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Vietnam Veterans Against the War Protest the Nixon Administration at the 1972 RNC

The Wednesday, October 21, 2026, Climate Justice Forum radio program, produced by regional, climate activists collective Wild Idaho Rising Tide (WIRT), features Allie Rosenbluth with Oil Change International talking about the deceptive Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act currently rushed through Congress, which would weaken bedrock, environmental laws protecting waterways, endangered species, historic sites, tribal consultation, and public review through required, government, environmental impact reports on proposed infrastructure, and would speed permitting of clean and dirty energy projects.  We also share news, videos, and reflections on opportunities to oppose and stop this latest legislative deal for industry, tar sands mining and tailings pond pollution of the Athabasca and Mackenzie rivers and First Nations in Canada, a settlement ending the lawsuit brought by Lithium Nevada against six indigenous and allied Thacker Pass mining protesters, a request for support of a Native land defender from the Trans Mountain tar sands pipeline, whose home sustained a retaliatory attack, and an observed, 2026 derailment and Amtrak delay in North Dakota, 25 years after a nearby, Canadian Pacific train wreck that released fertilizer ammonia, killed one resident, and injured hundreds more.  Broadcast for fourteen years on progressive, volunteer, community station KRFP Radio Free Moscow, every Wednesday between 1:30 and 3 pm Pacific time, on-air at 90.3 FM and online at KRFP and the Pacifica Network AudioPort, the show describes continent-wide, grassroots, frontline resistance to fossil fuels projects, the root causes of climate change, thanks to generous, anonymous listeners who adopted program host Helen Yost as their KRFP DJ.

“The Death of the Mackenzie River,” A Warning We Cannot Ignore, October 14, 2026 Keepers of the Water

Free! Thacker Pass Defenders Settle Lawsuit as Ethics Scandal Grows, October 9, 2026 Max Wilbert

Help Land Defender Kanahus Manuel Rebuild Her Home, October 8, 2026 Leftie Jane

Nineteen Train Cars Derail in Minot, September 30, 2026 Minot Daily News

One Killed after Train Derails, Leaks Ammonia, January 18, 2002 CNN

See also: Derailment of Canadian Pacific Railway Freight Train 292-16 and Subsequent Release of Anhydrous Ammonia near Minot, North Dakota (Railroad Accident Report NTSB/RAR-04/01), January 18, 2002 National Transportation Safety Board

Stop the Dirty Deal Again + Mass Call Tonight @ 5 pm PT/8 pm ET, October 21, 2026 People vs. Fossil Fuels (email similar to next article)

Stop the Latest Dirty Deal!, 2026 People vs. Fossil Fuels

Oppose Permitting Reform Organizing Call, 2026 Zoom/People vs. Fossil Fuels

The Deceptive “Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act”, October 19, 2026 Locus Focus/KBOO

 

In this conversation, edited and updated, Bioneers Producer Stephanie Welch speaks with Chloe Maxmin. Hailing from rural Maine, Chloe is the Co-Founder of Dirtroad Organizing alongside her best friend, Canyon Woodward. She also runs Begin Again Farm with her partner, Bill Pluecker, growing organic vegetables for her community. Chloe received an honors degree from Harvard College, where she co-founded Divest Harvard. Chloe served in the Maine House of Representatives in 2018 and the Maine State Senate in 2020. She was the youngest woman ever to serve in the Maine Senate and is the co-author (with Canyon) of Dirt Road Revival. (Note: Dirtroad Organizing is a non-partisan organization that focuses on values, not Party. Chloe’s political work does not affect Dirtroad’s non-partisan commitment.)

STEPHANIE: In this political climate, where we’re being told how polarized we are as a country, but there are many issues that a majority of people in the U.S. agree on, such as the need for universal healthcare, a living wage, having clean air, water, and food. Considering your work finding common ground, is it frustrating to hear all the time the refrain, especially in the media, that we can’t come together? How are you feeling about that aspect of our current political climate?

CHLOE: I mean, we are polarized. It’s something I experience in my community, and people who come through our organization, Dirtroad Organizing, are experiencing it, too. The ability to simply have a conversation across party lines is very, very difficult right now, and it takes a lot of intention and thought to make that happen. 

But at the same time, I think that the power of finding common ground still exists. We have to carve out the space to make that happen. We’re told a lot of stories that make it hard for people to hear the other side. This has made it both much more difficult to have space for another point of view, and it has also stoked horrible racism, xenophobia, and violence in our country that has made these bridge-building conversations unsafe for many people. At Dirtroad Organizing, our work is about trying to find the space where you can find that moment to reach beyond. 

There’s definitely a lot of prejudice and judgment on the left about rural voters that voted for Trump, and that’s a theme that rural voters feel. I feel it as a progressive living in a rural area–a kind of remote disdain from the left about folks in my community. People in my community are good people, and they’re disenfranchised and don’t feel represented, and can’t make ends meet. But in so many spaces that I’m in on the left, it feels like I have to make the case that they should talk to people who voted for Trump. 

Of course, some people who voted for Trump are far right extremists that I don’t have space for. But most folks are just trying to find the best way towards a good life for themselves and their families. I hear many folks saying, you know, just trust Trump, it’s all going to work out, he’s going to keep his word. And then I hear other people saying, “I regret voting for him.” I think time will tell, and we’ll see how it shakes out in our elections.

Photo by Henney Sullivan, courtesy of Dirtroad Organizing

STEPHANIE: I was in Iowa and interviewed small farmers and others who were sick of agribusiness and were organizing locally to advocate for busting up monopolies that are killing their communities. I sat with one farmer who showed me his childhood photo album saying: This used to be a vibrant community, we had dances every Saturday night, farmers could earn a living and pass on the farm to their children. And now everything here is boarded up and the town is dead. These are farmers who got arrested in 2008 protesting the Obama Administration for turning its back on homeowners. The rally I went to included immigrant workers dealing with unfair treatment by the meat packing industry, and local labor unions. One farmer, who happened to be a woman, told me we have got to reinvest in rural America, or this country is doomed. But I don’t see a focus on rural communities as a strong part of the current progressive agenda, do you? 

CHLOE: Yeah, I agree. I don’t think it’s represented well at all on the left. It’s a huge challenge. I think it’s one that rural folks feel quite acutely that the left doesn’t quite have the policy solutions that many rural communities need. The issues may be the same, but the approaches that you need in a rural community just look different. It’s complicated.

There’s an amazing book, The Politics of Resentment, focused on rural Wisconsin and how rural folks perceive a lack of support, especially on the policy level, from urban Democratic policymakers. There are many incredible books on this topic that can speak to it better than I can. But it’s a very pervasive feeling among rural folks that they don’t feel represented. The left doesn’t show up in rural communities, especially when they’re campaigning, and so we’ve seen just a systemic disenfranchisement of rural communities’ voices on the left as we’re making this policy. So it’s a circular problem. 

You can’t make policy for impacted communities unless you have those impacted communities at the table, and if we’re not actively organizing and investing in what are now conservative rural spaces, then we’re never going to understand that experience and what we need to be integrating into our laws. This is true for all communities that have not historically been central to Democratic law-making.

STEPHANIE: I find that there are still many people who don’t realize that millions who voted for Obama twice voted for Trump the first time, and they’re still wedded to this idea that there are these stagnant voting blocs. Over and over again, when voters are asked what they care about most, they say the same thing: the economy and the cost of living. And when the Democrats don’t deliver to voters and make material differences in people’s lives, they lose. Is that what you’re finding with voters that you talk to in rural areas? Is that an issue for them?

CHLOE: Yeah, based on my own experience and what I hear from the folks that we work with, I don’t think rural folks see their issues reflected in policymaking. And the challenges they face in their lives have gotten worse and worse. There are now many incredible organizations working to address this, and I do think that the tides are turning for the better thanks to this amazing work. 

Rural voters are privileged in our American democracy just the way that our Electoral College is set up, the way that our Congress is set up. So rural voices have an outsized influence on our policy at the national and at the state level. So if we’re talking about building durable progressive power that truly does advocate for the rights of everyone, we can’t get there unless we’re actively organizing in rural places. 

On the left, I think there’s frustration amongst policymakers that they’re losing ground, and there’s certainly frustration amongst the folks in rural communities. They don’t see themselves reflected in what’s happening with the people that they elect. It definitely feels like a huge mess. So from that perspective, it’s like people needed something different. The politics as usual was not working for rural folks, and, mostly for worse, people saw that reflected in Trump and his campaign. So that’s how I see the reality that we’re living with, people are just desperate to be heard and represented and have their needs met.

I think back to 2018 when I first ran, and talking to so many folks who had voted for Bernie in the 2016 primary and then voted for Trump, and trying to understand what that thread was. I think part of it is that folks felt an authenticity in Bernie, and they felt some form of authenticity in Trump, and that translated. But I think the sense of populism was also a common theme, that they felt like Bernie was trying to advocate for everyone in working class folks, and then they also saw that represented in Trump, and they didn’t see that represented in the Democratic establishment. 

Photo courtesy of Dirtroad Organizing

STEPHANIE: Let’s talk about your work in rural communities in your neck of the woods. How did you get involved in politics?

CHLOE: I’ve always loved my hometown. And growing up, I knew I didn’t share the same politics with everyone that was part of the village that was raising me, but they were all good people, and we shared our core values. 

When I was in high school in 2009, there was no partisan lean amongst rural voters. But then I went off to college, and I met Canyon Woodward, who managed both of my campaigns. Canyon also grew up in a rural red town. And while we were in college, something really interesting was happening in rural America. By 2016, by the time we had graduated, just seven years later, rural voters were swinging to the right by over 16 points. So when we went home after graduation, it really felt like a different world, and that is obviously manifested in 2016 when Trump was elected. My hometown State House district and my hometown State Senate district voted for Trump, and what that policy represented to me felt really at odds with the good-hearted community around me.

So in 2018, I decided to run for State House in my hometown, which had a plus 16 Republican advantage, and Canyon came up to manage the campaign. The work was really just about trying to understand what was happening in rural America and why things went so far one direction so quickly. We ran a campaign that was really based in grassroots organizing and relationship building, and we won. Then in 2020, we ran for the state Senate against the highest ranking Republican in the state, and we won again using the same philosophy of just reaching across differences and building really strong, broad, intentional movements. I served four years in the legislature, and this experience taught us so much about what it means to organize in rural America. 

A core part of our campaign was trying to get away from how things had been done, because that obviously wasn’t working well in our districts or in other districts like ours across the country. I don’t think anything we did was that radical, just minor changes to make our campaigns more representative of the communities we were organizing in. I was very lucky that Canyon had the skillset to create our canvassing universe. It’s basically the list of folks that you go and talk to when you, unfortunately, just don’t have the time to knock on every door.  We really focused on talking to Republicans and independents because it’s a conservative district. 

So many of those conversations were purely about bridging divides and trying to find common ground. It was so shocking how, on a daily basis, we would talk to people who had never been contacted by a Democratic candidate or campaign in their entire voting history. And many people said no candidate had ever come to their door, regardless of political affiliation. It was every day. I mean, it was so wild. I still hear this pattern echoed today with the leaders that come through Dirtroad Organizing, all these years later. They hear the same thing in their rural communities as they are out organizing. 

Photo by Forest Woodward, courtesy of Dirtroad Organizing

In my mind, it’s like, okay, if this person hasn’t been contacted before, maybe there’s a reason why. You know, maybe they’re too conservative to consider voting for someone like me, but that was not the case at all. These were incredible people with incredible stories who truly just wanted to be heard and represented, and we, as the left, had never shown up to hear their stories. Their stories shaped me; stories that I didn’t see reflected in the left and how we think about policy. So it was just very important to me to talk to folks.

I remember one door in particular. It was a trailer in the middle of the woods, down a very long dirt road. I canvassed by myself, which is not safe or accessible for everyone, but it’s what worked for me, and I could see that a guy lived there, and all the curtains on this trailer were drawn. And, you know, my heart was going a little bit. But I went up and knocked on his door, and we ended up having this really lovely discussion. And he said, “You are the first person to ever come and knock on my door, and people judge what my house looks like, and I can just see them drive away.” And that was so touching to me. 

I felt that judgment too when I drove up to the door. But that’s a lesson, you know, not everything is as it seems. And he ended up voting for me. And he kept my palm card on his fridge. It was one of those life-changing moments that challenges how you perceive the world. 

STEPHANIE: Were you finding common concerns among the people you talked to?

CHLOE: This was now many years ago, but I was surprised that the biggest thing that I heard was that people just didn’t feel represented. It was like everything had failed folks so much that it wasn’t one particular issue anymore, but just the system in general was failing people. And everyone has very specific examples in their lives of how politics has failed them. It was a sacred priority for me to actually represent my community once I was elected. I didn’t want to go hear stories and then go sponsor bills that weren’t reflective of the issues that I heard, or take votes that weren’t reflective of my community. So that felt very important to me.

I think everything has gotten more and more polarized since then. But my own experience to this day is that this sense of not feeling represented has gotten stronger and stronger and stronger, and everything that we’re experiencing right now is a consequence of people just feeling deeply unrepresented and not seeing the very personal challenges that they have in their lives addressed by the people that they elect.

STEPHANIE: When you were being presented with bills to vote on, or introducing your own legislation, what was your experience working with people who voted for you and those who didn’t vote for you who were still in your district?

CHLOE: It was fascinating, and taught me so much about myself and my community, and the Democratic Party in general. There were times when I didn’t vote with my party because I was representing my community, and there were times when I voted with my party, and maybe it didn’t match up with my community. It’s so hard. I always thought when I was elected it’d be very easy to tell where my community landed on an issue, but, people reach out when they’re fired up about one issue, and it’s very hard to tell what the other side thinks if they’re not as fired up. I knocked on so many doors, so I felt like I had a really good sense of where my community was, but that kind of real-time feedback was tough. 

Policymaking is very nuanced. An issue can be black and white, but the bill that the issue is held in can be very complicated. And so there can be one line in a bill that could have huge consequences, but it takes time and energy to communicate that to your constituents. I always viewed it as my job as an elected official – I’m getting paid to do this work, I’m getting paid to go to Augusta and read all of the bills – so I always tried to take the time to explain to people why I voted one way or another. But it’s almost never black and white.

As a constituent before I was elected, I always looked at policymaking and it seemed really black and white to me. And as an elected official, you realize there’s just always more to consider than what it seems. Of course, there are some issues where I do think it’s black and white, but I think in most cases that it’s more complicated.

STEPHANIE: It seems if you’ve built trust, to a certain extent, a lot of people would say, okay, I trust you; I know you’re going to compromise. Were you getting any pushback, including from the Democratic Party in general when you weren’t voting for the bills they were putting forward? Did you feel a lot of pressure?

CHLOE: Most elected officials have felt pressure at one point or another in their service. But, yeah, there’s pressure. There’s pressure, for sure. I think some of that is understandable, and some of it I don’t love. But, you know, that’s part of the experience of being elected, is being able to navigate that and kind of understanding why you’re there. 

I was there to represent my community, and that’s what I focused on. As a Democrat representing a conservative community, the way that I navigate the situation is going to be very different from how a Democrat representing a more liberal community is going to navigate it. And since we have more Democrats representing liberal communities than conservative communities, I think it’s just a different dynamic. And that’s okay.

STEPHANIE: Have you thought about being part of another party outside of the Democrats and Republicans? 

CHLOE: I’m a bit of a cynic. I think we’re kind of stuck with the two-party system, and I believe in reforming the Democratic Party from the inside out, that’s just my own personal theory of change. But we need all of the theories of change to move forward in this work. There’s so much work going on right now to support pro-democracy Republicans and conservatives that are running for office. I think that’s so important. A lot of Republicans don’t represent some of the social extremism that we’re seeing reflected right now in the larger Republican Party. 

I think it’s also important for Independents to run for office. One of my bills was to support independents voting in primaries in Maine to kind of even out the partisanship that we see in party primaries. I really like rank choice voting, which we also are lucky to have in Maine, because that allows Independents to have a fair shot when they’re running for office. 

Photo courtesy of Dirtroad Organizing

Dirtroad Organizing supports candidates, organizers, and staffers in rural areas across the country. To date, we have over 200 alumni from 39 states. These rural leaders are bringing so much love and empathy and care to the people they live with, and they’re paving a better way forward for all of us. We’re a non-partisan organization, and for me, it’s more about the values that you’re running to represent rather than the party that you’re from. As I chose to run, I wanted to run as a Democrat because I feel like the values of the Democratic Party are supposed to serve rural places well, they’re supposed to serve my community well. But they’re just not. So trying to kind of do some of that translation work, that was the task that I wanted to take on. But it’s not for everybody, and not every community wants that as well.

STEPHANIE: Right, and they abandoned the working class by design. Senator Chuck Schumer said their strategy was to appeal to suburbia and that for every working class Democrat voter they lost, they would get two Centrist Republicans. I don’t think that worked out for them, but it’s no surprise that low-wage workers feel they have no one representing them. The Democratic Party is very low in opinion polls, so maybe it’s a great time to be reforming it.

CHLOE: Yeah, I mean, I think it’s going to be a multi-decade task, probably. We’ve lost folks pretty quickly and have not been super successful at making the case that the Democrats do advocate for working class folks, as you just said. Again, I think this narrative is starting to shift now, which is really exciting to see.

The work of rural organizing is very complicated, and there is so much to unpack in what it means. Rural organizing as a white woman in my Maine hometown is very different from what it looks like in the South. But at the core, I really believe in the power of showing up and having really intentional and authentic face-to-face conversations. I feel like that’s the only way to break down some of the silos and judgments that each party has about each other. In my experience, and what we hear from our folks through Dirtroad Organizing, is when you knock on a door, the first question is: Are you a Democrat or a Republican? And you know, I would always blurt out very quickly, “I’m a Democrat but I’m a good Democrat.” But oftentimes the door gets shut in your face before you can even have a conversation. 

So I think that the best way for Democrats to make the case that they do care about working class folks and rural working class folks is that you have to show up at people’s doors, and you have to prove it. You have to show it. And then you have to get elected and you have to actually work on the policies that benefit those rural working class folks in a way that resonates with them, with the messaging and the stories that rural folks will listen to, because it’s a different language in rural America. 

Rural America deserves that nuance and attention. We’ve got to show up, and we have to kind of be able to hold that door open long enough to have that conversation, and plant that seed that maybe it’s not such a bad idea to vote for this person. I think that’s very important to do that consistently, not just in every October of an election year, but really showing up and organizing in communities. That’s so important. There are so many rural heroes who are doing this work, day in and day out, year after year–and those folks to me are the ones who are holding our democracy together.

I think it’s also important to have different voices and different representation in office that reflect the reality of rural communities. We also know you don’t get paid to run for office, and in many state legislatures, you don’t get paid a living wage at all to serve. In New Hampshire, you make $100 a year. In New Mexico, you make nothing. When I was in the Maine statehouse, I think it was like $14,000 in our first year, and $10,000 the second year. Most folks who do get elected at the state or local level don’t make enough to survive. So there’s a reason why our politics are skewed to older, retired folks or independently wealthy people, because that’s who it’s accessible to. 

There are so many movements right now to rethink how to make politics more accessible, to have campaign finance laws, or to allow folks to pay for childcare if they’re a parent while they’re campaigning to have a living wage while you’re serving. There’s so many pieces to it. Also, if you get elected and you don’t look like the majority of the body that you’re going into, then that’s a very difficult and isolating experience, as well, and you are more likely to get targeted. And that’s very scary. There’s a lot of risk involved as well if you don’t reflect kind of the majority of what our politics look like. So I think that’s a huge part of it. 

We also believe, at Dirtroad, that running for local office can still make such a huge difference. So much of our political conversation is at the statewide or national level, and that feels very hard to influence. You know, you’re one vote out of millions if you’re at the state level. At the national level you’re one vote out of hundreds of millions. So it just feels like no matter what you do or who you call, that it doesn’t really have an impact. And I certainly feel that, even though I’m very involved in politics. 

But at the state legislative level, at the local level, those bodies have a huge influence over what our communities look like, over the policies that we’re living in every single day. But they’ve been very overlooked, especially by the left. The right has done an incredible job of organizing at the local level, and we’ve seen that, especially at the school board level with all the effort to ban books and really use school boards to influence what our education system looks like. 

When you run at the local level, you can win by like five or ten votes. In Maine, we have state legislative races where people win by one vote. So you can see that every vote does make a difference, and it is important that you’re engaged and that you show up. And as the candidate, or as someone in the campaign, every vote truly does matter. It matters how many people we talk to. It matters that we’re reaching beyond the choir, because that’s how we make sure that we’re electing folks that are more representative of the communities.

STEPHANIE: Is it pretty consistent that candidates who have a solid ground game, who are actually talking to people and have support to knock on doors and have the conversations, win? 

CHLOE: Not always. We try and encourage folks to look at their campaigning as social movement building, that it’s not about a vehicle that gets one person from being a citizen to an elected official, it’s hopefully part of the journey, and an opportunity to organize in your community and talk to people. You have an excuse to go knock on doors, to make phone calls, to write postcards, to reach out in ways that you just don’t have the social license to at other times of the year. So I think that’s such a big part of it, is that ground game. 

Of course, that doesn’t always work, and I think especially in some conservative districts where it’s a steep hill to climb, you know? So we work with people who build incredible ground games, and it doesn’t quite get them to the finish line, but at the same time, winning isn’t always winning. They’ve been building movements, building volunteer infrastructures, creating a dialogue in their community where that dialogue wasn’t there before, and it looked very different than it was before they ran. So thinking about it that way is important. 

STEPHANIE: A movement definitely emerged with the Bernie campaigns. There was momentum and excitement, and a lot of organizing. They relied on small donations, which inspired a lot of people. And then he just handed everything over to the Democrats, including my email, which really makes me mad because I cannot get off their lists. But, you know, the air was really let out of that tire, so to speak. 

CHLOE: Yeah, I think that’s a theme for the Democrats, just universally, that we build movements and then we can’t quite sustain them. And I think there are examples of movements that have done  amazing jobs at sustaining very large movements over many cycles, and I think that’s pretty cool. But oftentimes, we do that organizing and then we’re burned out, we’re tired, we’re exhausted, we’re bummed, and it’s very hard to keep that organizing going. It’s like this boom or bust cycle of electioneering that has also impacted communities because they see people coming to their doors and all of this energy being invested for this year, and then it’s gone. It doesn’t make anyone feel good if you just kind of flit in when someone needs you. You want to be shown that it’s important that you’re there all the time. 

There are so many organizations that are doing year-round organizing across the country in every single state and at the national level, focused on doing this ground work in a way that bridges cycles, and that isn’t just tied to one candidate and one election. I feel like that’s such an important model as well. I mean it’s hard work. And we work with so many folks who put themselves on the line. They put their lives on hold. They don’t get to see their families and their friends and their loved ones because they’re campaigning. And they build these really beautiful movements, and then, you know, organizing in conservative districts, you don’t win, and that’s so hard. 

So part of our work – and we’re in these coalitions – is to support those people who did that incredible movement-building work, to support them if they want to run again, to support the movements that they built if they don’t want to run again. But just trying to think of it all more holistically and what it takes to organize in rural spaces. But as we started this conversation with the level of polarization and othering right now is at a very scary and dangerous level. And so to us, it makes it even more important to be able to do this work of bridging differences in rural America.

STEPHANIE: Yeah, I do feel there’s a kind of hopelessness. But I also feel that these experiences of making connections is key to despair. My cousin, who sadly passed away recently, was a trucker who worked all the time and dealt with a lot of stress and frustration. We grew up in Kentucky. And we went back and forth online politically, disagreeing on this and that, and after a while he said, “You know, Cous, I think you might have a point. I think a lot of what I’m putting out there is just a bunch of BS, and I don’t really mean it.” He was just caught up in the drama and didn’t have time to do a lot of research. We found a lot of things we agreed on. So I hope people become more open to having conversations with others who they might even perceive to be extreme. And just dig a little bit. You know? 

CHLOE: Yeah, definitely, definitely. I feel so inspired by the stories that we hear from the folks we work with, how they’re still finding common ground. You know, I hear over and over again, and it’s something that we talk about in our trainings as well – How do we want to show up in communities? How can we show up in ways that are authentic, that resonate, no matter what political party people are from? How can we really run on values that show that we’re all connected and are all facing so many of the same struggles? We might be facing them in different ways, and some of us are experiencing some struggles more acutely than others, but we are all in the same boat. 

In 2024, Dirtroad Organizing had 37 folks on the ballot all across rural America, and over 50 percent either won their seats or outperformed past cycles, and even in districts where Trump made huge gains, these folks were outperforming when they were running at the local level. We had one guy, David Arends, who ran in a very conservative district in northern Montana. He made his ballot competitive for the first time in over a decade, and he outperformed that district by nine points because he just literally went and talked to everybody. This year, we have over 70 Dirtroad alumni on the ballot. These folks are incredible leaders who deeply care about their communities and are out there, right now, organizing for a better future for all of us. Again, we’re a non-partisan organization. Many of our candidates gain ground because they run authentic grassroots values-based campaigns that are really focused on representing their community. So that, to me, that’s a sign that that’s where it’s at. That’s where our hope is. 

But running for office, working on campaigns, rural organizing in general is tough work. It’s tough work. And it can be really lonely and isolating, even though I think it’s the most important thing that we can be doing right now. So everything that we do is about trying to bring more resources and attention to the stories of what this organizing actually looks like. Dirtroad Organizing actually just launched a story telling program to uplift the incredible work of our alumni. It’s called HomeGrown, and you can find us on Substack. 

• Dirtroad Organizing website
• Homegrown Substack by Dirtroad Organizing
• 2020 Bioneers Online Keynote from Chloe as State Senator

The post Showing Up for Rural America: A Conversation with Chloe Maxmin appeared first on Bioneers.

Premature death rates among residents of rural Missouri counties exceed the national average, records show, a result in large part due to the lack of adequate emergency medical care.

According to data compiled by the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities, three rural Missouri counties have premature death rates that are more than double the national average of 392 people per 100,000.

Pemiscot County in the Bootheel region of Southeast Missouri bordered by Arkansas and Tennessee, has the highest premature death rate of 951 per 100,000 people, followed by Ripley and Dunklin counties at 879 and 828. Missouri’s overall premature death rate is 462 per 100,000 people.

Premature death rates include all deaths for people under the age of 75.

Reports by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show higher death rates from accidents for rural residents, because emergency responders are unable to reach the injured and get them to hospitals in time.

“The percentage of potentially excess unintentional injury deaths is higher in rural areas because the ability to transport patients quickly to critical care facilities is better in urban areas than in rural areas,” the CDC report said. “As a result, a substantially higher proportion of trauma patients in rural areas than in urban areas die within 24 hours: 89.6% in rural areas vs 64.0% in urban areas.”

A longtime problem

The higher rate of premature deaths is not a new phenomenon in Missouri. Steven Woolf, director of Virginia Commonwealth University Center on Society and Health, found in 2018 that these counties “have been struggling with economic challenges for generations. High poverty rates, stagnant wages, unemployment, challenges with young people getting an adequate education are known characteristics of these places.”

A  report by the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services cited by Checks & Balances Project showed that 50 rural Missouri counties lack a hospital. Those counties without hospitals have an average drive of 29.4 miles to a hospital.

Ray Locker is the executive director for Checks & Balances Project, an investigative watchdog blog holding government officials, lobbyists, and corporate management accountable to the public. Funding for C&BP is provided by Renew American Prosperity and individual donors.

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Rural Missouri counties face EMS crisis

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The government’s approval of the Jackdaw gasfield, off Aberdeen, has been widely condemned by environmental campaigners.

Previous protest against Equinor, one of the companies behind the Jackdaw and Rosebank fields. Photo: © Ron Fassbender

Opponents of the decision include the campaign network, the Weald Action Group, which with Sarah Finch, secured a landmark judgement later used to quash the original Jackdaw permission.

The government said today Jackdaw could begin extracting gas within months and increase UK production by about 6% at its peak. But it admitted that the field would not reduce household bills.

A decision has yet to be made on the Rosebank oilfield, off Shetland. The Guardian reported this afternoon that the government was leaning towards rejecting development of Rosebank. Oil from that field would be exported and sold on international markets.

Jackdaw and Rosebank were approved by the Conservatives. But in 2025 the Scottish Court of Sessions confirmed that both decisions were unlawful.

The judge said the Finch Ruling by the UK Supreme Court should apply restrospectively to both Rosebank and Jackdaw.

The Finch case had successfully argued that decisionmakers must consider the climate impact of greenhouse gases released when fossil fuels were eventually burned. The original decisions on Jackdaw and Rosebank had not taken account of these emissions, known as downstream or Scope 3.

Weald Action Group reaction “classic case of misdirection”

Campaigner Sarah Finch said:

“Giving the go ahead to Jackdaw is a mistake and classic case of misdirection.

“The UK has the oldest and least efficient housing stock in Europe with one in five homes lacking proper insulation.

“Instead of approving a gas field that will do nothing to cut heating bills this winter or make a meaningful difference to energy security, the UK government should be investing in a systematic and comprehensive home energy efficiency programme”.

Campaigner Kirsty Clough said:

“Governments around the world already plan to produce over 90% more gas than is compatible with keeping global average temperature rise below 1.5oC.

“At home droughts and wildfires blighted our country this summer. What more evidence do leaders need that the climate crisis is not some distant threat for future administrations to deal with? It is real and it is happening now.

“Approving Jackdaw will only make the situation worse”.

Other campaign reaction ClientEarth – “we pay price of extreme weather”

Kyle Lischak, head of UK at Client Earth

“The companies drilling our oil and gasfield will soon leave the empty oilfields with record profits, whilst we pay the price of extreme weather for decades to come.”

The organisation also said:

“The approval of Jackdaw showed the strength of the fossil fuel industry’s lobbying. To stop Rosebank, the Government must feel our collective opposition is even stronger.

“This is the final stage of a years-long fight by many individuals, communities and organisations. If enough people speak out now, we can make sure Rosebank is rejected once and for all.”

E3G – “more drilling is the wrong answer”

Ellie Mae O’Hagan, the UK energy programme lead, said:

“After a summer of deadly heatwaves, the public has made up its mind: more drilling is the wrong answer. If the prime minister wants a decade in power to change the country, he should invest in heat pumps and solar, not tax breaks for the oil and gas companies driving up our bills and polluting the planet.”

Friends of the Earth – “bridge to nowhere”

Energy campaigner, Danny Gross, said:

“Giving Jackdaw the green light is a huge blow to Labour’s green credentials. It comes the same day the UN warns the world must cut carbon emissions by nearly a fifth in the next four years to avoid climate catastrophe – and just weeks before the Prime Minister is due to attend the global climate talks in Turkey.

“With extreme heat, devastating floods, wildfires, droughts and rising food prices already giving us a glimpse of a future of climate chaos, the science is clear – there can be no new oil and gas if we’re to avert the worst of climate breakdown.

“Jackdaw is a bridge to nowhere. It will slow down the shift to cheaper, cleaner energy and the green jobs of the future.

“The coming months are now crucial for the government. Andy Burnham must put ordinary people before the interests of the oil and gas lobby and polluters by saying no to Rosebank and a third Heathrow runway and putting a pause on the energy-hungry data centres threatening communities and the environment. The government can’t keep allowing developments that blow holes in our carbon ambitions, fuel the climate crisis and put our future at risk.”

Greenpeace – “toxic grip of fossil fuel lobbyists”

Ami McCarthy, head of politics, said:

“Approving Jackdaw shows the toxic grip fossil fuel lobbyists still hold over our energy policy. Andy Burnham promised pragmatism, but there is nothing pragmatic about rubber-stamping a project that won’t lower energy bills, won’t boost energy security and will create just 27 full-time jobs.

“What Jackdaw is guaranteed to do is generate record profits for Shell and Equinor while supercharging the climate chaos hitting families here and abroad. Going on to approve Rosebank would detonate an even bigger carbon bomb, releasing as much carbon as 56 coal plants operating for a year.

“True pragmatism means severing our reliance on expensive oil and gas that leaves British households broke, supercharges extreme weather and leaves our energy security at the mercy of petrostates.”

Uplift – “caving to oil industry”

Tessa Khan, executive director,said:

“This benefits oil giants and their shareholders and doesn’t make life more affordable as Burnham promise. Clean energy is how we lower bills, reindustrialise regions and increase public control – not by caving to an oil industry making obscene profits while pushing up bills, laying off workers and driving the heatwaves we saw this summer.”

She also said:

“Jackdaw will provide around just 2 per cent of our gas demand for roughly ten years. It has been oversold and won’t stop the decline in North Sea jobs, as it will be largely unmanned and operated remotely.”

She added:

“Labour’s climate credibility is on the line. No new oil and gasfields are compatible with safe climate limits.”

“Shell will be cheering this decision but it won’t knock a penny off our energy bills, which is what’s keeping people up at night, or make a meaningful difference to our gas supply.”

TORONTO— ADAM THORN, clean growth director at the Pembina Institute, made the following statement in response to today's announcement by Prime Minister Mark Carney and Ontario Premier Doug Ford on new tariff response measures, including a $2.5B...

GE Trees at the 2026 UN Biodiversity Conference (COP 17) Yerevan, Armenia, 19 – 30 October 2026 GJEP is part of the CBD Alliance, a network of civil society organizations who have a common interest in the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD).  Who is the CBD Alliance? The CBD Alliance exists to enhance the cooperation […]

Registered nurses at Houlton Regional Hospital (HRH) in Houlton, Maine, released their letter of no confidence, following the Board of Trustees’ failure to respond to their concerns about CEO Jeff Zewe. The nurses, who are members of Maine State Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee, had sent a petition of no confidence in Zewe to the board of trustees in July 2026.

The UK government has approved extraction at the Jackdaw gas field in the North Sea, despite acknowledging that this decision could make it harder for Britain to convince other countries to move away from fossil fuel production.

UK energy secretary Miatta Fahnbulleh approved the drilling on Wednesday after months of high-profile debate, fuelled in part by interventions from US President Donald Trump. She argued that the project would boost energy security in the wake of the Middle East fossil fuel crisis, protect hundreds of jobs and add £2.9 billion ($3.88bn) to the UK economy.

She said Jackdaw’s gas would be cleaner than imported gas and would not prevent the UK from meeting its legally-binding carbon targets and its goal of net zero by 2050. As the field is already licensed, she said extraction was consistent with the Labour Party’s 2024 manifesto promise not to issue any new oil and gas licenses.

The same morning, the government announced a new Energy Wealth Fund to reinvest oil and gas revenues in the climate transition. It will start with £2 billion ($2.67bn) from the government and be topped up over time with tax revenues from offshore oil and gas production.

Energy Secretary Miatta Fahnbulleh and Chancellor of the Exchequer John Healey leave 10 Downing Street following Prime Minister Andy Burnham’s first cabinet meeting, on July 21, 2026 in London, England. (Photo by Ben Montgomery/Getty Images)

Climate campaigners in the UK and abroad were quick to condemn the decision, while a leading legal expert told Climate Home News it goes against the advice of the International Court of Justice. Meanwhile, the government’s own documents reveal that it recognises the drilling could damage the UK’s reputation and its ability to push forward the global transition away from fossil fuels.

“Climate leadership” blow

The 92-page decision document says Fahnbulleh “acknowledges that international standing on climate is important and accepts that a decision to grant consent may not further the UK’s international climate leadership.”

It adds: “She acknowledges concerns about the potential implications for the UK’s credibility and influence – including the difficulty inherent in encouraging other states to move away from fossil fuel production while the UK continues, in a limited and transitional way, to draw on its own domestic resources.”

While noting that Jackdaw has not been issued with a new license – just permission to extract gas – the document says Fahnbulleh “accepts this does not fully resolve the underlying tension in the UK’s position” but “considers this alongside the substance of the UK’s wider record [on emissions reduction], which remains significant”.

It continues that she accepts these concerns are “legitimate” and weigh against approving gas extraction, but only gives this argument a “moderate negative weight” set against the benefits of gas production.

“Huge” wrong signal

In international climate talks, the UK has long supported the transition away from fossil fuels and is one of very few major oil and gas producers to ban new licenses. Across the North Sea, the Norwegian government continues to make offshore areas available for oil and gas exploration through annual licensing rounds.

Climate experts and campaigners shared the concern, acknowledged in the decision document, that approving Jackdaw could set a precedent for fossil fuel production elsewhere. Sam Fankhauser, professor of climate change economics at Oxford University, said the direct climate impact of Jackdaw is “much smaller than the debate around it would suggest” but the “wrong signal it sends, however, is huge”.

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Bob Ward, policy and communications director at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change, said that while Jackdaw’s output will be very small, “it will signal to other fossil fuel producers that they too should carry on with business as usual, less than a month before the COP31”.

Kenyan campaigner Mohamed Adow, director of Power Shift Africa, called the decision “a serious blow to Britain’s international climate credibility” as “the UK cannot expect developing countries to move away from fossil fuels while giving the green light to new drilling in its own backyard”.

International Court of Justice

In July 2025, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) advised that government failure to take appropriate climate action “including through fossil fuel production” may amount to an internationally wrongful act.

The UK voted in favour of a United Nations resolution welcoming the advisory opinion. Yet, in its Jackdaw decision document, it notes that the ICJ opinion is not legally binding and says the UK does not accept the court’s opinion that the customary international law duty to prevent significant harm to the environment applies to climate change.

Fahnbulleh concludes that, although it will have “significant effect on the environment”, gas drilling in Jackdaw “would not lead to significant harm to the environment” – and so does not breach any duty to prevent such harm. Instead, the government document says the duty should be considered “as a matter of policy rather than legal obligation”.

Margaretha Wewerinke-Singh, who led Vanuatu’s legal team pushing for the ICJ’s advisory opinion, told Climate Home News that treating the duty as a matter of policy rather than legal obligation is “not how international law works”. “An advisory opinion is not a judgement,” she said, “but it states the law as it stands, and that law binds the UK whether or not it accepts it.”

“Even as a matter of policy,” she added, “the decision asks the wrong question: whether Jackdaw on its own would cause significant harm. The Court found that accumulated emissions are already causing significant harm. What matters is whether approving new production is consistent with the stringent due diligence the duty requires.”

Public support for decision

While the decision was criticised by climate campaigners and the opposition Green party, polling reported by Politico suggests that 55% of British adults support drilling at Jackdaw, with just 14% opposed. Even supporters of the UK’s net zero target back new drilling by more than two to one, the polling found.

Jackdaw is one of two North Sea oil and gas fields the government has been debating whether to extract more from for months. While Jackdaw is a small gas field, the other, Rosebank, is a much larger field that holds mostly oil.

Rosebank’s emissions are estimated to be around seven times higher than Jackdaw’s. Fahnbulleh told Sky News that Rosebank is “different” to Jackdaw because its oil would be exported, whereas Jackdaw’s gas will be used in the UK, adding that she will consider it “in its own right”.

The Guardian reported on Wednesday that UK officials say Fahnbulleh is minded to refuse approval for Rosebank. She has not yet taken a final decision on Rosebank, the newspaper said, but a ruling is expected later this year.

The post UK approves gas drilling despite admitting blow to “climate leadership” status appeared first on Climate Home News.

Editor’s Note: Attorney Guy Dicharry requested this statement from Norm Gaume, President of the Water Advocates. Discharry used it at a federal court hearing to contest Kit Carson Electric Cooperative’s Environmental Assessment FONSI (Finding of No Significant Impact) on the proposed hydrogen facility in Questa. It is reprinted here with permission.

People living in New Mexico’s Rio Grande basin are suffering from water bankruptcy,
defined as a “failure state in which human–water systems have exceeded their
hydrological carrying capacities, and societies have spent beyond their sustainable
hydrological budgets for so long that critical water assets are depleted … and a return to normal is infeasible even with prohibitive economic, social, and environmental costs.”1

The Lower Rio Grande in New Mexico is in water bankruptcy. Elephant Butte Reservoir
held 25,506 acre-feet on August 31, as reported by the Bureau of Reclamation’s online
data I checked today. That volume of water is 1.3% of the reservoir storage capacity, the
lowest since 1954. The reservoir stores the Rio Grande’s renewable water supply
apportioned by the Rio Grande Compact for the international Lower Rio Grande basin,
which extends downstream from the dam to about 80 miles southeast of El Paso. New
Mexico is compelled by the May 27, 2026, U.S. Supreme Court decree ending thirteen
years of litigation in Texas v. New Mexico, No. 141 Orig., to deliver Texas’s and Mexico’s
newly quantified shares at El Paso and to reduce groundwater pumping in New Mexico
between Elephant Butte Dam and El Paso to stabilize the aquifer and restore river
delivery efficiency. The United States intervened in the Texas lawsuit against New
Mexico. Its claims against New Mexico were the last to be settled.

I have studied the decree and the four agreements that are integral to the settlement the
decree adopts and have written about them. It is my opinion that the Court’s decree and
continuing jurisdiction function as New Mexico’s court-ordered water bankruptcy
recovery plan. Onerous penalties for non-compliance make the decree self-enforcing.
Compliance will be very costly.

The Middle Rio Grande is rapidly approaching water bankruptcy because it is alarmingly close to a new violation of the Rio Grande Compact. New Mexico owes a 132,000 acre-
foot water delivery debt to Elephant Butte Reservoir as determined by the Rio Grande
Compact Commission’s 2025 annual accounting. I estimate New Mexico’s 2026 water
deliveries through the Middle Rio Grande are approximately 40,000 acre-feet in arrears
as of August 31, 2026. The 2026 cumulative water delivery shortfall is growing larger
each day. Discounting the effect of any monsoon floods the remainder of the year may
bring, I estimate New Mexico will end 2026 with an accrued water delivery debt of more
than 172,000 acre-feet.

The Rio Grande Compact caps New Mexico’s water delivery debt at 200,000 acre-feet.
New Mexico could exceed that cap in 2027. On current trends New Mexico will violate
the cap by 2029 in the absence of dramatic climatic and hydrologic improvements and
effective regulatory or adequate voluntary curtailment of existing uses.

New Mexico’s Upper Rio Grande region, extending from the Colorado state line to the
Otowi Bridge on the Los Alamos highway, provides an important portion of the Rio
Grande’s annual water volume that the Rio Grande Compact apportions between the
Middle Rio Grande and the international Lower Rio Grande. The Rio Grande volume
measured near the Colorado state line is augmented by the tributaries and tributary
groundwater in the Rio Grande Basin upstream from the U.S. Geological Survey Otowi
stream gage. Springs in the bed of the river upstream of the Red River confluence are a
major contributor of tributary groundwater recharged by snowmelt runoff from the
Sangre de Cristos.

Today, streamflow at the Lobatos stream gage, located near the Colorado state line, is
about five cubic feet per second (cfs), or about ten acre-feet per day. The springs today
are increasing the Rio Grande flow measured downstream at the USGS gage near Cerro,
New Mexico, to about 35 cfs. USGS records that I reviewed today show the springs
normally contribute more than 100 cfs on this date.

Rio Grande Compact river flow apportionments individually limit New Mexico’s water
depletions in the Upper, Middle, and Lower Rio Grande regions. Upper Rio Grande
depletions are limited to unquantified 1929 levels, the year the United States froze all
water development pending negotiation and approval of the Rio Grande Compact,
signed in 1938. Historically low river flows this year are focusing State of Texas attention on New Mexico’s upstream depletion of the international Lower Rio Grande’s
apportionment. The Lower Rio Grande apportionment is 57% of the native Rio Grande
water flowing past the Otowi Bridge at very low annual volumes and a greater total
percentage as the volume increases.

New Mexico’s water depletions in the Middle Rio Grande are shorting the international
Lower Rio Grande region’s water supply from Elephant Butte Reservoir as a matter of
fact, even though New Mexico remains in legal compliance with Rio Grande Compact
requirements for upstream deliveries to the reservoir. Texas attempted to bring Middle
Rio Grande issues into the Lower Rio Grande litigation, but the Court refused.

Kit Carson Electric Cooperative is seeking a New Mexico Office of the State Engineer
permit for a new depletion from a currently unused water right. The proposed new
groundwater withdrawals are from the deep groundwater system, which is tributary to
the Rio Grande and is fed by snowmelt runoff from the Sangre de Cristos. Pumping 100
acre-feet per year of deep groundwater to generate hydrogen by electrolysis will reduce
the Rio Grande water supply flowing past the Otowi gage. It will reduce the Otowi Index
gage flow, and the volume the Lower Rio Grande receives, in this time of increasing
temperature, aridity, and water scarcity and at this moment of New Mexico’s legal jeopardy caused by its chronic consumption of water apportioned to downstream users.

New Mexico’s ongoing tragedy of its water resources commons is caused by
withdrawals from thousands of wells and dozens of river diversions. When surface water
is in short supply, water users turn to groundwater where they can. The Rio Grande
Compact is violated, and the river dies from the cumulative impacts of these thousands
of withdrawals. Individual water users, taking only what they need, together withdraw
more than New Mexico’s apportioned share.

The State of New Mexico is compelled to curtail such overuse in the Lower Rio Grande
now and will be compelled further in a future U.S. Supreme Court decree to curtail
overuse in the Middle Rio Grande and potentially the Upper Rio Grande if it does not do
so on its own initiative to prevent a new Compact violation.

Economic development and the generation of a reliable electric energy supply must not
increase New Mexico’s depletion of the Rio Grande. New Mexico does not have
sufficient water resources along the Rio Grande to convert water into energy. The
proposed new deep groundwater pumping will deplete the Rio Grande to do that.

Norm Gaume, BSEE, MSCE, P.E. (ret.)
Water Resources Engineer
Former New Mexico Interstate Stream Engineer
Former Engineer-Adviser to the New Mexico Commissioner, Rio Grande Compact Commission
NM license #6969
September 1, 2026

1 Madani, K., Water Bankruptcy: The Formal Definition, Water Resources Management    (2026) 40:78, abstract, https://doi.org/10.1007/s11269-025-04484-0.

 

 

FracTracker Alliance and Buckeye Environmental Network analyzed 2,529 Ohio oil and gas incidents from 2015 through 2025. Incidents are rising, classifications are often unclear, and roughly 25 inspectors oversee some 96,000 wells.

The post Rising Incidents, Lax Oversight: Ohio Oil and Gas Incidents, Inspections, and Enforcement 2015–2025 appeared first on FracTracker Alliance.

Best bang for your buck: Halloween edition JR Culpepper October 21, 2026

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Finding the perfect finishing touch for your Halloween costume can be tricky, especially when you have to worry about spooky ingredients hiding in makeup and personal care products.

To make Halloween shopping a little simpler for you and your kids, we’ve rounded up lower-hazard options for eyeliner, mascara, hair gel and body art products, including fake blood, glitter and face paint. And what’s more, they’re all $20 or less.

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Some of the products below are EWG Verified®, which means they have been reviewed by our scientists to ensure they meet strict health and transparency standards and avoid EWG’s ingredients of concern.

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Premature death rates among residents of rural Missouri counties exceed the national average, records show, a result in large part due to the lack of adequate emergency medical care.

According to data compiled by the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities, three rural Missouri counties have premature death rates that are more than double the national average of 392 people per 100,000.

Pemiscot County in the Bootheel region of Southeast Missouri bordered by Arkansas and Tennessee, has the highest premature death rate of 951 per 100,000 people, followed by Ripley and Dunklin counties at 879 and 828. Missouri’s overall premature death rate is 462 per 100,000 people.

Premature death rates include all deaths for people under the age of 75.

Reports by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show higher death rates from accidents for rural residents, because emergency responders are unable to reach the injured and get them to hospitals in time.

“The percentage of potentially excess unintentional injury deaths is higher in rural areas because the ability to transport patients quickly to critical care facilities is better in urban areas than in rural areas,” the CDC report said. “As a result, a substantially higher proportion of trauma patients in rural areas than in urban areas die within 24 hours: 89.6% in rural areas vs 64.0% in urban areas.”

A longtime problem

The higher rate of premature deaths is not a new phenomenon in Missouri. Steven Woolf, director of Virginia Commonwealth University Center on Society and Health, found in 2018 that these counties “have been struggling with economic challenges for generations. High poverty rates, stagnant wages, unemployment, challenges with young people getting an adequate education are known characteristics of these places.”

A  report by the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services cited by Checks & Balances Project showed that 50 rural Missouri counties lack a hospital. Those counties without hospitals have an average drive of 29.4 miles to a hospital.

Ray Locker is the executive director for Checks & Balances Project, an investigative watchdog blog holding government officials, lobbyists, and corporate management accountable to the public. Funding for C&BP is provided by Renew American Prosperity and individual donors.

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Rural Missouri counties face EMS crisis

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Adapted from Chapter 5 of The Last Animal: Human History and the Fate of Life on Earth From the Ice Age to the Sixth Extinction (Princeton University Press).

Blame the word wizardry of Charles Dickens. In 1852 the great Victorian novelist described a long-forgotten naval admiral with the coinage “as dead as the Dodo.” The phrase was catchy. It appeared just a few years before Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, which stoked almost as much interest in the ends of species as in their beginnings. The poor dodo then appeared, as a clownish figure, in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865). The bird’s reputation was sealed, and the dodo became not just an emblem of extinction but a byword for doomed obsolescence. To go the way of the dodo meant to succumb to inevitable oblivion.

In truth, the dodo’s fame is out of proportion to its significance. And yet the bird, rightly understood, is the perfect allegory for the fate of island biota in modern times. That is to say, if we understand its story correctly in place and time, the precise way that its evolutionary history intersects our own, the dodo can help us understand the true depth of human impact — and why the conventional ways we measure that impact threaten to understate the damage we have done.

The dodo (Raphus cucullatus) lived on the island of Mauritius in the Mascarene archipelago in the Indian Ocean. The species was a flightless member of the pigeon/dove family (Columbidae). Dodos boasted long and colorful beaks. They ate fruit and perhaps small crabs. The portrayal of the dodo as ridiculous or clumsy is absurdly unfair. Mauritius lacked native mammals (with the exception of one bat, now endangered), so the niches normally occupied by mammals were infilled by birds, reptiles, and even crabs. The dodo, far from a defective product of evolution, was a stroke of creative genius, executed under the severest constraints — a plump pigeon playing the part of a mammal. Until we showed up, they thrived.

The Mascarenes make a rich case study in the annals of extinction history because, as Anthony Cheke and Julian Hume have observed, “Their despoilers took good notes.” This is no accident. The Mascarenes were ground zero for some of the first environmental thinking — and activism — in recognizably modern form. Deforestation and defaunation startled European observers. Mauritius, in the words of the historian Richard Grove, acquired “a disproportionate significance in the history of European colonial environmental policy.” The phrase “dead as a dodo” was not only catchy — it had been primed for success by two centuries of awareness and angst about European impact on this exotic landscape.

Even so, the exact date of the most famous extinction is still fuzzy: The dodo was last securely observed in the 1630s, but they may have survived for a few more decades. The precise cause of their demise is also obscure — in large part because the bird suffered all the usual forces of ecological upheaval at once. Their habitat was destroyed by farms. Their eggs were eaten by invasive species. And, certainly, we hunted the dodos.

The dodo symbolizes the total biotic chaos instigated when Europeans showed up on these islands. At some point or another, more than seventeen mammals, roughly three dozen birds, over a dozen reptiles, a handful of frogs, and numerous invertebrates (among them the nasty predator known as the rosy wolf snail) were introduced. The archipelago’s new residents made their presence felt: Pigs ran rampant, rats gorged on birds and their eggs, and the crab-eating macaque, a monkey native to Southeast Asia, feasted on unwary endemic animals. The effects rippled. Since the first caravel cast its shadow on these shores, more than fifty species have vanished from the Mascarenes.

Human arrival unthreaded a unique fabric woven over incomprehensible reaches of geological time. Islands confront us with the active role of geology in evolution. Islands broadly fall into two types, oceanic and continental, with distinctive evolutionary dynamics. Oceanic islands are usually volcanic in origin (e.g., Palmyra, Hawaii, the Mascarenes), though sometimes they are created by uplift (e.g., Cyprus). Continental islands are bits of landmasses that have become stranded (e.g., the British Isles). Unlike oceanic islands, continental islands start with life, a random sample drawn from continental flora and fauna, like a handful of trail mix grabbed in the dark.

Evolution will work with whatever it is given, and since the constraints are heavy, island biogeography is, in the words of David Quammen, “a catalogue of quirks and superlatives.” Physical barriers drive evolutionary divergence; island populations, separated from the continents, follow unique evolutionary paths. With predators absent and competition sparse, natural selection tilts in unexpected directions. Traits that make no sense on continents — like flightlessness in birds — flourish. Entire systems of interdependence evolve around these peculiarities. And the result is that a staggering share of the world’s species diversity has been hatched on islands.

With great distinctness comes great fragility. Small populations on islands are always vulnerable to shocks, and island species often lack defenses that continental animals must acquire in constant competition against predators, parasites, and even disease. In sum, it is exactly that which makes islands different that leaves them especially vulnerable to us. Their essence is isolation; ours is connectivity. Their tempo is Earth time; our schedules are manic. And when the two collide, the result is often catastrophic.

The Portuguese first set foot on Mauritius around 1507 CE. This timing is of enormous consequence. The year 1500 has come to denote a stark boundary in the literature on the Sixth Extinction (in essence, because the IUCN started noting known extinctions since that date in its Red List). In order to compare past and present rates of extinction, it is commonplace to start tallying species that have disappeared since that time. Round numbers are always suspect, but this one is unusually complicated. Scientists, with a solemn duty to measure things precisely, must start somewhere. Historians, whose tapestry is woven of countless threads, prefer to linger over complexity, to insist on a mix of continuity and change in all human affairs. As a scholar of divided loyalties, I can sympathize with, and become frustrated by, both sides.

Even if the year 1500 is asked to bear an unrealistic amount of weight, the choice is not arbitrary. Around this time, Europeans started crossing oceans with some regularity. The pace of change accelerated. The human impact on biodiversity not only became more pronounced in the Age of Discovery, but the record of our impact also became much richer. No one denies that something dramatically changes around the year 1500, but as the ecologist Robert Whittaker put it, “Using a baseline of AD 1500 is to begin in the middle of the movie.” Whittaker describes our impact on islands in terms of “successive waves of transformation, a form of anthropogenic ratchet effect.”

Human impact on island fauna goes back to the original Ice Age dispersal of humans. Since the Pleistocene, colonization has often meant the onset of hunting and the beginning of the end for large animals, like the pygmy hippos and dwarf elephants on Cyprus. In general, the bigger the animal and the higher up the food web, the more likely it was to vanish. Flightless birds and big reptiles bore the brunt. The giant ground birds of New Zealand, the moas, are a striking case. Geology destined it to be a land of birds. With no mammals (apart from a few bats), the avian fauna of New Zealand gives us a sense of what evolution might have done if the asteroid had wiped out the mammals. The Polynesians who arrived found an Edenic landscape: nine moa species, some towering up to 12 feet tall and weighing hundreds of pounds. Tens to hundreds of thousands of these birds roamed the islands. Within two or three centuries, every species of moa was extinct.

European colonization in the Age of Discovery marked a new era within this much longer story. What makes this period stand out is that the fate of island biodiversity became entangled with novel power dynamics between human societies. Virgin islands like Mauritius were long since rare by 1500 CE, so in most cases, Europeans arrived on already-inhabited islands, disrupting socioecological balances of long standing. The Caribbean offers a quintessential case. Even before European contact, human impact unfolded in distinct waves, but the arrival of Columbus brought a cascade of new pressures: invasive animals, unfamiliar pathogens, and extractive technologies. Indigenous societies and island ecosystems were thrown into turmoil.

The result is measured in rapid faunal turnover. In the Greater Antilles (Cuba, Hispaniola, Jamaica, and Puerto Rico), there were 116 species of mammals at the beginning of the Holocene. Around 60 of them are gone. If bats are excluded, more than 4 out of every 5 mammals have gone extinct. Cuba, which includes the largest island in the Caribbean plus an archipelago of more than three thousand small islands, has seen approximately 24 of its 59 native mammals go extinct. Deforestation and direct exploitation were important drivers, but the role of invasive species was primary: Over 40 nonnative mammals have been introduced. To the east, on Hispaniola, virtually all the nonflying mammals are gone. On Puerto Rico, all seven are gone.

Mammals were not the only victims. Caribbean birds were threatened by new predators like rats and cats, and they were evicted from their shrinking forests. More than 60 species of birds have certainly gone extinct, and most that remain are threatened or endangered. Over half of the endemic parrots of the Caribbean have been snuffed out. Reptiles have suffered a similar fate. Although modern research has skewed away from our cold-blooded cousins, reptiles are integral to Caribbean ecosystems. Yet since European arrival, turtles, snakes, and lizards have been in freefall. On Guadeloupe, for instance, half to two-thirds of snakes and lizards have gone extinct. Many of the ecological jobs undertaken by reptiles go unreplaced, making the loss of functional diversity even greater.

The story of island biodiversity will thread through future chapters too. As steam replaced sail, the problem of invasive species only became more acute. In the last century, pollution and climate change have become new threats. There was a long pre-history to human impact before 1500 CE; European colonization marks not a beginning but a distinct new phase, a speeding up; and now the Anthropocene is somehow accelerating human impact again.

All in all, the human-dominated planet leaves less life on islands. What endures is quieter, more uniform, less exuberant than before. The raw numbers are revealing. Consider that since the beginning of the late Pleistocene — roughly 126,000 years ago — about 600 bird species are known to have gone extinct, and the real number is probably twice as high. Around 80% of the extinct species were island endemics. Even more generally, around three out of every four anthropogenic extinctions to date have involved island species. If global biodiversity is a great library, written over tens of millions of years, then we have erased an inordinate portion of its rare books collection — the most archaic, most colorful, and most singular volumes.

The year 1500 always saw a speeding up of human impact on ocean life, but the contrast between oceans and islands puts the proposition of the Sixth Extinction, its limits and its strengths, in a distinct light. Oceans are vast and resilient. Islands are small and fragile. If we measure human impact by counting extinctions alone, we will underestimate what we have done to life in the oceans. At the same time, extinction is a reasonable measure of our impact on islands, at least so far, even if we rarely count or even consider the losses before 1500 CE. And counting extinctions is only one crude measure of what we care about. Conceivably, the rate of island extinction could slow down, only because we have already done so much damage to the most vulnerable ecosystems. This is hardly cause for complacency. In fact, just the opposite: Because we have already lost so much diversity on islands, we might strain all the more to protect what remains.

Previously in The Revelator:

For Bald Eagles, the Descendants of the Destroyers Became the Restorers

The post The Way of the Dodo: Thinking Historically About Extinction appeared first on The Revelator.

Kathryn Porter, a consultant to the fossil fuel industry and a prominent critic of emissions reduction policies, has joined the UK’s foremost climate science denial group.

Porter appears frequently in the media as an “independent” expert on energy issues and has been interviewed on the BBC, LBC, GB News, and TalkTV, while her research is often covered in conservative media.

She also writes a column for The Telegraph, and in recent weeks she spoke on energy panels at both Labour and Conservative party conferences.

Porter’s consultancy Watt-Logic advises the oil and gas industry. Its website states that she works for “businesses with projects across the electricity, gas and oil industries”, including “clients with conventional energy assets including gas-fired power stations, gas storage, upstream oil and gas production and [Liquefied Natural Gas]”.

On 16 October, Porter joined the board of the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), a lobby group set up by Conservative peer and former chancellor Lord Nigel Lawson in 2008 to counter the growing consensus on the need to address man-made climate change.

The group, which is currently led by Tory peer Lord Craig Mackinlay, has said CO2 has been “mercilessly demonised” when it is a “benefit to the planet” – claiming that the atmosphere’s CO2 concentration should be “two or three times” higher than it is now. The group does not publicly declare its funding.

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In a statement on the GWPF website, Porter said: “I am delighted to be joining the Board of Trustees. Nigel Lawson understood the importance of open debate, rigorous analysis and challenging conventional wisdom, and I look forward to helping build on that legacy.”

Porter has authored two reports for the GWPF, and one for its campaign arm Net Zero Watch, since 2023.

She will sit on the board alongside The Telegraph’s chief interviewer Allison Pearson, and Labour MP Graham Stringer.

Porter has publicly criticised climate policies. In a post on X in January 2025, Porter attacked what she called an “excessive focus on CO2” in energy policy, and in February she suggested the UK’s landmark Climate Change Act should be repealed.

As DeSmog revealed in July 2023, Porter has written blogs that contradict basic climate science. In a 2017 post, she wrote that “climate models overstate global warming”. In fact, climate models have accurately predicted global temperature rises, with observed warming reflecting scientific forecasts.

The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the world’s foremost climate science body, has stated that it is “unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land”.

It has also stated that carbon dioxide “is responsible for most of global warming” since the late 19th century, which has increased the “severity and frequency of weather and climate extremes, like heat waves, heavy rains, and drought”.

While Porter and the GWPF claim that reaching net zero emissions by 2050 is unaffordable, a succession of heatwaves during the British summer led to mass school closures, public transport disruption, and a “disaster” harvest – ultimately costing the economy an estimated £4.4 billion.

The Climate Change Committee, an independent government advisory body, has estimated that reaching net zero will cost 0.2 percent of GDP per year – and that its total cost will be less than one fossil fuel price shock.

Porter and the GWPF were approached for comment.

Conservative Connections

Porter and the GWPF have several connections to the Conservative Party.

In January, Clare Coutinho, the then Tory shadow energy secretary, helped to launch a paper written by Porter claiming that renewable energy development could cause blackouts – a claim rejected as “nonsense scaremongering” by the government.

Coutinho had previously suggested that the Labour government should hire Porter to vet its energy policies.

The Conservative Party under Kemi Badenoch has ditched its past support for climate action, declaring it would be “impossible” to reach net zero by 2050, and vowing to repeal the Climate Change Act. Badenoch has banned any Tory candidate from supporting net zero.

Earlier this month, Porter spoke at the Conservative Party’s conference in Birmingham on a panel entitled ‘Solving Britain’s Energy Crisis’ alongside newly-appointed shadow energy secretary Andrew Bowie, head of policy at Octopus Energy Jack Pardoe, and Liam Halligan, a former GB News presenter and the director of the Centre for Policy Studies think tank.

Porter also spoke on a GWPF panel at last year’s Tory conference entitled ‘Can Britain survive Ed Miliband?’, where she called for net zero to be scrapped and for increased fossil fuel extraction. 

As DeSmog revealed in September 2024, GWPF donors have given more than £7 million to the Conservatives over the past two decades.

At this year’s Labour Party conference in Liverpool, Porter also spoke on an energy panel organised by the oil exploration company EnQuest, whose CEO Amjad Bseisu is a Conservative Party donor.

Speaking alongside Bseisu, GMB general secretary Gary Smith, and Labour donor Dale Vince, Porter called for taxes to be reduced on the fossil fuel industry and for the UK to expand its North Sea drilling. 

The post Oil Industry Consultant Joins Climate Denial Group Run by Tory Peer appeared first on DeSmog.

President Trump signed legislation Tuesday making Chiricahua America’s 64th national park, the first new national park in six years.

Nicknamed the “Wonderland of Rocks,” Chiricahua is known for its balanced boulders, rhyolite pinnacles, and other rock formations. It’s one of several sky islands in southeastern Arizona, which are isolated mountain ranges that rise up out of the surrounding desert “sea” and provide important habitat to species including black bears, jaguars, and more than half of the continent’s birds.

President Calvin Coolidge protected Chiricahua, located in southeastern Arizona, as a national monument in 1924. The park’s boundaries stay the same, and the law protects Tribal access for traditional ceremonies on land that was once home to the Chiricahua Apache. At least five similar bills stalled before Representative Juan Ciscomani and Senators Mark Kelly and Ruben Gallego pushed this one through.

Local leaders are counting on a tourism bump. “More visitors can mean more customers for our hotels, restaurants, and small businesses,” Willcox Mayor Greg Hancock said.

Whether the Park Service can handle them is another matter. Agency officials declined to say whether they will add staff after deep workforce cuts under Interior Secretary Doug Burgum. Additionally, the park currently needs mold abatement in employee housing as well as other repairs, according to a review of park service projects by the Center for Western Priorities.

62 percent of national forests within half-mile of backcountry roads

A new map created by The Wilderness Society finds 310,860 miles of road or other routes in national forests are currently open to motorized vehicles—enough to drive to the moon and a quarter of the way back.

Despite the staggering amount of miles already open to off-road vehicles, motorcycles, and snowmobiles, the Trump administration is proposing to open even more of our national forests to motorized vehicles by revising the agency’s Travel Management Rule. The revision would flip the current “closed unless designated open” system on its head so all routes, including hiking and biking trails, would be open to motorized use unless marked closed.

Quick hits New map reveals extent of data center applications on public lands in the West

Reuters | KLAS | KHQ | KVOA

Court upholds EPA’s authority over Tribal lands in Oklahoma

Native News Online

As Trump wages golf course war, DC residents fear loss of access

New York Times

Report: New data shows how New Mexico can leverage satellites to find and fix oil and gas emissions

Big Gas Polluters

Company powering Google’s data center gives $105 million for Yellowstone conservation

Cowboy State Daily

NRDC says permitting deal is ‘deeply flawed,’ calls for changes

Politico Pro

14 bears were euthanized at one Montana home. Wildlife experts explain what went wrong

Outside

Lawmakers could face a data center backlash if permitting reform bill passes

HuffPost

Quote of the day

The Chiricahuas deserve national park status. They are one of America’s most spectacular and wild places… That said, this designation will bring more visitors, which will require more resources. Doug Burgum and Congress need to fully fund our park system, rather than starving it.”

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

Picture This

@usinterior

America’s newest national park is rock solid!

Chiricahua is officially our 64th national park.

Known as the “Wonderland of Rocks,” this spectacular Arizona landscape was shaped by massive volcanic eruptions and millions of years of erosion, creating the towering rock pinnacles that define Chiricahua today.

But there’s much more to this place than the rocks. Chiricahua National Park is home to an incredible diversity of plants and wildlife and preserves thousands of years of human history, from Indigenous peoples and Chiricahua Apaches to Buffalo Soldiers, pioneers, ranchers and the Civilian Conservation Corps.

A new name for a place Americans have treasured for generations.

Photos by Sean Parker | @seanparkerphotography

Feature image: Massai Point in Chiricahua National Park; Source: nps.gov

The post Chiricahua becomes America’s 64th national park appeared first on Center for Western Priorities.

By Biruk Tsehay Abera, 2026 Africa Zero Waste Academy Participant

My name is Biruk Tsehay Abera, and I co-founded Jitu Organic Fertilizer. “Jitu” means giving and providing, and it also symbolizes prosperity and fertility.

I was born and raised in Addis Ababa. Like many rapidly growing African cities, it is experiencing migration, rapid urbanization, and modernization, all of which increase and diversify waste generation. The city generates about 3,000 metric tonnes of waste daily, much of which ends up in landfills rather than at decentralized composting facilities such as Jitu Organic Fertilizer. About 70% of the waste generated is organic and can be composted.

Currently, Addis Ababa’s reliance on open landfilling creates serious environmental problems, including methane emissions, leachate that can contaminate surface and groundwater, and air pollution.

At Jitu, we have been working on practical solutions by advocating for better waste management, creating accessible waste streams for compost producers, developing market opportunities, and providing training and capacity development.

I have witnessed this transformation firsthand and contributed to it alongside my fellow actors in the waste sector. We have achieved important successes, but the biggest change is still ahead.

This combined experience is why I applied to the Zero Waste Academy. 

I have always told myself I am a lion among lions. But through the Zero Waste Academy, I have met the true lions, the heroes and heroines of the zero waste movement.

Seeing my fellow African brothers and sisters join this journey—bringing innovations rooted in their local contexts, creating social and economic change, and making their voices heard— has been an incredible experience.

Being part of this global movement—sharing our stories in person, building connections, learning from one another’s lifelong experiences, and witnessing how far people have come—and the determination they have to keep moving forward with hope and commitment—has been one of the most powerful experiences of my life.

ABIB Zero Waste Project: A New Beginning

Our goal is to move toward zero waste.

ABIB is a Hebrew word associated with spring, renewal, and a new beginning. For me, it represents the transformation we seek in the waste sector.

To achieve this transformation, integrating and building capacity across the waste sector are essential. I came to the Zero Waste Academy looking for practical solutions and an eye-opening experience that would help me see waste from a broader perspective—not only from a scientific standpoint, but also through its social, economic, political, and global dimensions.

The waste sector affects diverse groups, including women, children, minority communities, persons with disabilities, waste workers, and compost producers. Their experiences and challenges must be part of the zero-waste conversation at both the national and international levels.

In the waste sector, we often see a mountain of waste that seems impossible to move, a wall of dirt that seems impossible to break, and the distance that seems impossible to reach. Yet, beyond the dark sky covered by dust, we can always see a horizon.

That horizon represents hope and determination.

One of our greatest challenges is building greater integrity, collaboration, and solidarity within the sector. Waste workers and compost producers need to come together, share knowledge and skills, advocate collectively, and create safe spaces for dialogue.

The Zero Waste Academy has shown me that I am no longer standing alone.

The challenges we face are similar. The system is broken in ways that keep those working toward circularity and zero waste from reaching their full potential.

But I believe that these challenges can also become opportunities for transformation.

My Dream

I have a dream: to build Africa’s largest organic fertilizer facility.

With great power comes great responsibility. Understanding the reality of the waste sector, identifying the right direction, and building the right partnerships have therefore been among my biggest considerations.

The Zero Waste Academy has given me something beyond knowledge. It has connected me to a regional and continental network of waste workers and changemakers across Africa who have the will, determination, and belief to transform the sector.

This network is a major step toward creating sustainable jobs and improving livelihood security. It strengthens our ability to advocate, share experiences, learn from one another, and change people’s attitudes toward waste.

What I Am Taking Forward

Through the Zero Waste Academy, I have learned the power of advocacy, community engagement, and collective action. I have seen how associations can help waste workers organize, strengthen their voices, and advocate for better working conditions and legal protection.

This experience has also strengthened my confidence as an advocate. It has helped me understand that waste is not simply waste. It has economic, political, social, environmental, and global dimensions.

The overwhelming challenges waste pickers and informal waste collectors face have further convinced me of the importance of building strong organizations and associations for compost producers and waste workers. Collective organization can create stronger negotiating power for better working environments, recognition, and legal protection.

Shaping the Future

Shaping the future is like carving stone. It is not a simple task. You need the right tools, the right skills, and the determination of a skilled craftsman.

I believe the Zero Waste Academy has given me some of those tools.

Now, it is time for me to turn social problems into life-changing solutions.

I came to the Academy looking for practical solutions. I leave with new knowledge, new partnerships, new confidence, and a stronger belief that transformation is possible when we work together.

The journey toward zero waste is far from over.

This is only the beginning.

See you at the top!

Biruk Tsehay Abera

The post Diaries from Accra: Biruk’s Experience at Africa Zero Waste Academy first appeared on GAIA.

Current climate policies put the world on a course for 2.8 degrees C of warming this century, well beyond international climate targets, according to a new U.N. report.

Read more on E360 →

SAVE THE DATE | 1–4 DECEMBER 2026 | ABUJA, NIGERIA Two Major Continental Gatherings. One Shared Vision for Africa’s Food Future.

The Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa (AFSA) is pleased to announce the Africa Agroecology Entrepreneurship and Food Systems Week, taking place from 1 to 4 December 2026 in Abuja, Nigeria, under the theme “Taste Africa and Grow Africa: Through Agroecological Foods, Enterprises and Food Sovereignty.” Bringing together agroecological entrepreneurs, farmers, civil society organisations, policymakers, researchers, financiers, market actors and development partners from across Africa, this four-day continental gathering will advance a shared vision for thriving African food enterprises, stronger territorial markets, healthy African diets and food systems rooted in African knowledge, culture and sovereignty.

The Week will feature two major continental events:

On 1–2 December, the 3rd African Agroecological Entrepreneurship (AEE) Convening, under the theme “Breaking Barriers to Scale: Unlocking Opportunities for Agroecological Entrepreneurship and Territorial Markets in Africa,” will focus on overcoming barriers to finance, market access, investment and supportive policies, while creating practical opportunities for African agroecological enterprises to grow.

On 3–4 December, the 6th Biennial Food Systems Conference, under the theme “The Battle for the African Diet: Ultra-Processed Foods and the Future of Food Sovereignty,” will examine how industrial food systems and changing retail markets are reshaping African diets, threatening indigenous food cultures and farmer livelihoods, and what it will take to protect Africa’s food diversity, strengthen community control and reclaim the future of African food.

Four days. Two major gatherings. One powerful African movement for food sovereignty. Together, these events will connect economic opportunity with cultural pride, amplify African solutions and strengthen collective action for food systems that serve African people and communities.

Stay tuned for further announcements, programme details, and information on how to join selected sessions virtually. We look forward to bringing together AFSA members, partners, allies and food systems advocates across Africa and beyond to help shape the future of African food.

#SaveTheDate #Agroecology #FoodSovereignty #AfricanFoodSystems #TasteAfricaGrowAfrica #AFSA

Five problems with the FDA’s proposed food chemicals rule Anthony Lacey October 21, 2026

A new EWG analysis finds a Food and Drug Administration proposed food chemicals rule update may represent more bark than bite – its “requirements” could be mandatory in name only, and worse, may weaken the current rule. 

The FDA in August proposed to narrow a legal loophole in a food chemicals approval process that’s currently shrouded in mystery. 

The food chemicals fall into the category of “generally recognized as safe,” or GRAS. 

The GRAS loophole allows food and chemical companies, rather than the FDA, to greenlight new food chemicals or new uses of those chemicals – often in secret. Since 2000, the food and chemical industry has greenlighted nearly 99% of food chemicals introduced onto the market without federal safety review, a 2025 EWG analysis found.

Under current law, a company gets to decide for itself whether to notify the FDA after deciding a food chemical is GRAS. Many choose not to inform the agency, leaving it – and consumers – in the dark about what’s in their food. 

EWG has identified over 100 of these so-called “secret GRAS” chemicals used in thousands of products. The FDA estimates in the proposed rule that there could be thousands of these secret ingredients. 

The FDA rule purports to take the secrecy out of GRAS by mandating companies tell it when they determine a new chemical or use is safe. But EWG’s analysis suggests the proposed rule is toothless and may weaken some existing requirements. 

Here are five major problems with the FDA’s proposal. 

1. Potentially unsafe chemicals can still go into food before FDA review 

The FDA has said its proposed rule will end so-called secret GRAS notifications by requiring companies to notify it when they introduce a new ingredient. 

But buried in the rule is a remarkable admission: “a company may reach a GRAS conclusion about a new use of a substance and introduce the substance into interstate commerce before submitting a GRAS notice.” 

Worse, there’s no deadline for notifying the FDA. A chemical could be on the market indefinitely before the FDA gets involved. And it’s allowed to remain on the market while the FDA completes its review. 

So even if the FDA decides in the end a chemical is not safe, consumers may have already been exposed for years. 

2. No incentive to comply

What happens to a company that ignores the notification requirement? Not much, according to the rule. 

It states that non-compliance is merely “a factor in FDA’s prioritization of food substances for post-market review.” It doesn’t lead to civil penalties or any requirement to pull the product from shelves.

The FDA’s post-market review program is chronically underfunded and notoriously slow. It took the FDA nearly 35 years to ban Red Dye No. 3 after determining in 1990 the dye causes cancer. The FDA banned brominated vegetable oil 50 years after first raising concerns about its safety. And petitions calling on the FDA to address potentially dangerous chemicals often languish for years.

With the agency sometimes taking decades to work its way through its watchlist, if it ever does, the threat of landing on that list is not a meaningful deterrent.

3. No data? No problem! 

The proposed rule streamlines the review process for potentially thousands of chemicals and uses currently on the market. These are chemicals companies have secretly decided should be considered GRAS and never told the FDA about. 

To qualify for this process, a company must submit basic information only, including, in addition to its name and its uses, details about how much of it was being used and proof it was being sold in food before the rule took effect. 

What isn’t required: safety data. Scientific justification. Not even a short summary of why the company thinks the substance is safe. 

The proposed rule states the FDA will post these submissions on a public list, but it also says appearing on the list “does not mean that the FDA has reviewed the GRAS status of the substance.” 

How many secret GRAS chemicals or uses could benefit from this “streamlined” process? No one knows, but the FDA estimates it could receive more than 2,400 submissions from more than 900 companies through this track alone. 

Some new substances – or new uses of substances already in our food – have never been reviewed by the FDA for safety. And under this rule, they wouldn’t have to be. They’d simply be registered. 

This approach contrasts starkly with current law. 

Today, when a company submits a notice to the FDA, it must include a list of all the data it relied on to conclude the chemical was safe. All that information must be of the “same quantity and quality of scientific evidence” as would be required by the more rigorous pre-market review process for food additives. 

4. Creates perverse incentives to rush potentially unsafe ingredients onto store shelves

Any substance in the food supply before the rule’s effective date can use the streamlined no-safety-data process up to one year after the rule is finalized. 

Finalizing a proposed rule can take years. The last time the FDA updated its GRAS process, through a rule proposed in 1997, it took the agency 19 years to finalize. 

Now there’s a window when companies can introduce new chemicals – or use chemicals in new ways – by taking advantage of the shorter process.  

The proposed rule effectively rewards companies for getting their product on the market quickly, before oversight begins. It gives companies a financial incentive to move quickly, skipping review rather than taking  the time for careful scrutiny. 

A rule intended to rein in the secret GRAS loophole process may accelerate the very behavior it was meant to stop.

5. Creates a major new loophole for minor amounts of new chemicals 

The proposal also expands a fairly obscure exemption, as the Guardian recently reported.  

Until recently, the “threshold of regulation” loophole applied only to food contact materials that might leach into food in tiny amounts – 0.5 parts per billion. Any chemical whose dietary exposure falls below that threshold and does not cause cancer is able to evade the normal review process. 

Companies have exploited the rules to let some chemicals into the food supply. Perchlorate, a rocket fuel chemical that could harm children’s brain development, can be used in dry food packaging through the loophole.

The proposed rule would extend this exemption to substances added directly to food. That’s a major change. 

The FDA’s cancer-centered approach to risk also ignores other important kinds of potential harm. For example, hormone-disrupting chemicals can cause damage at very low doses. So can chemicals that affect fetal development, harm the nervous system or suppress immune function. 

The proposed loophole extension also fails to consider the total risk that might come from exposure to the same chemicals from other foods or from non-food sources like personal care products. 

This new exemption could allow substances like flavor ingredients, enzymes, solvents, processing aids and fermentation byproducts to skip FDA review altogether. 

What we need instead

The FDA’s proposal will not fix the problems with our food chemical review system. Congress can still step in to make our food safer. 

Rep. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.) and Sens. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Cory Booker (D-N.J.) have introduced legislation that would go much further than the proposed rule. It would require pre-market review of new GRAS substances, mandate disclosure of important safety data, and give the FDA the resources it needs to complete the job. 

These bills represent the kind of structural reform the GRAS system needs. EWG urges Congress to move the bills forward and calls on the FDA to strengthen its proposed rule.

States stepping up

In the meantime, states have stepped in to fill the FDA’s regulatory gaps. More than 30 states have introduced legislation to make our food safer. Food companies have responded by reformulating products.

New York recently passed a bill requiring companies to disclose their use of GRAS substances, which is awaiting the governor’s signature. Any federal action on food chemicals must preserve these important state protections. 

EWG will continue to push for a food safety system that puts consumer health first – not one that creates the appearance of oversight while leaving the door open to unreviewed chemicals.

Areas of Focus Food Authors Melanie Benesh October 21, 2026