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The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the nation’s largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization, today demanded that a U.S. manufacturer of electroshock weapons stop sending its devices to Israel following an investigative report revealing their systematic use in the torture and abuse of Palestinian detainees.

According to an investigation published by The Guardian and Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism, American company Axon Enterprise (formerly Taser International) has continued to supply electroshock Taser weapons and accessories to Israeli security forces despite mounting documentation that these devices are deployed inside detention facilities to inflict severe physical abuse.

Released detainees interviewed in the report detailed horrific accounts of being tightly restrained, doused with water to intensify electric shocks, and repeatedly tortured, leaving lasting physical and psychological scars.

The investigation also highlighted findings from the UN Committee Against Torture regarding a sharp escalation of abuse, sexualized torture, and electrocution inside Israeli detention facilities since October 2023, alongside similar documentation by human rights organizations like Amnesty International.

In a statement, Washington, D.C.-based CAIR said:

"It is unconscionable that equipment manufactured by an American corporation is reportedly being used to carry out acts of torture and abuse against detained Palestinians. Axon must immediately halt all current and future contracts, shipments, and servicing of electroshock weapons to Israeli authorities. Furthermore, the U.S. Department of Commerce must rigorously enforce export oversight criteria to block the transfer of technologies to governments implicated in systemic human rights violations."

Dapperly dressed in black, white, and glacial gray, the Northern Shrike might pass as any other songbird. But don’t be fooled—it's also a brutal killer. With a bold black mask and hooked bill...

Bill would give Interior Secretary Doug Burgum a two-year window to approve projects a future president could not undo

DENVER — A bipartisan permitting bill headed for a Senate vote right after the election would give President Donald Trump and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum two years to approve data centers, nuclear facilities, and fossil fuel projects on public lands, then make those approvals nearly impossible to reverse, according to a new analysis from the Center for Western Priorities.

The Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act, written and sponsored by Senators Mike Lee, Shelley Moore Capito, Martin Heinrich, and Sheldon Whitehouse would be disastrous for public lands:

• Industry lock-in: Section 1401 bars agencies from altering any permit in effect on or after September 16, 2026, unless they meet a “clear and convincing evidence” standard far higher than agencies normally face.
• Public lock-out: Courts could no longer pause projects with botched environmental reviews. Construction would continue while reviews are redone, agencies could not act on what they find, and challengers would get just 150 days to sue.
• Taxpayer price tag: Section 1402 would make taxpayers pay developers 50 to 100 percent of construction costs if a future administration slows a whole category of projects, such as gas plants or nuclear fuel facilities, with money drawn from a Treasury fund that requires no vote of Congress.

Burgum’s Interior Department is already reviewing applications for around 17 data centers on public lands, and it attempted to approve the first one by skipping environmental review and public comment entirely. If this bill passes, that could become the norm for permitting data centers on public lands. The bill would shield permits issued by the Trump administration for everything from drilling to nuclear waste storage on public lands from revocation by a future administration, while Trump’s cancellations of wind and solar projects would remain in place. The bill also rewrites the National Historic Preservation Act, drawing opposition from nine national Tribal organizations and the All Pueblo Council of Governors.

The Center for Western Priorities released the following statement from Executive Director Aaron Weiss.

“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.

“Any permitting deal passed under this administration must strengthen the guardrails that keep Burgum and Trump in check, not hand them a blank check. 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.”

Read our full analysis of the bill on Westwise.

Learn more:

• New map tracks data center applications moving through BLM’s pipeline – Center for Western Priorities
• 6 threats to public lands in the Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act – The Wilderness Society
• NRDC Assessment of BAAJA, the 2026 Permitting and Transmission Bill – National Resources Defense Council
• Hard Questions About the Permitting Bill – National Resources Defense Council

 

Feature image: The Utah Data Center located in Bluffdale, Utah; Swilsonmc/Wikimedia Commons 

 

The post Senate permitting bill would cut the public out of public lands and lock in Trump-era data center, nuclear, and fossil fuel approvals appeared first on Center for Western Priorities.

The nation’s largest and most profitable corporations paid an average federal income tax rate of just 10.4 percent in 2025, the lowest rate documented in more than four decades of research by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP), according to a new study released today.

The study examines the current federal income taxes of 706 major U.S. corporations that collectively reported $1.88 trillion in domestic profits last year. Despite these enormous earnings, the companies collectively paid less than half the statutory federal corporate income tax rate of 21 percent, and 114 paid no current federal income tax at all.

The findings illustrate the combined effects of two rounds of corporate tax cuts enacted under President Trump: the 2017 tax law, which slashed the statutory corporate income tax rate from 35 to 21 percent, and the 2025 tax law, which expanded and made permanent lucrative corporate tax breaks.

Among the study’s key findings:

• 114 corporations paid no current federal income tax in 2025, including well-known companies such as Tesla, Walt Disney, CVS, Citigroup, United Airlines, and DoorDash.
• 258 corporations paid effective tax rates below 7 percent, or less than one-third of the statutory rate. Together, these companies reported $683 billion in U.S. profits but paid an effective federal income tax rate of just 1.7 percent.
• The 706 corporations studied received $198 billion in federal tax subsidies by paying less than the statutory 21 percent rate. They also benefited from an additional $263 billion in tax savings attributable to the 2017 reduction of the statutory rate from 35 percent to 21 percent.
• Just 25 corporations accounted for more than half of the 2025 tax subsidies. Alphabet ($18.9 billion), Microsoft ($18.7 billion), Amazon ($17.4 billion), and Meta ($13.9 billion) were among the largest beneficiaries.

“These findings show just how dramatically the corporate tax system has been tilted in favor of the nation’s wealthiest and most powerful companies,” said Matt Gardner, ITEP Senior Fellow and co-author of the report. “At a time when lawmakers claim the country cannot afford investments in families and communities, some of the most profitable corporations in American history are paying little or nothing in federal income taxes. This is not an accident. It is the predictable outcome of deliberate policy choices that have steadily eroded the corporate tax base.”

The study finds that corporate tax avoidance is particularly pronounced in several industries. Technology companies collectively paid an effective federal income tax rate of just 10 percent, receiving $68.5 billion in federal tax subsidies. Motor vehicle companies paid just 2.7 percent, while telecommunications companies paid 6.7 percent and aerospace companies paid 7.6 percent.

The research also documents how corporate tax breaks enacted or expanded in Trump’s 2025 tax law have helped some of the nation’s largest tech companies dramatically reduce their tax bills. Provisions allowing companies to immediately deduct investments in equipment and research have provided substantial benefits to corporations making massive investments in artificial intelligence and other technologies.

While these subsidies are frequently promoted as necessary to encourage investment, the report raises questions about why highly profitable corporations should receive billions of dollars in taxpayer subsidies for spending they may have undertaken regardless.

“Congress has repeatedly chosen to expand tax breaks for corporations that are already extraordinarily profitable,” said Steve Wamhoff, ITEP Federal Policy Director and co-author of the report. “Rather than continuing to subsidize corporate investments and reward aggressive tax avoidance, lawmakers should close these loopholes and ensure that large corporations pay a meaningful share of their profits in taxes.”

ITEP’s analysis draws on annual financial reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission by corporations in the Fortune 1000 or S&P 500. The study calculates effective federal income tax rates based on companies’ reported current federal income tax expense relative to their U.S. pretax profits.

The findings continue a series of corporate tax studies conducted by ITEP and Citizens for Tax Justice over more than four decades. The 10.4 percent effective rate in 2025 is even lower than the 11.2 percent rate documented in 1982 following President Reagan’s first round of corporate tax cuts, and the 11.3 percent rate reported in 2018 following Trump’s first tax law.

In December 2025, former B.C. Premier Christy Clark gave an interview on Global News where she described Canada’s west coast ban on oil tankers as a “ridiculous” constraint on the Canadian economy.

A clip of Clark’s interview then began to circulate online, where it was shared by several Canadian conservative influencers and aggregator accounts on platforms including X and Facebook with captions including “reality check,” “huge truth bomb” and “economic self-sabotage.”

Within days, the interview clip was spreading across the social media feeds of people in B.C. and beyond, eventually surpassing 1.6 million views.

But this was not necessarily a case of west coast residents suddenly deciding organically they wanted to overturn the ban on coastal oil tanker traffic brought in by former Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

The digital media amplification of Clark’s comments was orchestrated in part by Canada Action, a pro-oil industry advocacy organization partly funded by Cenovus Energy, Canada’s third-largest oil and gas company.

It was one example of “showcasing Canada Action’s content leadership influencing the public discussion,” according to an internal slidedeck from the Calgary-based group. That slidedeck, which hasn’t yet been reported on, was obtained by Greenpeace Canada and published in its October 2026 report Manufacturing Petro-Populism.

Screenshot from a Canada Action Slidedeck called “Extended Third Party Reach: Showcasing Canada Action’s content leadership influencing the public discussion”.

These and other presentation slides from Canada Action demonstrate how fossil fuel interests manufacture the appearance of consent for increased oil and gas production in Canada, according to experts who study the spread of climate disinformation online.

“Most people can pretty easily see through messages coming directly from the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP) or industry CEOs,” said Shane Gunster, a professor at Simon Fraser University’s School of Communications, in a statement to DeSmog. 

“But when the message comes from people in their social network, local business leaders, their family and friends, they’re far more likely to engage with it and maybe even be persuaded by it. And this is especially true for growing segments of the public that don’t consume a lot of news.”

Canada Action didn’t respond to DeSmog’s questions about the slidedeck.

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Canada Action was founded in 2012 by Cody Battershill, a Calgary-based realtor. Though Canada Action claims to be a grassroots effort, it has numerous reported ties to the fossil fuel sector and its lobbyists. According to the Greenpeace report, Canada Action spent $1.9 million CAD on marketing in 2024, and $1.5 million CAD in 2023.

The presentations were made in the context of a funder session for the group Canadian Energy Prosperity (CEP), through its Energy in Action (EIA) initiative, and held at the Calgary Petroleum Club in January 2026.

According to the Greenpeace report, Energy in Action is an oil-industry backed network of thirty organizations that advocate for the fossil fuel sector, including front groups, charitable organizations, companies, media organizations and lobby groups. EIA is itself funded by Canadian Energy Prosperity.

Though neither of these are public facing organizations, members of EIA’s network are prominent pro-oil and gas voices in Canada. They include, among others, the Fraser Institute, Canada Action, Energy United, Debunk, Canadians for Affordable Energy, Young Canadians for Resources, Resource Works, Energy Creates, and The News Forum.
 

Two of those organizations, Resource Works and Energy United, prepared a slidedeck for the Calgary Petroleum Club event describing environmental groups as “opponents” and Indigenous rights as a “problem,” as reported previously in the Narwhal.

 Many of the groups that are funded by CEP also receive funding from Gwyn Morgan, a Canadian fracking magnate who has financed a climate misinformation ecosystem with nearly $10 million in funding to right wing anti-regulation lobby groups. Morgan is also linked to Cenovus (which has funded Canada Action), as well as Second Street, a libertarian advocacy organization.

In its presentation to CEP, Canada Action explained how it was able to manufacture viral pro-oil content online from a December 1 interview former B.C. Premier Clark gave to Global News.

First, Canada Action explained, “we snipped and posted a critically important message from former B.C. Premier Christy Clark, highlighting the importance of revisiting the federal tanker ban.”

Then, the group “modified the video to add the ‘On the Oil Tanker Ban’ text on the video, so any other video containing that graphic can be directly attributed to stemming from our post.”

Screenshot from a Canada Action Slidedeck called “Extended Third Party Reach: Showcasing Canada Action’s content leadership influencing the public discussion”.

Canada Action carefully tracked “other major pages who have taken our content and then directly re-uploaded it on their platforms as a new post on their page.”

One of these reposts was from the page Debunk, Inc., which characterized Clark’s comments as explaining “why the Pacific tanker bank is pointless.” That post garnered thousands of likes and comments. In a separate slide presentation obtained by Greenpeace, Debunk stated that “the energy narrative is ours to shape. With your continued support we will continue to challenge the myths, engage Canadians, and advocate for the energy future our country deserves.”

All told, the Clark clip generated 1,614,000 views across Canada Action’s social media pages as well as “unattributed traffic” due to the video being shared by third-party accounts, according to metrics shared by the group.

In a separate slide deck, titled “Digital Reach Report: April 2026 Social Media & Website Views & Impression”, Canada Action indicated its social media content received over 37.5 million views. The bulk of its monthly impressions came from one of its three Twitter accounts — @LNGAction, @OilSandsAction, and @CanadaAction — which together brought in over 25 million views.

Amplification Machine

Canada Action has considerable social media reach, noting in its presentation that its Facebook and Instagram posts “are being reached and interacted with by millions of unique Canadians.” Indeed, according to its presentation slides, the Canada Action Facebook page drew 2.8 million unique people while the Oil Sands Action Facebook page drew 1.4 million. On Instagram, Canada Action claimed to have attracted 559,000 while Oil Sands Action drew 476,000.

Canada Action uses its sizable digital imprint to amplify other groups in the CEP network, including Young Canadians for Resources, its youth advocacy arm.

The Canada Action presentation also highlights a  partnership with Resource Works “to amplify the economic leadership of 5 Mayors from the Alliance of Resource Communities,” an effort to build public support for oil and gas and other natural resource projects in B.C.  “We can now say that we are the LNG capital of Canada,” Kitimat mayor Phil Germuth stated in one Facebook post. At the time the screenshot was taken, that post had garnered 6,600 likes, 490 comments, and was forwarded 274 times.

Resource Works is also identified in the Greenpeace report as an organization with ties to the fossil fuel sector. DeSmog has previously reported that the organization has been involved in other influence campaigns, including an astroturf campaign to oppose a ban on natural gas that involved template comments for restaurant owners, hospitality workers and residents of Vancouver.

Gunster argues that the sorts of digital campaigns led by Canada Action and its allies have influenced how Canadians think and feel about the oil and gas sector.

“Look at the big swings in public opinion in favour of oil and gas projects over the past year-and-a-half,” said Gunster. “Some of that is obviously Trump and the trade war, and some of that is the Carney government. But I have no doubt that the kinds of campaigns described in this [Greenpeace] report are also having a significant impact, saturating our social media feeds with pro-industry messaging.” 

DeSmog reached out to Christy Clark and Global News to determine whether Canada Action had asked permission to use the video clip and still images in their promotional materials. Neither responded.

The post ‘Snipped And Posted’: How Pro-Oil Groups Generate Viral Content Online appeared first on DeSmog.

The board of the UN’s Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage agreed on Thursday to set aside $20 million to help Nepal recover from the devastating climate-driven flood it suffered in August.

At an extraordinary online meeting, board members unanimously invited Nepal’s government to submit a proposal for how to use the money, which will be considered at a future board meeting.

The board’s co-chair Camila Minerva Rodriguez described the decision as “truly historic” as it is the first time the new fund has allocated any money since it was set up three years ago. It is expected to approve its first set of projects at its next board meeting in December.

Maheshwar Dhakal, a senior official at Nepal’s climate ministry, told the meeting the decision was “a powerful expression of humanity, compassion, solidarity and hope” and, for the flood victims, a “recognition of their suffering, respect for their dignity and hope that they are not alone in their darkest hour”.

A woman carries belongings recovered from her destroyed home following flash floods, on August 29, 2026 in Devighat, Nepal. (Photo: Ezra Acayan/Getty Images)

While board members were united in approving the $20 million, plus $1.6 million of administrative costs, representatives of developed and developed countries were divided over the extent to which the decision should set a precedent for the fund’s long-term way of operating.

Germany and Czechia’s board members said it should not set a “precedent” while Japan’s representative said the decision is “truly exceptional” and that the fund’s support must be “in accordance with established rule and procedure”.

Learning the lessons?

Responding, Pakistan’s Ali Sheikh said the lessons from the Nepal case should “feed the long-term model and its work on rapid disbursement” of funds.

He added that he had heard Jan Dusik, Czechia’s board member saying that “we are open for learning but not in setting precedent”. “Please do not define the boundaries for learning,” he emphasised.

Sheikh complained that the decision approved by the board – the result of negotiations between a group of four developed and four developing-country representatives – was narrower than developing countries had hoped for.

“We are saying it is a one-time and Nepal-only window, a sentiment against which many developed countries have raised their voice,” he said, adding there had been no time to review the decision.

Walter Schuldt from Ecuador echoed Sheikh, saying “we should not put limits on lesson learning”. He said the decision, which he was involved in negotiating through “intense exchanges”, tells the fund’s staff to assess the lessons learned.

The fund is currently in a start-up phase and the board will debate its long-term model – including whether and how to rapidly disburse funds in response to climate-driven disasters – at its next board meeting in the Philippines in December.

At Thursday’s meeting, several developing-country board members called for wealthy nations to put more money into the fund. Recovery and reconstruction from Nepal’s flood alone is estimated to cost $4.8 billion – in comparison, the fund has only around $350 million available to allocate to countries, with a current cap of $20 million per project.

Climate justice experts welcomed the decision to allocate money to Nepal as a sign of solidarity but lamented that it came only after significant pressure and is a tiny amount compared with the country’s recovery needs.

“Setting aside millions is not the same as delivering billions,” said Lien Vandamme, a climate justice campaigner with the Centre for International Environmental Law. “What’s clear is that a fund that is desperately under-resourced will remain toothless in the face of escalating climate disasters.”

Editor’s Desk: Nepal’s disaster has laid bare the world’s adaptation accountability gap

Communities on the frontline of those disasters are owed reparations “as a matter of legal obligation”, she added, referring to last year’s advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice which made clear that states most responsible for the climate crisis have a duty to repair the harm it causes.

Brandon Wu, director of policy and campaigns with ActionAid USA, noted that three years after being established, the loss and damage fund has yet to send any money to countries hit by climate impacts and has not provided a concrete timeline for paying out the money it reserved for Nepal this week.

“If the fund were adequately resourced, an immediate disbursement to Nepal would be an absolute no-brainer. But it seems rich countries are terrified that the fund – which has received a paltry $500 million to date – will run dry, thus putting more pressure on them to provide the money they owe,” he added.

This story was updated after publication to add comment from climate justice campaigners.

The post Loss and damage fund agrees $20m for Nepal but rich nations warn it should not set precedent appeared first on Climate Home News.

EWG evaluation of food chemicals: Seven artificial dyes rcoleman October 22, 2026 Jump to: What are artificial dyes and why are they added to foods? Where are artificial dyes found in foods? What is the regulatory status of artificial dyes? Are foods containing artificial dyes ultra-processed? Are artificial dyes allowed in organic foods? What are the potential health harms associated with artificial dyes? Uncertainties/where more research is needed More details about artificial dyes Cited resources October 23, 2026 EWG’s recommendation

Petroleum-based, synthetic dyes, including Blue Dye No. 1, Blue Dye No. 2, Green Dye No. 3, Red Dye No. 3, Red Dye No. 40, Yellow Dye No. 5 and Yellow Dye No. 6, are ingredients of concern. 

EWG suggests limiting consumption of food that contains them. 

Human and animal studies suggest artificial food dyes may affect behavior and learning, particularly in children. A 2021 assessment by the California Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Environmental Health Hazard, or OEHHA, linked these dyes to adverse behavioral outcomes in children both with and without preexisting behavioral difficulties. 

Animal studies have concluded that prenatal exposure to synthetic food dye mixtures can produce lasting changes in offspring behavior, including altered activity levels and measures of anxiety-like behavior and exploration.

Red 3 has been shown to cause cancer in laboratory animals exposed to high doses, prompting the Food and Drug Administration in 2025 to finally revoke its authorization of the dye for use in food. 

Science analysis

What are artificial dyes and why are they added to foods?

Artificial dyes are added to processed foods to give them color, restore color lost during processing, and make them visually appealing. 

Six synthetic food dyes are authorized for general use in U.S. food: Blue 1, Blue 2, Green 3, Red 40, Yellow 5 and Yellow 6. Red 3, another petroleum-derived synthetic dye, is currently being phased out. 

Ingredient nameSynonymEuropean numberRed 40Allura Red ACE129*Red 3ErythrosineE127Yellow 5TartrazineE102*Yellow 6Sunset Yellow FCFE110*Blue 1Brilliant Blue FCFE133Blue 2Indigotine / Indigo CarmineE132Green 3Fast Green FCFE143 (Not authorized in the EU)

* Must carry a warning label in the EU.

Where are artificial dyes found in foods?

Artificial dyes are most commonly added to candy, baked goods, desserts, beverages, breakfast cereal and other snacks.

They are found in 23,312 of the 172,081 foods and beverages added to EWG’s Food Scores between 2023 and 2025.

The 15 food categories with the most products containing food dyes (by supermarket shelf):

Image

Source: EWG’s Food Scores. Label created between January 2023 and October 2025.

What is the regulatory status of artificial dyes?

In 2025, the FDA revoked the use of Red 3 in food products and oral medication on the basis of the Delaney Clause, which bans authorization of a food or color additive found to induce cancer in humans or animals. Red 3 must be phased out of all food products by January 15, 2027. 

In 2025, the FDA announced plans to work with manufacturers to phase out the remaining six artificial dyes in foods by the end of 2027.

Bills have been enacted in California, Utah, Arizona, Virginia and other states to ban Blue 1, Blue 2, Green 3, Red 40, Yellow 5 and Yellow 6 in food sold in public schools. And in 2025, West Virginia enacted a bill to ban these artificial dyes statewide.

Food containing Red 40, Yellow 5 or Yellow 6 sold in the European Union must carry a warning label stating the dye “may have an adverse effect on activity and attention in children.” The EU doesn’t allow the use of Green 3 as a food additive.

In 2025, EWG supported the Ban Harmful Food Dyes Act, a bill in Congress which aimed to revoke approval for use of Blue 1, Blue 2, Citrus Red No. 2, Green 3, Orange B, Red 3, Red 40, Yellow 5, Yellow 6, titanium dioxide and any additive similar in chemical makeup. The FDA revoked authorization for Orange B in 2026, and proposed revoking authorization for Citrus Red 2.

Are foods containing artificial dyes ultra-processed?

Industrially synthesized ingredients such as artificial food dyes are common in ingredients defined as ultra-processed food, or UPF, ingredients in the Nova framework (Monteiro et al., 2019).

Under a recent California law defining UPF, food containing artificial dyes is considered UPF (Real Food, Healthy Kids Act, 2025). 

Are artificial dyes allowed in organic foods?

Under Agriculture Department organic standards, synthetic substances are banned in certified organic foods. 

What are the potential health harms associated with artificial dyes?

Thorough review by the OEHHA found artificial food dyes are linked to adverse behavioral outcomes in children both with and without preexisting behavioral disorders (OEHHA, 2021), which is of particular importance since foods containing artificial food dyes are typically marketed to children (Dunford et al. 2025). 

Although mixtures of all seven food dyes produced observed effects across studies, the most evidence of toxicity comes from studies of Red 3, Red 40 and Yellow 5. Reviewed studies support the evidence of their behavior and learning effects. 

The research found changes in the behavior and learning of children exposed to artificial food dyes, both when the colors were added and eliminated from their diets.

This assessment of human and animal studies showed that because of outdated toxicity data, current allowable daily intake values do not sufficiently protect children from harm. 

In one study, Yellow 5 was found to increase behavioral changes such as irritability, sleeplessness and decreased attention span in a dose-dependent manner in children (Rowe & Rowe, 1994).

In animal studies, developmental effects were observed in rodents exposed to artificial food coloring in utero. A series of studies that exposed pregnant mice to a mixture of artificial dyes and followed their offspring to adulthood observed long-term neurobehavioral changes. 

Exposed offspring exhibited significant changes in movement and exploratory behaviors and altered anxiety profiles (Doguc et al., 2013, 2015, 2019). In one of these studies, these effects occurred with doses relevant to human exposure.

The neurobehavioral effects of artificial food dyes are believed to be caused by the ability of the dyes to bind to certain proteins and affect neurotransmitter pathways. When studying learning and behavior changes in rodents, researchers found that exposure during pregnancy can lead to altered expression of receptors that control memory (Ceyhan et al., 2013). 

Red 3 was linked to cancer when it was observed to induce thyroid tumors in rats (Hiasa et al., 1988). Separate laboratory research found Red 3 can interfere with thyroid hormone signaling and estrogen-related pathways in human breast cancer cells, raising questions about its potential to disrupt hormones (Dees et al., 1997). 

A 2015 study of human lymphocytes observed damage to genetic material  exposed to Yellow 5 (Soares et al., 2015). 

Another found that long-term consumption of this dye, even at levels established as safe, significantly changed how epigenetic genes are regulated in multiple mouse organs, suggesting the potential for developing cancer and behavioral effects (Zand et al., 2023). 

Other research has linked certain food dyes, such as Yellow 5 and 6, to disruption of the human gut microbiome (Elder et al., 2023), and Red 40 to colitis in animal studies (He et al., 2021; Kwon et al., 2022). 

Although research is limited on how artificial food dyes affect human health, some epidemiological evidence suggests that consumption of foods with both natural and artificial dyes is associated with an increased incidence of Type 2 diabetes (Shah et al., 2026). 

Uncertainties/where more research is needed

From its 2021 report, the OEHHA identified important gaps in research on synthetic food dyes, including limited understanding of individual susceptibility, long-term developmental effects, absorption and metabolism, and differences in exposure and effects across population groups. 

It also noted that current FDA acceptable daily intakes are based largely on decades-old studies that were not designed to assess behavior and learning effects. 

The OEHHA nevertheless concluded the available human and animal evidence supports behavioral effects in some children and called for modern, dye-specific research to set exposure levels that adequately protect children’s health.

More details about artificial dyes

Red 40, Yellow 5 and Yellow 6 account for most of the dyes used in the U.S. market.

Synthetic food dyes can contain manufacturing-related impurities, including carcinogenic compounds, that raise potential health concerns. A review by the Center for Science in the Public Interest called attention to p-cresidine as one potential carcinogenic impurity in Red 40 and benzidine and 4-aminobiphenyl in Yellow 5 and Yellow 6. Benzidine is classified as carcinogenic by the International Agency for Research on Cancer.

Orange B, an artificial color used only to color sausage casings, was “abandoned by industry” and is no longer approved for use as of September 2026. Since it is no longer being used, it doesn’t need to be evaluated. 

Citrus Red 2 is allowed to be used only to restore the orange color to the skin of oranges that lose their color, but is also abandoned by industry.

Cited resources

Global health and regulatory agencies

• Regulation (EC) No 1333/2008 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 16 December 2008 on food additives. (2008). Official Journal of the European Union, L 354, 16–33. http://data.europa.eu/eli/reg/2008/1333/oj 

Comprehensive reviews and frameworks

• Monteiro, C.A., Cannon, G., Levy, R.B., Moubarac, J., Louzada, M.L., Rauber, F., Khandpur, N., Cediel, G., Neri, D., Martinez-Steele, E., Baraldi, L.G., & Jaime, P.C. (2019). Ultra-processed foods: What they are and how to identify them. Public Health Nutrition, 22(5), 936–941. https://doi.org/10.1017/s1368980018003762. 
• Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment. (April 2021). Health effects assessment: Potential neurobehavioral effects of synthetic food dyes in children. California Environmental Protection Agency, Children’s Environmental Health Center. https://oehha.ca.gov/media/downloads/risk-assessment/report/healthefftsassess041621.pdf 

Legislation

• Arizona House Bill No. 2164, 57th Leg., 1st Reg. Sess., Ariz. (2025). https://legiscan.com/AZ/text/HB2164/2025
• Ban Harmful Food Dyes Act, H.R. 5027, 119th Cong. (2025). https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/5027/all-info 
• California Assembly Bill No. 2316, Chapter 914, Cal. Stat. (2024). https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=202320240AB2316
• Real Food, Healthy Kids Act, Assemb. Bill 1264, Chapter 467 (Cal. 2025). https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=202520260AB1264. 
• Food and Drug Administration. (2025, January 15). FD&C Red No. 3. https://www.fda.gov/industry/color-additives/fdc-red-no-3 
• FDA. (April 22, 2025). HHS, FDA to phase out petroleum-based synthetic dyes in nation’s food supply. https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/hhs-fda-phase-out-petroleum-based-synthetic-dyes-nations-food-supply 
• Utah House Bill No. 402, General Session, Utah State Legislature (2025). https://legiscan.com/UT/text/HB0402/2025
• Virginia Senate Bill No. 1289, Chapter 222, Va. Acts (2025). https://legiscan.com/VA/text/SB1289/id/3191585/Virginia-2025-SB1289-Chaptered.html
• West Virginia House Bill No. 2354, Chapter 206, W.Va. Acts (2025). https://legiscan.com/WV/text/HB2354/id/3177443/West_Virginia-2025-HB2354-Enrolled.html 

Specific health impact studies

• Ceyhan, B. M., Gultekin, F., Doguc, D. K., & Kulac, E. (2013). Effects of maternally exposed coloring food additives on receptor expressions related to learning and memory in rats. Food and chemical toxicology : an international journal published for the British Industrial Biological Research Association, 56, 145–148. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.fct.2013.02.016 
• Dees, C., Askari, M., Garrett, S., Gehrs, K., Henley, D., & Ardies, C. M. (1997). Estrogenic and DNA-damaging activity of Red No. 3 in human breast cancer cells. Environmental health perspectives, 105 Suppl 3(Suppl 3), 625–632. https://doi.org/10.1289/ehp.97105s3625 
• Doguc D.K., Ceyhan B.M., Ozturk M., Gultekin F. 2013. Effects of maternally exposed colouring food additives on cognitive performance in rats. Toxicol Ind Health 29:616623.
• Doguc D.K., Aylak F., Ilhan I., Kulac E., Gultekin F. 2015. Are there any remarkable effects of prenatal exposure to food colourings on neurobehaviour and learning process in rat offspring? Nutr Neurosci 18:12-21.
• Doguc D.K., Deniz F., Ilhan I., Ergonul E., Gultekin F. 2021. Prenatal exposure to artificial food colorings alters NMDA receptor subunit concentrations in rat hippocampus. Nutr Neurosci:1-11.
• Elder, R., Vancuren, S. J., Botschner, A. J., Josephy, P. D., & Allen-Vercoe, E. (2023). Metabolism of azo food dyes by bacterial members of the human gut microbiome. Anaerobe, 83, Article 102783. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.anaerobe.2023.102783 
• He, Z., Chen, L., Catalan-Dibene, J., Lafaille, J. J., Furtado, G. C., & Lira, S. A. (2021). Food colorants metabolized by commensal bacteria promote colitis in mice with dysregulated expression of interleukin-23. Cell Metabolism, 33(7), 1358–1371.e5. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cmet.2021.04.015 
• Hiasa, Y., Ohshima, M., Kitahori, Y., Konishi, N., Shimoyama, T., Sakaguchi, Y., Hashimoto, H., Minami, S., & Kato, Y. (1988). The promoting effects of food dyes, erythrosine (Red 3) and rose bengal B (Red 105), on thyroid tumors in partially thyroidectomized N-bis(2-hydroxypropyl)nitrosamine-treated rats. Japanese Journal of Cancer Research, 79(3), 314–319. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1349-7006.1988.tb01593.x 
• Kwon, Y.H., Banskota, S., Wang, H. et al. Chronic exposure to synthetic food colorant Allura Red AC promotes susceptibility to experimental colitis via intestinal serotonin in mice. Nat Commun 13, 7617 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-022-35309-y 
• Rowe, K. S., & Rowe, K. J. (1994). Synthetic food coloring and behavior: A dose response effect in a double-blind, placebo-controlled, repeated-measures study. The Journal of Pediatrics, 125(5), 691–698. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0022-3476(06)80164-2 
• Sanam Shah, Anaïs Hasenböhler, Guillaume Javaux, Marie Payen de la Garanderie, Fabien Szabo de Edelenyi, Paola Yvroud, Cédric Agaësse, Alexandre De Sa, Inge Huybrechts, Fabrice Pierre, Marc Audebert, Xavier Coumoul, Chantal Julia, Emmanuelle Kesse-Guyot, Benjamin Allès, Valérie Deschamps, Serge Hercberg, Benoit Chassaing, Emmanuel Cosson, Sopio Tatulashvili, Mélanie Deschasaux-Tanguy, Bernard Srour, Mathilde Touvier; Food Coloring Additives and Incidence of Type 2 Diabetes in the NutriNet-Santé Prospective Cohort. Diabetes Care 20 May 2026; 49 (6): 1067–1077. https://doi.org/10.2337/dc25-2727 
• Soares, B. M., Araújo, T. M. T., Ramos, J. A. B., Pinto, L. C., Khayat, B. M., Bahia, M. O., Montenegro, R. C., Burbano, R. M. R., & Khayat, A. S. (2015). Effects on DNA repair in human lymphocytes exposed to the food dye tartrazine yellow. Anticancer Research, 35(3), 1465–1474. https://ar.iiarjournals.org/content/35/3/1465 
• Zand, A., Enkhbilguun, S., Macharia, J. M., Budán, F., Gyöngyi, Z., & Varjas, T. (2023). Tartrazine Modifies the Activity of DNMT and HDAC Genes-Is This a Link between Cancer and Neurological Disorders?. Nutrients, 15(13), 2946. https://doi.org/10.3390/nu15132946 

Other

• Dunford, E. K., Galligan, T. M., Taillie, L. S., & Musicus, A. A. (2025). All the Colors of the Rainbow: Synthetic Dyes in US Packaged Foods and Beverages in 2020. Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, 125(9), 1207-1217.e9. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jand.2025.05.007 
• Simon, J.E., Decker, E.A., Ferruzzi, M.G., Giusti, M.M., Mejia, C.D., Goldschmidt, M. and Talcott, S.T. (2017), Establishing Standards on Colors from Natural Sources. Journal of Food Science, 82: 2539-2553. https://doi.org/10.1111/1750-3841.13927 

This article Inside the resistance to Spain’s crackdown on migrants in Ceuta was originally published by Waging Nonviolence.

On July 30, images streamed across TVs, social media feeds and newspapers of thousands of people approaching a fence along the beach, in boats and by foot. Migrants, including children and families, were attempting to cross into Ceuta, a Spanish enclave bordered by Morocco. Facing violent border guards and the threat of drowning, over 70,000 people made it to Ceuta, with hopes of eventually reaching the Spanish mainland. Officials in Ceuta said that 100 people died in the crossing — either by drowning or being crushed — and sources on the ground believe the number was higher. 

“I lost my phone, my money, my ID card, everything I had,” one Moroccan teenager recalled. “At one point I got pulled to the bottom, so far down that my feet touched the sand. When I looked around me, I saw women and babies who had drowned.”

“There was no proper humanitarian response from the local authorities — whether it is basic hygiene, food or shelter,” said Ric Fernández, coordinator and spokesperson for humanitarian and migrant advocacy group No Name Kitchen, or NNK, about the first days after the mass crossing. “Instead, there was an institutional response of pressuring people to ‘voluntarily’ return to Morocco. … There was repression, violence against people on the move in every form — legal, administrative and physical, and the forced expulsion of people.”   

Facing intense pressure and violence from both the Spanish police and military, within 96 hours most people returned to Morocco. Estimates about how many migrants remain are in flux, but the Spanish government said in late September that up to 10,000 people are still in Ceuta.

While the global mainstream media quickly moved on from this story, the situation in Ceuta has remained tense over the last three months, with increased violent harassment by the police, evictions and collective expulsions. In recent weeks, “voluntary returns” and evictions from makeshift camps on the beach have ramped up.

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Irene Estébanez Gutiérrez, a family and community doctor in Madrid, spent two weeks in Ceuta as a volunteer. “An information campaign has been waged that portrays people on the move as invaders, violent and dangerous,” she said. The media coverage, she believes, has failed to adequately address “the resulting humanitarian crisis, the systematic violation of rights, the lack of protection for minors, and the systematic violence and discrimination to which people are being subjected to, particularly by the military.”

Those who remain include Moroccan men and women, alongside Sudanese, Syrians, Palestinians, Malians and Nigerians. According to NNK, a significant number are minors. They are still stranded; the majority of them have slept in the street or in makeshift tents since they crossed into Ceuta over two months ago. 

Kora, who uses a pseudonym as an activist to protect her identity, arrived in Ceuta to volunteer in early August and found the violence and the lack of access to basic necessities particularly angering. The authorities were “not letting them access the supermarkets to get food or water,” she said. “They turned off the publicly and freely accessible water [to shower or drink] on the beaches and beat them or scare them in the middle of the night … to purposefully making their lives more miserable.” 

Organizing solidarity, facing criminalization

This violence, however, did not prevent activists and migrants from developing forms of organizing and resistance. Hundreds of migrants staged a protest on a popular beach in Ceuta in August to demand asylum. On Sept. 21, Migreurop, a Euro-African network of organizations, activists and researchers that monitors European migration policies, noted in a joint statement with over 100 organizations: “We have witnessed forms of resistance in everyday survival practices.” They mentioned the sharing of information, food and medicine, as well as safety and protection practices. 

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Besides migrants’ self-led efforts, civil society has stepped up to help, with the Spanish Red Cross distributing food at Trampolín Beach, the site of one makeshift camp. Other local charities like Luna Blanca, have been providing between 2,700 and 3,500 meals a day in five locations with initial funding from the Spanish government. NNK, a group started by Serbian activists in 2017 that supports migrants along the Balkan and Mediterranean routes to the EU, has been working in Ceuta since 2021. It has grown from a fixed team of four to more than 21 volunteers, after a call for help in early August through social media and Signal groups with other grassroots organizations providing aid to migrants in EU borders. Operations have shifted in the three months since the migrants arrived, and NNK is now cooking and serving over 1,200 meals a day in a new industrial-size kitchen. 

Fernández shared how the group has adapted its work on the ground to keep up with a crisis situation. “For more than a month [after July 30], we were not able to do proper legal accompaniment, because the system was broken and we were just trying to register people,” he said. “We tried to divide our work into four different teams: legal, health, cooking, awareness.” To keep things coordinated, aid groups in Ceuta hold a weekly meeting to share information and needs. The most pressing needs are for immediate humanitarian assistance, including clothes distribution, housing for vulnerable groups and phone charging. 

Volunteers arrive from Spain and mostly other European countries, contributing what they can based on their experience. “I provided direct basic health care because of the barriers to accessing medical care and the huge health needs due to violence and living conditions,” said Irene, the doctor who volunteered with NNK. She said she assessed dozens of cases involving wounds or injuries resulting from assaults, mostly perpetrated by the Spanish military. 

The hostility of authorities toward migrants has also extended to volunteers, who carry out their daily work under intense police monitoring. Police constantly ask for identification documents and conduct searches, including of food containers meant for distribution. Reprisals against volunteers and grassroots groups have taken multiple forms, from administrative fines to criminal charges of “trafficking.” A volunteer who had previously spent time in Ukraine and Syria reported that the seven-square mile enclave of Ceuta felt considerably more militarized than either of those countries.

Lessons learned and the way ahead 

Spain’s response to the people who crossed into Ceuta has been shocking to many observers, especially for a country that has been considered among the more progressive in the European Union on migration. This comes at a time when states are slowly beginning to implement the EU Pact on Migration and Asylum, a new and comprehensive reform to migration management which includes a focus on external borders. Legal advocates argue that this pact, coupled with the use of emergency laws, could suspend migration and human rights law in the EU during mass border crossings like the one in Ceuta. 

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Solidarity groups have also come under attack and are looking for ways to move forward in this new atmosphere. Greece is among the first countries to implement the pact and one that has led the way in criminalizing humanitarian efforts to support migrants. This increasing criminalization is happening “through the misuse of the criminal justice system to target and persecute activists and people in solidarity for their work, as well as through administrative law, such as harsher requirements for the registration of civil society organizations,” said Eleni Sirri from the Border Violence Monitoring Network, a network of NGOs, associations and collectives that monitors human rights violations at and within European borders. 

Anna Gruber is the advocacy manager from Collective Aid, an NGO working with migrants in the borderlands of Serbia, Bosnia and Greece. She shared how Collective Aid also had to reorganize and strategize about the way ahead, given the increase in crackdowns on humanitarian work, as well as the anticipated changes because of the EU pact. “We are now focusing more on capturing conditions in detention, [and] mapping deaths and disappearances on the borders,” she said. “While these are hard to trace, bringing all the scattered evidence we can find together helps showcase the EU’s focus on detention camps and the containment of migration that is at heart of the new pact.” 

Like other groups navigating the criminalization of migration and anticipated changes under the new pact, NNK feels it is important for grassroots groups across the EU and beyond to come together around migrant rights. Fernández believes putting energy into growing networks and collectives of grassroots groups is the way forward. “The far-right in Europe and instrumentalization of migration will continue to grow,” he said. “We need to prepare for that and learn from each other to be stronger.” 

Kirsten Dimovitz, the advocacy coordinator for the Border Violence Monitoring Network and a volunteer in Ceuta, contributed additional reporting to the story.

This article Inside the resistance to Spain’s crackdown on migrants in Ceuta was originally published by Waging Nonviolence.

In nearly two years the Trump administration has protected just three species as threatened or endangered under the Endangered Species Act and missed dozens of deadlines to make decisions promised in a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service workplan. No other administration in the more than 50 years since the law was passed has protected so few animals and plants from extinction.

“The Trump administration is just a pure disaster for the natural world and America’s struggling wildlife will pay the price,” said Noah Greewnwald, endangered species codirector at the Center for Biological Diversity. “To benefit polluters and billionaires the administration is taking a wrecking ball to protections not just for wildlife but also our air, water and climate.”

In 2024 the Service published the fifth version of its workplan since 2016, providing a schedule of protection decisions for hundreds of species by fiscal year (Sept. 30 to Oct. 1) over the next five years. In fiscal year 2026 the Service failed to make scheduled findings for 39 species, leaving wildlife like little brown bats, golden-winged warblers, Arizona toads and more in the lurch.

“Even before Trump species waited far too long for protection,” said Greenwald. “Now massive spending and staffing cuts and contempt for environmental protections mean hundreds of plants and animals won’t get badly needed protections anytime soon, pushing them closer to extinction. It’s truly sad.”

Under the Clinton administration 521 species were protected and under the Obama administration 361 species were protected. Only 22 species were protected under the first Trump administration. To date, the second Trump administration has listed just three Florida reptiles: the Florida Keys mole skink, rim rock crowned snake and the Key ringneck snake. All three were listed following court orders.

In July the Trump administration published a new version of the workplan that dropped decisions for 64 species over the next five years, meaning animals including pygmy rabbits and Florida manatees have no prospects for gaining lifesaving protection.

The Trump-Vance administration has abandoned its appeal in National Council of Nonprofits et al. v. McMahon, a case brought by a broad coalition of nonprofit organizations, more than a dozen local governments, and labor unions against the U.S. Department of Education. The case stopped a new rule that would have allowed the Secretary of Education to disqualify government and nonprofit employers that disagree with the administration’s policies from a program intended to support borrowers working in public service jobs.

Earlier this year, a federal court ordered the Trump-Vance administration to stop its unlawful rewriting of the Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) program as a way of silencing nonprofit organizations and local governments that do work that runs counter to the administration’s political agenda. The government had filed an appeal of the ruling, but on Wednesday submitted a joint stipulation of dismissal, which will formally end the matter and ensure the new rule will never take effect.

Plaintiffs in the case include the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), City of Albuquerque, City of Boston, City of Chicago, City and County of San Francisco, County of Santa Clara, Amica Center for Immigrant Rights, Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights, Legal Aid DC, National Association of Social Workers, National Council of Nonprofits, Oasis Legal Services, American Federation of Teachers, and National Education Association. The coalition is represented by Democracy Forward and Protect Borrowers in this matter; the County of Santa Clara and City and County of San Francisco represent themselves.

“The Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program was created so public service workers can pursue careers serving their communities without being burdened with debilitating debt,” said AFSCME President Patrick Moran. “Countless essential workers rely on this program, and weaponizing it for political purposes would hurt not just these workers but the communities they serve. We’re glad the administration is now following the law and abandoning this illegal scheme.”

Quotes from additional plaintiffs included in the coalition about the court’s ruling are available here.

The legal team on this case includes Sarah Goetz, Victoria Nugent, Simon Brewer, Jennifer Fountain Connolly, and Robin Thurston from Democracy Forward, Persis Yu and Winston Berkman-Breen from Protect Borrowers, and attorneys from the County of Santa Clara Office of the County Counsel and San Francisco City Attorney’s Office.

Read the opinion that decided the case here and learn more about the case here.

On Sunday, October 25, 2026 Brazilians choose between President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Senator Flávio Bolsonaro, son of former president Jair Bolsonaro, who finished narrowly ahead in the first round. For Brazil’s Landless Workers’ Movement (MST), whose communities are featured in this episode of Field Notes, the stakes are concrete. They remember what happened the last time a Bolsonaro was in power.

Six demands to policy and decision-makers to strengthen policies in support of family farmers, by the Civil Society and Indigenous Peoples’ Mechanism (CSIPM).

There are nearly 900 million food producers at the heart of food systems. More than 90 percent of the world’s roughly 608 million farms are family-run, and generate around 80 percent of global food value; smallholdings under two hectares alone account for roughly a third of the food produced worldwide. Yet many of these smallholder farmers, pastoralists, fisherfolk, Indigenous Peoples’, women and youth face massive challenges that threaten their livelihoods and agency. 

Commitments to family farmers are not lacking. Since 2011, the Committee on World Food Security (CFS) has adopted a series of policy recommendations that recognise their central role:

• How to Increase Food Security and Smallholder-Sensitive Investments in Agriculture (2011)
• Investing in Smallholder Agriculture for Food Security and Nutrition (2013)
• Connecting Smallholders to Markets (2016)
• Promoting Youth Engagement and Employment in Agriculture and Food Systems for Food Security and Nutrition(2022)

The CSIPM developed these key messages in consultation with smallholder farmers, peasants, pastoralists, fisherfolk and Indigenous Peoples across a balance of regions. They reflect the experiences, lessons and struggles of those living with the gap between policy and practice. 

The CSIPM calls on policy-makers to act on the following six priorities:

• Rights-holders must take part in decision-making. 
• Policy coherence is political, not technical 
• Youth must shape prorgrammes meant for them 
• Agrarian reform and an end to the criminialisation of peasants and Indigenous Peoples
• Redirect public finance to smallhoderls, territorial markets and fair prices
• A gender lens in every policy

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The post Words Won’t Feed Us: Six Priorities of the People Who Already Do appeared first on CSIPM.

EWG comments to HHS and FCC on radiofrequency radiation exposure limits Anthony Lacey October 22, 2026

Attached are EWG’s comments to the Department of Health and Human Services and the Federal Communications Commission urging joint action to update radiofrequency radiation exposure limits to protect public health and children.

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Nurses at Watsonville Community Hospital (WCH) in Watsonville, California, will hold a Care Not Cuts Town Hall on Saturday, October 24, to warn community members about the potential decision to close the neonatal intensive care, labor and delivery, and postpartum units, a major shutdown of all birthing care services at the facility.

We could all use a little extra environmental inspiration these days, so here are 15 new books for readers of all ages.

We’ve adapted the books’ official descriptions below, and the link in each title goes to the publisher’s page. You can also find any of these titles through your local bookseller and library.

Spooky Rivers: 25 Strange and Mysterious Rivers That Snake Across Our Planet

By Geo Rutherford

A thrilling nonfiction book that follows the winding histories of 25 mysterious rivers around the world. Explore natural phenomena, scientific oddities, historical events, and environmental disasters, as well as the myths and legends tied to these waterways, which are increasingly threatened by climate change.

Rivers are the Earth’s restless travelers — carving landscapes, shaping history, and holding secrets. Some are forces of destruction, sweeping away everything in their path, while others are lifelines, sustaining civilizations for millennia. And some are both, bringing prosperity and devastation in equal measure. From deadly whirlpools to lost cities submerged beneath their waves, these rivers challenge everything we think we know about the natural world. There are rivers that catch fire, rivers that boil, and rivers so deep they seem bottomless. Some slither beneath the ground you stand on, while others vanish without a trace.

Who knew rivers could be so … spooky?

Big Cats

By Steve Winter and Sharon Guynup

National Geographic photographer Steve Winter has spent his career photographing big cats around the world, from the graceful jaguars of Brazil’s Pantanal to elusive Himalayan snow leopards. His photographs astound; his stories, even more so. Winter and environmental journalist Sharon Guynup share experiences behind the lens.

In chapters on every key species — cougar, jaguar, leopard, snow leopard, tiger, and lion — readers will witness the power of Winter’s work, including uplifting stories of how his photographs have made a difference and powered important conservation efforts on behalf of these mighty creatures.

Winter and Guynup’s work has changed the world — and it continues to awe and inspire us. But you don’t have to be a serious-minded conservationist to be pulled into their new book. All animal lovers, especially those who love cats, big and small, are invited to look deeply into the eyes and lives of these iconic species.

Wild Work: Adventures of Women Field Biologists

By Sophie A. H. Osborn and Susan B. Adams

More than 40 real-life adventure stories by 37 women field biologists take readers behind the scenes with wolves, condors, bats, bears, and other wild animals, highlighting the important work of women in field science and wildlife conservation. This is an inspiring and entertaining anthology that brings to light the often-untold stories of women in wildlife science, featuring first-person accounts by dozens of adventurous field biologists, immersing readers in the thrilling and compelling reality of studying and conserving fish and wildlife across the globe.

From playing tag with wolves or cuddling wild foxes to wading through rivers filled with venomous snakes or evading poachers, these women share stories of courage, curiosity, and resilience. And they share the delicate balancing act of juggling demanding fieldwork with family life, the lifelong friendships they forge in the wild, and the transformative power of connecting deeply with the natural world. They also bear witness to the fact that while women have been integral to fish and wildlife research for decades, their stories have rarely been represented in literature.

The Nerd Reich: Silicon Valley Fascism and the War on Democracy

By Gil Durán

When Silicon Valley says it’s ‘‘moving fast and breaking things,” the world is bullied into perceiving the chaos as a “necessary cost” of innovation. Gil Durán reveals something far more sinister: a decades-long campaign to replace elected governments with corporate rule. The Nerd Reich explains the origins, strategies, and ambitions of Silicon Valley’s war on democracy for the first time. From San Francisco’s weaponized elections and secret billionaire projects to the White House, Durán exposes how the world’s richest men are building a new political order.

Using insider political experience and new investigations, Durán traces this ideology from its philosophical roots in The Sovereign Individual by James Dale Davidson and Lord William Rees-Mogg. He introduces its modern “messiahs” — Peter Thiel, Marc Andreessen, Balaji Srinivasan, and Elon Musk — and shows how the promise of technological liberation has become a global movement for digital feudalism, powered by cryptocurrency, artificial intelligence, and the algorithmic propaganda of social media.

More than a hidden history, this book is an urgent warning: Democracy is being dismantled by code, capital, and the illusion of innovation. Durán insists there is still time to fight back — if we act now.

Profiles in Cowardice: A Study of Collaboration in the Trump Era

By Jacob Weisberg

History will be particularly harsh to Trump enablers who share and covet money and power. They represent intuitions that are central in determining whether America remains a free, functioning democracy or not — and they know very well they are committing crimes. In this bitterly humorous book, Weisberg has written a defining book of the Trump era — how this pitch-black political moment happened, why so few resisted, and what it reveals about the character of American leadership.

Big Tech, Wall Street, mega-corporations and the U.S. Congress are encapsulated in eight individuals who together form an entwined network of power in America, giving us a new way to understand how authoritarianism can take root in an open society — not by overthrowing institutions, but by bending and bullying them into submission.

We’ve Been Here the Whole Time! A Not So Sacred Guide to All Things Native America

By Joey Clift

Foreword by Shane Hawk / Illustrated by Julie Fiveash

Comedian Joey Clift (Cowlitz nation) takes you on a hilarious journey to discover the largest population you don’t know in this sharp debut for fans of Michael Harriot and Phoebe Robinson. Put away the construction paper: This contraband book contains everything your high school refused to teach you about Native American history, people, and culture — illustrated in an irreverent textbook-meets-notebook style by Diné artist Julie Fiveash.

Clift walks you through a wide range of misconceptions, weird questions, and even weirder assumptions, covering everything from Pocahontas and sports mascots to ancestry claims and the Land Back movement. This hilarious, NDN-approved guide to Native America is a great gift for history buffs, teachers, and comedy fans.

Brought to You By: How Corporations Warped the Truth, Conned the Public, and Broke Democracy

By Amy Westervelt

A gripping account of the corporate propaganda that has invaded our media, our democracy, and now the very nature of truth itself from investigative reporter and Drilled podcast host Amy Westervelt.

Whether it’s the tobacco industry lying about the health dangers of cigarettes, Big Pharma burying studies that make its products less marketable, or Big Oil misleading the public on the dangers of the climate crisis, we all know corporations use doubt and science denial to avoid responsibility. So why do we continue to let them get away with it?

Westervelt exposes the plot hidden within the familiar story of science denial. Over the last century, Big Industry has built a vast apparatus of think tanks, lobbyists, sponsored university labs, and obliging news networks to con the public and fool decision-makers, poisoning the informational ecosystem and warping the nature of truth along the way.

Forest of the Sea: The Remarkable Life and Imperiled Future of Kelp

By David Helvarg

A spectacular cold-water paradise 30 million years in the making is succumbing to warming oceans. Kelp forests are largely out of sight, hidden under the ocean’s surface, yet they are one of Earth’s most wonderous and underappreciated marine habitats. It’s an ethereal light-infused realm of sharks, otters, eels, sea stars, crabs, rockfish, and myriad other species vital to a functioning ocean and the countless coastal communities that make their living from the sea. Unlike coral reefs, whose similar plight plays out in tropical waters highly visible to vacationing tourists, kelp forests thrive along cold-water coastlines far from tourist centers. What will it take to stop the decline before these underwater playgrounds bursting with colorful life become vast fields of lifeless urchin barrens?

The Earth Said Remember Me: How to Revive Our Memories and Restore the Planet

By Jason Dove Mark

A rallying cry and resistance manual from one of the leaders breathing new life into the environmental movement. As the climate emergency worsens and biodiversity shrinks, we somehow get used to it. We struggle to remember what summers were like before the unrelenting heat, in those years before wildfires became an annual routine. We adapt, we normalize. Scientists call this “shifting baseline syndrome,” and they warn that it’s why we are increasingly sleepwalking toward disaster.

Read an excerpt.

Great Reads for Young People (and some adults too!)

Beatrix Potter’s Botanical: The Art of Flowers and Fungi

By Marta McDowell

A rare collection of Beatrix Potter’s own botanical art, and an exploration of the role these plants played in her personal and literary life. This beautiful book showcases 65 plants and fungi that Potter made special study of in her often-overlooked career as a botanical artist. For each species we see Potter’s original pencil and watercolor renderings, learn about the specimen’s role in her various beloved gardens, and hear the stories of how it inspired or appeared in her literary work. The result is a new look at the celebrated illustrator as a pioneering botanical artist and budding scientist.

Liars, Cheats, and Copycats: Trickery and Deception in Nature

By James O’Hanlon

Meet some of the world’s most dastardly creatures, who lie, cheat, and deceive for a living. There’s the deadly praying mantis that looks like an innocent pink flower. The assassin bug that strums spider webs to lure in a tasty snack. The cuttlefish that changes color to hide its romantic intentions.

To understand how these creatures swindle their way to survival, this book reveals the science behind camouflage, mimicry, and masquerade, taking readers on a journey from tropical rainforests to the darkness of deep ocean trenches to examine how animals and plants use deception to avoid predators, lure in prey, and even reproduce.

Let’s Explore Foxes: An Urban Wildlife Explorers Book

By Siski Kalla

Perfect for home or school, the new book for children in the acclaimed Urban Wildlife Explorer series takes a close look at foxes, one of the most common but least understood wild urban animals. Ideal for curious young minds, they’re bursting with laugh-out-loud moments, fascinating science, and beautiful watercolor illustrations. The series is also packed with tips on how kids can help protect and interact safely with local wildlife. Whether you’re a budding naturalist or just want to find out more, these are the perfect guides for young urban explorers.

A Raven of the Rainforest

By Rosanne Parry

A stand-alone addition to the New York Times and Indie bestselling Voice of the Wilderness novels by Rosanne Parry, which include A Wolf Called Wander, A Whale of the Wild, A Horse Named Sky, and A Wolf Called Fire.

On Westerly’s otherwise ink-black tail, one bright white feather stands out. Westerly stands out, too. She isn’t like her brother and sister — she’s different. Everyone knows it, including the roost’s story keeper, who proclaims that Westerly alone is destined to save her fellow ravens from a terrible fate. Questioning her destiny, isolated from her family, and full of doubt, Westerly takes to the sky, vowing never to return. But when a once-in-a-lifetime volcanic eruption finds her, she has no choice but to flee in the direction of home.

The Butterfly Season: What 64 Butterflies Taught Me About Nature’s Great Mysteries and the Meaning of Life

By Lea Korsgaard

Combining nature writing, philosophy, myth, science, and 64 beautiful hand-drawn illustrations, The Butterfly Season is a luminous account of one woman’s quest to see all 64 species of butterflies native to Denmark in a single year. Part field diary, part mythological tapestry, part existential reflection, Lea Korsgaard’s journey unfolds across seasons and geographies, through meadows, marshes, and ancient coastal lands as she discovers the mysteries and miracles of the natural world.

The Science of History: Ingenious Inventions From the Ancient Romans to Pirates, Vikings, Cowboys, Samurai, and More

By Mark Brake and Benjamin Bryant

We may think of ancient cultures as rudimentary — but in reality, the humans living hundreds and even thousands of years ago were remarkably savvy, establishing the foundations of the science we rely on today. From early Mesopotamia to the Stone Age, through Ancient Greece and Rome, the pirates of medieval England, and the seafaring Vikings of Scandinavia, the time of the Samurai, Chinese dynasties, and cowboy cultures from the American West to South American ranches and the Mongolian tundra, This fascinating book showcases how different peoples at different times have observed nature, reached rational conclusions, developed scientific techniques, invented revolutionary tools, and devised shockingly creative ways not only to explain the world about them, but to thrive in it.

Within the Earth humans found medicine; within the Air, navigation; within Fire, warfare; and within Water, the ability to manipulate their environment. Discover the origins of surprisingly sophisticated ancient science in this fascinating look at human ingenuity, such as: Terraced Farming (Ancient Andes, China), Samurai Land Stewardship (c. C16th), Roman Concrete (c. 3rd century BC), Stonehenge (c. 3100 BC, England), Samurai Armor Crafting (c. C16th), Viking Battlefield Herbalism (793–1066 AD, Scandinavia), The Pirate Compass (C17th–18th, England) and so many more clever stories and fun facts, textboxes, lists, and features, readers can open any page of The Science of History and learn something new.

 

You can find hundreds of additional environmental book recommendations in the “Revelator Reads” archives.

And let us know what you’re reading: Drop us a line at comments@therevelator.org

Republish this article for free! Read our reprint policy.

The post New Environmental Books to Inspire Your Autumn appeared first on The Revelator.

A bipartisan permitting bill headed for a Senate vote right after the election would give President Donald Trump and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum two years to approve data centers, nuclear facilities, and fossil fuel projects on public lands, then make those approvals nearly impossible to undo. While the bill would help speed the country’s grid buildout, it currently contains three provisions that would be disastrous for public lands, writes CWP Executive Director Aaron Weiss.

Section 1401 of the bill bars agencies from altering any permit in effect on or after September 16, 2026, unless they meet a “clear and convincing evidence” standard far higher than agencies normally face. Courts could no longer pause projects with botched environmental reviews. Construction would continue while the review is redone, and agencies can’t act on the review findings. Opponents of federal actions would get just 150 days to sue. Section 1402 would make taxpayers pay developers 50 to 100 percent of construction costs if a future administration slows a whole category of projects, like gas plants or nuclear fuel facilities, essentially locking in the priorities of the Trump administration.

Meanwhile, the Bureau of Land Management is currently considering at least 35 data center-related applications covering more than 24,000 acres across six Western states. The bill would essentially shield permits for everything from data centers to drilling issued by this administration from reversal by future administrations. Trump’s cancellations of wind and solar projects, meanwhile, stay in place. The bill, as written, also weakens the National Historic Preservation Act, over objections from nine Tribal organizations and the All Pueblo Council of Governors.

Senator Martin Heinrich, who’s co-sponsoring the bill, once said every person “deserves a chance to provide input” on public land management. His bill, as written, gives Burgum and Trump a green light to cut them out. Read more in the latest post on Westwise.

GAO to probe Trump mineral deals

Federal watchdogs plan to investigate what safeguards the Trump administration is abiding by when taking financial stakes in mining companies and separately examine the Interior Department’s decision to create a new division overseeing offshore energy development. Senator Heinrich and Representative Jared Huffman requested the review from the Government Accountability Office.

Quick hits Trump officials ask Supreme Court to let border security project resume in national park

Washington Post

Judge halts U.S. Forest Service reorganization, ruling it is ‘overwhelmingly likely’ that plans violated federal law

Summit Daily

Trump administration plans to begin work on massive arch in two weeks

Washington Post

Burgum discusses Colorado River plan, calls Arizona’s water cuts ‘completely manageable’

13 News

The future of wolf protections in the West hangs on the Ninth Circuit

High Country News

Trump’s East Potomac Golf Course renovations face a growing legal fight

TIME

What’s behind the $105 million donation to Yellowstone National Park?

Mountain Journal | Wes Siler’s Newsletter

Poll: 96% of Coloradans support conserving public lands

9News

Quote of the day

It is overwhelmingly likely that the USDA’s planned closures and relocations violate Congress’s express restriction on those activities… There is no public interest in allowing the government to violate federal law.”

—U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria, Summit Daily

Picture This

@usinterior

Hot moose summer is over. Welcome to cool moose fall.

At @grandtetonnps, autumn means the moose rut is underway. Bull moose roam in search of females, size up their competition and sometimes put those massive antlers to the test.

Romance, rivalry and really big antlers. Fall has arrived in the Tetons.

Photo by Kevin Yu Shi

Feature image: Spent nuclear fuel at the Hanford Nuclear Site, Wikimedia Commons

The post The Senate permitting bill would lock in data centers and nuclear waste on public lands appeared first on Center for Western Priorities.

TALLAHASSEE, FL – Audubon Florida recently honored conservation leaders during its annual Assembly, held October 15–17, 2026. For decades, Audubon Florida has brought together staff, members...

With fuel prices sky-high, the need for fuels from non-petroleum sources has taken on a new urgency. And researchers at Worchester Polytechnic Institute say they might have just the alternative source we need for low-carbon and low-cost fuel: bamboo.

Bamboo could power trains, planes, and automobiles for as little as $2.75 per gasoline-gallon equivalent at mature commercial scale, the researchers calculate. The fuel would emit greenhouse gas emissions 26 times lower than conventional diesel fuel. What’s more, bamboo promises to be a more sustainable biofuel feedstock than conventional ones like corn and sugarcane.

Bamboo is a grass, and one of the fastest-growing plants on Earth. Some species growing several dozen inches in a day. Because of this fast growth rate, the US could make as much fuel from bamboo as it makes ethanol from corn while using about 13% as much land. The WPI researchers published their results in the journal Sustainable Energy & Fuels.

“I think this research is especially timely and important because fuel prices are high and the transportation sector produces more greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S. than any other,” said chemical engineering professor Michael Timko in a press release. “Bamboo would use different land than we are using for food production, so there is no food versus fuel trade-off. Farmers win, consumers win.”

 

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Timko and colleagues evaluated bamboo for biofuel production using a process called hydrothermal liquefaction. In the process, wet biomass or organic wastes are subjected to high heat and pressure. Polymer chains in the mass breaks down to form a biocrude oil. The oil can then be converted to other liquid fuel products.

The researchers heated wet bamboo pulp to 300°C for 10 minutes. The process converted about 36% of its mass into biocrude.

Unlike corn or sugarcane, which are the main plants used to make biofuels today, bamboo wouldn’t compete with agricultural land and doesn’t need much water or energy to grow. And compared with other perennial grasses that are also being considered for biofuel, it has very low ash content—less than 1% by weight—so the fuel-making process generates minimal waste.

”Bamboo may eventually offer industry a way to generate low-carbon liquid fuels at scale,” Timko said.

Source: Timothy M. Woodard et al. Bamboo as a cost-effective feedstock for production of low carbon transportation fuels. Sustainable Energy & Fuels, 2026.

Image: Based on photo by Ranurte/UnSplash. ©Anthropocene Magazine

To put it mildly, Trump is not having a good day.

He is facing challenges from above: The Federal Reserve increased interest rates against his wishes. The Supreme Court ruled against his attempt to limit voting by mail. Judges have thwarted him on such issues as the Kennedy Center and his attempt to ban news outlets from the White House.

Previously loyal Republicans are fleeing now that a Trump endorsement has become a curse. Major far-right media figures such as Tucker Carlson, Marjorie Taylor Greene and Joe Rogan have broken with him. Impeachment and corruption charges are looming.

In addition, he is facing discontent from below: His approval ratings are at record lows. According to polls, 65 percent of voters disapprove of Trump, more than twice as many as the 32 percent who approve. His policies are even more unpopular than they have always been, with just 17 percent approving of his handling of the economy.

Increasingly, Trump is seen as self-serving and corrupt, no longer the “outsider” alternative to elite politics. As one Republican pollster puts it, in a guest essay called “The Trump Brand Has Tanked”: “Voters don’t think the economy is working for them, and they think it’s being rigged more and more in favor of a precious few who are cozied up to our nation’s leaders.”

Everyone is asking, “Why is this happening now?” While the answers vary, the universally acknowledged truth is that the war in Iran is the number one culprit, particularly because it is worsening the ongoing affordability crisis.

The economic fallout from the war is impacting everyone through soaring fuel prices and higher costs of living domestically. This impact is on top of the generalized instability and suffering the war has provoked globally.

The U.S. economy has continued to grow because of enormous investment in artificial intelligence, but this has raised fears of a massive crash if and when the AI bubble bursts.

Trump, of course, ran on the promise of ending deeply unpopular “forever wars,” so his exploits abroad are seen as a betrayal by some of his base.

And significantly, sections of that base are turning against him. In a New York Times opinion piece called “Trump’s Luck is Finally Running Out,” Thomas Edsall quotes Charlie Cook: “Over the last 90 days, President Trump’s political standing has transitioned from very unpopular to toxic and now to radioactive.”

Edsall shares this account from Amy Walter of The Cook Report:

Trump’s staying power in our politics — even, astonishingly, despite the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol — gave the president the confidence and latitude to pursue unpopular policies and blow off scandals that would have sunk any of his predecessors. But now, the economic consequences of his sweeping tariffs and the war in Iran have done the one thing all the controversies of his first term were never able to do: splinter his coalition and sink his approval ratings to all-time lows.

It is certainly gratifying to see the unbearably arrogant and smug Trump brought down. But this isn’t a moment that we can celebrate. As The Guardian put it in September, “The weaker he gets, the more dangerous he gets: Trump lashes out as his power wanes.”

Trump’s relative weakness has not slowed the ruthless tide of xenophobic, racist, and transphobic scapegoating and attacks. Mass detentions and deportations continue. The recent ICE raid on the home of Rep. Ilhan Omar is a chilling example of how far the forces of reaction are willing to go.

Trump’s fear of losing the elections has led him to extreme attempts to undermine liberal democracy, something that is recognized even by conservative critics of the administration such as the neo-conservative Robert Kagan, who says, “We’re heading in the direction of dictatorship.” With varying levels of success, Trump has tried or threatened gerrymandering, restricting mail-in ballots, stationing federal troops or agents at polling stations, and abusing the voter database to throw people off voter lists.

Right-wing fear-mongering about hordes of noncitizens voting is, of course, unfounded. Trump recently cited Department of Homeland Security estimates of 16,000 noncitizen residents registered to vote in Nevada. A state investigation brought that number down to 185 and then, after further scrutiny, zero.

The Nevada Secretary of State called out such widespread disinformation:

DHS officials continue their attempts to intimidate election officials into compliance and deter voters with huge claims of fraud with no evidence…Repeating unsupported claims does not make them true.

Given such extreme efforts to prevent people from voting and undermine the elections, we can anticipate more legal and illegal maneuvers in the face of a Trump loss.

There will likely be further court challenges. As one commentator writes:

The courts have provided mixed verdicts on Mr. Trump’s attempts at vote suppression in advance of the 2026 midterms. But the rulings have handed him an unambiguous gift: a road map for shaping the universe of eligible voters to his liking in the presidential election year of 2028.

Democrats are widely predicted to win the elections in November and may even win majorities in both the House and Senate, but they offer no real alternative to the far-right agenda.

Where we can make a real difference is in movements, campaigns, strikes and struggles on the streets and in the workplace. Collective organizing from below is the only force that has ever won substantial reforms, no matter who is in office.

Many Democrats, including some so-called “progressives,” are bending over backward to distance themselves from issues such as Black Lives Matter, trans rights, and Palestinian rights. If they win the election, it will be a vote against Trump, not a vote for the Democratic Party. In fact, 45 percent of voters say their congressional choice is a vote against Trump, including four out of five Democrats and around half of independents.

Charlie Cooke has the perfect metaphor:

While many have long predicted that Democrats will enjoy a “blue wave” election, I think of it more as a “red undertow,” which will pull many Republicans under and significantly trim the margins for many others. A blue wave implies an endorsement or affirmation of Democrats and their policies. But the Democrats’ brand is still in tatters. … Fortunately for Democrats, this election will in most cases not be about them.

If they do get elected, unless Democrats fight for substantial reforms (which they show no inclination to do), they will only disappoint those with raised expectations and lay the ground for the return of an even more radical GOP in 2028 or 2030, continuing the vicious cycle of the two-party system.

Given these realities and the current weakness of movements, it’s understandable that some people are placing their hopes in democratic socialists working within the Democratic Party. A recent message from Alexandria Ocasio Cortez makes the case. Titled “Why I’m feeling hopeful,” it describes her campaigning in upstate NY:

Launching this program and speaking with organizers has filled me with hope that the energy to elect Democrats up and down the ballot is out there if we can channel it into turning people out who may have previously felt left behind or that their vote did not matter. The way we do that is by giving people something worth showing up for: Medicare for All, universal childcare, a living wage, and a government that actually works for them.

That all sounds wonderful. But it’s not what Democrats of any stripe are delivering anywhere. It is not the agenda of mainstream Democrats. And progressives or democratic socialists who get elected face relentless pressure from the system to toe the line.

In the absence of independent mass movements that can act as a counterweight, elected democratic socialists are unable to meet their campaign promises. Rather than pulling the mainstream to the Left, they themselves move to the center and lend weight to mainstream Democrats.

Katie Wilson, a democratic socialist who was elected as mayor of Seattle last year, campaigned on promises of taxing the rich and funding housing. Instead, she has delivered a city budget with massive spending cuts, no new taxes, and more money for the cops. In New York City, Zohran Mamdani’s failure to reign in the police has already disappointed and frustrated many of his supporters.

The failure is not personal, but systemic: Even the best progressives face the harsh reality of being trapped in a rigged and unbending system once they are elected.

This recognition does not mean inaction.

Revolutionary socialists don’t abstain from elections. They are an important part of politics that we often will want to participate in, whether around a particular ballot issue or a candidate attached to a movement. But we recognize that elections are the territory of the ruling class, and we will always be weakest there. So, they should never be prioritized. We don’t put them first. It’s a waste of our time and energy.

We must not drop our criticisms of mainstream or progressive democrats in office—to do so just leaves the field open to the right wing.

We must defend our limited democracy (including civil liberties), but most importantly, we must fight not only for meaningful reforms but also for the transformation of society that will allow genuine and much more expansive democracy.

The Democratic Party is not committed to such a transformation, and even if they were, would not have much room to maneuver in the current political system.

At an otherwise bleak moment, our reason to be hopeful is that a growing number of people on the Left are dissatisfied with the dominant socialist options, whether reformist or campist. They recognize that we need to build a better alternative.

Where we can make a real difference is in movements, campaigns, strikes and struggles on the streets and in the workplace. Collective organizing from below is the only force that has ever won substantial reforms, no matter who is in office. Hundreds of thousands of mostly young people in France, Spain, Belgium and India are currently demonstrating this in mass protests around education, housing and other issues. These are the same forces that have the power to stop the right and revitalize the Left in the U.S.

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: Hassan Albadawi, The White House; modified by Tempest.

The post Trump is sunk  appeared first on Tempest.

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Artificial intelligence (AI) is developing at a rapid pace and is increasingly being used by scientists to better understand climate change.

AI is perhaps best-known for its use in “large language models”, such as ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini.

However, the field is vast. 

From weather forecasting to analysing satellite images, climate scientists are using various types of AI to develop faster and more efficient ways to study the warming planet. 

However, the technology comes with no shortage of risks and challenges, including overreliance on unverified results, intensive energy use and exacerbating existing inequalities in climate science.

Carbon Brief spoke to 10 experts working across a range of climate-related fields – from developing climate forecasts to analysing changes in the energy grid – about how AI is being used.

Their answers are set out below, grouped by theme.

• What are the benefits and challenges of using AI in weather and climate forecasting?
• What are some other current uses of AI in climate science research?
• How is AI being used to advance climate policy and action?
• How could AI be used in climate research over the coming years?
• Are there any misconceptions about the use of AI in climate science?
• Could AI improve or exacerbate inequalities in climate research?
• What are some other risks and challenges of AI in climate change research?

Article Contents Expand menu

• What are the benefits and challenges of using AI in weather and climate forecasting?
• What are some other current uses of AI in climate science research?
• How is AI being used to advance climate policy and action?
• How could AI be used in climate research over the coming years?
• Are there any misconceptions about the use of AI in climate science?
• Could AI improve or exacerbate inequalities in climate research?
• What are some other risks and challenges of AI in climate change research?

What are the benefits and challenges of using AI in weather and climate forecasting?

Dr Doug McNeall, science lead in data-driven climate modelling at the UK Met Office:

One of the most significant recent developments has been the success of AI weather-prediction models, which learn from large volumes of weather data to predict the next few hours ahead and then repeatedly feed those predictions back into themselves to generate forecasts up to two weeks into the future.

These models have demonstrated that AI can provide accurate predictions while requiring far less computing power than existing numerical models [which rely on mathematical equations to simulate the climate].

One of the main challenges is that AI weather-prediction models have been developed for relatively short timescales, where large amounts of observational data [for example, temperature, rainfall or sea ice extent data] is available and model performance can be evaluated quickly and rigorously.

Climate prediction is fundamentally different. To provide useful climate information, we need to make projections for future climates that lie outside the observational record.

One promising route forward is, therefore, to use AI to emulate or accelerate these existing models, rather than relying solely on purely data-driven approaches. This blended approach could make climate risk information far more accessible and affordable to produce, while retaining the physical understanding [based on mathematical and scientific principles] that underpins confidence in climate projections.

Prof William Collins, professor of AI for climate science at the University of East Anglia:

We’re seeing a really exciting renaissance in both weather and climate science…Machine learning [a subset of AI that uses algorithms to let computers learn from data and make predictions without being explicitly programmed] has had an enormous impact on numerical weather prediction.

So, for example, the European Center for Mid-Range Weather Forecasts is now deploying an AI forecast system as part of their official communication of weather predictions to the European community, alongside the traditional forecast system. AI systems have become good enough that they’re absolutely competitive with the world’s leading numerical weather prediction…So that’s been quite remarkable.

Much of machine learning and AI involves learning from data and climate represents a future for which we do not have data. We’re literally trying to predict the future. We don’t have observations of it. So, where does the data come from to inform the models? That is, at the moment, the central challenge that the climate community is attempting to overcome.

Dr Amirpasha Mozaffari, researcher in Earth artificial intelligence at the Barcelona Supercomputing Centre:

AI forecast models do well on typical weather, but underperform physics-based models on record-breaking and unprecedented extremes – precisely the events that matter most for adaptation [to climate change].

Solving that – whether through hybrid models [which combine AI with traditional models], physical constraints [in which rules are implemented based on the laws of physics to help the models make realistic forecasts] or new ways of evaluating models on what they have not seen – is the central open problem for the field.

What are some other current uses of AI in climate science research?

Dr Stefano Materia, researcher in climate variability and change at the Barcelona Supercomputing Centre:

Besides the climate modelling and prediction framework, the proliferation of Earth-observation satellites has created a massive influx of geospatial data (for example, images showing deforestation or sea ice melt). AI is used to translate raw pixel data into actionable climate intelligence.

Methane tracking and ecosystem monitoring are two examples of this kind of application. Methane is a potent greenhouse gas, but leaks are largely invisible and hard to track. AI algorithms now automatically scan hyperspectral imagery [which uses data from across the electromagnetic spectrum] from satellites to pinpoint specific industrial methane leaks globally, alerting operators in near real-time.

At the same time, machine-learning models process thousands of satellite images daily to detect illegal logging, track land-use changes and monitor glacier retreat long before humans could manually review the footage.

Satellite image showing deforestation in Para, Brazil. Credit: Universal Images Group North America LLC / Alamy Stock Photo

Dr Clare Eayrs, polar research scientist at the Environmental Fluid Dynamics Lab at New York University:

In sea ice research, machine learning is now used across the sea ice modelling workflow…The most mature application is extracting more information from observations, for example, mapping fine-scale sea ice deformation from ship radar and classifying snow layers in micropenetrometer profiles [which measure the hardness or softness of different layers of snow].

Forecasting is the most visible application in this field. Ice Net [a sea ice forecasting system] was an early demonstration that a deep-learning system [which uses models inspired by the layers of a human brain to process information] could outperform a leading physical model in seasonal Arctic forecasts. Machine-learning systems are now used to predict [climate] variables such as sea ice concentration, thickness and drift.

Prof Cristiana Stan, vice-chair of the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP):

AI now appears across all major parts of the WCRP. [For example,]…the ”weather prediction model intercomparison project” [an initiative to create a centralised database of physics- based, machine-learning and hybrid model forecasts] includes physics-based numerical weather prediction models, hybrid [models] and AI weather prediction models. Because it is focused on operational models, the project offers a direct comparison between state-of-the art systems. [It] is intended to accelerate the deployment of the next generation of operational models and contributes to development of metrics needed to assess relative strengths and weaknesses of models.

Downscaling is another area that is harnessing AI power to refine the coarse-resolution model output into high-resolution.

Dr William Collins:

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is performing its seventh assessment report (AR7)…This time, for the very first time, there’s a model intercomparison project just for models using AI [for weather and climate forecasting]. So that is a real milestone…It’s a very exciting proof of principle or proof of concept and, I think, the harbinger of many more developments of this kind to come. 

[For more on how model intercomparison will inform IPCC AR7, see Carbon Brief’s recent guest post.]

Dr Amirpasha Mozaffari:

A few years ago, it took two or three years for a new architecture to make its way from the machine-learning community into weather and climate work. Today it is a matter of months: diffusion models, foundation models and generative ensembles have all arrived in our field almost as soon as they appeared elsewhere. That speed opens up things that were previously out of reach.

And the cost of running a global forecast has dropped by orders of magnitude…which, in principle, changes who can produce weather and climate information at all. 

How is AI being used to advance climate policy and action?

Prof Priya Donti, assistant professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and co-founder of Climate Change AI:

As we introduce more solar, wind and other renewable energy into the power grid, we need to rethink how we actually manage the various sources on the power grid… 

AI is used in a few different ways here. One of them is just trying to get better predictions of solar and wind power production in order to reduce that uncertainty and allow us to plan with a little more foresight.

Wind turbines and solar panels in California. Credit: Tom Grundy / Alamy Stock Photo

Another big one is helping to actually optimise and control the various components we have on power grids – the power generators, the batteries, flexible loads like industrial loads or the batteries in your electric vehicles or heating and cooling systems.

Dr Carlos Rodriguez-Pardo, postdoctoral researcher at Politecnico di Milano, affiliated scientist at the European Institute on Economics and the Environment and at the Euro-Mediterranean Center on Climate Change:

AI is already useful at every stage of the climate policy cycle. 

The first stage is measurement: understanding what is happening, what has been tried and who is exposed. Machine learning helps us process satellite imagery to estimate emissions, improve air quality monitoring, harmonise fragmented policy databases and map a scientific literature that has grown far beyond what any human team could read.

The second stage is modelling futures. The models we use to explore climate and economic scenarios are computationally very expensive, so AI-based emulators [simple models that can be used to represent more complex mathematical models] that reproduce their behaviour at a small fraction of the cost are transforming what we can do. Instead of a handful of scenarios, we can explore thousands and quantify uncertainties that were previously out of reach.

Reinforcement learning [a type of AI in which a computer programme learns to make decisions through a process of trial and error] is also allowing us to study how multiple actors, such as countries or electricity producers, compete and cooperate under different policy designs. This can reveal strategies that classical analysis misses. 

The third stage is evaluation, where causal machine learning is extending the toolkit we use to answer whether a policy actually worked. That is a different – and much harder – question than predicting what will happen next.

How could AI be used in climate research over the coming years?

Prof Cristiana Stan:

The WCRP has established a task team to address this very question. The focus areas considered by the task team include modelling and projections, data and observations [and AI] impacts and services, engagement with the private sector supporting development and integration of AI and machine learning into climate research and applications and the scientific rigour and trustworthiness of AI and machine learning methods.

Dr William Collins:

I think the IPCC’s eighth assessment [likely due in the late 2020s] may itself largely be written using large language models. Basically, the job of the people writing the IPCC report is to synthesise…One could certainly argue whether or not that needs to be done by people. AI should be telling us the known unknowns, not the known knowns… The thing that’s value-added [by AI] as part of that assessment process is to tell us what isn’t certain, what isn’t known well. Because then that tells you where the science should be heading.

[In September 2026, the IPCC established an “informal group” on AI to “provide timely guidance on the responsible use of AI and emerging digital technologies in IPCC processes”.]

AI will also be an integral part of the eighth Coupled Model Intercomparison Project, with machine-learning codes running alongside traditional climate models.

Dr Stefano Materia:

The inclusion of AI in climate and land-vegetation modelling represents a paradigm shift. Rather than replacing physical models entirely, hybrid modelling merges the mathematical rigour and physical consistency of traditional process-based Earth system models [advanced computer models that combine physical, chemical and biological processes to simulate the climate] with the pattern-recognition power and speed of machine learning.

This new approach will be able to overcome computational bottlenecks, replace unresolved subgrid processes [which are too small to be captured by the grid cells of a computer model], improve the terrestrial biosphere – finally narrowing down the uncertainties on the terrestrial carbon sink and accurately pinpointing emergent constraints and non-linear tipping points.

Dr Clare Eayrs:

Much of what we know about Antarctic sea ice comes from the satellite era, which begins in 1979. That is a short record for a system with strong decadal variability. A great deal of information about earlier conditions is contained in ship logs, whaling records, expedition photographs and early aerial and pre-1979 satellite imagery. Machine learning is well suited to extracting it. Lengthening the observational record would improve almost everything else we do, including training and testing AI systems.

“The Bear” whaling ship getting free from the ice pack. Credit: New Bedford Whaling Museum Are there any misconceptions about the use of AI in climate science?

Dr David Rolnick:

AI is frequently thought of as large generative models, like [those] developed by large tech companies. But that is not mostly what is useful in AI for tackling climate change.

People talk a lot about energy usage of AI and negative impacts on society, including on the climate, as a result of that energy usage and associated negative impacts like water usage. These are very real worries. However, it is worth noting that the massive energy and other requirements of AI systems are referring to those large-scale generative and agentic systems. They’re not mostly about the kinds of AI systems that are actually used to fight climate change.

Prof Priya Donti:

I think the general public thinks of AI as this one specific thing…often large language models, chatbots, etc…People who are making allocation decisions for who funds scientists might have a mismatched understanding of what needs to happen, which means the right science doesn’t necessarily get funded.

Could AI improve or exacerbate inequalities in climate research?

Dr Amirpasha Mozzafari: 

Frontier models [which are at the cutting edge of AI research] are built almost exclusively in the global north, trained on data that is densest where observations are richest and validated against benchmarks that reflect the same regions. 

Cheap inference [in which a trained AI model applies its learned patterns to new, unseen data] does not fix that on its own: being able to run someone else’s model is not the same as having a say in what it is trained on, how it is evaluated, or whether it serves your decisions. 

Without deliberate effort to share data infrastructure, evaluation metrics that centre on people’s wellbeing and genuine co-production of knowledge, AI risks automating and amplifying the existing divide in the global climate information system rather than closing it.

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Dr Carlos Rodriguez-Pardo:

If done well, [developing AI-based Earth system models] could dramatically lower barriers to entry. A small research group, or an agency in a data-poor region, could adapt a pre-trained model on modest hardware rather than building bespoke systems from scratch. That matters because [the] data is thinnest and the resolution gap is largest exactly where vulnerability to climate [change] is highest.

Dr David Rolnick, associate professor in the school of computer science at McGill University and cofounder of Climate Change AI:

Climate action should fundamentally be about democratisation of action and equitable response to climate change, both in terms of mitigation and in terms of adaptation. The consolidation of large-scale AI can often work counter to those goals by consolidating power in certain geographies and stakeholders, and by defining action based upon the goals of those stakeholders. 

When you build technology in specific institutions, they do not necessarily understand the needs of the majority of the world’s population or local stakeholders from other geographies and other entities. 

What are some other risks and challenges of AI in climate change research?

Dr Clare Eayrs:

The biggest challenge is trust…Good performance is necessary, but it is not enough. We also need independent evaluation, physical credibility, process-based validation, robustness and some degree of interpretability.

The risk I worry about most is that the apparent success of these systems could be read as a reason to invest less on observations. AI is not a substitute for observation, physical understanding or careful evaluation. Especially for Antarctic sea ice, where observations of sea ice and snow thickness remain sparse and understanding of snow-ice processes remains limited, we need more, targeted observations, not fewer. It also makes the case for documenting them – and their uncertainties – far better than we do now.

Dr William Collins:

The challenge is always making sure that you’re getting the right answer for the right reason and the risk is getting a plausible answer that is “truthy”, but not the truth…Ask a computer for an answer and it will give you one. And it’s very good. It will always obey. It will always give you an answer. The question is whether or not that answer is valid or not.

Dr David Rolnick:

The first and foremost risk is AI diverging attention from other forms of climate action. AI is not a silver bullet. It is not an answer in itself. And where it is useful, it is only one part of the solution.

Prof Detlef van Vuuren, a senior researcher at the PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency [in a 2026 Carbon Brief interview]:

There are now many more proposals being submitted than in the past, as people can use AI tools. So our science discipline has to start learning how to deal with this, both in terms of what we feel is allowed in creating [scientific] articles – what is allowed in reviewing [and] what is allowed in proposal writing. This is something that we have to learn.

Dr William Collins:

The partnership between academia, the data centres and private industry is going to be integral to our success going forward. And I think the challenge is going to be navigating that relationship in a way that respects open science, uses open source code, etc…

You do not want to be in a situation where we have something like a large language model where it’s not open source…[We need] fairness, accountability, transparency and explainability. 

Dr Carlos Rodriguez-Pardo:

High-resolution outputs can look exact when they are not; uncertainties compound in invisible ways and predictions that feed into policy need honest, well-calibrated uncertainty estimates, communicated in decision-relevant terms.

Like any other technology, AI should augment human judgement in climate decisions, not replace it. As researchers, it is our responsibility to ensure the field serves as a force for social progress.

Related Explainer: The CMIP7 emissions scenarios – and how they explore future climate change 01.09.2026 Climate modelling Guest post: How CMIP7 will shape the next wave of climate science 22.05.2026 Climate modelling Traditional models still ‘outperform AI’ for extreme weather forecasts 29.04.2026 Climate modelling Limiting global warming to 2C would not ‘rule out’ extreme impacts 25.03.2026 Climate modelling

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