos Valley Watershed Coalition to discuss the Truchas to Costilla project: ” . . . the proposal is a ‘map of opportunities; it’s not a map of proposed projects.’ He said boundaries could change based on additional wildlife or archaeological surveys, as well as ‘based on who’s available to do the work and what capability people have, and then where we get money.’ The tools used to accomplish the desired outcome could vary, too, but ‘where we’re trying to get to doesn’t change.’”

Bankruptcy Court Had No Authority To Issue Widely Reported Liability Finding

Ominous headlines appeared in The New York Times and other media last November. A Kentucky bankruptcy judge had issued a startling order holding the City of Oakland liable for up to $654 million in damages, before interest, for obstructing construction of a massive rail-to-ship coal export facility in West Oakland. 

That all changed last Wednesday, September 30, as a federal judge in Kentucky dismissed the “billion dollar” lawsuit brought by Insight Terminal Solutions (ITS) against the City of Oakland.

“A Stand Against Coal Exports Could Push Oakland, California Toward Bankruptcy,” led The New York Times in a November 2025 story reposted widely, including on page one of the East Bay’s aspirational paper of record, the East Bay Times (“Coal project costs mounting”).

“The New York Times parlayed a recent rogue judgment issued by a handpicked bankruptcy judge in Kentucky into a tale of the wolf knocking at Oakland’s door,” No Coal in Oakland wrote at the time. The City’s attorneys protested, as they had from the outset of the Kentucky litigation, that the bankruptcy judge had no authority to hear the case, much less issue a judgment against the City.

But the tale of Oakland’s impending doom took hold, leaving City officials unwilling to voice opposition to coal. However shaky the legal grounds for the gargantuan lawsuit in Kentucky, the threat of a catastrophic defeat in a strange court left many in Oakland uneasy. Muckrakers slung muck on substack (see East Bay Insiders Oakland Newsletter and Oakland Report). Developer Phil Tagami’s PR flack, Zennie Abraham, posted a video confidently entitled “City Of Oakland Owes Insight Terminal Solutions $678 Million In OBOT Breach-Of-Contract Case.” 

“We lost, lost, lost, and we continue to lose,” lamented Oakland city councilmember and developer ally Ken Houston, apparently convinced that the bankruptcy judge’s ruling would stand. 

A dark cloud hung over City Hall.

The substance of the ITS lawsuit was the shell company’s sole asset, its sublease to develop a 19-acre corner of the shuttered Oakland Army Base as a marine export terminal. ITS claimed that the City of Oakland committed tortious interference with its effort to develop a coal export facility on the site, near the foot of the San Francisco Bay Bridge. According to its complaint, the City owed ITS “not less than $1 billion,” plus interest, punitive damages, fees, and expenses.

But last Wednesday, United States District Judge Benjamin Beaton ruled that the City’s attorneys, led by Danielle Leonard of Altshuler Berzon LLP, got it right when they argued that the Kentucky bankruptcy court lacked subject-matter jurisdiction to hear the case filed in early 2024. They insisted from the outset that the case involved California parties in a dispute governed entirely by California law and should be heard, if at all, in a California courtroom.

In his order of dismissal, Judge Beaton agreed, pointedly adding that “ITS’s decision to file an adversary proceeding in Kentucky, rather than to sue in the California courts, carries at least a whiff of forum shopping.” No Coal in Oakland made the same call nearly two years ago.

ITS chose the Kentucky forum to launch its “billion dollar” lawsuit after a California trial judge denied a $159.6 million claim brought by developer Phil Tagami in Alameda County. In 2018, the City terminated Tagami’s lease for failure to get terminal construction underway by deadlines set in the lease. This effectively rendered ITS’s sublease, executed weeks before the City’s termination of Tagami’s lease, worthless as well. 

Although Alameda County Superior Court Judge Noël Wise ruled the City’s termination of the lease unlawful and reinstated the lease in early 2024, she rejected the mega damages sought by the developer as too speculative to be awarded under California law.

ITS, which had funded Tagami’s case in California, decided to take another shot at an unearned payday in front of the Kentucky bankruptcy court judge who had presided over ITS’s reorganization in 2021. ITS emerged from bankruptcy under new ownership by Autumn Wind Lending, a shell company owned by Los Angeles hedge fund operator Jon Brooks.

The bankruptcy case was fully resolved when Autumn Wind acquired ITS. The shell company’s attorneys nonetheless argued that ITS’s claim against the City was sufficiently “related to” the 2021 case to provide the Kentucky bankruptcy court with jurisdiction. Brooks’ lawyers tried but failed to bluster past the glaring fault in their argument that the issues they were trying to litigate could have been, but weren’t, raised by ITS or Autumn Wind Lending during the earlier proceeding.

After quoting the late Justice Antonin Scalia (“as many a curbstone philosopher has observed, everything is related to everything else”), Judge Beaton found no significant connection between the bankruptcy case and ITS’s 2024 lawsuit. He ruled that

the absence of any identifiable pre-confirmation claim or post-confirmation distribution dooms the jurisdictional basis for ITS to return to bankruptcy court. This litigation doesn’t involve application of the Bankruptcy Code, the interpretation of the reorganization plan, or any potential effects on creditors….The only relevant nexus between this case and ITS’s bankruptcy is the one linking its current owners to a potential future recovery. And that does not suffice…. Even the expansive reach of related-to bankruptcy jurisdiction doesn’t stretch this far.

The practical result of Beaton’s decision is that this litigation, after years in Kentucky federal courts, is almost certainly over in any forum that matters. ITS can refile its claims in California or appeal Judge Beaton’s decision to the Sixth Circuit, but neither approach is likely to lead to a different result.

California may provide a six-month window to refile in state court, but that window opens onto a limitations question ITS is unlikely to survive. The City cancelled Tagami’s lease and, effectively, rendered ITS’s sublease worthless in 2018. The business torts raised by ITS have a two-year statute of limitations so they became untimely long before ITS filed in Kentucky. Even if ITS could survive the limitations issue, the City has raised a number of other credible alternative grounds for summary judgment in its favor.  The City need only win on one argument; ITS would have to prevail on all of them to survive a summary judgment motion in state court.

In the event of a successful appeal of last week’s ruling to the Sixth Circuit, the case would land back before Judge Beaton. He made it clear in his opinion that, if the appeals court were to overrule him on “related to” jurisdiction, he would nonetheless abstain from hearing the case, either dismissing it again or leaving it in limbo. 

Abstention is a nonreviewable determination that a case is in the wrong court even though, technically speaking, the court has jurisdiction. Abstention is rarely invoked, but Judge Beaton included in his decision a detailed analysis, tallying up ten reasons no federal court in Kentucky should be handling the case.  

“This case cried out for the exercise of discretionary abstention by the federal courts in favor of California litigation,” he concluded, sending a message to both ITS and the forum-shopped bankruptcy judge who hung on to the case for nearly two years.

ITS now faces an unappetizing choice between investing further resources in a California refiling that is likely to fail at the threshold or an appeal that leads nowhere. ITS may choose to plow ahead along one of these paths just for the nuisance value of holding formally unresolved claims over the City’s head, but the bell has rung and ITS has lost this round, if not the entire bout.

With victories in Alameda County and Kentucky, the City is now 2-0 against the developers’ suits for damages.

The decision is Insight Terminal Solutions, LLC v. City of Oakland, No. 3:25-cv-00023-BJB (W.D. Ky. Sept. 30, 2026) Opinion & Order of Dismissal.

Photo at top: Musicians Action Group bringing musical energy to kick off June 2016 No Coal rally outside Oakland City Hall.  Credit: Brooke Anderson

Related coverage

Nina Singh-Hudson, Oakland Dodges $1 Billion Coal Terminal Lawsuit as Federal Judge Tosses Case, Hoodline (Oct 2, 2026) 

Eli Wolfe, Coal company’s $1 billion lawsuit against Oakland dismissed, Oaklandside (Oct 2, 2026)

Israr Ahmad, Insight Terminal Solutions’ $1 Billion Lawsuit Against the City of Oakland Dismissed, What the Federal Court Actually Decided, All About Lawyer (Oct 3, 2026)

Juan Carlos Lara, Newsom Signs Coal Terminal Law as Oakland Wins Key Court Fight, KQED (Oct 4, 2026)

With the close of the 119th Congress just around the corner, our elected leaders still have time to deliver significant conservation funding and policy before the term ends. At the beginning of this...

The tiny backpack you see on this American Oystercatcher “N94” is a solar-powered GPS/GSM transmitter. Thanks to this technology, applied by a trained biologist, we were able to find N94 after...

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 
October 6, 2026

Lawsuit Targets Utah Oil Highway Threatening World-Renowned Nine Mile Canyon – 10.6.26 Construction to Demolish 100-Foot-Tall Canyon Walls, Damage Native Rock Imagery, Utah History

Contacts:
Grant Stevens, Communications Director, Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance (SUWA); (319) 427-0260; grant@suwa.org
Mike Hansen, Nine Mile Canyon Coalition, (801) 916-2491, jmichaelhansen@gmail.com
Deeda Seed, Center for Biological Diversity, (801) 803-9892, dseed@biologicaldiversity.org

SALT LAKE CITY, UT —The Nine Mile Canyon Coalition, Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, and Center for Biological Diversity today sued the Trump administration’s Bureau of Land Management for approving construction of a hydrocarbon highway through Utah’s scenic, culturally and historically significant Gate Canyon in eastern Utah.

The project would straighten 6 miles of what is currently a scenic, winding, gravel road through Gate Canyon and involves the blasting and destruction of 100-foot tall canyon walls, damaging Native rock imagery, Utah history, and habitat for threatened wildlife.

“This lawsuit challenges the Trump administration’s disgraceful plan to transform a quiet backcountry road into a highway clogged with speeding oil tanker trucks,” said Deeda Seed, senior Utah campaigner at the Center for Biological Diversity. “Blasting through Gate Canyon’s walls will be a disaster for nearby animals, including threatened Mexican spotted owls. We’re going to court to protect this irreplaceable cultural treasure and the animals calling it home.”

Gate Canyon is located in Utah’s West Tavaputs Plateau region, between the towns of Myton and Wellington. It feeds into Nine Mile Canyon — a world-renowned archaeological area that contains more than 10,000 unique, irreplaceable cultural, historical and archaeological resources. The proposed route of the highway, designed to accommodate 70-foot oil tankers, cuts directly through the rugged landscape and will fundamentally alter the character of Gate Canyon.

“In the words of Joni Mitchell, the BLM has approved the ‘paving of paradise.’  But instead of putting in a parking lot, the BLM has given its OK to the building of a highway to carry crude oil from the Uinta Basin to Carbon County,” said J. Michael Hansen, president of the Nine Mile Canyon Coalition. “It’s like constructing a highway through the Louvre Museum.”

Today’s lawsuit challenges the BLM’s rushed and behind-closed-doors environmental review for failing to disclose or analyze the threats of increased traffic and canyon blasting on wildlife, the area’s rock imagery, historic axle grease inscriptions and scenery, and for failing to consider alternative, less damaging routes.

The BLM also ignored its own resource management plans that require protecting the area’s cultural and scenic values and violated the federal National Historic Preservation Act and the Endangered Species Act. The bureau failed to consider the project’s threats to Mexican spotted owls, despite the fact that the cliffs near the proposed blasting areas are identified as potential owl habitat.

“The BLM knew that prior versions of this same proposal were extremely controversial and faced fierce public headwinds,” said Landon Newell, staff attorney with the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance. “This time around, instead of facing the public, they hid their decision and rushed their analysis and approval, all under the guise of Trump’s “Energy Dominance” agenda.”

The project, known as the “Wells Draw Road Amendment – Gate Canyon,” was proposed by Duchesne County and approved by the BLM on April 28, 2026. It is intended to provide an alternative route for transporting oil out of the Uinta Basin. The current backcountry road would be transformed to accommodate 70-foot oil tanker trucks traveling to the oil fields and transloading facilities in Carbon County, Utah. If the destruction of Gate Canyon moves forward, as many as 1,000 vehicles could pass through each day — the equivalent of “[a] tanker truck every 7 minutes,” according to news reports.

This marks the third attempt by Duchesne County to destroy Gate Canyon. In 2015 and 2022, the BLM received similar applications to realign Gate Canyon Road, but those projects were abandoned amid significant public opposition. The BLM quietly posted the latest iteration of the project in March 2026 without issuing public notice or opening a formal comment period. After learning of the project, conservation groups quickly requested that the BLM allow for public participation opportunities in the decision-making process. The agency denied those requests and quickly approved the project in late April.

Nine Mile Canyon is often referred to as “the world’s longest art gallery” because of its extensive collection of rock imagery and archeological sites. Previous BLM studies describe the area as containing “a significant and high density of historic, cultural, and archeological sites joined together in several overlapping historic landscapes” and saying it “is known to contain the country’s highest concentration of rock imagery panels, remnants of the prehistoric Archaic, Fremont, and Ute cultures…The rock structural remains of Fremont homes, granaries, and ‘forts’ are more visible in Nine Mile Canyon than almost anywhere in the Fremont cultural area.”

###
The Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance (SUWA) is a nonprofit organization with members and supporters from around the country dedicated to protecting America’s redrock wilderness. From offices in Moab, Salt Lake City, and Washington, DC, our team of professionals defends the redrock, organizes support for America’s Red Rock Wilderness Act, and stewards a world-renowned landscape. Learn more at www.suwa.org.

The post Lawsuit Targets Utah Oil Highway Threatening World-Renowned Nine Mile Canyon – 10.6.26 appeared first on Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance.

After witnessing the effects of sea-level rise in the low-lying island nation of Tuvalu, Pacific leaders on Tuesday used the pre-COP31 summit in Fiji to voice their frustration at the difficulties they have experienced in tapping the global climate finance system.

A small group of government leaders, climate negotiators and heads of development banks and climate funds took a trip to Tuvalu’s Funafuti atoll on Tuesday morning, travelling by road over land just 10-20 metres wide to visit a project that is building barriers to keep the sea from the land.

They then flew to Fiji for the pre-COP summit, where several Pacific leaders said they had been let down by the insufficient quantity, bad terms and slow speed of international finance to help them adapt to a warming climate that is bringing higher oceans, drought and more powerful storms to their shores.

“Right now, our islands are like a canoe that has been rammed by a massive foreign ship. Our canoe is taking on water, we are sinking, and what is the world’s response?” asked Palau’s President Surangel Whipps Jr.

“They hand us a tiny patch to cover a gaping hole,” he continued, “but the bureaucratic process just to receive that patch is so slow that the water fills the hole while we wait. Then to rebuild the vessel so that we can survive the next storm, we are offered loans, debt that adds weight to a sinking boat packaged in red tape so thick we can barely access it. And while we wait, the water continues to fill.”

Palau’s president Surangel Whipps Junior on Monday (Photo: Australia-Pacific Partnership)

Pacific leaders and Australia called again on governments to invest in the new Pacific Resilience Facility (PRF), which has been designed by the Pacific Islands Forum and is seeking $500 million in investments by COP31 in November.

It has around $180 million so far, but did not receive additional pledges during the UN General Assembly in New York. The PRF aims to invest to generate annual returns which it can give to projects like water tanks for drought-hit communities.

Witnessing sea level rise

The annual pre-COP gathering is usually a low-profile technical meeting of climate negotiators. But this year, Australia – which is the president of negotiations at COP31 – partnered with the Pacific to introduce a “leaders segment” in an attempt to shine a spotlight on climate issues affecting the region.

Fourteen government leaders – from Australia, Timor-Leste, Mauritius and the Pacific – made the trip. They were joined by the European Union’s climate commissioner Wopke Hoekstra, the heads of the Green Climate Fund and the Asian Development Bank and former Australian prime minister Julia Gillard.

World leaders and bank officials pose for a photo at Tuvalu’s narrowest point (Photo: Australia-Pacific Partnership for COP31)

On their return to Fiji, Solomon Islands Prime Minister Matthew Wale told the pre-COP leaders roundtable that the sea level rise they had witnessed was personal for him.

“Tuvalu was not just a site visit for me. I saw the story of my own saltwater people,” he said, adding that he, his daughter and his grandfather had lost their houses to sea level rise and that three-quarters of his electorate live on land that will be underwater in the next 30 years.

From the other side of the world, Antigua and Barbuda’s environment minister Michael Joseph said Tuvalu’s problems felt similar to those of his own Caribbean islands. “I saw vulnerable communities… just metres from the sea and people determined to remain on their land, preserve their culture and way of life,” he said.

Michael Joseph speaks to reporters at Tuvalu’s narrowest point (Photo: Australia-Pacific partnership)

A group of Fijian schoolchildren told the leaders it was not just sea level rise the Pacific struggles with but also heatwaves, droughts and storms, which worry their families and prevent them from learning.

Climate finance red-tape

Several Pacific leaders criticised the world’s leaders for not doing enough to combat climate change. Cook Islands Prime Minister Mark Brown expressed disappointment that only two non-Pacific leaders had come to the pre-COP, a fact Australian media widely picked up on to label the event a flop and question its A$20 million (US$14m) price tag.

“We’ve heard a lot of numbers these last two days,” Brown said. “Let me share one of my own. More than 50 invitations extended to world leaders… to see for themselves what high emissions are doing to our nations and our ocean – an ocean that covers nearly one-third of the Earth’s surface.”

• Aug 28, 2026 News Pacific islands seek backing for new regional fund ahead of COP31 Pacific leaders will appeal for pledges to a new regional fund designed to swiftly channel climate finance to local communities Read more
• Jun 11, 2026 Comment The Pacific made history in the courts – now we must do it in the negotiations Legal clarity alone will not lead to reduced emissions, more finance or stronger national climate plans – political will is key to meeting states’ obligations Read more
• Oct 3, 2024 Energy Civil servants warn fossil fuel exploration could harm New Zealand’s climate reputation Advice to politicians says revoking a ban on oil and gas drilling could damage relations with Pacific neighbours and risk lawsuits Read more

He called for more climate finance for the Pacific, asking “if the world is prepared to assess our suitability for climate finance, why is it not equally prepared to scrutinise whether those responsible for delivering it are meeting their obligations?”

Like Palau’s president Whipps, Naoero’s President David Adeang criticised the red tape that is hindering access to climate finance as well as a lack of money, complaining especially about “complicated procedures, heavy reporting, delays in approval and disbursement”.

Adeang added that “the way we assess vulnerability matters”, adding that it should be measured by more than income. Naoero, for example, is classified by the World Bank as high-income, restricting which climate finance it is eligible for.

Action plan to improve access

On Thursday, the Australian government will present a statement and action plan on improving access to climate finance for small island developing states and least developed countries, which it is asking other countries and organisations to endorse.

The statement addresses some of these Pacific complaints as well as acknowledging that progress has already been made on simplifying access by multilateral development banks and climate funds.

In Fiji, Asian Development Bank head Masato Kanda said his institution is “tailoring our finance and operations to island realities” because “your children and their children should be able to grow old in the countries their ancestors have called home for millennia”.

The executive director of the Green Climate Fund (GCF), Mafalda Duarte, said that the GCF-backed coastal adaptation project leaders visited in Tuvalu shows that “climate finance works” although – as the project took eight years to implement – “it takes time, and therefore we have no time to waste”.

Part of the GCF-backed Tuvalu Coastal Adaptation Project (Photo: Australia-Pacific Partnership) Australia calls for optimism

While Pacific leaders expressed concern that the world is set to blast past its agreed 1.5C warming limit, endangering their nations, Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese called for “optimism”. “If people think there is no hope, then they will not strive to get the change that we need,” he said.

He said that when he attended his first COP in 2005, Australia’s renewable energy target was 2%. Its target is now 82% renewable electricity by 2030.

While Albanese promoted Australia’s success at electrifying homes and businesses and rolling out renewables, he has been criticised by climate campaigners for extending the production of fossil fuels, including coal – largely for export.

Climate campaigners criticise Australia’s fossil fuel subsidies on the grounds of the Sheraton hotel on October 06, 2026 in Nadi, Fiji. (Photo by Hilary Wardhaugh/Getty Images)

France’s Minister for Ecological Transition Monique Barbut defended the European Union’s climate action at the pre-COP meeting. She said the continent was heating up and reducing emissions faster and providing more climate finance than anywhere else in the world.

“It is time for all major emitters to step up and do their fair share” on climate finance, she said. Most developing countries with large emissions have fiercely resisted joining the club of climate finance donors, arguing they have played a disproportionately small historic role in causing climate change.

Barbut, as well as Palau’s president Whipps, called for the next flagship scientific assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to be finished by COP33 in 2028, in time to inform the next global stocktake of national climate action.

This timeline has been opposed by countries like India, Saudi Arabia and China, who argue it would put an unfair burden on developing countries. Barbut said countries should “support the work of the IPCC rather than sabotage its calendar”.

Barbut said that governments should agree at COP31 to aim to raise the share of “clean electricity” in final energy consumption to 35% by 2035. The Turkish and Australian governments have pushed for this goal although without specifying that the electricity should be “clean”. Barbut added that COP31 should also agree to cut emissions of methane, a particularly potent greenhouse gas.

The post Pacific leaders rail at climate finance failures after pre-COP trip to Tuvalu appeared first on Climate Home News.

Twelve independent chapters operate within the Audubon Southwest region. Consider joining a chapter near you to participate in bird-related events near you and engage on local issues. Read on for...

For more than 50 years, Audubon’s conservation work along the Platte River has been rooted in the belief that lasting conservation is built through strong partnerships and...

Recent months have reinforced the case for accelerating action on the energy transition and climate, particularly from a European perspective.

Let’s list the reasons why:

• this summer has been like no other in Europe, with five major heatwaves across the continent and provisional data from the UK Met Office showing temperatures in London approximately 4°C above the long-term baseline average (1991-2020);
• internationally, 2026 has been marked by a series of extreme weather events, from the tragic landslide in Nepal caused by a melting glacier to a deadly winter storm bringing widespread fatalities across North America;
• all this against the backdrop of a super El Niño likely to generate even more extreme weather across the globe in the coming months;
• growing recognition, reflected in UK Energy Security and Net Zero Secretary of State Miatta Fahnbulleh’s warning that the war in Iran and closure of the Strait of Hormuz have shown how exposure to global fossil fuel markets raises energy costs;
• the war has also led to an explosion in electric vehicle sales, particularly in Asia. Across the first half of 2026, electric car sales in Europe grew around 35-40% compared with the same period in 2025; in the UK it’s up about 25% over the same period;
• according to WindEurope, Europe installed 8.8GW in the first half of 2026, a 30% increase on H1 2025. Renewables provided 53.1% of electricity generated by the UK’s Major Power Producers between March and May, with renewable generation up 22% year on year.;
• a breakthrough on the costs of energy storage, with global benchmark costs for four-hour battery storage projects falling by 27% year-on-year in 2025.

On the face of it, the case for accelerating the transition has never been stronger. But despite this, the state of multilateral action on climate change can probably be summed up by the collective shrug in response to the Climate Summit convened by the outgoing UN Secretary-General in New York on 23 September. In his final UNGA week, Antonio Guterres again argued that fossil fuel expansion “defies science, economics and common sense”. In language reflecting an increasing sense of alarm and urgency, he talked about this being the last generation “who can avert climate catastrophe”.

The weakened state of climate multilateralism is often attributed to a geopolitical environment in which political consensus has fractured and climate science is more openly challenged. This is evident not only in North America but in several European countries. But are there still opportunities this autumn for the pendulum to swing back towards concerted policy action that reflects the favourable platform that science, technology and economics are providing?

All roads on climate tend to lead to the COP, which this year will meet in Antalya, Turkey, from 9-20 November. COP31 will feature an unusual co-hosting arrangement between Turkey and Australia, alongside a pre-COP meeting hosted by Fiji and Tuvalu from 5-8 October. Crucially, the Pacific gathering will give small island states a platform to highlight the existential threat posed by climate change.

As for COP31 itself, the co-hosts face the challenge of providing a central focus for a COP where no single major negotiated decision is expected and which is being described as an “implementation COP”. But two key themes are emerging:

• a “35 by 35” global electrification target, designed to accelerate the transition by increasing the share of global final energy demand met by electricity to 35% by 2035, up from the present 20%;
• ecosystem resilience, and the impact of severe climate shocks on food and water systems.

Serious discussion of both issues will be welcome. Yet many increasingly view the COP process, and the wider UN system, as unable to move beyond being a talking shop. Which is why, perhaps even more than is usual at a COP, some of the more consequential action in Antalya may take place in the margins outside the formal negotiations.

This would be consistent with the most significant outcomes from COP30 in Belém, with the emergence of two separate “coalitions of the willing” to work on international roadmaps: to transition away from fossil fuels (TAFF); and to halt and reverse global deforestation.

This TAFF initiative in particular will be put to the test of COP politics, even if it’s not on the formal agenda. Twelve months on from its birth in Belém, and seven months since the coalition of nearly 60 countries met in Santa Marta, Colombia, to kickstart work on a global TAFF process, there will be pressure to start turning high-level ambitions into concrete plans. This will mean attention on the Netherlands, which co-hosted Santa Marta with a Colombian government that has since been replaced by a new administration not committed to the initiative, and Ireland and Tuvalu, which will host a “Santa Marta 2.0” in the Pacific next July. These governments will want to show whether their initiative can work alongside the COP process and even restore some faith in the value of international cooperation to tackle global challenges. Other members of the coalition may also face questions about whether their domestic policies match their claims to international leadership: from the UK Government, which will also take on the G20 presidency in 2027, to Canadian and Australia governments, where fossil fuel production policy is moving in a different direction.

Looking beyond COP31, there are still grounds for optimism, whether through existing institutions or coalitions such as TAFF. The possibility, if recent reports are to be believed, that China could host COP33 in 2029 could be a game-changer, another Paris moment for the UNFCCC and multilateralism to demonstrate that it can deliver more than rhetoric. But back in the present, the science is making clear that delaying meaningful action, even now, will only do further harm. As the Belém Declaration on a TAFF spelled out nearly 12 months ago, action needs to be accelerated.

As progressives gather in Antalya, they may therefore do well to keep two overarching priorities at top of mind.

First, revisit the Belém Declaration as a constant reminder that limiting global temperature rises requires a “shared determination to work collectively towards a just, orderly and equitable transition away from fossil fuels”. This work will require, as the Declaration detailed, a focus on economic diversification, reducing structural dependence on fossil fuel revenues and phasing out inefficient fossil fuel subsidies. Progressive policymakers will also need to consider how to support a step-change in finance for the Global South, given the vulnerability of many emerging and developing economies to both the transition and the physical impacts of climate change. The work that has begun since the Santa Marta conference – both in the Santa Marta workplan and the separate but closely linked Brazilian COP Presidency TAFF exercise – will give policymakers the tools to start implementing TAFF in practice. That collective effort can begin in the discussions in and around COP31, even if not yet in the formal negotiations.

Second, one of the most positive developments this year has been the reframing of climate around energy security, risk and resilience. The statement by the UK Prime Minister at the same UNGA week where the UN Secretary-General’s Climate Summit yielded little tangible progress, that “the climate crisis is now a national security threat for countries around the world”, is a sign of an evolving narrative. As is this line from the recent Green Central Banking newsletter: “maybe resilience, for lack of a better word, is a new, pragmatic way to ensure climate action and collaboration still take place in an ever more geopolitically fragmented world.”

COP delegates will also be mindful that they are convening just after the US mid-terms on 3 November.

Many of the underlying conditions (economic, technological and scientific) are in place for governments to make this autumn one of significant progress on climate ambition. The case for framing the transition around economic opportunity and 21st-century energy security is clear. Policymakers may remain cautious in the current geopolitical environment; but this is time to seize the moment.

The post Can a Sweltering Summer Create an Autumn of Opportunity for the Transition? appeared first on Carbon Tracker Initiative.

The Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa (AFSA) is pleased to release its 2025–2026 Annual Report, documenting a year of collective action to advance agroecology, defend farmers’ rights and strengthen community-led food systems. Covering 1 July 2025 to 30 June 2026, the report marks the first year of implementation of AFSA’s 2025–2029 Strategic Framework. It brings together achievements, experiences and lessons from an alliance of 48 member organisations, showing how local knowledge and community leadership inform action from farmers’ fields to national, regional and global policy spaces.

The report highlights efforts to protect farmers’ rights to save and exchange seeds, advance agroecology in climate policy, celebrate African food cultures and strengthen local economies. Key developments include the Seed Is Life and My Food Is African campaigns, Healthy Soil Healthy Food work across six countries, and support for 222 agroecological enterprises and 21 territorial markets. Member stories bring these achievements to life: young farmers and women restoring land and water systems in Zambia, communities expanding farmer-led agroecology across West Africa, and farmers in Malawi rebuilding soil fertility and improving maize harvests through locally produced organic manure. Together, these experiences demonstrate the practical value of African-led solutions for livelihoods, resilience and food sovereignty.

Reflecting on the communities behind this work, AFSA Board Chairperson Rev. Dr. Tolbert Thomas Jallah Jr. writes: “Their experiences remind us that food sovereignty is not simply a policy aspiration; it is lived every day through the stewardship of land, seeds, biodiversity, livelihoods and human dignity.” General Coordinator Dr. Million Belay sets out the ambition guiding the alliance: “Our task is not only to respond to crisis, but to build power, alternatives and hope.”

Alongside these achievements, the report shares the challenges, institutional developments and lessons shaping AFSA’s next steps, including the need to translate policy commitments into implementation and sustain investment in community-led change. AFSA thanks its members, communities, partners, donors and allies for their commitment and invites policymakers, researchers, civil society and the wider public to explore and share the report.

Read the AFSA Annual Report 2025–2026

The purpose of this essay is to probe the relationship between the Earth, our bodies, and ourselves. That these three are inextricably interlaced may seem self-evident, yet that very relationship is fraught with ambiguity. It is undoubtedly a misconception of Western thought that—as individuals and societies—we are primarily defined and valued as productions of our […]

When I visited Oxbow Cattle Company in Montana last spring, I saw firsthand how land management practices can support healthy grasslands and productive working lands. Owners Bart and Wendy Morris and...

More than 200 conservation organizations sent a letter today urging Congress to oppose the “Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act of 2026,” introduced by Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), Martin Heinrich (D-NM), Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV), and Mike Lee (R-Utah). The bill includes sweeping attacks on the Endangered Species Act that would gut protections for nearly every endangered species across the country.

The legislation would weaken the Act’s gold-standard “best available science” mandate, making it substantially harder to protect imperiled species and the places they live. It would also surrender authority to states to conduct Section 7 consultations — one of the most important safeguards against harm from federal agency actions.

“We don’t have to choose between protecting our most endangered animals and plants and building a clean energy future,” said Stephanie Kurose, deputy director of government affairs at the Center for Biological Diversity. “Hollowing out the Endangered Species Act only benefits energy-hungry data centers and the fossil fuel industry while leaving monarchs, manatees, and countless other species to pay the ultimate price.”

The bill also includes judicial review provisions that would make meaningful review of certain Endangered Species Act challenges much more difficult.

“Friends of the Earth US is proud to stand beside our NGO partners in the fight to uphold our country’s bedrock environmental laws,” said Hallie Templeton, legal director for Friends of the Earth. “It’s paramount that Congress keeps things in perspective as it continues to navigate our desperate need for a clean energy future. There is no reason to throw endangered species under the bus to secure what falls short of even a half-measure approach to achieving justly sourced, renewable energy access and affordability.”

Today’s letter notes that “real environmental champions do not trade away the world’s strongest conservation law in pursuit of a legislative mirage that does nothing more than grease the wheels for pipelines, data centers, petrochemical buildouts, and the next generation of energy-guzzling tech infrastructure.”

Editor’s note: On 7 October 2026, Brazil’s oil regulator ANP will auction hundreds of oil and gas blocks, many of them under the Cerrado of Maranhão. The Cerrado is a vast tropical savanna covering about a fifth of Brazil, home to rich biodiversity and the headwaters of many of the country’s major rivers, and one of its most threatened biomes. A lawsuit filed on 29 September seeks to pull 15 blocks that overlap quilombola and Indigenous lands, which were never consulted. Earlier this year, gas company Eneva gave up three blocks on Krenyê Indigenous and quilombola territory after media exposure. Below, Mayron Régis Brito Borges, journalist and president of the Maranhão-based environmental and human rights organization Fórum Carajás, reflects on what is at stake. Roots before sky

Where does one begin, writing about the Cerrado? For the people of Maranhão, a state in Brazil’s northeast, it is not a landscape but the ground of life itself. No biome is more careful with what it has. You can read this in its plants: their roots first go deep in search of water, and only then do they reach for the sky. The Cerrado is where we begin, and where we return.

350.org team with local community members in Maranhão. Photo: 350 Brasil

Going home

Every July and December, during the school holidays, families who had left for the big cities to work and study would make their way home. Most of those homes were in the Cerrado. They came back for what the cities could not give them: healthy food, clean air, silence, family and old friends, rivers, streams and forests, the games of childhood, a youth and innocence they had left behind.

For generations, the rivers carried them. They rise in the chapadas, the Cerrado’s high plateaus, and run down to the bays of São Marcos and São José de Ribamar, on the coast of the state capital, São Luís. The Mearim, the Itapecuru, the Parnaíba, the Munim, the Preguiças: these rivers bound the countryside to the city. Along the way, by water or by road, people gathered native fruits, bacuri, murici, buriti, pequi. There was enough for everyone. That sense of abundance never quite leaves you, even decades on.

The gas arrives

But that abundance now belongs to the past. One of the reasons is gas extraction in the Cerrado of Maranhão by the energy company Eneva, which bears down on the traditional and quilombola communities of the Mearim Valley. Eneva may argue that when it took over its gas-fired power project in Santo Antônio dos Lopes, the environmental licensing was already complete. Yet no one told the traditional and quilombola communities what a project like this would mean for them. What would it do to their groundwater and their rivers? To the air, the soil, their crops? To their bodies and their minds? To the forests, the wildlife, their right to the land itself?

Eneva cannot claim ignorance. The company recently gave back gas exploration blocks that overlapped the Krenyê Indigenous land and the Peixes quilombola territory. It knows. And still it holds on to the blocks it bought in Capinzal do Norte, where several quilombola communities live. And still it behaves as though nothing is wrong in the quilombola communities of Lima Campos.

Another auction, the same mindset

The auction planned for October reveals, once more, a way of doing business that looks past people and nature so long as the profits add up. One of the blocks on offer overlaps quilombola territories in the municipality of Vargem Grande. It also reaches into the Munim River basin, which gives water to towns and villages across eastern Maranhão. And once again, the communities were not asked first, as international law requires.

Activists stand in front of the Presidential palace, telling Brazilian President to end oil exploration in Cerrado. Photo: 350 Brasil

Those who would sell it off have learned the opposite lesson. They reach for the profit first, and leave the people who live on this land to deal with what is left behind.

The post The Cerrado Is Not for Sale appeared first on 350.