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National Emergency Briefing Film – What about the workers?

Photo by Ashley Gorringe on Unsplash

Review by Mick Holder

I attended a showing of the campaign film National Emergency Briefing in St John’s Church, Leytonstone recently. Whilst I have issues with its focus on parliamentary action and failure to address work and trade unions I’d still recommend everyone tries to attend a showing, even if you have no knowledge or plenty. It presents a very honest but equally bleak picture and the campaign around the showing of the film locally is to try and get more action on the issue of climate change, which is no bad thing.

In case you don’t know already, the film is based on an event held in Westminster Central Hall last year where experts gave their stark opinion on how far we’re in the shit already climate wise and what the future looks like. At the time we said to them their focus missed out work, workers, the role of unions etc. and we were told they were too far down the line to change, although we were welcome to join in from the floor. They subsequently haven’t picked up on the issue in the film and today’s event wouldn’t have said anything about that if I hadn’t said my piece towards the end – FBU, wildfires and floods, Unite bus workers strike over impossibly hot cab conditions etc. 

And maybe that’s where we are. Showing this film seems to have momentum so perhaps it’s down to us to attend and do our usual “What about the workers?” call. And a warning – celebrities are involved!

Today’s screening was attended by 200+, mainly a mix of people in their thirties upwards and it was reported there have been 4,000 screenings nationally so far. It is not currently available to watch online, deliberately trying to create events involving local communities rather than individuals watching in isolation at home or on their phones. Today’s session was kinda TU Ed style, watch film, break into small groups, report back etc. although I felt the activities were too touchy feely and not enough get active, and too reliant on parliament alone.

The campaign would benefit from a bit of history, not just Greenpeace and FoE but the trade union led Lucas Plan of the 70s calling for a move away from manufacturing for war to making renewable energy sources to end our reliance on fossil fuels, the 1972 book The Limits To Growth which warned us all of the problems we might face if we don’t act and which is still relevant now. I’m sure you can think of more examples. And details of how governments have used growth and de-regulation as an excuse not to act or to act in a way that weakens or removes worker and environmental protections (Grenfell, WHO air standards, many other exposure limits, shitty water etc.). And how global industry spends billions of their profits on making sure governments’ and regulators don’t do what they all know they really should all in the pursuit of profit.

Maybe the film wants to avoid the blame game. I don’t. We should call these fuckers out for what they truly are and ensure they are held to account. We also need to show the personal side of what their actions or inactions mean to us, our families and friends and people around the world, many who will probably suffer far more than we will, at least in the near future.

I think the film is being made available to local groups for free and would encourage people to consider this. Just make sure there’s someone on the panel who knows their stuff about work, trade unions and a bit of analysis too.

A further contribution we can make at any local showings is to complement the focus on lobbying MPs with organising – set up a local campaigning network where none exists, help coordinate existing groups where they do. To create a just transition we need organised forces pushing for it on the ground, as well as pressuring MPs to make the right decisions.

The Campaign Against Climate Change Trade Union group has produced an excellent 13 minute version specifically to be shown in union branches. GJA strongly urges all supporters to get this shown in their union branch, to coincide with the COP in November if possible, but any time soon if not. A link to this is here.

We also have this draft motion that could help focus discussion. 

The individual sections of the National emergency briefing are available here

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The post National Emergency Briefing Film – What about the workers? first appeared on Greener Jobs Alliance.

The next time you pass an urban tree, stop to appreciate what it’s been through. As a youngster, it was especially vulnerable to pests and diseases, not to mention vandalism. Now grown up, it must contend with ever-rising temperatures due to the heat island effect — the built environment’s tendency to soak up solar energy and slowly release it at night. 

You might assume, then, that city trees are by default worse off than their rural counterparts. But new research suggests that urban vegetation is more resilient than you might think. Using satellite data from 2001 to 2022, researchers found that in more than three-quarters of 751 cities worldwide, plant life better coped with climate stresses like extreme heat than greenery in the surrounding countryside. In one-third of those municipalities, trees showed a “dual advantage,” losing less greenness from pressures in the first place, but also recovering faster from them.

That’s allowing metropolitan vegetation to do what it does best: reduce temperatures by providing shade, boost biodiversity by creating habitats, and mitigate flooding by allowing rainwater to soak into soil instead of pooling on concrete. “Generally, the urban environment is harsher for vegetation — for example, the air temperature and also the air pollution,” said Zhengfei Guo, an ecologist at the University of Hong Kong and lead author of a new paper describing the research. “Therefore, our results that found urban vegetation is more resilient than rural vegetation is very surprising.”

So what’s going on here? The researchers reckon this increased resiliency comes down to something no tree can thrive without: water.

If you’ve ever seen your local parks department or a nonprofit plant a tree on the street, you might have noticed them placing a plastic bladder around its trunk. This provides consistent water for the sapling to help it grow big and strong in its most vulnerable years. Elsewhere in the metropolis, crews make sure that green spaces are sufficiently hydrated. And in backyard gardens, residents use hoses or drip irrigation systems to keep their flora verdant. 

The built environment itself is inadvertently helping here, too. The traditional way of designing a city called for funneling water into sewer systems as quickly as possible to prevent pooling and flooding. As rainwater cascades off buildings and sidewalks, it flows into patches of dirt with trees, where it can soak into the ground.

Which is all to say: Urban vegetation is often pampered compared to what’s growing wild in the countryside. This is an advantage in the long term, but doubly so during relentless droughts and increasingly miserable heat waves. While rural trees desiccate, their compatriots in cities are regularly attended to. “They’re showing this kind of great ability to be resilient, most likely from just intentional management from people, or just the way we’ve simply designed cities to move and work,” said Eric North, program manager for urban forestry at the Arbor Day Foundation, who wasn’t involved in the new research.

Read Next Urban trees aren’t just nice, scientists say — they’re mandatory Matt Simon

For many plants in the city, additional heat can actually help. The urban heat island effect raises temperatures perhaps 20 degrees Fahrenheit higher than in nearby rural areas, because all that concrete and brick holds onto the sun’s warmth. This is potentially deadly for people, on account of the mercury staying high through the wee hours and denying the body time to cool down and recuperate. (Indeed, nights overall are warming faster than days are.) But it can be advantageous for well-watered plants, because the phenomenon is also in effect outside of summer. This is extending growing seasons, providing some species with extra time to flourish.

Interestingly, while these researchers found that vegetation was overall more resilient in cities, it was more so in the urban core compared to the outer neighborhoods. One theory why is that the heart of a city tends to be more developed and parks more rigorously tended. “The urban edge is not as stable as the urban core,” Guo said.

However, just because all that greenery has been enjoying surprising resilience, that doesn’t mean it’s guaranteed to do so forever, as the impacts of climate change grow ever more dire. “Some new ways to think about how to better sustain the urban area will become more and more important,” said Jin Wu, an ecologist at the University of Hong Kong and coauthor of the new paper.

For one, cities are trying to prioritize planting native species, which may already be adapted to withstand drought. They’re also looking to hotter places, importing species that scientists already know work there — essentially getting ahead of the baking to come. Selecting trees that are both drought-tolerant and have large canopies brings a double benefit, as the additional shade protects the surrounding dirt. “I’m assuming that’s really what a driving factor here is,” North said. “That it’s keeping the moisture that’s in the ground locked in, instead of evaporating off the ground, and so it’s more available for plants to use.”

Cities are also getting smarter about water. Los Angeles, for instance, is building “sponge city” infrastructure, things like roadside green spaces that allow water to soak into the ground and collect in cisterns rather than flow into sewers. It’s also using spreading grounds — giant dirt bowls, basically, where rainwater is piped and allowed to percolate into the underlying aquifer, from which it can be pumped during the dry season.

With proper water management, cities can remain green in the challenging decades to come. They’re building out urban gardens, for example, which bring all the benefits of greenery in general and provide nutritious food for residents. Scientists are also growing crops on rooftops under the shade of solar panels, generating clean electricity and supersized vegetables.

In a weird way, then, cities are becoming more rural. Now we have evidence that with a little TLC, plants can ensure metropolises don’t just survive, but thrive. 

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Pampered city trees deal with stress better than their country cousins on Oct 14, 2026.

20 Inspiring Stories of Victory Against Incinerators

October 14, 2026

Over the past 25 years of GAIA, we have seen more than 375 incinerators shut down across the map. In this series for the Global Week of Action to Stop Incineration, we spotlight over 20 inspirational examples of communities emerging victorious against incinerators and incinerator proposals in their cities.

From passionate and informative representations at council meetings, to technical consultations with international finance institutions, to historic petition drives and gathering support from the international community, find out the key factors in the following victories against toxic false solutions around the world.

.stk-6uwpxd8 .stk-block-heading__text{color:#952925 !important;}Asia Pacific View this post on Instagram

A post shared by GAIA Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives (@gaia_zerowaste)

DUMAGUETE PYROLYSIS PLANT

Dumaguete, Philippines

Year Closed: 2025

Key factor to success: Power of community science and on-the-ground expertise and leadership of the members of the impacted communities, including waste workers, housewives, residents, students, and teachers in Dumaguete.

Case study and resources: 

• Clearing the Air Report
• Read about the press conference here: https://www.pna.gov.ph/articles/1253343

Members involved in the win: WOW,  DWWA (Dumaguete Waste Workers Association), GAIA

WASTE-TO-ENERGY PLANT PROPOSAL IN 4 CITIES

Gujarat, India

Year closed/stopped: 2025

Key factor to success: 

1. Through analysis of the ESIA report and finding out how it violates World Bank’s performance standards 

2. Amplifying local voices globally through collaboration and writing about the issue to the Board of Directors of the World Bank

3. Documenting the on ground impacts of the WTE company and its financial analysis.

Resources: Letter to World Bank, Collective letter signed by 174 organizations

Members involved in the win: Alliance for Incinerator Free Gujarat including CFA, IAP and communities affected

MULTI-COUNTRY INCINERATOR PROPOSAL

Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam, China and Hong Kong

Year closed/stopped: 2024

Key factor to success: Collective campaign efforts, including in strategic spaces like the AIIB Annual Meeting + Technical letter sent to AIIB (Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank)  and raising concerns on the incinerator company’s association with corruption and pollution

Resources: Project Document from AIIB, Case feature on AIIB Observer

Members involved: Members in Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Viet Nam, China and Hong Kong, GAIA Asia Pacific 

TE AWAMATU WASTE TO ENERGY PROPOSAL

Te Awamatu, Aotearoa New Zealand

Year Closed/Stopped: 2025

Key factors to success: Public opposition with over 900 written submissions + strong expert testimonies against the plant in the Board hearings

• Great community engagement
• Great coalition building between community, Māori and environmental organisations
• Relevant and highly qualified expert evidence at the hearings 

Resources: 

• Campaign Website, GAIA’s submission
• Make a submission on the Te Awamutu Incinerator https://zerowaste.co.nz/action-alert-make-a-submission-on-the-te-awamutu-incinerator/ 

Members involved in the win: Zero Waste Aotearoa, Regeneration Not Incineration

MAPO RECOVERY FACILITY PROPOSAL

Mapo-gu, South Korea

Year Closed/Stopped: 2026

Key factors to success: Creation of an alliance to fight this incinerator proposal

• Residents’ determination and strong community organizing: Fierce opposition and persistence of the community was the driving force that kept the campaign going through to the end.
• Victory in the legal dispute: The community won a lawsuit by revealing procedural flaws.
• Broad civil society solidarity: The campaign built a broad coalition extending beyond the residents’ group, bringing together residents, civil society organizations, and the local district office.

Resources: Seoul City Scraps Mapo-gu Incineration Plant Plan https://www.chosun.com/english/national-en/2026/03/03/D2EWSGFRPVEDZH6R5PJZWZY26E/

Members involved in the win: Mapo Resource Circulation Network

.stk-p1ylu2b .stk-block-heading__text{color:#952925 !important;}Europe

ROUGHLY 200 INCINERATORS

Various locations, UK

Year Closed: since 2007

Key factor to success: Campaigners’ successes can be attributed to many factors, including:

1. Deploying factual arguments supported by evidence including the harms caused by waste incineration
2. The provision of advice, guidance, and networking support from an established nonprofit network – UKWIN
3. Strong sustained public opposition that translates into political buy-in from local officials

Case study and resources: 

• https://ukwin.org.uk/act-locally/
• https://ukwin.org.uk/files/pdf/BiIG-success-for-Buttington.pdf
• https://foe.scot/from-concerned-locals-to-national-change-how-dovesdale-action-group-built-power-and-won/
• https://ukwin.org.uk/oppose-incineration/ 

Members involved in the win: UKWIN, local communities, partner organizations, and allied networks

MUNICIPAL WASTE INCINERATOR

Skalica, Slovakia

Year closed/stopped: 2026

Key factor to success: 

1. Early monitoring and information-gathering: tracking waste-management developments and gathering information about the project from the very beginning of the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) process, allowing campaigners sufficient time to understand the proposal and respond effectively.
2. Identifying and empowering affected local residents: finding active people in the community who could be directly affected by the project, engaging them through public meetings and information campaigns, and supporting them to become key local advocates.
3. Providing sustained NGO and expert support: creating a forum where NGOs and experts could explain the project and its potential impacts to residents, local authorities, and community advocates, while emphasizing the patience and perseverance needed to sustain the campaign over time.

Resources: 

You can find out more about our joint struggle here: 

https://www.priateliazeme.sk/spz/z-nasej-prace/definitivne-vitazstvo-zamer-na-vystavbu-spalovne-odpadov-pri-meste-skalica-nebude

Relevant articles:

Spaľovne? Po skládkovaní druhé najhoršie riešenie! Spaľovanie odpadov je škodlivým prežitkom

http://skalickyobzor.sk/cms/zo-skalickej-spalovne-je-medzinarodny-skandal/

http://skalickyobzor.sk/cms/podme-porovnat-oba-varianty-likvidacie-odpadu-ceh-zevo-kontra-mbu/

http://skalickyobzor.sk/cms/je-dokazane-uz-dnes-spalujeme-skalicky-odpad-v-cementarni-v-rohozniku/

Members involved in the win: local community, Priatelia Zeme – SPZ  (Friends of the Earth – SPZ)

RDF-FUELLED INCINERATOR

Pavlikeni, Bulgaria

Year closed/stopped: 2026

Key factor to success: 

1. A united local community and support from local businesses: residents came together across their differences to protect the region’s clean environment, fertile agricultural land, and quality of life, with local businesses also supporting the campaign.
2. Strong technical, legal, and scientific expertise: lawyers, biologists, ecologists, and other technical experts provided critical expertise, with environmental organization Za Zemiata supporting the campaign with knowledge and legal capacity.
3. Unprecedented public mobilization and sustained perseverance: more than 20,000 people from the region signed a petition, generating significant media attention and demonstrating strong public opposition. Four years of legal battles required sustained perseverance, while Za Zemiata’s successful lawsuit against the Sofia incinerator helped maintain hope that the campaign could succeed.

Resources: 

<CASE STUDY COMING SOON>

Members involved: Za Zemiata, impacted community, network of allies

.stk-nitz4wg .stk-block-heading__text{color:#952925 !important;}Africa

DRAKENSTEIN MASS BURNING FACILITY

Drakenstein, South Africa

Year Stopped: 2016

Key factor to success: Local communities and organizations challenged the proposed US$25-million mass-burning project, including concerns around the involvement of foreign companies and the U.S. Trade and Development Agency (US TDA). 

Case study and resources: 

• https://www.no-burn.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/South-Africa-Case-Study-2.pdf

Members involved in the win: Drakenstein Environmental Watch (DEW), Wellington Association Against the Incinerator (WAAI), groundWork, the South African Waste Pickers Association (SAWPA), GAIA, and community residents 

MAURITIUS WASTE-TO-ENERGY PROJECT 

La Chaumiere, Mauritius

Year closed/stopped: 

Key factor to success: Highlighting the mismatch of the proposed 300,000-tonne Gamma Covanta waste-to-energy facility on an island where approximately 70% of waste is composed of green and kitchen waste. 

Resources: https://www.lalitmauritius.org/en/newsarticle/843/the-la-chaumire-waste-to-energy-project-criticized/

Members involved in the win: Collectif des Opposants a l’Incineration de Dechets, DION & groundWork

MASS-BURNING FACILITY

Johannesburg, South Africa

Year closed/stopped: 2013

Key factor to success: Recognizing and following the lead of the 500 waste pickers, putting their voices and livelihoods at the center of the campaign. 

Resources: March against killing jobs for dirty energy

Members involved: SAWPA, groundWork, and the International Alliance of Waste Pickers (IAWP) 

OGIJO TYRE PYROLYSIS FACILITY (TECH HIGH PROFILE)

Ogijo, Nigeria

Year Closed/Stopped: 2025

Key factors to success:  Citizen science filling the gap in official data to document pollution near the waste-burning facility. 

Resources: 

• Clearing the Air Report  

Members involved in the win: Affected communities, Green Knowledge Foundation

The post WHEN THEY WIN, THE WORLD WINS. first appeared on GAIA.

This is an original story by Mongabay republished through the Indigenous News Alliance.

Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. arrived at the Grand Hyatt Manila on Sept. 10 to address hundreds of foreign business representatives assembled for the Luzon Economic Corridor investors’ forum.

Outside the hotel, hundreds of demonstrators had also gathered, carrying signs that read “No to Pax Silica!” The scene reflected both the government’s ambitious plans to ride the artificial intelligence wave and deep ambivalence in civil society.

Police confronted the crowd, shoving them with riot shields and batons on the street outside the hotel lobby. Activists say police injured at least 27 protesters and arrested five. Police, meanwhile, reported minor cuts and injuries to 16 personnel. 

Protester Jona Yang, from the activist-scientist group AGHAM, said she was negotiating with the police to cool tensions when they arrested her. “We want the Marcos government and investors to see the outrage all of this has caused,” Yang told Mongabay. “They’re taking away our resources and our lands.”

The Luzon Economic Corridor, or LEC, is an economic initiative focused on the Philippines’ biggest island, begun in 2024. Pax Silica, the U.S.-led global pact to build an AI and semiconductor supply chain that is not reliant on China, includes the LEC. In April, Washington and Manila announced plans to build a 4,000-acre high-tech manufacturing hub in the Central Luzon region.

Pax Silica has become a lightning rod for political and environmental contentions. The government maintains it’s a boon for the Philippine economy. But opponents of the project, including Indigenous and local communities living on the land designated for the project, say it’s an international land and resource grab in the name of U.S. AI ambitions.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio visited Manila in July to affirm bilateral commitment to the project, with a final agreement slated for signing in November.

At the LEC forum, Pax Silica was discussed behind closed doors, and officials gave few details about its future. Angela Ignacio, an undersecretary at the Philippine Department of Finance, told reporters it would be premature to share any details on Pax Silica before plans are finalized. But she did call it a chance for the Philippines to become a “global player when it comes to technologies that will shape the future.”

Heather Variava, senior adviser to the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Economic, Energy, and Business Affairs, added that “the goal of the U.S. is always to be an additive, to bring more power, to bring water, to bring more benefits to the Philippines.”

The Pax Silica hub will be built within New Clark City, a government-planned “smart” city inside the greater 79,000-acre Clark area, a former U.S. military complex. Clark is titled and managed by the Bases Conversion and Development Authority, or BCDA, an office under the supervision of the president. At a press briefing, development authority chief Joshua Bingcang shared a “conservative” estimate that the facility would need around 3 gigawatts of energy to run. He also said that it would be green and mainly solar powered.

“We are blessed with 300 days of sunshine,” Bingcang added.

Running consistently, the Pax Silica facility would demand about 26.3 terawatt-hours each year; by contrast, the Philippines’ entire service sector consumed about 28 TWh in 2024.

Giovanni Tapang, former dean at the University of the Philippines’ College of Science and a convenor of the Network Opposed (NO) to Pax Silica, told Mongabay that the Philippines has the “most to lose” among the 25 nations involved in the pact as it chains domestic resources to U.S. policies. “How many thousands of hectares will they be taking from farmers to build solar panels? And if we’re generating all this clean energy, why let the U.S. use it instead of local households?” Tapang said.

The development authority initially said that data centers could be part of the Pax Silica. But Bingcang and the president’s office later denied this in a September press briefing where he emphasized it would be a semiconductor facility.

A document shared at the LEC forum listed data centers as part of the planned infrastructure in New Clark City. It did not specify whether the data centers would be built inside the Pax Silica hub.

Bingcang said the Pax Silica hub would also consume about 16 million to 24 million gallons of water each day, sourced from rainwater via an impounding dam. “We can ramp it up to 300 million liters [79 million gallons] a day with the available technology,” he told reporters in Filipino.

Tapang voiced concerns about how the development authority’s plan would work during the Philippines’ dry season, which runs from December to May. “This is the same period where farmers need their water for irrigation,” he said.

The BCDA says it intends to house mineral processing technology as well. Thony Dizon of the advocacy group BAN Toxics said the government has yet to reveal anything about how it will manage the resulting waste. “How will the government ensure that after 30 years, we are not left with a contaminated environment and depleted natural resources?” Dizon said.

The United States’ history with Clark dates to a military base established in 1903, when the Philippines was under U.S. colonial rule. The base remained under U.S. military control until 1991, when Clark finally came under the control of the Philippine government 45 years after the country gained independence.

Long before that, historians argue, the area was the ancestral territory of the Aetas, considered to be some of the earliest settlers on the archipelago.

The Pax Silica site, located within the 23,350-acre New Clark City, overlaps with the ancestral domain claims of thousands of Aetas. A survey of the land by Arnisson Andre Ortega, a professor at Syracuse University in the U.S. and a member of the geographer group Countermapping Ph, revealed that planned construction for Pax Silica would impede on the lands of at least three existing Aeta villages.

“There is no ancestral domain title in that area,” BCDA chief Bingcang said, denying that the project would displace anybody.

Gloria Capiz-Estabillo, 76, is one of the elders of the Aeta Hungey tribe. She said tribal members have already been told by the Bases Conversion and Development Authority to leave their land. Michael Beltran for Mongabay.

Gloria Capiz-Estabillo, 76, an elder of the Aeta Hungey tribe, told Mongabay that the development authority has already begun informing Aetas that they need to leave the land. “They’re setting up right in the middle of our land. Where are we going to live? How about our crops? Where will they take us, just drop us in the ocean?” Estabillo told Mongabay in Filipino.

To gain land rights, Indigenous peoples must apply for what’s known as a certificate of ancestral domain title from the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples.

Aetas in Clark have been lobbying for a certificate since 1994, but have been beset by frequent delays as the impoverished communities struggle to complete the minimum requirements needed: a detailed area map, a population census, genealogy of at least five clans covering the past three generations, and elder testimonies.

Ortega said the process has lagged for decades under “Indigenous-unfriendly” red tape involving the Bases Conversion and Development Authority and the commission. “The absence of a formal title does not invalidate their claim to their ancestral lands; rather, it highlights a critical lack of government support,” Ortega told Mongabay.

By contrast, the Pax Silica hub is supported by the Investor’s Lease Act, signed by President Marcos Jr. in September, which allows foreign businesses to lease commercial and industrial lands for up to 99 years.

The second day of the LEC forum was held in New Clark City. The BCDA led a field visit for the hundreds of prospective businesses. Hundreds of protesters continued to hound them, joined by nearby Aeta communities.

“They’ll have to kill us to take us off this land,” Estabillo said.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline America’s AI ambitions threaten Indigenous lands in the Philippines on Oct 14, 2026.

Defending the upcoming election from authoritarian capture will require massive turnout, and we all have roles to play.

The centrality of property to political economy is a metaphysical error, institutionalized forgetting, spawning violence and uncountable injury. 

The danger AI poses can be understood as an extrapolation of the disruptions we’re already experiencing from Big Tech’s stranglehold over our lives.

We are now, finally, aware of what happened: In 2024, seven male students at Cornell University, all members of the Chi Phi fraternity, raped a woman known now as Jane Doe at a fraternity party. The party at which she was assaulted was soaked in alcohol and drugs.

Jonathan Newell and six other men took advantage of and amplified her intoxicated state. She was taken to a bedroom where she was attacked by these men. A fraternity member disgustingly posted a message to Snapchat (that went to 50 people who did nothing) advertising free access to Doe’s body. The text read, “free pussy in alum pu [pull up]. . . Like you can walk in and whip it out.” Another message read, “Shop still open.” Trapped in the room, Doe was raped for hours.

It is almost too grotesque to fathom yet also horribly common.

Fraternity members scrambled to respond to the accusation of assault. “Just deny, deny, deny” read one message. On social media they asked, “What’s the plan? … I don’t think she would have reported this.” “It’ll blow over in a couple days,” one wrote.

The University reported the accusation to the Tompkins County District Attorney. But as of October 2026, none of the men has been charged with a crime due to a loophole in the law that says that a person who voluntarily ingests intoxicants cannot claim that they did not consent. It has been revealed that Doe was given ketamine against her will. However, regardless of any voluntary intoxication, no one who is impaired can truly consent to sexual activity. Intoxication is not a license to rape.

The university banned the fraternity and expelled two students. This was the extent of their “punishment.”

This failure occurred in spite of Doe’s interview with Cornell police and a Title IX investigator that produced a 120-page transcript. Her claims that she “can say with 100 percent confidence that I was raped” by a “ring of men” in a room from which there “was really no escape” did not, as Corey Robin has reported, make it into the six pages supplied to the District Attorney, who concluded that he did not have enough evidence to file charges against the men.

But this September, Doe filed a civil lawsuit against the University, the Chi Phi fraternity, Delta Delta Delta sorority, and the seven men who assaulted her. This filing and the following outcry prompted New York Gov. Kathy Hochul to order Attorney General Letitia James to open a criminal investigation. The national response has revived public awareness of sexual assault, particularly sexual assault on college campuses. Thousands of students at Cornell and across the country demonstrated powerful support of Doe demanding independent investigations, bans on fraternities, and the resignation of the university president and other administrators who protected these men from the consequences of their actions.

Elite universities, fraternities, and gender violence

Sexual assault occurs, unfortunately, everywhere, but one in five undergraduate students experiences rape or sexual assault over a four-year college career. As much as 80 percent of sexual assaults on campus are not reported. Regardless of enrollment, women between 18 and 24 are most at risk for rape and other sexual violence. College students, according to feminist Rebecca Solnit, are most at risk at fraternities during the “Red Zone” between the start of school and Thanksgiving break.

Ivy League and other elite universities around the world have a vested interest in guarding the institution against scandal and protecting students who either will join the ranks of the ruling class or already come from powerful families. Alumni who belong to fraternities also exert pressure after leaving school. As Cornell graduate student Kaori Quan told Truthout, “wealthy donors are members of these organizations, and that stream of cash incentivizes the university to preserve their reputation over the health and safety of students.”

Robin explains,

So you have a woman student stating she was gang raped. You have a police officer and an administrator [a Title IX investigator] beholden to an institution that wants, more than anything, to cultivate a reputation for itself as a hallowed place of learning and study rather than as a playground for rapists. It doesn’t take much to see how the representative of those institutions could massage and produce, out of 120 pages of blood-curdling testimony of a terrified and confused woman, a bland statement that a not terribly energetic or inquisitive district attorney could tuck away and think, I’ve done my job for the day.

Thus, when students commit crimes, these schools rarely expel them. Fraternities, while not protected by law, often employ cultural and social mechanisms—discouraging and under- reporting, blaming single individuals for such conduct, and enforcing codes of silence, destruction of evidence, and denying blame for crimes committed at “unofficial” events like parties—to protect members and discredit victims. The code “Bros will be Bros” influences perception of sexual assault responsibility: When a perpetrator is a member of a fraternity,1Rita C. Seabrook and L. Monique Ward, “Bros Will Be Bros? The Effect of Fraternity Membership on Perceived Culpability for Sexual Assault, Violence Against Women 25, no. 12 (2019): 1471-1490.

males rated perpetrators as less guilty and victims as more culpable when the perpetrator was a fraternity member, suggesting that sexual violence may be reinforced among fraternity members as they are both more likely to perpetrate sexual assault and less likely to be blamed.

Relative to campuses in general and society at large, fraternities are associated with higher risks of sexual assault, although exact numbers are hard to find due to underreporting and institutional silence.

The progressive Century Foundation and Gallup News report that, despite making up only about two percent of the total U.S. population, fraternity members dominate traditional positions of power: The Century Foundation reports that half of the CEOs of Fortune 500 Companies, 76 percent of U.S. legislators, 85 percent of  Supreme Court Justices (since 1910), 63 percent of U.S. Presidential Cabinet members, and almost every President and Vice President of the United States (since 1825). (Three of the six women on the Supreme Court were members of sororities.)

73 percent of fraternity members are white; 60 percent come from private high schools, and 30 percent were legacy admissions.

So, when it comes to sexual assault and other violations, universities protect themselves, fraternities protect themselves, and both protect students who either are or will be in the ruling class.

In doing so, these institutions are grievously failing survivors like Jane Doe and abetting gender violence in the service of broader systemic power.

Capitalism and gender violence

Solnit describes our society as a “rape-prone” culture marked by

entitlement and the desire to abuse and dehumanize women, which is in part about definitions of both masculinity and femininity: masculinity in that domination, violation and degradation are seen as status-enhancing, femininity in the perception that women’s bodies are for men to use, women’s voices and rights to be ignored.

Solnit’s emphasis is on masculine supremacy as the root of rape culture. However, it is also important to consider that gender violence is tied to the general structural violence—from sexual assault to police violence to colonialism and war to racist brutality and more—of the capitalist system. Why and how does capitalism produce a “rape-prone” culture?

Capitalist society depends upon people to occupy normative (prescribed, “appropriate”) gender identities and roles as part of the ideology of family values. This is because capitalism relies upon the private family to reproduce—biologically and socially—the population of workers, all at no cost to corporations or the state. The ideology of the family depends on a feminine identity whose primary role in society is to keep house and raise children. Gender violence is a form of gender discipline that, in conjunction with other ideological and social forces, sustains the installation of women as responsible for every reproductive task, from birth to education, housing, health care, transportation, and socialization (which itself reproduces normative gender roles).

We can find cultural expression of this gendered family imperative in the (actually declining) “tradwife” movement exhorting women to abandon education and careers in favor of devoting themselves to home and family. We see its political expression in the policy announced by Vice President J.D. Vance that would reallocate federal childcare funds to pay families with married, stay-at-home parents.

Rebecca Hall has argued that the usually feminized paid and unpaid labor often performed by women means that the family and other domestic spaces are sites of both extreme and persistent gender violence and creative resistance to capitalism as a system.2Rebecca Hall, “A Social Reproduction Theory of Gender Violence,” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 48, no. 2 (20223): 321-345. She explains gender violence as occupying the intersection between the structural violence of capitalism and the embodied violence of gendered spaces.

The irony is that capitalism is a direct threat to the well-being of the private family and yet requires it to sustain profitability. Gender violence fills the gap in that contradiction by blaming women, and particularly women active in careers and pursuits outside the home, for transgressing the role that capitalism needs them to play so badly. Domestic assault and sexual assault happen in domains considered to be “private,” sites of profound gender regulation un- or loosely overseen by the state. Hall notes that social reproduction happens expansively not only in the household but also in communities, public and private institutions, and workplaces—and so, therefore, does gender violence.

Above and beyond the networking and nepotism of fraternities, the social reproduction of ruling class men into their prescribed roles generate habits of command and sexual entitlement, which carries forward into fraternity life and their roles as future bosses and political elites.

A brief note is necessary about trans and gender nonbinary identities and bodies as they intersect this discussion. Transwomen and other genderqueer people, in refusing to occupy conventionally gendered social positions, are especially targeted by gender violence and the carceral system. Sarah Lamble says that trans people, figured as dangers to society, experience fear, surveillance, discipline, policing, and punishment.3Sarah Lamble, Unsafe: The Carceral Roots of the Anti-Trans Backlash (Haymarket Books, 2026).

Fighting back against gender violence

Women and their allies resist gender violence in both interpersonal and public ways. Some may call for greater criminalization of gender violence and intervention by the police and other agencies of the state. It is tempting to hope for the criminal prosecution and conviction of the seven rapists in the Cornell case as a positive end goal. But the police are not our defenders.

Indeed, police are disproportionately represented among those who commit rape and other sexual assaults, including against children, and they are more likely than others to commit violence against their family members. Ms Magazine reported recently that police sexual violence is the second-most common form of civilian complaint against law enforcement. As with fraternities there is a (blue) wall of silence that protects police accused of these and other crimes (like the murder of Black people and abuse of immigrants by ICE).

More broadly, as brian bean argues in their end is our beginning, the modern police were created and evolved in capitalism and serve its violent order.4brian bean, Their End Is Our Beginning (Haymarket 2026). They exist to protect corporations and society at large from threats to property and elites. They crack down on immigrants, protesters, labor unions, and women and the gender queer as a function of their mission to serve capitalism. In short, the police are not our friends, and the courts are not friendly to victims of gender violence, either.

Not only is sexual assault underreported, but is one of the most dismissed crimes in U.S. law. Character assassination, legal loopholes, and retaliation make successful prosecution difficult and damaging to survivors.5R. Michael Cassidy, “Character, Credibility, and Rape Shield Rules,” Georgetown Review of Law and Public Policy 19 (2021): 145-176. If looking to the law is not a productive response to gender violence, including rape, where do we find effective resistance for the survival and flourishing of women and genderqueer people?

Historically, it has been mass movements for women’s liberation that have affected public awareness and incidence of rape and other gender crimes. It was in the late 1970s, during the women’s liberation movement and on the heels of its militancy that rape rates began a decades-long decline.

Take Back the Night protests took shape during this time, and the viral #MeToo movement, founded in 2006 by Tarana Burke, was revived in 2017. It led to legal, cultural, institutional, and economic change, including state-level prohibition of non-disclosure agreements, the passage of state-level anti-harassment laws, an increase in the reporting of gender violence to the police and increased numbers of prosecutions, and some corporate workplace reforms (and the ejection of perpetrators from seats of power). In culture, new awareness about the need for affirmative consent and discussion about gender and power in the media arose.

Women’s rage has fueled resistance to gender violence. Today, there is a massive viral solidarity movement with the slogan “I am Jane Doe,” with 40 nationwide protests and campus walkouts, sit-ins, and demonstrations at Cornell and other universities. The Cornell faculty introduced a no-confidence resolution against the university administration.

On October 5, thousands of Cornell University students representing more than 20 organizations protested on the campus, holding signs reading “We are Jane Doe,” “Stop Protecting Rapists,” and “We Want Sentences, not Essays.” Shireen Akram-Boshar reported that the students are demanding the replacement of Cornell’s internal judicial system with an independent system, an external investigation of Cornell’s administration mandatory sexual assault prevention trainings for students, and compliance with the New York state law, “Enough is Enough.” In addition, they are demanding the resignation of Cornell University President Michael Kotlikoff and other administrators. Some are demanding that fraternities be banned from campus.

They have also called for the expulsion of all of the students. Akram-Boshar learned that, of 1200 reported incidents of sexual violence on campus from 2018 to 2024, only seven resulted in expulsion.

We stand with Jane Doe and all of the students demonstrating against sexual assault and administrative inaction.

In addition, we must build a broader movement that connects the fight against gender violence to the abolition of the police and the struggle for socialism from below. We on the socialist Left must make gender violence a focus in our political discussion and action. Ciswomen, transwomen, transmen, and genderqueer people must stand in solidarity with each other and with the struggle against the capitalist system,  which is the horrifying well from which this violence against us springs.

#MeToo

#IamJaneDoe

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: Rotograph Co; modified by Tempest.

The post The gang rape at Cornell appeared first on Tempest.

We need a movement for self-rule Channel Comment brendan 14th October 2026 Teaser Media

All Electric Homes founder Trent Jones warns that a shortage of skilled tradies, fragmented business models and poorly designed rebates could derail Australia’s push to electrify millions of homes.

The post Why the old tradie business model won’t deliver all-electric homes | SwitchedOn Australia appeared first on Renew Economy.

For asset owners, buyers, managers and O&M teams, the webinar will cover performance metrics, service levels, warranty-compliant operating procedures, independent data measurement, distinguishing data gaps from genuine performance breaches, and Glenn’s “Lessons Learned” checklist for a successful 20-year asset.

The post Webinar: Hard-earned lessons for BESS operators – warranties, diagnostics, and contract design appeared first on Renew Economy.

Less than two years after starting construction, four-hour big battery energy storage system powers up in preparation for full operation on state's grid.

The post Commissioning starts on what will be state’s biggest battery – but not for long appeared first on Renew Economy.

Fascinating chart backs up AEMO chief's observation that people are piling in on the offer of free power in the middle of the day – with EVs, batteries and appliances.

The post “Stunning example of market working:” Households embrace free power offer, causing major spike in demand appeared first on Renew Economy.

An overwhelming majority of US motorists say they feel they have zero choice in how much they get behind the wheel — and most of them explicitly want to transportation system that doesn’t force them to drive almost everywhere they go, a new study finds.

A stunning 73 percent of self-identified drivers in a recent survey by the Climate and Community Institute said they “have no choice but to drive as much as they do,” with another 53 percent reporting that they “would like to have more transportation options” beyond endlessly reaching for the keys.

That second number may be an undercount — both because CCI conducted the poll before the war in Iran sent gas prices soaring, and because many Americans simply cannot imagine a future where their own cities make driving optional and offer attractive alternatives.

For the one in three US residents who can’t drive or lack reliable access to a car, though, those auto-centric cities are just a difficult fact of life — and they need more motorists to join them in the fight for more and better travel options.

“Whether you get around mostly by car or you don’t drive at all, most people in the U.S. are united by feeling unhappy with their daily transportation options,” said Emmett Hopkins, the transportation policy manager at the Institute and co-author of the study. “Broadly speaking, they want the same thing: more good transportation options that don’t [leave] a car as the only choice — or basically, the forced choice.”

Source: Data for Progress, Percentages may not total 100 percent due to rounding.

Unfortunately, most US policymakers haven’t exactly gotten the memo about how many of their constituents feel trapped by car dependency — never mind how many of them long to escape it.

Co-author and researcher Kira McDonald points out that the federal government routinely guarantees 80 percent of federal funds to automotive uses alone, while making much of the funding for shared and active transportation all too easy to claw back. As those ratios propagate across state and local transportation policies, highways, parking lots, and other car-centric infrastructure have come to dominate our physical environment.

Worse, car dominance has created the illusion that America is a “nation of drivers,” rather than a nation of people who drive because they have no other choice — and quite often, despite the fact that a lot of people can’t really afford cars.

Two in five adults surveyed said they struggled to weather an unexpected transportation cost like a car repair, and the same share said they sometimes have to make significant adjustments to their budget just to stay on the road.

“A ludicrous percentage of adults use cars to get to work — [but that’s] because we are under-investing in other modes,” McDonald added. “The novel contribution of this report was to supplement those [mode share statistics] with survey data, and ask people what they actually want.“

To get even further beyond the statistics, co-author Ruth Rojas led an effort to gather stories from non-drivers about how car dependency impacts their lives — and help explain why so many US residents are hesitant to join their ranks.

Again and again, she found that non-drivers struggled with unreliable transportation, navigating transit-poor neighborhoods, and lengthy commutes across sprawling regions. She cites the example of immigrant communities, where she says those challenges can fuel a belief that life would be easier on four wheels — until they actually get a car, and find themselves trapped in it for much of the day.

“[I personally grew up in] an immigrant family who didn’t have access to cars in a small town that was very spread out and didn’t have public transit,” added Rojas. “My family really bought into that idea that cars meant freedom, cars meant getting a job, cars meant more economic growth. … The narrative ends up being that cars give us a perceived freedom… What gets left out is everybody who doesn’t — or maybe can’t — [drive them].”

Rojas and her co-authors acknowledged that it’s not enough to simply make policymakers aware of how poorly the transportation system is serving is non-drivers and compulsory motorists alike — or even what a sheer majority of Americans belong to those categories.

Hopkins stressed that much of US transportation policy is the product of “profit-seeking forces” that have successfully influenced lawmakers to privilege automotive interests over the needs of everyday people — and it will take organizing among those people to change the tide.

“This call to offer more people more choices is really a call to stand up for working people against corporate power determining what options they have in their lives,” he adds.

Still, the report argues that change is possible, starting with “an overhaul of Departments of Transportation (DOTs) at the federal and state levels, as well as massive investment in diverse transportation options to help people have choice in how they get around.” The executive branch, meanwhile, must overhaul auto-centric “rules, guidelines, and culture,” while Congress must use its power of the purse to robustly fund that shift.

Needless to say, local governments must work fast to implement those changes on the ground, in ways that actually engage with the majority of residents who are clamoring for other options. And they have an even more critical role to play among residents who would embrace a different transportation landscape, if they just got a taste of how good life with a broader menu of mobility options can be — even if the transition feels temporarily uncomfortable.

“I think there’s a kind of induced demand [among] people who want to live outside of car dependency, but they don’t know it yet, because they haven’t experienced it,” added McDonald. “These policies always see their popularity improve after implementation.”

A version of this article is the first in a short series that was originally appeared on the author’s Substack. It is republished with permission; read part one in the series here.

Let’s look at some states’ transportation performance, starting with climate. Democrats support reducing climate emissions and Republicans don’t — right?

Not necessarily. Former Washington State Gov. Jay Inslee was often called the climate governor. But he didn’t apply his climate leadership to the state’s transportation program. He liked to build new highways too much. See our report, Fueling the Crisis, on how states spent their federal transportation funding under the Biden era Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA).

Why did North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Wyoming, and Montana perform so much better at reducing emissions than California, Washington, and Connecticut?

It wasn’t because they promised climate action and delivered. It’s because they are less likely to build highways they can’t afford to maintain. In other words: fiscal responsibility might be better for the climate than a climate champion.

Most people believe that Democrats care about more than just reducing traffic congestion. They want to provide ways to move around outside of a car. But do they?

North Carolina likes to brag about putting some money into rail and bike/ped projects, but that amount is very small compared to their highway building budget. That is no surprise when you look at the five scoring criteria North Carolina uses to prioritize statewide projects for funding:

• 30 percent travel time benefits v cost, which is how much vehicle speeds increase vs cost (safety is not part of their economic case);
• 30 percent congestion, which scores the problem of congestion, not how an investment will affect it;
• 10 percent economic competitiveness, which estimates how speeding up vehicles affects the economy according to the TREDIS model;
• 20 percent multimodal, which is just existing congestion on military and truck routes plus truck volumes; and
• 10 percent safety, which is the existence of a safety problem rather than how a project might improve it.

In other words, it’s 90 percent the existence of congestion and/or how an inaccurate transportation model claims a project will improve it … and 10 percent safety.

Recommended Oregon Highway Expansion Facing Second Lawsuit for ‘Cumulative Impacts’ George Kevin Jordan August 16, 2024

Oregon is often held up as a leader on transit — but it has a constitutional restriction on using the gas tax or vehicle taxes for transit and spends a fraction of what they spend on highways for transit.

The state has lost a lot of goodwill due to its roughly $1 billion budget gap that caught lawmakers and the public by surprise. Oregon’s truck taxation system has generated years of controversy over whether heavy trucks were paying too much, followed by calculations indicating they were paying too little.

And while the state pleads poverty about transportation maintenance and staffing, it commits billions in borrowing and matching funds to megaprojects, like the I-5 Rose Quarter expansion that will induce traffic and likely cost way more than whatever ODOT is saying it will cost now. Further, ODOT struggles to deliver the Columbia River Crossing project after decades of talking about it; I worked on this project when I worked for Rep. Brian Baird in the late 1990s.

The governor is looking for a new ODOT leader now. The fear is that she will pick someone who is an expert in how ODOT has run in the past rather than someone who understands how ODOT needs to modernize to deliver the results it has consistently promised to the Oregon taxpayers.

In fact, this is a challenge that many new governors — at least the 18 of them who will face after the election in November. Stay tuned, because we will have a memo for those newly elected leaders calling for and explaining how to connect their transportation priorities to their transportation spending.

Recommended Did Minnesota Just Release the Best Statewide Transportation Bill Yet? Streetsblog July 18, 2023

Some states have made progress but it isn’t always clear whether a new governor will maintain it.

The State of Minnesota will have a new governor, likely Sen. Amy Klobuchar, who has a voting record in the Senate of supporting a status quo transportation policy. But many of the exciting updates in Minnesota’s transportation policies were legislated, and the legislative champions, such as Sen. Scott Dibble, are likely to still be in office to protect them.

Under Gov. Jared Polis, Colorado has funded some pretty massive highway expansions that will do little-to-nothing to address congestion or spur the economy. But his administration also established a rule that requires the Colorado Department of Transportation and the state’s five metropolitan planning organizations to show that their transportation plans cut greenhouse gas emissions. If they can’t, they must offset those emissions or remove the projects that cause emissions increases.

The progressive Democrat that is likely to be the next governor of Colorado, state Attorney General Phil Weiser, was rumored earlier in the campaign to be squishy on this important policy. But recently, supporters sound more hopeful.

Recommended State DOTs Aren’t Stacking Up On Sustainability and Equity Kea Wilson April 2, 2025

This is not a comprehensive write-up of where progressive state DOTs land on transportation policy. There are blue states doing very interesting things, like Virginia and Smart Scale and Minnesota on transit funding and climate. There are red states that are being ridiculous, like Florida which has made some safety projects illegal even though it is the most deadly state for cyclists and third most deadly for pedestrians. I can’t cover everything here.

But which states are willing to try new things and innovate does not always track with their partisan leaning. For example, my organization has had success working on quick build safety demonstration projects on state roads in Alabama, Kentucky, and Tennessee — while being told by Pennsylvania and North Carolina that they simply couldn’t do the same. We have also worked with California, Connecticut, and Maryland on some awesome quick-build safety projects. Just don’t assume.

Recommended It’s Time For State DOTs to Step Up and Do a Better Job Kea Wilson March 24, 2025

The point is this: just because leaders claim to share your priorities does not mean they will do anything meaningful to move those priorities forward. And sometimes those who claim to oppose one of your goals (like reducing emissions) support other goals (like fiscal responsibility) that will get to the same outcomes.

Conservatives might sometimes produce better progressive outcomes than progressives, even if it is unintentional.If you support transit or more walkable communities or climate or reconnecting communities or fix-it-first or whatever, do not assume that a Democrat will be your champion or that a Republican will block your priorities.

No matter who is in charge, figure out what they care about and where your priorities might overlap or lead to similar outcomes. Demand leadership that is fresh and expert in where you want to go, not where you have been. And then demand that the transportation agency be held accountable for the results it achieves — whether that means criticizing your supposed allies or praising your supposed opposition.

• The rate of pedestrian deaths in the U.S. is more than twice that of most developed nations, and experts believe it will likely rise under Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy’s “car-obsessed MAGA ideology.” Under his leadership, the Trump administration scrubbed references to and proven safety measures like road diets and bike lanes. (The Guardian)
• More transit agencies are using tap-and-go fare payment systems. (Eno Center for Transportation)
• Boston is building a protected bike lane at the intersection where a driver killed transportation planner and cyclist Louisa Gag. (WBUR)
• Automated speed cameras in Denver and expanded hours when parking fees are in effect are expected to generate $6 million in revenue. (Denverite)
• Uber is spending $2.5 million to help re-elect New York Gov. Kathy Hochul at a time when state lawmakers are considering regulations on its competitors, like Waymo. (Politico)
• WalletHub ranked Philadelphia as the worst city in the U.S. to drive in. (Billy Penn)
• A walkable New Urban development in Utah is facing backlash from opponents of density. (Salt Lake Tribune)
• Tacoma is studying potential improvements to crash-prone Portland Avenue. (The Urbanist)
• Richmond is making more than 3,000 repairs to broken sidewalks near schools. (Standard)
• Relaxed zoning laws around Edmonton light rail have led to a 50 percent increase in new housing units. (CBC)
• Even some transit advocates like Reece Martin are starting to think high-speed rail is too expensive for Canada, and that frequent service might be more important. (The Transit Brief)
• Cyclists are challenging Ontario’s policy of tearing up bike lanes at Canada’s Supreme Court. (CP24)
• European cities are not electrifying their bus fleets fast enough to meet climate goals. (DW)

EWG, Consumer Reports: People demand stronger protections from pesticides rcoleman October 14, 2026

WASHINGTON – Consumers deserve to be protected from pesticides, and Congress should reject any pesticide legislation that fails to do so. 

Today the Environmental Working Group and Consumer Reports unveiled their Consumer Pesticide Safety Bill of Rights to ensure that any federal pesticide legislation protects the public, including children. 

Consumers too often lack basic information about pesticides used in their homes, communities and in food, and lack meaningful protections when those chemicals put their health at risk. 

The Consumer Pesticide Safety Bill of Rights declares Americans’ right to: 

• Warnings on the products people bring into their homes, including the right to know whether a pesticide is linked to cancer and other health harms.. 
• Know if a toxic pesticide that can make people sick is being sprayed nearby.
• Know that the food people feed their children is subject to the toughest pesticide safety standards. 
• Expect that children are protected from toxic pesticides when they are at school or playing in local parks. 
• Expect that U.S. pesticide regulators will act quickly to review toxic pesticides when other nations ban them. 
• Be informed about where pesticides have been used, when they’ve been mishandled, and how much is being detected in Americans’ food and water.
• Seek justice when pesticides have caused harm. 

“Consumers deserve to know if the pesticides we bring into our homes or that have been sprayed nearby might make us sick,” said EWG Legislative Director Geoff Horsfield.

“We should be confident our children are safe when they’re at school and confident their food is subject to the toughest safety standards,” he added.

“Our current pesticide laws fall short of giving consumers the information and protections they need to protect their families,” said Brian Ronholm, director of food policy for Consumer Reports. “This Bill of Rights is a road map for making the food we eat and the communities we live in safer.”

The Consumer Pesticide Safety Bill of Rights addresses long-running gaps in pesticide protection.

Few states require farmers or commercial pesticide companies to publicly notify when they’re spraying these chemicals. Warnings on household pesticide products are often inadequate. And many pesticides found on food children commonly eat aren’t subject to the strictest safety standards. 

Only a handful of states require buffers to protect kids at school from exposure to toxic pesticides, and standards vary regarding pesticides that can be used in school buildings or on school grounds. 

Many pesticides used in the U.S. have been banned by other nations. But the EPA can take decades to restrict pesticides. Consumers also lack basic information about pesticide use, spills and detections on food and water.

Exacerbating an already problematic situation, the Supreme Court recently acted to limit access to the courts for people harmed by pesticides. 

The Consumer Pesticide Safety Bill of Rights tackles many of these issues head-on – and lawmakers may soon have a chance to incorporate it into legislation.

Congress could consider renewing the Pesticide Registration Improvement Act as early as December. The current law, through which the chemical industry negotiates fees that fund EPA’s pesticide reviews, is set to expire next September.

“Congress should reject any new pesticide law that fails to protect consumers,” said Horsfield. “We should expect our kids to be safe from toxic pesticides. We deserve to know when pesticides could make us sick. And we should be able to seek justice in court when pesticides do make us sick.”

“The renewal of the Pesticide Registration Improvement Act is a critical opportunity to deliver meaningful protections for Americans, including clearer warnings and greater transparency about where these chemicals are used and when they’re detected in our food and water,” said Ronholm. 

###

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

Founded in 1936, Consumer Reports (CR) has a mission to help build a fair and just marketplace for all. The nonprofit CR is widely known for its rigorous research, testing, and reviews of thousands of products and services. CR advocates for consumer rights and protections, reports extensively on consumer issues, and surveys millions of people every year. CR is nonpartisan and independent, and it accepts no advertising. Learn more at www.consumerreports.org

Areas of Focus Family Health Children’s Health Pesticides ‘Bill of Rights’ seeks to protect consumers as Congress weighs federal pesticide policy law Press Contact Alex Formuzis alex@ewg.org (202) 667-6982 October 14, 2026

As more and more Victorian households quit gas, there remain real and unresolved questions about who bears the cost of abandoned pipelines. Slamming the brakes on electrification isn’t the solution.

The post Gas networks want Victoria to stall electrification. Households and industry should hope it doesn’t oblige appeared first on Renew Economy.