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This year, Philadelphia is on track to have the lowest number of homicides since 1963. But over Fourth of July weekend, a heat dome stretching from Maine to the Gulf of Mexico descended, leaving 165 million people facing major or extreme heat.

Cities including Boston, Baltimore, and Raleigh saw record temperatures, and readings in Philadelphia topped 100 degrees for three consecutive days.

The sweltering city also saw a busy weekend for gun violence. Between July 2 and July 4, the Gun Violence Archive recorded nine shootings, leaving three dead and nine wounded.

“Those who commit gun violence are in a vulnerable population that have limited economic ability to make sure that they have air conditioning,” said Marion Campbell, executive director of Eddie’s House, a Philadelphia nonprofit that provides violence prevention and social services to such populations. “When you get hot you get irritated, OK! I’m just going to keep it real. You get irritated and your inability to manage your frustration could be heightened.”

Research confirms what Campbell and others see on the ground: When temperatures rise, gun violence increases. What was previously unknown was the effect of climate change on gun violence.

A new finding shared with The Trace by Climate Central, a nonprofit focused on climate change research and communication, estimates that approximately 2,000 shootings between 2021 and 2025 in the 100 U.S. cities with the most gun violence are attributable to high temperatures made more likely by climate change.

In fact, the baking July Fourth weekend in Philadelphia was at least twice as likely to occur due to climate change, according to Climate Central.

And this is only the beginning. As temperatures continue to rise, even more upward pressure on gun violence is likely.

“Across all of these cities, we see that in aggregate, climate change is raising the risk of gun violence,” said Kristina Dahl, vice president for science at Climate Central. “Short of really swift and deep cuts to heat-trapping emissions globally, we expect the planet to continue to warm,” Dahl said.

The theory that increased temperatures correspond with increased violence is well established, said John Roman, a distinguished senior fellow at the University of Chicago’s NORC social research center, whom The Trace asked to review the Climate Central analysis.

It can be confusing for observers, because this summer has seen record high temperatures but record low gun violence in many cities. But that doesn’t mean that climate change isn’t having an effect, Roman said.

“I think if we still had the same climate we had in 1980, I think we’d see even lower violence than we see today,” he said.

Understanding how

Until now, researchers haven’t pinned a number on the effect of climate change on violence.

“We’re talking about close to 2000 shootings that we can attribute to climate change’s influence on high temperatures,” Dahl said. “So, that’s still a lot of people who are being exposed to this kind of traumatic event because of climate change.”

No individual shootings were attributed to climate change. There are multiple stressors and contributing factors, and shooters themselves would never say they committed violence because it’s unusually hot outside. 

Instead, Climate Central researchers looked at the aggregate relationships between climate change, temperature, and gun violence for each of the 100 cities studied.

They started by identifying the relationship between outside temperature and gun violence. This is complicated, given a 95-degree summer day is sweltering in the humid northeast, but barely noteworthy in Phoenix. So each city got its own gun violence model, an equation based on historical values that gives back the expected number of shootings for any given temperature.

Read Next Extreme heat left this student athlete on life support. He won’t be the last. Tik Root

Next they applied the model to find the number of shootings that would have occurred if cities had seen cooler temperatures without climate change. 

To simulate that cooler world, researchers used 22 climate models from leading scientists around the globe, combined with real-world temperature records, to calculate hypothetical daily temperatures for each of the 100 cities.

Comparing these temperatures to actual recorded temperatures returned estimates that climate change has made the typical day in those cities about 2.4 degrees Fahrenheit hotter, ranging from about 1.7 F in San Francisco and Miami to 3.8 F in Fresno, California. 

Once researchers know the gap, they can use a city’s temperature model to estimate the number of shooting incidents associated with it. 

Added up over five years and 100 cities, the difference comes to about 1,950 shootings, roughly 1.7 percent of the 116,281 total shootings recorded in the Gun Violence Archive for the cities during that time period.

In Philadelphia, the gap was about 2.7 degrees F, associated with an estimated 149 additional shootings from 2021 to 2025. “Estimated” is key. The simulated temperatures are estimates, as are the number of shootings associated with them. And climate is just one of many facets that affect the rate of shootings in a city.

“There are a lot of factors that go into a city’s gun violence incident rate. Temperature is just one,” Dahl said. However, “we can actually parse out the signal of climate change in this data,” she said.

In other words, 149 additional shootings in Philadelphia is an estimate, but the direction is clear: Climate change is pushing up the number of shootings.

Who’s most vulnerable

In any given city, not all neighborhoods are equally vulnerable to the effects of increased temperatures. Instead, the burden of climate change’s effects will likely fall on neighborhoods where gun violence is already high.

The leafy green New York City where the movie characters Harry and Sally strolled is real. But just three miles away from the Upper West Side of Manhattan lies the Bronx’s Mott Haven neighborhood, a place that sees more than its share of gun violence.

The median income is about $100,000 less, and there is 40 percent less green space, according to city health department data. Pavement traps and concentrates heat, raising the surface temperature about 5 degrees on the average day — a gap that can literally mean life or death.

Neighborhoods like Mott Haven are known as urban heat islands, and nationally, they disproportionately affect residents who are not white. Mott Haven itself is 97 percent Black and Latino.

Read Next Nebraskans couldn’t escape the heat this summer — not even at night Anila Yoganathan

At a recent community meeting, residents gathered to organize around the stifling effects of heat. 

About 84 percent of households in the neighborhood have air-conditioning units, leaving 16 percent without access, the health department data shows. But even for those with air conditioners, the cost can be prohibitive. One mother brought a monthly electric bill of $1,000.

“You can’t run your AC all day,” said Soledad Alvarado, a longtime Mott Haven resident who is a climate justice fellow at the Waterfront Alliance. Instead, residents use it just to survive the hottest hours.

When residents leave home, they find little relief. Major bus routes are on streets with little shade. Underground subway stations are essentially heat traps and can be up to 18 degrees hotter than the street-level temperature. Playgrounds — covered in asphalt, not grass — become unbearable.

For workers who work outside, heat stress accumulates all day. Currently the city has no requirement that work stop, no matter how extreme the temperature is.

These conditions are not an accident, but rather reflect the historical realities of how cities decided to invest — or not invest — in neighborhoods, said Dahl of Climate Central. 

“We know that the hottest parts of cities tend to be places where there hasn’t been an investment in the sort of natural environments that would help to keep the environment cooler,” Dahl said. “Trees and parks that can really create a lot of shade and help cool the city down are less likely to be present.”

“This is one example among many, many, many,” she said, “in which climate change falls hardest on the people who have the fewest resources to cope with it.”

When this heat burden falls on disadvantaged communities, it can be more likely to translate into increased violence, said Kimberly Meidenbauer, an assistant psychology professor at Washington State University who leads an environmental neuroscience lab there.

Financial strain, resource scarcity, discrimination, and exposure to violence put the body in a stressed state known as allostatic load. When the stressors are chronic, she said, it becomes difficult for the human body to calm back down. 

“In the context of heat, we’re talking about an additional stressor. Well, if your body’s already dysregulated and under a lot of stress it’s just probably not going to be able to handle an additional stressor quite in the same way,” she said.

Science of why

Why would heat lead to shootings, when most people have been miserably hot without harming anyone? Scientists have two main explanations, and they aren’t mutually exclusive.

The first has to do with human physiology.

It begins when heat throws our bodies into disequilibrium, Meidenbauer said.

The hypothalamus region of the brain detects when the body is too hot and starts trying to move heat from the core of the body to the periphery by initiating sweating, and expanding veins and vessels near the surface of the skin.

“Thermoregulation is pretty effective at keeping our bodies in a safe range, but it is also uncomfortable,” she said.

Read Next Yes, this summer really was as hot as you think it was Matt Simon

That discomfort, in turn, ushers in negative emotional states like irritability, hostility, and frustration, while simultaneously impairing parts of the brain that normally help us keep our emotions in check.

Research is also starting to point to the possibility that our brains aren’t good at placing blame for stress where it belongs, she said. Trapped in a hot subway car, a person might blame their stress on a crying baby instead of the heat.

What’s worse, this state also seems to change how a person understands the emotional states of others.

“When you’re hot, you actually perceive others as being more hostile and aggressive, so it actually alters your perception of the intentions and threat of other people, which we think also might be driving, in part, what we see here,” Meidenbauer said.

Scientists are still working on showing definitively that heat as a stimulus causes aggression toward others, she said. In the Washington State University lab, they put study participants in an infrared sauna and asked them to play a video game against a (non-existent) player in a different room that allowed stealing from opponents as part of game play. Warmer temperatures were associated with the “impulsive aggression” of stealing, she said.

The other possible cause, known as routine activities theory, originated in the 1970s and suggests that violence increases with temperature because people are outside more and thus more likely to encounter potential sources of conflict. An example of this is the ubiquity of shootings at high school sporting events. These shootings are almost never planned, they occur because games bring together a large number of people, some of whom are carrying guns.

Roman said he sees evidence for this behavior in the data itself. Gun violence starts going up at relatively moderate temperatures, and keeps increasing — up to a point. Then at extremely high temperatures, there is a signal that gun violence goes down again, he said.

“If it’s 95, I don’t care how mad you are at somebody else, you’re gonna wait until it’s not 95 to go out and do something about it,” Roman said. When it’s really hot, he said, “people go inside.”

This also points to an unexpected way climate change could change gun violence patterns, he said, because it won’t just increase very hot days, it will also increase the number of days per year that clear the minimum temperature threshold.

“The more days you have that are warm enough to be outside, the more people are exposed to violence, and so now it isn’t that July is super hot and people are madder or shorter fuse. It’s that April and March and October and November are much nicer to be out and about,” he said.

Stereotypes

Back in Mott Haven, community members said they worry that connecting temperature and gun violence could stir up old stereotypes about heat and its effect on Black and brown people.

“People who are not from here, they might see a cluster of people outside in the Bronx and think that something violent is going to happen,” she said, but she wants people to know that the time-honored tradition of hanging out outside in warm weather can be both peaceful and joyful.

This summer’s outdoor celebrations around the World Cup and the Knicks’ victory parade showed people of all races and backgrounds could be outdoors, together, in the city, peacefully, she said

Indeed, climate, race, and violence have been bogusly linked throughout history.

Read Next The world is adapting to extreme heat — but not nearly fast enough Kate Yoder

Climatic determinism, the idea that hot climates produce hot-tempered, less civilized people, was used for centuries to justify slavery and colonialism.

In 1967, civil unrest occurring in 128 cities in protest of racial discrimination, police mistreatment, and economic oppression, was given the minimizing moniker of “long hot summer.” Before that summer, the FBI warned that racial unrest had become “a summer phenomenon” driven by hot weather, and it pointed to Communist agitation.

“Temperature is only one of many factors that go into why someone might pull out a gun on a hot day,” Dahl said. “There’s a whole constellation of supports and services and policies that could help to alleviate some of the other stressors people are facing that might lead to these kinds of decisions.”

Solutions

Many cities give residents access to cool spaces, like libraries, swimming pools, and community centers so their bodies can at least take breaks from extreme heat. New York City operates hundreds of these heat shelters during heat emergencies. The mayor’s office also recently announced vans that can travel to older residents’ homes and pop-up cooling centers that can be set up at job sites to give relief to outdoor workers.

Still, resources are limited. The city’s first-come, first-served program that gives air conditioners to the most vulnerable households, people over 60, young kids, and people with heat-sensitive conditions, stopped taking applications before summer even started, earlier than any previous year. And the program does nothing to help families pay for running the units once they have them. 

Another idea might be to warn people about what to expect, Meidenbauer said. “So much of our public messaging right now is about ‘on hot days, stay cool and watch out for signs of heat exhaustion and heat illness,’” she said. “We also know that heat affects us psychologically. So telling people to look out for changes in how they’re feeling, whether they’re thinking clearly, and disrupted sleep due to nighttime heat.”

Longer-term solutions involve addressing the underlying causes of heat islands.

Back in Philadelphia, a 2018 study found that removing trash and adding grass to randomly selected vacant lots was associated with about a 29 percent reduction in nearby gun violence in neighborhoods below the poverty line. 

Now, the city is undertaking a massive greening project called Tree Plan, which is city-funded but run by the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society. The goal: 30 percent tree canopy citywide. Some neighborhoods have as little as 2 percent tree cover and are up to 22 degrees hotter than leafier areas.

Such efforts are needed because models predict warming will only get worse.

“We know when it gets hot outside people get angrier, and when people get angrier and there’s guns present, it’s more likely to end up violent,” said Adam Garber, executive director of CeaseFirePA, a nonprofit advocacy group. And, he said, “We know it’s getting hotter every year because of climate change.”

Climate Central and The Trace collaborated on this story and the analysis behind it. As experts on climate science and gun violence, respectively, we each wanted to explore how climate change is affecting violence, and we knew that neither of our organizations could do so without the input and expertise of the other. Over the course of the project, we have met regularly to define and refine the analytical approach, identify places to dig into with on-the-ground reporting, and review results.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Higher temperatures fuel gun violence. Now we know how much is from climate change. on Oct 25, 2026.

“The Hub” is a weekly round-up of transportation related news in the Philadelphia area and beyond. Check back weekly to keep up-to-date on the issues Clean Air Council’s transportation staff finds important.

Are you ready to vote on November 3? Find voting and election information here.

Image Source: The City of Philadelphia

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For Elijah Lee, protecting the environment has always been about what’s happening close to home.

He grew up in a predominantly Black, low-income community in Roanoke Rapids, North Carolina, and went to school next to a paper mill that filled the air with pollution. He always wondered why it seemed like the only employment option for people in town. 

Now, as data centers expand in Virginia, where he moved as a teenager, he fears the political promises of data center-driven economic growth won’t reach him or his generation. 

At 18, Lee is preparing to vote in his first midterm election. Climate policy ranks among his top concerns. But he understands why people struggling to pay their bills might not put it first.

“It’s hard to care about the quality of your air or your food that you eat and whether or not that food is actually clean when you can’t even afford the food in the first place,” he said.

New polling suggests that tension is widespread. Black voters may not name climate change as their biggest election concern, but they still want leaders to address it. 

Read Next Trump ordered to release billions in climate grants meant for Black communities Adam Mahoney, Capital B

In a seven-state survey conducted by HIT Strategies for the Climate Equity Action Fund and the League of Conservation Voters, only 9 percent of Black registered voters ranked climate change among their top three issues motivating them to vote, compared with 74 percent who selected the cost of living. 

At the same time, most respondents said they wanted climate policy to be a top issue for their elected officials. Even among Black Republicans, 79 percent said it was important for candidates to prioritize addressing climate change.

Interviews with voters and advocates suggest the gap is not simply a messaging issue, but also about whether voters see the connection between environmental policy and their immediate needs. Increasingly, it is also a question if voters should even prioritize climate positions when voting because they cannot trust elected officials to deliver lower bills, cleaner water, and protection from corporate pollution.

“Young people today want to ensure we have a future where we can live prosperously,” Lee said. “We understand that the future requires environmental protections. But we also understand that it is not being prioritized today.” 

Climate politics at the kitchen table

The survey, taken from September 24 through October 10 this year, included 2,000 Black and Latino registered voters in swing states in the 2024 election. Seven in 10 respondents in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio, and Pennsylvania said they are likely to vote in the November midterm elections. 

Across both groups, 89 percent said it was important for candidates to prioritize lowering energy costs, 86 percent said the same about reducing air and water pollution, and 82 percent wanted candidates to prioritize addressing climate change.

Erica Tebbs, a senior analyst at HIT Strategies, said the problem is not convincing Black voters that environmental threats exist.

“The proof that is needed is that their concerns will be addressed and responded to by elected officials and that a vote will result in a real impact in their community,” Tebbs said. “That’s where the doubts lie.”

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For Tebbs, those answers show why climate’s relatively low ranking on a list of election issues should not be read as indifference. When questions turn to the cost of electricity, safe drinking water, or extreme weather, the concerns become personal and immediate. By contrast, the phrase “climate change,” can feel abstract.

Bill Hairston, national field director for the League of Conservation Voters, sees a similar dynamic in conversations with residents. Data center development, he said, has become one of the issues bringing people into discussions about energy and environmental policy. Residents worry about what the facilities will mean for their bills, air pollution, and housing costs and gentrification. 

“I think it’s actually just putting the two and two together,” Hairston said.

Hairston grew up in Charleston, West Virginia, where his grandparents’ home sat in a poor, Black neighborhood. Daily, coal trucks passed nearby. He remembers the grass around the house looking yellow, with soot on it. 

“I never saw my grandmother’s grass green,” he said. 

He didn’t fully connect those conditions to the decisions shaping his neighborhood when he was young, but he said voters should be making those connections more often.

For Hairston, conversations about data centers offer an opportunity to connect an industry’s presence with questions about health, affordability, and government oversight. Rather than treating those as separate concerns, he wants residents to consider who makes the decisions and whose interests those decisions serve.

Who pays for the data center boom?

The poll found substantial concern among Black voters about what data centers could mean for electricity costs.

Black voters also showed skepticism that policy promises actually benefit their households.  

Respondents were told Congress was considering a policy requiring companies building data centers to pay for the electricity they use rather than passing costs to consumers. Even with that protection described, 52 percent of Black voters expected data centers to raise electricity costs for everyday Americans.

“They don’t necessarily trust that this type of policy will really protect the public from taking on these costs,” Tebbs said.

For Andrea Cristina Mercado, who leads Climate Equity Action Fund, the results show clearly that Black communities are confronting failed policies related to climate change and the environment.

Read Next The rush to power data centers is weakening the Clean Air Act Emily Jones

Lee, who now lives in the data center capital of the U.S., is an example of this. He questions the tax breaks offered to data center developers and the promises of jobs used to promote the facilities. He worries that communities will be asked to accept the costs without receiving the benefits they were promised.

“I understand the importance of wanting to bring money into Virginia,” Lee said. But “to pass these things off as mass sources of employment is just not true.”

For Mercado, that is why climate policy cannot be separated from affordability and the economy.

“We actually believe that climate policy has to address the needs of working people,” she said, and that is why affordability is leading to “the emergence of a massive organic movement against data centers.”

Shared concerns across party lines

Concern about climate change among Black voters extended across party identification more than it did among Latino voters in the survey.

Among Black Republicans, 79 percent said it was important for candidates to prioritize addressing climate change. Among Latino Republicans, 59 percent said the same.

Hairston said this had to do with the lived experience of Black voters, who are subjected to more pollution and climate change-related issues like flooding. 

He sees those experiences as an opening to organize around protections that reach beyond party labels. For climate advocates, the challenge is persuading people that taking action can produce results.

Nearly half of respondents said that powerful interests and wealthy corporations would always block meaningful efforts to reduce climate harm, regardless of what ordinary people did, and that they believed it was already too late to reduce that harm.

But 45 percent of Black voters said people working together through voting, petitions, and boycotts could hold government and corporations accountable and reduce the harmful effects of climate change.

Tebbs said those doubts about political power mattered especially to younger voters. 

But the possibility of change is still visible among young people, said Lee, who is a first-year college student. He pointed to a group of high school students in Spartanburg, South Carolina, organizing against a proposed data center as an example of students seeking a say in the future being built around them.

He wants older voters to listen to those concerns rather than assume a generation raised with technology will welcome every project built to support it.

“We know that this is the future that we’re inheriting, the markets that we’re inheriting, the housing that we’re inheriting, the food prices that we’re inheriting,” he said. “And so I think more than anything, I’m being driven by deep concerns, but also by a deep hope that we can turn this around.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline For Black voters, climate action means little without relief from rising costs on Oct 24, 2026.

La Via Campesina expresses unwavering solidarity with the peasants and working people in Myanmar and their revolution against the military dictatorship and their resistance against capitalist exploitation

The post La Via Campesina expresses unwavering solidarity with the peasants and working people in Myanmar appeared first on La Via Campesina - EN.

We join the voices in New York City and the nation in denouncing the most recent ICE shooting and subsequent kidnapping of 28 year old Dominican immigrant and father Oscar Belgal.

On October 8, Oscar was surrounded by ICE agents and shot at seven times while in his vehicle during a busy afternoon when many children and parents were around. One of the shots hit his neck. Eyewitnesses describe how he was held by ICE agents and NYPD officers as 20 minutes passed before any ambulance arrived at the crime scene. Oscar was taken to nearby Allen Pavilion hospital and then later kidnapped by ICE agents to an unknown location. We demand his immediate freedom.

The shooter has been identified as Kevin Brodowsky. Also on the scene was notorious ICE goon Brenden Cuni who was wearing a construction vest, and was brandishing a AR-15-style rifle, putting the lives of children and passerby at risk. Cuni has terrorized people in NYC (Chinatown, Bushwick, Queens), in Columbus, Ohio, and in Minneapolis, where he participated in the brutal assault and dragging of a pregnant woman across the snowy pavement. Brenden is of Dominican & Puerto Rican descent, which shows that people of any ethnicity can be class traitors and oppressors. We join the mass clamor demanding that Kevin be tried for attempted murder.

This reckless act is a continuation of Trump’s murderous and racist anti-immigration policies currently affecting our communities.

We condemn the attempts by NYPD commissioner Jessica Tisch and DHS to justify this brutal act by citing Oscar’s previous interactions with the police and his affiliations. This is a blatant act of racism. No criminal record and interaction with the repressive state justifies being shot by ICE in front of your kid. We demand DHS retract that statement and stop criminalizing Dominican and Haitian immigrants as well as Black people and all oppressed immigrant communities.

Furthermore, we also condemn Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s inaction for not firing Jessica Tisch and for not having taken steps to disband the NYPD’s Strategic Response Group (SRG) as he promised during his campaign. Instead, Mamdani has allowed the NYPD to continue colluding with ICE, brutalizing protestors who demand the release of our neighbors and demand ICE out of our streets. Mayor Mamdani claims to be on the side of immigrants but actions speak louder than words: we are fed up with promises from “progressive” politicians who are afraid to break their ties with the two-party system and the status quo.

As Dominicans in the diaspora, we stand in solidarity with Haitian immigrants and Dominicans of Haitian descent in Dominican Republic, who are also victims of government profiling and repression in the island. What happened to Oscar on October 8, has been happening to Haitian and Black Dominicans for decades in DR. The Dirección General de Migración (DGM) operates as ICE does, raiding public and private spaces and terrorizing neighbors to disappear them into the immigration enforcement system.

We stand against ICE the same way we stand against DGM, and all repressive forces.

Finally, we call on all workers, parents, high school, and college students in NYC to unite, organize and mobilize, and take part in school walkouts, teach-ins, boycotts, ICE watch in their communities, occupations, strikes, and all actions necessary until NYC is free of ICE terror.

We demand:

1. The immediate release of Oscar Belgal to his family
2. Fire Jessica Tisch
3. The end of NYPD collaboration with ICE
4. Mamdani to fulfill his promise to disband the SRG
5. Abolish ICE once and for all

Compas de la Diáspora, October 10, 2026

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

The post Justice for Oscar Belgal appeared first on Tempest.

The editor-in-chief of Russian-language news site Meduza tells Anne Schumacher about Putin's objectives and circumventing censorship

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In this episode, Kate and Aaron talk to Robert Lull, author of the book Our Natural Lab: Remarkable Stories of Science from America’s National Parks, about the amazing discoveries that have come out of science that took place in our national parks. Kate and Aaron also talk about the negative impacts the Senate permitting bill, also known as the Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act, could have on public lands.

News

• The Senate permitting bill would lock in data centers and nuclear waste on public lands. It only gets worse from there – Westwise
• Senate permitting bill would cut the public out of public lands and lock in Trump-era data center, nuclear, and fossil fuel approvals – CWP
• Over 100 Groups Oppose Sweeping Attacks on Public Lands in Permitting Bill – Center for Biological Diversity

Resources

• BLM Data Center Tracker
• Watch this episode on YouTube

Produced by Aaron Weiss, Lauren Bogard, Kate Groetzinger, and Lilly Bock-Brownstein
Feedback: podcast@westernpriorities.org
Music: Purple Planet
Featured image: Grand Prismatic Spring, Yellowstone National Park; Source: Dietmar Rabich/Wikimedia Commons

The post From lead paint to DNA tests: surprising discoveries from America’s national parks appeared first on Center for Western Priorities.

The Justice Department asked federal judges this week to revoke Interior’s approvals for three offshore wind farms, including Revolution Wind, which has been delivering power to New England’s grid since March. The DOJ also targeted the 2.2-gigawatt Maryland Offshore Wind and 2.6-gigawatt New England Wind projects.

The requests land weeks before a Senate vote on a bipartisan permitting bill that would bar agencies from altering any permit in effect on or after September 16, 2026, without “clear and convincing evidence.” Under that framework, Trump’s wind and solar cancellations would stand, while the data centers, drilling, and nuclear projects Interior Secretary Doug Burgum approves over the next two years would be nearly impossible for a future administration to undo.

Tony Irish, a former Interior associate solicitor, called it “outrageous for Secretary Doug Burgum to take active energy production off the grid in New England as winter approaches.”

Over 100 groups oppose attacks on public lands in permitting bill
More than 100 groups urged Congress in a letter Thursday to reject the Senate permitting bill from Senators Whitehouse, Heinrich, Capito and Lee due to its negative impacts on public lands.

The coalition warns it would fast-track mining, drilling, logging, and gas pipelines across hundreds of millions of acres of public lands, from the Arctic to Bears Ears. Mining companies, including foreign-owned firms, would gain rights to permanently seize public land for roads and waste dumps, and Tribal consultation would become optional. It would also lock in data center development and nuclear waste storage on public land, according to an analysis of the bill by Center for Western Priorities Executive Director Aaron Weiss.

Quick hits Analysis warns bipartisan Senate permitting bill would lock in Trump-era data center, fossil fuel approvals

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Utility Dive

Quote of the day

Senator Heinrich says his bill ‘will age very well over time.’ As it’s currently written, it will indeed age, locking in data centers and a new nuclear legacy on our public lands for generations—after all, the half-life of plutonium-239 is about 24,000 years… Senator Heinrich should pump the brakes on this bill during the lame duck session and work with leaders in the next Congress to get it right.”

—Aaron Weiss, executive director of the Center for Western Priorities

Picture This

@mypubliclands

More trails, more ways to explore!

We’re thrilled to announce the completion of the North Fruita Desert Trails Master Plan, with the grand opening of K2-Play, a brand new, 3-mile mountain biking trail along the stunning Book Cliffs. This milestone marks the final phase in a nearly 30-mile expansion of the 18 Road trail system, made possible by years of teamwork among public land managers, local partners, trail builders, and dedicated volunteers.

This project is a shining example of how partnerships can create new recreation opportunities, boost local communities, and ensure our public lands remain accessible and vibrant for generations to come. Whether you’re a seasoned rider or just starting out, there’s something for everyone to discover!

Feature image: The Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind pilot project, Source: Photo by Stephen Boutwell/BOEM

The post DOJ moves to kill offshore wind permits as Congress weighs permitting bill appeared first on Center for Western Priorities.

The Los Angeles Times took a deep dive into the controversy surrounding the Newsom administration’s agreement to pay a private investment firm $180 million for a relatively small amount of additional water for Sacramento River salmon.

At roughly $36,000 per acre-foot, dozens of times what cities pay for a single year of water on average, the water comes at a steep price. As Barry Nelson, an advisor for the Golden State Salmon Association, told the LA Times, “This is extraordinarily expensive water… [it] seems like a really bad investment for the public.” 

In addition to its exorbitant cost to California taxpayers, the agreement leaves the amount of water provided in any given year largely up to Reclamation District 108.

Peter Drekmeier, policy director at Yosemite Rivers Alliance, raised similar concerns about the agreement’s value and accountability: “The taxpayers are expected to pay top dollar for an amount of water that’s not really going to move the needle, and that’s just wrong… How do you track this water? Are we really getting what we’re paying for? We know it’s really, really expensive water, and we don’t know how much of it’s actually going to end up in the ecosystem.”

Meanwhile, the Newsom administration is after more agreements like this one that environmental groups cite as a prime example of the types of deals that voluntary agreements depend on in the Bay-Delta Plan update. On October 28-29, the State Water Resources Control Board is scheduled to consider the voluntary agreements (VAs) as part of new rules governing water in the Delta.

Environmental groups across the Delta and California are raising concerns about these agreements’ impact on critical ecosystems and cost to taxpayers. With the total price tag potentially reaching $5.6 billion compared to initial estimates of $1.1 billion, advocates are calling on the State Water Board to recognize the VA framework as costly and ineffective.

Read the full Los Angeles Times piece here. 

This article was co-written with Brien Weiner of the South Shore Audubon Society, serving the southern half of Nassau County on Long Island, New York.When researchers fitted 20 Black Skimmers at Lido...

A new report examining more than a dozen of the Earth’s life-sustaining systems paints a pretty bleak picture. Published last week in BioScience, the seventh annual State of the Climate report shows how global warming is producing significant shifts in the planet’s overall health and destabilizing the climate as a whole. 

Key climate indicators are going in the wrong direction: greenhouse gas emissions, sea level rise, glacier thickness, ice mass, and more. These shifts should no longer be taken as warning signs about some distant future, the authors write; instead, they amount to a “diagnosis” of how climate change is impacting the planet today — and where things will go if human behavior doesn’t change quickly or sufficiently enough. 

Concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide, stemming primarily from the burning of fossil fuels, hit record highs this year. Meanwhile, glacier thickness and Greenland ice mass are at record lows. Things are also not looking good for the Earth’s energy imbalance, a measure of how much energy the planet absorbs from the sun versus how much of that energy exits the atmosphere. This measure has been rising, a sign of how the planet, essentially, is heating up. 

Of the 16 climate indicators examined by the authors, seven — or 44 percent — are at record extremes. The paper also discusses worrisome feedback loops, or how existing warming might be further accelerated by phenomena like wildfires or permafrost melting that release greenhouse gases into the atmosphere and are themselves made more likely by climate change. 

Read Next The hidden history of how Big Oil invented the American Dream Kate Yoder

But the authors also wanted to delve into how human activities like agriculture, transportation, and energy usage — in other words, things within our control — contribute to climate change. Changes within our food system in particular present some of the easiest opportunities for individuals to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions, especially methane. 

That’s because some animals raised for human consumption — such as cattle, sheep, and goats — emit methane as part of their digestive process. These animals are called ruminants, and in 2024, there were more ruminant livestock than at any other point since the 1960s, according to the study. Per capita meat production also hit a record high in 2024. 

These two figures reflect “important pressures from the global food system,” said William Ripple, professor of ecology at Oregon State University and one of the report’s lead authors. They point to meat’s growing role in our global diet, as well as the environmental cost of that shift. Ripple said they looked at ruminant livestock populations because methane is such a powerful greenhouse gas; it only stays in the atmosphere for roughly 10 years, but it is 28 times better than carbon dioxide at trapping heat. There is a silver lining to that, though: For these same reasons, reducing methane emissions is an effective tool to curb warming in the short term.

One way of doing that, clearly, is producing and eating less meat. “I think this is an important opportunity for climate action that sometimes gets overlooked,” said Ripple. “Shifting toward more plant-based diets, especially in countries with high meat consumption, could make a meaningful difference.”

Raising cattle for human consumption is also one of the main drivers of deforestation, which contributes to warming by eliminating carbon sinks. Timothy Searchinger, a senior research scholar at Princeton University who studies the relationship between agriculture and the climate, noted that “we can’t solve climate change unless we stop” such clearing of carbon-rich habitats, “and we probably cannot stop that unless the world’s wealthy eat less meat, and particularly less beef.” (Searchinger was not involved in the report.)

He added, “Just eating 1.5 hamburgers a week on average instead of 3 is one of the basic ways Americans can help address climate change.”

Ripple and his co-authors also point out that such high levels of meat production create a wildly inefficient agricultural system, since cattle need so much land to graze and farmers are compelled to dedicate land to grow crops like corn and soy that ultimately go to feed cattle. That land could be used instead to grow carbon-sinking ecosystems or food that feeds people directly. 

“At a time when climate change is threatening food security, we can hardly afford a food system that uses so much of its productive capacity inefficiently,” said Ripple.

The bottom line, he said, is that there is no way to address global warming without also making changes to what we eat and how it’s produced. “Our growing demand for meat is putting enormous pressure on the climate, land, and water at a time when all three are already under stress,” he said. 

toolTips('.classtoolTips3','Carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and other gases that prevent heat from escaping Earth’s atmosphere. Together, they act as a blanket to keep the planet at a liveable temperature in what is known as the “greenhouse effect.” Too many of these gases, however, can cause excessive warming, disrupting fragile climates and ecosystems.'); toolTips('.classtoolTips7','A powerful greenhouse gas that accounts for about 11% of global emissions, methane is the primary component of natural gas and is emitted into the atmosphere by landfills, oil and natural gas systems, agricultural activities, coal mining, and wastewater treatment, among other pathways. Over a 20-year period, it is roughly 84 times more potent than carbon dioxide at trapping heat in the atmosphere.');

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline The planet’s vital signs are getting worse. One of the easiest fixes is your diet. on Oct 23, 2026.

The Western Environmental Law Center holds more than 30 years of deep and expansive expertise regarding public lands and health protection, energy development, watershed and wildlife protection, and climate action in the West. We are acutely cognizant of the imperative to build green infrastructure in a way that respects people and place. Yet we are alarmed at the depth of harm the newly proposed “Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act” (BAAJA) would inflict on bedrock public health and environmental laws and, by extension, to the people and places of the West. This bill, if passed into law, would recklessly transform the legal and policy landscape, taking power away from the public and giving new and enhanced powers to technology, energy, finance, and other development interests.

Our experts prepared a short policy analysis on the concerning provisions in BAAJA (S. 5653). This sprawling bill would stack the deck for fossil fuels, strip states’ and Tribes’ rights, reduce the National Environmental Policy Act to a mere box-checking exercise without force, and diminish the Clean Water Act and Endangered Species Act in ways that would cause widespread harm.

Read our policy analysis here, and please reach out if you have any questions.

“This permitting deal is a betrayal of public lands, water and wildlife, and environmental justice values that Westerners depend on for clean air and water, places to hike, hunt, and fish, and the inestimable sense of freedom the West provides us all,” said Erik Schlenker-Goodrich, executive director of the Western Environmental Law Center. “The permitting deal concedes to fossil fuel and data center interests while falsely pitting the imperative to build green infrastructure against people and place. It is a surrender to President Trump’s noxious agenda and pathology of ‘energy dominance’ that emerged from Project 2025. We will fight this terrible deal tooth and nail.”

Contacts:

Erik Schlenker-Goodrich, Western Environmental Law Center, eriksg@westernlaw.org

Marlyn Twitchell, 541-485-2471, ext. 144, twitchell@westernlaw.org

The post Media advisory: “Permitting reform” bill analysis available to reporters appeared first on Western Environmental Law Center.

Climate change is becoming a major threat for farmers globally, impacting communities everywhere. States and the UNFCCC (Climate COPs) have failed us, driving our planet towards a +3/5 °C by the end of the century, in an accelerating phenomenom.

The post LVC Statement on El Niño and the Climate Crisis Ahead of COP31 appeared first on La Via Campesina - EN.

Ron and Jeanne Crumly on their land on the proposed Keystone XL pipeline route in Holt County, Nebraska (2014)

It’s not the same companies or exactly the same route this time, but their playbook will still be to use eminent domain to seize farmers’ property to build a dangerous tarsands pipeline that is all risk and no reward, a threat to our land and water. Join us Nov. 19 for a virtual meeting to learn about your rights as a landowner, and how we can stop this risky project. We will reawaken the NoKXL coalition and inform Pipeline Fighters and Water Protectors about this new proposal to build the Keystone XL pipeline across the country.

• WHAT: How We Stopped the Keystone XL Pipeline (and Will Do It Again)
• WHO: Speakers will include veterans of the fight to stop Keystone XL (2009 – present)
• WHEN: Thursday Nov. 19, 6:00 p.m. CT
• WHERE: Click this link to join at 6pm on Nov. 19: bit.ly/keystone-pipeline
• JOIN BY PHONE: 312-626-6799 (Meeting ID: 862 0389 2831)

We’ll share the history of how we stopped the Keystone XL pipeline before, and how we’re going to do it again.

Seasoned veterans from the NoKXL fight will provide an analysis of the viability of the new pipeline proposal, and the current legal and regulatory landscape. We’ll talk about actions that we will be taking, and that you can take in your own communities, from landowner and Indigenous organizing, to gathering petition signatures and submitting public comments, and potential litigation.

The post Nov. 19 (Webinar): How We Stopped the Keystone XL Pipeline (and Will Do It Again) appeared first on Bold Nebraska.

Registered nurses at UCI Health Irvine in Irvine, California, will hold a rally and picket on Wednesday, October 28, to highlight their increasing concerns about unsafe working conditions and the removal of certified nursing assistants (CNAs) from ICU night shifts.

Registered nurses at the Community Hospital of Monterey Peninsula (CHOMP), in Monterey, California will hold a rally on Monday, October 26 to highlight their patient safety concerns, including short-staffing and ongoing workplace violence issues.

When four surfers began cleaning Ecuador’s beaches in 2014, they were driven by a contradiction that was hard to ignore: How could such beautiful natural spaces be covered in trash? What began as a response to pollution evolved into an organization that today works with communities, promotes environmental education initiatives, generates information, and develops alternatives to reduce the use of single-use plastics.

This is how Mingas por el mar was born—an Ecuadorian foundation committed to a fundamental idea: to tackle plastic pollution, it’s not enough to simply remove the waste; we must understand the problem and build solutions together with those who live with it every day.

“Our mission is to work on the ground—that is, with the communities—because they are the ones who see the problem day in and day out and often lack the knowledge or tools to make these important changes,” explains Nicole Casal, the organization’s education coordinator.

Beach cleanups soon became an opportunity to generate knowledge through citizen science as well. Since 2018, Mingas por el mar has been collecting data that has helped drive changes in public policy. Complementing this work are environmental education projects and reuse systems that seek to address pollution at its root causes.

From Waste to Solution: Reuse as an Alternative

In 2023, thanks to a small local grant, Mingas por el mar launched a project to reduce the use of single-use plastics in tourist establishments by providing reusable cups and straws.

The initiative includes a preliminary survey of the establishments and monthly follow-ups for at least six months to measure results and identify opportunities for improvement. Each establishment signs a commitment agreement to ensure the items provided are cared for properly. This mechanism has helped reduce the loss of reusable items by at least 80%.

Beyond these results, the project demonstrates that alternatives to disposable plastic require support and commitment to be sustained over time. “I’ve seen how such a small and simple reuse project has been yielding very positive results,” notes Casal. Her vision is to move toward reuse and return systems that involve communities as key players and that have the necessary resources to grow and become established.

From Local Evidence to Changes in Public Policy

The data collected by Mingas por el mar since 2018 has also helped drive national regulation of single-use plastics in Ecuador, with a special focus on protected areas.

The regulatory framework addresses plastics from a perspective that considers their entire life cycle—from production to final disposal—and serves as a foundation for the organization’s work with the tourism sector.

This experience demonstrates how community action can help transform public policy: the information gathered on the ground raises awareness of the problem and provides evidence to drive measures that go beyond waste management.

Casal has observed a shift in how this issue is addressed. When she began working on the topic nine years ago, relatively few people and organizations were discussing plastic pollution with the seriousness it deserved. Today, there is more information available and a greater willingness to listen and get involved.

However, growing public awareness does not always translate into policy decisions. “The lack of involvement from decision-makers is what holds us back the most, because while many of us are speaking out and launching initiatives in this fight, there continues to be resistance from decision-makers at all levels—and it’s because of the industries that want to keep things as they are,” she warns.

In the face of these obstacles, it is essential to keep up the pressure so that institutions adopt ambitious measures that address the root causes of pollution and allow for the expansion of alternatives developed within communities.

A Local Struggle That Is Part of a Global Movement

Mingas por el mar is part of Break Free From Plastic (BFFP), the global movement that brings together organizations committed to a future free of plastic pollution. For the Ecuadorian foundation, being part of this network means connecting with other organizations, exchanging experiences, and strengthening local efforts through collective learning.

“The idea of being part of a global movement whose central goal is to fight against plastics from various angles—public policy, grassroots activism, and more—allows us to connect with other NGOs to learn from and support one another,” explains Casal.

In Ecuador, Mingas por el mar has collaborated with organizations on initiatives involving environmental education, composting, and community recycling. At the regional level, it shares its expertise in reuse systems with other NGOs so they can adapt and replicate the model in their own areas.

Reflecting on the BFFP’s 10-year history, Casal highlights the consolidation of a network that brings together organizations with different scopes and working methods, yet all sharing a common goal: “Because by connecting, learning, and building together—across organizations—we create a fairer and cleaner future, supported by a movement that respects opinions, backs decisions, and enables us to grow as an organization and as a team.”

The journey of Mingas por el mar reflects the value of this collaboration. An initiative born out of concern for beaches can generate data, contribute to policy changes, and develop alternatives that are then shared with organizations in other countries. The global movement is strengthened when it supports those who turn their common goals into concrete actions.

A Global Treaty to Change the Rules of the Game

This connection between local initiatives and international action takes on special relevance in the process toward a global plastics treaty. For Casal, the process has made it possible to bring together efforts that previously moved forward in a more scattered manner. “I believe the treaty has united these efforts under a single, broad, and important umbrella, because perhaps before, the efforts were very scattered, but now, in order to achieve a strong treaty, various NGOs and decision-makers from many countries are already collaborating with one another,” he notes.

An ambitious treaty can establish shared commitments to address plastic pollution throughout its life cycle and create conditions for local solutions to become part of a broader transformation. To achieve this, it will be essential that international commitments translate into concrete measures and that communities and organizations working on the ground have opportunities for participation and the resources to sustain their initiatives.

The experience of Mingas por el mar reminds us that global change is also built from the beaches, communities, and businesses that are committed to alternatives to single-use plastic. Ten years after the founding of BFFP, its work demonstrates that local action is indispensable, but it requires strong public policies, international cooperation, and a treaty capable of transforming the rules that perpetuate pollution.

In this guest post, David Eddy, a campaigner with Drawing a Line in the Chalk in North Yorkshire, reviews the change in direction in national planning policy on onshore oil and gas and asks whether it will make any practical difference to the communities living with the risks?

Artwork: Drawing a Line in the Chalk

In October 2025, I wrote for Drill Or Drop about the challenges faced by local communities confronting technically complex oil and gas planning applications.

Writing as the then chair of Foxholes and Butterwick Parish Council, I described a system in which well-resourced developers could call on specialist consultants and technical advisers, while parish councils and residents struggled to obtain information, scrutinise environmental assessments and secure independent expertise.

I argued that fragmented regulation, inadequate transparency and an over reliance on mitigation left communities at a structural disadvantage.

A year on, the national planning landscape has changed. The revised National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF), published in August 2026, and its updated mineral policies, published in September, introduce a more restrictive approach to onshore oil and gas extraction.

But the question remains: Has the planning system changed in ways that will actually help communities protect their environment?

A change in policy direction, but not a ban

In chapter 11, the revised NPPF contains a specific policy on development involving peat, coal and onshore oil and gas.

Policy M5 states that development involving onshore oil and gas extraction should be refused unless it falls within specified exceptions. These include development necessary to facilitate exploration, appraisal or production where the North Sea Transition Authority (NTSA) has granted petroleum rights.

This is a significant change in the way national policy expresses its approach to fossil-fuel development. But it does not amount to a blanket prohibition on projects within pre-existing licensed areas.

For communities challenging exploration proposals, the implications need careful examination. The existence of petroleum rights does not, by itself, demonstrate that a particular development is environmentally acceptable or that it satisfies every other relevant planning policy.

The question is whether decisionmakers will properly scrutinise the evidence, apply the relevant environmental protections and explain why the benefits of a proposal do, or do not, outweigh its impacts.

The evidence must be good enough to support the decision

Our experience at Foxholes illustrates the challenge.

A technically complex application can contain hundreds of pages of assessments without necessarily answering every question that matters to the community.

A hydrogeological assessment, for example, needs to be examined not simply for its conclusions but for the evidence supporting them:

• What site-specific investigations have been undertaken?
• Which assumptions have been made?
• How are uncertainties addressed?
• What happens if containment systems fail, extreme weather occurs or impacts persist after operations have ceased?

These are not arguments claiming that every development will cause harm. They are questions that must be answered sufficiently well before a planning authority can make a properly-informed decision.

The revised NPPF’s Policy M4 requires mineral development to avoid unacceptable adverse impacts on the natural and historic environment and human health, taking account of other national decision making policies and cumulative effects. It also addresses restoration and aftercare.

That framework makes the quality of the evidence particularly important. A conclusion that impacts are acceptable should be supported by evidence, not simply by a statement of intent or an expectation that proposed mitigation will work.

Mitigation is a lessening of risk. Mitigation is not the same as eliminating risk.

Communities are frequently reassured that risks will be controlled through engineering measures, planning conditions and environmental permits. Those measures can have a role to play and may be important. But their existence does not automatically resolve every concern.

There is a difference between demonstrating that a risk can be managed in principle and showing that the proposed arrangements are appropriate for a particular site, geology, groundwater system and operating plan.

There is also a difference between the controls imposed at the planning stage and those subsequently dealt with through environmental permitting or other regulatory regimes.

Communities need to understand which authority is responsible for each issue, what evidence it has considered, how compliance will be monitored and what happens if something goes wrong?

Long-term well integrity, restoration and the financial responsibility for dealing with future problems deserve particular attention. A planning decision should not rely on an assumption that a risk will somehow be resolved by another regulator at a later stage.

The cumulative evidence problem

One of the most important lessons from our experience in Foxholes is that environmental risks cannot always be assessed adequately in isolation.

In its consolidated response to Egdon Resources’ application, Foxholes and Butterwick Parish Council have challenged the way the proposed development’s impacts were assessed separately. Traffic, air quality, noise, light, landscape, groundwater and public amenity are not independent issues experienced by different communities. They interact in the same place, at the same time, and affect the same residents and environment.

The revised NPPF now provides a particularly relevant framework for examining this problem. Policy M4 requires mineral development proposals to avoid unacceptable adverse impacts on the natural and historic environment and human health, taking account of the other national decision-making policies. Crucially, it explicitly includes the cumulative effects of multiple impacts from individual sites and/or from a number of sites in a locality.

At Foxholes, that means looking beyond individual assurances that particular impacts can be mitigated.

The proposed wellsite involves drilling through the Principal Chalk Aquifer, within a complex groundwater environment connected to local surface water systems. The assessment must also consider the potential implications of well integrity, subsurface geological pathways, methane or saline migration, operational chemicals and hydrocarbons, and the consequences if containment fails.

At the same time, the development would bring additional heavy traffic onto rural roads, alongside existing traffic, noise and road safety concerns. Construction, round the clock drilling, vehicle movements and potential flaring could combine to affect residential amenity and the character of the surrounding countryside.

Each of these issues deserves proper assessment in its own right. But that is not enough. The local planning authority also needs to understand how the impacts interact: do the assessments use an adequate baseline and would the combined effects be acceptable at this particular location?

There is a further question about the boundaries of the assessment. The applicant acknowledges that a successful exploration programme could lead to subsequent applications for appraisal and production. Those later stages would require their own planning decisions, but their foreseeable implications should not be confused with wholly unrelated future development. The authority needs to be clear about what the current application includes, what it excludes, and whether any relevant cumulative effects have been left unexamined.

The same applies to the history of the site. The nearby Fordon-1 proposal was withdrawn in 2013 following objections from Yorkshire Water and the Environment Agency concerning groundwater vulnerability and containment. That history does not prove that the present proposal is unacceptable, but it is relevant evidence that should be considered when assessing whether the current application has adequately addressed the risks associated with the local hydrogeological system.

There is also a significant development in the evidence base.

In December 2025, the British Geological Survey (BGS) completed new geological mapping of the Yorkshire Wolds, improving understanding of the Chalk Aquifer’s complex geological structure and fault network. This work post-dates Egdon’s Hydrogeological and Flood Risk Assessment, submitted in November 2025. North Yorkshire Council must therefore establish whether this new evidence has been taken into account and whether Egdon’s assessment adequately reflects the latest understanding of geological structures and potential groundwater pathways. Where a development involves drilling through a Principal Aquifer supplying drinking water to over 900,000 people in East Yorkshire, the adequacy and currency of the evidence are fundamental to determining whether the risks have been properly assessed.

The central question is, therefore, not whether every individual risk can be described as unlikely, or whether a mitigation measure exists for each one. It is whether the evidence demonstrates that the combined impacts and uncertainties have been properly understood and that the development would be acceptable in this particular setting.

Policy M4 gives decision-makers a clear reason to ask that question. The challenge now is to ensure that cumulative impacts are genuinely assessed, rather than acknowledged in policy but overlooked in practice.

The imbalance in resources remains

Even where national policy provides a clear basis for challenging a proposal, communities must still assemble the evidence and make their case.

Developers can employ specialist planners, lawyers, geologists and hydrogeologists. Parish Councils and volunteer campaign groups, such as Drawing a Line in the Chalk, often have to scrutinise the same technical material with limited funds, often no experience or expertise in this field, and considerable demands on their time.

That inequality matters. An objection supported by specialist evidence may expose a weakness that would otherwise go unexamined. But obtaining that evidence can be beyond the means of the people most directly affected.

If the planning system expects communities to engage meaningfully with complex applications, it should consider how they can access independent professional advice.

Modest funding for technical scrutiny, early access to application documents, clear non-technical summaries and sufficient time to review substantial new evidence would make a practical difference.

Independent review need not mean that every applicant-funded report is unreliable. It means ensuring that important conclusions can be challenged and tested where the consequences of getting them wrong could be serious.

What should change now?

The revised NPPF is an opportunity to improve both the substance and the practice of planning decisions. Local planning authorities (North Yorkshire Council in our case) should ensure that decisions are based on sufficiently robust evidence, with risks, uncertainties and cumulative impacts addressed explicitly.

Regulators should make relevant information available in a way that enables the LPA and the public to understand the issues within their respective remits.

Applicants should provide accessible explanations of their proposals and make the supporting evidence available early enough for meaningful scrutiny.

Government should consider practical support for communities facing complex applications, including support from the LPA and access to independent technical advice.

Finally, decision makers should distinguish between the existence of a mitigation proposal and evidence that it is adequate, enforceable and appropriate for the site concerned.

A fairer system is still needed

The new national planning policy establishes a more restrictive approach to onshore oil and gas. That is a welcome development in the policy debate, but the practical test will be how the NPPF is applied to proposals.

For communities such as ours, the issue is not opposition to development for its own sake. It is whether decisions are made on the basis of sound evidence, with environmental risks properly understood and local people given a meaningful opportunity to participate.

A year ago, I described the experience as playing a board game in which another rule was announced after we had rolled the dice. The rules have now changed. But will communities finally have a fair chance to play by them?

So the central question now is not simply whether the new NPPF is better, but whether a more restrictive national policy on fossil fuels will be matched by a planning process in which communities can properly scrutinise the evidence and decisionmakers fully utilise the evidence to inform decision making and ensure they are accountable for the conclusions they reach.

David Eddy, Drawing a Line in the Chalk

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• NEV record
• Impact of Hormuz
• NEV demand down 
• Exports surge

For the first time, new-energy vehicles (NEVs) made up 67% of new car sales in China in September, according to the latest data from the China Passenger Car Association (CPCA).

The figures show that NEVs, which include battery electric cars and plug-in hybrids, captured a record share of sales, even though fewer were sold than last year.

This is because sales of combustion-engine cars are falling steeply, a trend that the CPCA has attributed to rising petrol prices following the start of the Hormuz crisis.

Indeed, sales of fuel-only cars were down 31% year-on-year in the first nine months of 2026, with plug-in hybrid sales down 26% – whereas battery EV sales were only down 4%.

One analyst tells Carbon Brief that China’s rapidly growing EV fleet has offset demand for 143m barrels of oil since the start of the Hormuz crisis.

Another says that the crisis is “reinforcing China’s electrification of road transport”.

Meanwhile, amid slowing domestic sales, Chinese carmakers’ exports of NEVs more than doubled [in 2026 to date / in September] from a year earlier.

NEV record

A record two out of every three cars sold in September in China were NEVs, according to CPCA data, as shown in the figure below.

(NEVs predominantly include battery electric vehicles – BEVs – and plug-in hybrids  – PHEVs. BEVs only run on electricity, whereas PHEVs also have a combustion engine.)

This marks a rapid rise for NEVs from just 6% of new car sales in 2020 up to 58% in 2026 to date – and a record 67% in the month of September.

This year, NEVs’ share of sales has also bounced back from a low of 39% in January, after the full purchase tax exemption that had been in place for more than a decade came to an end in December 2025.

The gain in NEV share in 2026 has come amid a slowdown across the wider domestic passenger-car market, which has hit sales of combustion-engine vehicles particularly hard. 

This September, passenger-car retail sales across all categories declined, with overall sales volumes falling 28% year-on-year.

The contraction was led by combustion-engine vehicles, which saw sales fall 43% year-on-year in September and 31% in 2026 to date.

However, sales of PHEVs also fell by 36% year-on-year in September and by 26% in 2026 to date. By comparison, BEVs performed better, although sales still declined 8.5% from a year earlier in September and 4% in 2026 to date.

As a result, NEV sales overall fell by 17% in September and 13% in 2026 to date.

While the market changes in 2026 to date were particularly dramatic, they reflect a broad continuation of trends seen over the past decade.

Indeed, sales of combustion-engine cars in China peaked in 2017 and they have been declining ever since, shown in the figure below.

Impact of Hormuz

Part of the reason for the advance of NEVs in 2026, said Chinese technology news outlet OFweek, was petrol cars “giving up market share” as they were outperformed by electric alternatives.

Cui Dongshu, secretary-general of the CPCA, cited higher petrol prices as an explanation for September’s weak combustion-car sales, in comments to financial news outlet National Business Daily. 

Imports of oil into China in January-September have fallen 15% compared to 2025, equivalent to 470m barrels, as ongoing conflict tightened supply and drove up prices. 

China’s passenger-car NEV fleet has displaced 143m barrels of oil so far during the strait of Hormuz crisis, Euan Graham, senior energy analyst at thinktank Ember, tells Carbon Brief.

EVs “accounted for 12% of the decrease in China’s oil use post-Hormuz”, according to an estimate provided to thinktank the Brookings Institute by an unnamed analyst.

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Erica Downs, a senior research scholar at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy, tells Carbon Brief that the strait of Hormuz crisis and higher oil prices are “reinforcing China’s electrification of road transport”. 

She says the “world’s largest oil supply disruption” vindicates China’s early bet on EVs, which was partly driven by concerns about oil-supply security.

NEV demand down 

Nevertheless, NEV sales have fallen year-on-year, albeit at a slower rate than overall car sales. The growth in NEV market share has also been decelerating.

Zhang Yichao, a partner at consulting firm AlixPartners, tells Carbon Brief that NEVs benefit from government trade-in policies and a “strong pipeline” of new models, particularly those involving innovation. 

He says these factors help explain why NEVs sales have fallen at a slower rate to their combustion-car counterparts.

Cui told the state-run China National Radio that the fall for NEVs and for cars overall in September 2026, is also due to a high baseline of sales from the same month in 2025, as well as changes to trade-in policies and disruptions from the holiday period. 

Other factors, says consulting firm Wood Mackenzie, are the weakened demand due to “demand pull-forward” in 2025 caused by the end of subsidies, as well as “tighter financing conditions”.

Zhang tells Carbon Brief he does not “see much more room ahead” for further growth in NEVs’ market share.

He adds that, in his view, their share in China is unlikely to exceed 80%, as some premium-market segments and specific use cases will continue to require combustion-engine vehicles.

Exports surge

Meanwhile, while domestic NEV retail sales fell 17% in September 2026, exports more than doubled, increasing 164% year-on-year, according to the CPCA.

This extends the decline in domestic sales and very strong growth in exports seen across 2026 to date, as shown in the figure below.

In September, 1,084,000 NEVs were sold domestically in China, while 558,000 NEVs were exported.

Exports are becoming increasingly important to Chinese carmakers, in the face of weaker domestic demand and cut-throat industrial competition.

The CPCA says exports have become “a core priority” for some carmakers.

However, the surge in exports from China has created concern in the EU, which has placed tariffs on imports of EVs from China and recently agreed plans to cut imports of hybrids.

Countries including Mexico and Turkey have also placed tariffs on Chinese EV imports. 

At the same time, the Chinese government is putting policies in place that might be expected to disincentivise exports, such as cutting VAT export rebates.

Analysts differ on what impact this policy shift will have, with some saying it will be limited, while others believe it could cause the price of exported cars to rise. 

Related Experts: What China wants from the COP31 climate talks 29.10.2026 China policy Analysis: China’s clean-tech exports in 2026 to avoid as much CO2 as Brazil emits in a year 29.10.2026 China policy Interactive: What China’s dozens of ‘five-year plans’ say about climate and energy 24.09.2026 China policy Q&A: What does China’s 15th five-year plan for coal mean for climate action? 14.08.2026 China policy

The post Chart: A record two-thirds of car sales in China are now electric vehicles appeared first on Carbon Brief.