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Communities can refuse incineration by organizing early, demanding air-quality monitoring, and advancing zero waste plans before waste-to-energy contracts are signed. That single sequence — organize, monitor, propose an alternative — is how residents have stopped proposed incinerators from breaking ground.

To refuse incineration means treating burning waste not as an inevitable “solution” but as a false one that can be blocked through collective action, legal pressure, and a credible zero waste plan. This guide equips organizers and residents facing a proposed incinerator or waste-to-energy (WTE) facility with the concrete steps to fight back — and win.

Anti-incineration protest in Chile. © Oren Langelle

What does it mean to refuse incineration?

To refuse incineration is a community strategy: residents reject the burning of waste — including WTE, plastic-to-fuel, and chemical recycling — and organize to stop proposed facilities before contracts are signed.

Waste incineration is often marketed as “waste-to-energy,” a green-sounding label for burning trash to generate electricity. It is a false solution. Incineration of waste releases toxic air pollutants, undermines recycling and composting, and locks communities into decades-long contracts that require a constant stream of garbage to feed the burner.

Refusing incineration is not only about saying no. It is about saying yes to something better — a zero waste plan that reduces waste at the source, protects public health, and keeps decision-making in the hands of the community rather than the industry.

Incineration is not a climate solution. GAIA’s research documents that zero waste approaches cut climate pollution more effectively than burning trash, without the air-quality harm that falls hardest on frontline communities.

How to Refuse Incineration: A Step-by-Step Community Guide

Here is a practical, extractable sequence communities have used to refuse incineration and stop proposed facilities.

1. Organize early — before the contract is signed. The window to stop an incinerator is widest before permits are issued and financing is locked in. A core group of 5–10 committed residents can map local decision-makers and draft a campaign timeline. The goal is to begin before any permits are submitted.
2. Map the proposal and the permits. Identify the developer, the proposed site, and every permit the project needs. Incineration permits typically require environmental and air-quality approvals from local and national regulators — request every public document. Knowing exactly which agencies hold approval power tells you where to concentrate legal and public pressure.
3. Demand independent air-quality monitoring. Do not accept the developer’s own data. Push for community-led air monitoring and independent review, and make air quality the center of your public case. Independent data is often the most persuasive evidence in permit hearings and media coverage.
4. Expose the false-solution framing. Waste-to-energy, plastic-to-fuel, and chemical recycling are marketed as green. Document what they actually emit and who bears the harm. GAIA’s webinar on incineration as a false solution breaks down the arguments organizers can use. Sharing this evidence early shapes media coverage and public opinion before the developer’s narrative takes hold.
5. Build a coalition rooted in environmental justice. Incinerators are disproportionately sited near low-income communities and communities of color. Center the voices of directly impacted residents, and bring in health professionals, waste pickers, unions, and faith groups. A broad, visible coalition signals to decision-makers that opposition is not a fringe position.
6. Intervene in the legal and permitting process. File public comments, request hearings, and — where the case supports it — challenge permits in court. Legal pressure has delayed and defeated projects, as in Chile’s Araucanía region. Even interventions that do not immediately block a project create delay, raise costs for developers, and generate public record.
7. Put a zero waste plan on the table. Refusing incineration is strongest when paired with a credible alternative. Present a zero waste plan that shows decision-makers a better path (see the section below). A concrete alternative removes the “no other option” argument that developers rely on.
8. Keep the pressure public and sustained. Rallies, media coverage, petitions, and testimony keep the issue visible until the proposal is withdrawn or rejected. Decision-makers are more likely to act when they know the community is watching and will not disengage between official hearings.

Local groups protest incinerator plans in Indonesia. Source: WALHI

Building a zero waste plan as the alternative

A zero waste plan is a community roadmap to reduce, reuse, recycle, and compost the maximum amount of waste — so there is nothing left to burn or bury.

This is the yes that makes the no credible. When residents refuse incineration without an alternative, decision-makers claim there is “no other option.” A zero waste plan removes that excuse.

A strong community zero waste plan usually includes:

• Source separation and organics diversion — composting food and yard waste, which is the largest and most burnable fraction of the waste stream.
• Reuse and repair systems that cut waste before it is generated.
• Integration of waste pickers and recyclers as recognized workers, not an afterthought.
• Producer accountability that shifts the cost of packaging and plastic back onto the companies that create it.

GAIA’s Zero Waste Academy has trained more than 500 participants across regions from Africa to Latin America to build exactly these kinds of plans. Learn how communities design zero waste systems through GAIA’s work on zero waste for all communities and the evidence that zero waste beats incineration in cutting climate pollution.

Communities that refused incineration and won

Communities have refused incineration and won by combining early organizing, legal action, and zero waste alternatives — from Canada to Chile. For more examples, explore 20 Inspiring Stories of Victory Against Incinerators, GAIA’s Global Week of Action series spotlighting communities that stopped incinerators around the world.

GAIA’s case documentation on stopping waste-to-energy in Canada records how community and civil-society pressure has challenged proposed WTE projects and pushed decision-makers toward waste reduction instead of burning.

In Chile, residents in the Araucanía region carried their fight into the courts. GAIA’s coverage of the case — WTE Araucanía awaits the tribunal’s resolution — documents how the community used the legal system to contest a proposed incineration project, demonstrating that permitting and tribunal processes are real leverage points for refusing incineration.

The pattern across these cases is consistent: organize before the contract is signed, make air quality and public health the core argument, and offer a zero waste plan as the alternative.

These are not isolated wins. They are part of a global movement in which residents, waste pickers, and organizers refuse to accept incineration as the price of managing waste.

Frequently asked questions about stopping incinerators Can a community legally stop an incinerator?

Yes. Communities can legally stop an incinerator by intervening in the permitting process, filing public comments, requesting hearings, and challenging permits in court. In Chile’s Araucanía region, residents took a proposed WTE project to a tribunal, showing that legal channels are a real path to refuse incineration.

What is a zero waste plan?

A zero waste plan is a community roadmap to reduce, reuse, recycle, and compost the maximum amount of waste so that little or nothing needs to be burned or landfilled. It typically includes source separation, organics composting, reuse systems, integration of waste pickers, and producer accountability.

How long does it take to block an incinerator?

It varies. Some campaigns win in months by mobilizing before a contract is signed; others take years of sustained legal and public pressure. The earlier a community organizes — ideally before permits and financing are locked in — the shorter and more winnable the fight tends to be.

What agencies regulate incineration permits?

Incineration and waste-to-energy facilities generally require environmental and air-quality permits from local and national regulators. The exact agencies depend on the country and region, so a key early step is to map every permit the project needs and request all public documents.

Refuse incineration with us

Burning waste is not inevitable — and it is not a solution. Communities everywhere are proving that incineration can be refused and replaced with community-led zero waste. You don’t have to fight alone.

Join the Global Week of Action to Stop Incineration. Take part in the Global Week of Action to connect with organizers, access campaign resources, and help build the zero waste alternative in your community.

The post How Communities Can Refuse Incineration and Win first appeared on GAIA.

If your community is being pitched a “waste-to-energy” incinerator as a clean, modern fix for its garbage, this page equips you to evaluate that claim with evidence rather than industry marketing.

The short version: a waste-to-energy incinerator is not renewable, not cheap, and not clean. It is one of the most expensive ways to manage waste, locks cities into decades of burning materials that should be reduced, reused, and composted, and releases pollutants into the neighborhoods least able to fight back. If that weren’t bad enough, it’s a climate disaster, emitting almost twice as much CO2 per unit of energy than coal. Zero waste solutions cut climate pollution, cost less, and create more jobs.

This is GAIA’s evidence base for policymakers, community organizers, and journalists assessing incineration proposals. It draws on GAIA’s more than two decades of research and community organizing across the global zero waste movement. Read it, share it, and download the full brief to bring the receipts to your next council meeting.

What is a waste-to-energy incinerator?

A waste-to-energy incinerator is a facility that burns municipal solid waste at high temperatures to produce heat, which drives a turbine to generate electricity. “Waste-to-energy” (often shortened to WTE) is the industry’s preferred name for what is, at its core, mass-burn incineration.

The term is a marketing frame. Burning trash to make a small amount of power does not make incineration a clean or circular technology. It converts discarded materials — much of which could be recycled or composted — into ash, air pollution, and greenhouse gases.

How waste-to-energy incineration actually works

Mixed municipal waste is fed into a combustion chamber and burned at roughly 850°C or higher. The heat boils water into steam, the steam spins a turbine, and the turbine generates electricity. Whatever is left becomes bottom ash and fly ash, both of which require disposal — often in a landfill.

This is the detail the industry rarely leads with: incineration does not make waste disappear. It transforms one waste stream into three — air emissions, toxic fly ash, and bottom ash — while destroying the material value of everything it burns.

Why “energy recovery” is a misleading label

The amount of energy recovered from burning waste is low relative to the energy that was embedded in producing those materials in the first place. Recycling an aluminum can or a plastic bottle saves far more energy than burning it ever recovers.

Burning waste for a modest electricity yield destroys that embedded energy permanently. GAIA’s research shows that a zero waste approach — reduce, reuse, recycle, compost — retains far more value and cuts far more climate pollution than any “energy recovery” from an incinerator.

Why incineration of waste harms the climate and communities

The incineration of waste harms the climate because it emits more carbon dioxide per unit of electricity than coal, and it harms communities because it releases hazardous air pollutants into the neighborhoods surrounding the plant.

Waste-to-energy incinerators emit 1.7 times as much greenhouse gases (GHGs) per unit of electricity produced compared to coal-fired power plants. They also emit more air pollutants than other sources of energy.

That single comparison dismantles the “clean energy” claim. A technology that out-pollutes coal per megawatt-hour cannot credibly be sold as a climate solution. GAIA’s peer analysis found that zero waste beats incineration in cutting climate pollution, and the emissions math is the reason why.

The pollutants a waste-to-energy incinerator releases

GAIA’s WTE Facts and Figures brief documents that waste-to-energy incinerators release a range of hazardous pollutants, including dioxins, furans, mercury, lead, and particulate matter. These are not trace nuisances — they are among the most toxic substances in industrial air pollution.

Dioxins and furans are persistent, bioaccumulative, and linked to cancer and reproductive harm. Mercury and lead are neurotoxins. Fine particulate matter penetrates deep into the lungs and is associated with heart and respiratory disease. The exact pollutant profile of any given plant depends on what is burned and how emissions are controlled.

Environmental justice: who lives next to the smokestack

Incinerators are not distributed evenly. They are disproportionately sited in low-income communities and communities of color — the same communities that have historically had the least political power to refuse them.

This is the heart of GAIA’s objection. A waste-to-energy incinerator does not just produce emissions; it concentrates them where the people breathing them did not consent. Community air-quality monitoring by GAIA members repeatedly documents this pattern. That is why more than 100 organizations have urged UN-Habitat to stop promoting waste-to-energy as a false solution.

The true cost of waste incineration vs. zero waste

Waste-to-energy incineration is one of the most expensive waste management options available — incinerators carry very high upfront capital costs, long-term debt, and “put-or-pay” contracts that lock cities into feeding the burner for decades. For a detailed breakdown, see GAIA’s resource on the high cost of waste incineration.

That one sentence is the answer most policymakers are searching for: what does a waste-to-energy incinerator cost? It costs more than nearly any other disposal method — and the bill lasts far longer than a single budget cycle.

Why incinerator cost is higher than it looks

The sticker price of an incinerator is only the beginning. A full accounting of incinerator cost includes capital financing over decades, ongoing operations and maintenance, pollution-control equipment, ash disposal, and the health and environmental costs borne by nearby residents.

Because the facilities are so expensive to build, they are financed with long-term debt. To service that debt, operators need a guaranteed volume of waste to burn. That is where the trap closes.

The put-or-pay trap

Many incinerator contracts include “put-or-pay” clauses. A put-or-pay clause is a contractual guarantee that a city will supply a minimum tonnage of waste — or pay a penalty as if it had.

This creates a direct financial disincentive to reduce, reuse, recycle, or compost. Once a city signs, cutting waste means paying penalties. The incinerator’s economics actively fight against the zero waste progress a community wants to make.

What communities get instead when they choose zero waste

Zero waste systems require far less capital, scale incrementally, and create more jobs per ton of material handled than incineration. Recycling and composting infrastructure can be built in stages, funded without decades of debt, and adjusted as a community’s needs change.

Crucially, zero waste keeps money and materials circulating in the local economy rather than sending them up a smokestack. It is the flexible, lower-cost, community-controlled alternative that a put-or-pay incinerator contract forecloses.

Zero waste alternatives that beat incineration

Zero waste alternatives — waste reduction, reuse, expanded recycling, and organics composting — cut climate pollution, cost less, and create significantly more jobs than a waste-to-energy incinerator. They are not aspirational; they are already working in cities across the GAIA network.

Reduce and reuse first

The cheapest, cleanest ton of waste is the one never created. Waste reduction and reuse — refillable systems, repair, product redesign, and bans on the worst single-use items — shrink the waste stream at the source before disposal is ever a question.

This is why incineration and zero waste are fundamentally incompatible. An incinerator needs a steady diet of waste; zero waste is designed to starve that diet down to nothing.

Recycling and separate collection

Separating materials at the source keeps recyclables clean and valuable. When waste is mixed and burned, that material value is destroyed forever. When it is separated and recycled, it displaces the far larger energy and emissions cost of producing materials from scratch.

GAIA’s global network has documented zero waste cities that have driven diversion rates high enough to make incineration unnecessary — proof that the model scales in the real world.

Composting and organics

Organic waste — food scraps and yard trimmings — is wet and heavy, which makes it a poor fuel and a major driver of an incinerator’s inefficiency. Diverted to composting instead, that same material becomes soil, sequesters carbon, and supports local agriculture.

Removing organics from the waste stream is one of the fastest ways to cut both landfill methane and incinerator emissions at the same time.

The trans-local model behind the movement

GAIA supports these alternatives through a trans-local organizing model — distributed leadership across regional communities rather than a single top-down blueprint. Programs like GAIA’s Zero Waste Academy equip citizens, policymakers, and organizations with the scientific knowledge and political frameworks to build community-led systems that make incineration obsolete.

Frequently asked questions about waste-to-energy Is waste-to-energy renewable?

No. Waste-to-energy incineration is not renewable. It relies on a continuous supply of discarded materials — much of it fossil-based plastics — and emits 1.7 times as much greenhouse gas per megawatt-hour as coal-fired power plants. Burning finite materials to make power is the opposite of a renewable cycle.

Is incineration better than landfill?

No — framing the choice as “incinerator or landfill” is a false dilemma. Both are disposal methods that destroy material value, and incineration adds hazardous air emissions and toxic ash on top. The real alternative is zero waste: reduce, reuse, recycle, and compost so that far less material needs disposal at all.

What does a waste-to-energy incinerator cost?

A waste-to-energy incinerator is one of the most expensive waste management options, with very high capital costs and long-term contracts that often lock cities in for decades. The full picture — including financing, operations, ash disposal, and health costs — is detailed in GAIA’s the high cost of waste incineration.

Does waste-to-energy reduce waste?

Not really. Incineration reduces the volume of waste but leaves behind bottom ash and toxic fly ash that still require disposal, and it destroys recyclable and compostable materials in the process. It converts one waste stream into three — air emissions, fly ash, and bottom ash — rather than genuinely eliminating waste.

Are waste-to-energy emissions regulated?

WTE incinerators are subject to air-quality regulations, but regulation does not make them safe. Emission limits vary widely between countries, monitoring is often intermittent, and pollutants like dioxins, furans, mercury, and lead are hazardous even at low, “permitted” concentrations. Community air-quality monitoring by GAIA members frequently reveals gaps between what is permitted and what communities actually breathe.

Take action against waste incineration

Waste-to-energy incineration is a false solution — more polluting than coal, more expensive than the alternatives, and a decades-long lock-in that punishes communities for choosing zero waste. The evidence is clear, and the movement to stop it is growing.

Download the full WTE Facts brief to bring GAIA’s complete data set — emissions figures, cost analysis, and pollutant profiles — to your next hearing, article, or campaign. Enter your email and we will send you the brief and updates from the movement.

Add your name to GAIA’s campaign against waste incineration. Communities across the global GAIA network are refusing incineration and building zero waste systems that work. Join the Global Week of Action to Stop Incineration, and help make the next proposed incinerator the one that never gets built.

See the evidence from twenty incinerators worldwide in GAIA’s Burn Book, and read GAIA’s new report on waste-to-energy in Africa.

The post Waste-to-Energy Incineration: The Facts, Costs & Risks first appeared on GAIA.

Three storms at once

Today is World Food Day. This year it finds African farmers caught between three storms at once: a super El Niño, a war in Europe and a war in the Gulf.

None of these storms began in Africa. Africa did not heat the Pacific Ocean. It did not start the war in Ukraine or the war around the Strait of Hormuz. Yet it is African farmers, pastoralists, fisherfolk and families who will pay the highest price, in empty granaries, dead livestock and children going to bed hungry.

That is what I want to say plainly today. These crises are not creating Africa’s vulnerability. They are exposing it. And that vulnerability was not an accident. It was built.

A super El Niño that hits Africa hardest

The El Niño now under way is one of the strongest on record. The World Food Programme warns it could push at least 49 million more people into acute hunger by the end of 2027. Around 24 million of them are in Africa: more than 18 million in East and Southern Africa, and nearly 6 million in West and Central Africa.

The damage is already visible. The June to September rains failed across Ethiopia, Sudan, South Sudan and Uganda’s Karamoja. South Sudan and Karamoja are on track for their driest year on record. Now the Horn of Africa faces the opposite danger: heavy rains and floods along Somalia’s rivers, where famine is a real risk.

In Southern Africa, forecasters expect late, poor rains and long dry spells over the season that is starting now. Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Malawi, Zambia, Angola, Madagascar and Lesotho are of greatest concern. The worst hunger will come not now but in the lean months of 2027 and early 2028, when the food from a failed harvest runs out.

For a farmer who depends on rain, one failed season can mean selling the last goat, pulling a child out of school or eating seed meant for next year. A family can take years to recover.

Wars far away, hunger at home

The war between Russia and Ukraine has entered a new phase on the Black Sea. Both sides are now striking each other’s grain ports. Russian wheat exports fell by more than half in August. The FAO Food Price Index reached its highest level since November 2022. African and Middle Eastern countries, among the biggest buyers of Black Sea wheat, are low on stocks and will have to buy at higher prices.

The war in the Gulf has hit even closer to the farm. Since 28 February, shipping through the Strait of Hormuz has been largely blocked. About a third of the world’s seaborne fertiliser normally passes through it. Urea more than doubled in price, from about US$400 to over US$850 a tonne in April.

World prices have since eased, but African farmers have not felt the relief. In July, urea still cost about US$975 a tonne in Malawi and US$933 in Tanzania, more than double the world price. Weak currencies, freight costs and port delays keep it high.

Fuel tells the same story. Ethiopia lost more than 180,000 tonnes of fuel deliveries, halving its daily diesel supply. In Kenya, record fuel price rises pushed transport fares up by about a quarter. Zimbabwe’s fuel import costs rose 40% in under a month.

Every one of these numbers reaches the farm. Diesel moves the harvest to market. Fertiliser that a farmer cannot afford means a smaller harvest next season. And the bread, rice and cooking oil that city families buy cost more each week.

Same storm, different shelter

The same shocks are hitting the whole world. What differs is who has shelter.

When fertiliser prices jumped, India raised its fertiliser subsidy by 11%, to 415 billion rupees for the summer season alone. The European Union proposed €540 million in emergency relief for its farmers, which member states can top up to about €1.5 billion. France added its own fertiliser aid. These governments had the money, the institutions and the political room to act within weeks.

Most African governments did not. Many entered this year already squeezed by debt. In nearly four in five sub-Saharan African countries, governments now pay more in interest than they spend on health or education, according to the World Bank. A treasury that sends its money to creditors cannot shield its farmers. Countries such as Ghana, Malawi and Sudan could not even pay cash for fertiliser imports.

So the shock that a rich country absorbs as a budget line falls on an African family as hunger. That is not a difference in weather. It is a difference in power.

A vulnerability that was built

Africa is not weak by nature. Its vulnerability was built over generations, and it is still being built today.

• Colonialism reshaped African farming for export. The best land, roads, railways and research went to cotton, coffee, cocoa and groundnuts for European factories. Food for Africans came second. Many of those patterns remain.
• Structural adjustment dismantled our defences. From the 1980s, loan conditions pushed governments to close grain reserves and marketing boards, cut extension services and open markets to subsidised imports. We lost the buffers that once carried us through bad years.
• We were taught to import our food. Sub-Saharan Africa’s food import bill was projected to reach about US$65 billion in 2025. Every rise in world prices and every weak currency now lands directly on our tables.
• We were taught to import our soil fertility. A farming model built on purchased fertiliser and hybrid seed ties the fertility of African soils to gas fields and shipping lanes thousands of kilometres away. The Strait of Hormuz has shown what that means.
• Debt keeps the cycle going. Money that should build irrigation, storage and rural roads goes to pay interest. Climate finance, when it comes, too often arrives as loans, adding new debt to repair damage Africa did not cause.
• The rules are written elsewhere. Trade rules, seed laws, intellectual property regimes and credit ratings are largely set by and for the powerful. They narrow the policy space African governments need to protect their own farmers.

These are not separate problems. They are one system, and it was designed to keep Africa supplying raw materials and buying finished goods. El Niño and the wars did not create this system. They have simply shown us, once again, how it works.

What must change

This year’s World Food Day theme is “Innovate today. Nourish tomorrow.” The innovation Africa needs most is not another imported package. It is the courage to rebuild food systems that Africans control.

1. Act now on El Niño. Governments and agencies must move before the lean season, not after it. Pre-position food, protect livestock and seed, and get cash to families early.
2. Rebuild public food reserves. National and regional grain reserves, run in the public interest, are a basic defence that structural adjustment took away.
3. Invest in agroecology and healthy soils. Compost, manure, legumes, trees and diverse crops build fertility that no blockade can cut off. Public money now spent on imported fertiliser should shift steadily towards them.
4. Protect farmers’ seed. Farmer-managed seed systems hold the drought-tolerant varieties we need. Laws that criminalise saving and exchanging seed must change.
5. Feed Africa from African farms. Support territorial markets, local processing and public procurement, including school meals, that buy from our own producers.
6. Cancel unjust debt and pay climate finance as grants. No country should have to choose between paying creditors and feeding its people. Adaptation finance must reach farmer organisations directly.
7. Give Africa its policy space. Trade and investment rules must allow African governments to protect their farmers and their food.

Africa can feed itself

Africa has the land, the water, the seed, the knowledge and the farmers to feed itself. Our small-scale producers already grow most of the food Africans eat, often with little or no public support.

What we lack is not ability. It is control over our own food systems, and freedom from the debts, rules and dependencies that keep us exposed to every storm.

On this World Food Day, I call on African governments, the African Union and our international partners to stop treating each crisis as a surprise. The next El Niño, the next war and the next price shock will come. Let them find Africa ready, fed by its own farmers and standing on its own soil.

Million Belay (PhD)
General Coordinator, Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa (AFSA)
16 October 2026

Vegetable farms and solar farms both need lots of sunlight and open space. But how do we divide our limited lands between these two priorities? One elegant solution is to put crops and solar panels on the same land—and share the broad spectrum of incoming sunlight between them.

A new study in Cell Reports Physical Science does this with photovoltaic cells that are semi-transparent: They capture some wavelengths of sunlight to make electricity, while letting the wavelengths most critical to photosynthesis pass through and reach the plants below. The new study suggests that broccoli can be grown in the magenta shade of these solar panels—without sacrificing the harvest.

Agrivoltaic schemes—putting plants and solar on the same land – could help us avoid clearing more land for human use. Climate studies suggest that this might work especially well across a wide sunbathed swath of the United States, from Texas up to Nebraska and west to California. Devoting just one percent of U.S. farmland to agrivoltaics could cover up to 20 percent of the nation’s electricity needs.

But traditional photovoltaic panels are opaque—and by shading plants, they can reduce crop yields. So engineers are trying to create new photovoltaic cells that divide the spectrum of sunlight between plants and electricity generation—similar to how governments segment different frequency bands for television, radio, cell phones, and other uses.

A 2020 study looked at panels that allow red wavelengths, critical for photosynthesis, to pass through—while harvesting green and blue wavelengths to make electricity. Basil grown under these panels produced similar yields, while spinach yields decreased. But the researchers estimated that by selling both electricity and crops, farmers growing spinach could generate 35 percent more income from the same land.

 

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In the newest study, scientists evaluated a different kind of semi-transparent panel that lets most red and some blue wavelengths pass through—casting a magenta light on the plants—while converting much of the rest to electricity.

Broccoli cultivated under them grew more slowly, requiring an additional 25 days for harvest, but produced roughly the same yield. Meanwhile, these magenta sunscreens improved the microclimate below, reducing the “vapor pressure deficit”—a measure of when plants need to halt photosynthesis to avoid excessive water loss. This may have improved the plants’ efficiency in converting sunlight into plant biomass, which increased by 2.8- to 4.5-fold compared to unshaded plants.

The shaded plants’ levels of macronutrients such as calcium, magnesium, and phosphorus were either higher than or similar to unshaded plants, while levels of some micronutrients such as iron, copper, and zinc were slightly lower.

This was only a preliminary study. Future studies should look at larger plots, farmed across multiple seasons, and in different locations with varying climate and sunlight. It suggests that for now, the future of agrivoltaics might be best seen through rose-colored glasses.

Lu et al. “Evaluating land productivity with semi-transparent colored CdTe thin-film PV and broccoli cultivation in agrivoltaic systems.” Cell Reports Physical Science, 2026.

Image: Broccoli growing beneath semi-transparent, colored solar panels at the experimental site at Kärrbo Prästgård farm in Sweden. ©Silvia Ma Lu

The World Bank president said on Friday his organisation will continue to support some gas projects in developing countries alongside renewables, nuclear and hydropower, despite criticism from climate campaigners who say fossil gas is expensive and polluting.

“Homes, mines, factories, farms, and growing cities – what do they need? Reliable, affordable baseload power,” Ajay Banga told the bank’s annual meeting in Bangkok on Friday. “Our approach is balanced by design – a full mix of renewables, hydro, gas where appropriate, nuclear when it makes sense, transmission, grids, storage – the whole thing.”

His comments come in a week during which he faced pressure from the US to finance more gas projects and from climate campaigners to stop funding fossil fuels altogether, part of a tightrope he has walked on the bank’s climate policy since Donald Trump’s re-election in 2025.

The bank ended its support for coal around ten years ago and last year, for the first time, funded no oil projects. It has ended support for gas exploration but still backs some projects to do with transporting and using gas, such as a $140-million project to help Benin, Côte d’Ivoire and Togo in West Africa to import liquefied natural gas (LNG).

While its overall support for fossil fuels wanes, the bank’s support for clean energy has been at historic highs over the last few years, with funding of just under $10 billion a year in 2023, 2024 and 2025 – compared to under $1.5 billion a year for fossil fuels.

On Monday, the head of Pakistan’s Indus Consortium, Hussain Jarwar, asked Banga at a civil society townhall meeting why the bank is supporting a “volatile” energy source like LNG, which is pushing economies and consumers into debt “when real renewable energy solutions like solar [are] available and supporting communities and industries for clean, accessible and affordable energy source”. Global LNG prices hit record highs earlier this year as the Iran war squeezed supplies.

Banga replied that the bank is working with countries to source “baseload productive power” and that “if Pakistan wants to build an energy system that is more self-reliant by going further on different forms of baseload plus top-up energy, we’re more than happy to work with it”. “We’ve got no biases in the system – our job is that electricity and water are human rights,” he added.

His answer did not satisfy climate campaigners. Sunil Acharya, just transition lead at Recourse, an NGO that works on sustainable development finance, said in a statement that the bank is moving in the wrong direction and Banga’s “framing of wind and solar as a ‘top-up’ to nuclear, hydropower and gas misses the opportunity to transform energy systems”.

“Fossil gas is bad economics – it exposes countries to volatile global markets and debt while locking public resources into costly infrastructure,” the Nepali campaigner said. “The World Bank must stop reproducing the extractive development model of the fossil fuel era and redirect public finance towards 100% renewable economies that deliver energy for all, protect people and nature, and put people’s priorities before private profit.”

US pressure from Scott Bessent

On Wednesday, however, Banga was pressured from the other direction. US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who skipped the Bangkok meeting, issued a statement praising the bank for “beginning to refocus on its core mission of reducing poverty and raising economic growth” after what he called “years of mission creep”.

He said the bank should “formally retire its prohibition on financing” gas and oil exploration and production as it “cannot credibly invoke country ownership while categorically excluding upstream projects before their development merits are even assessed”. He argued that supporting gas projects would help extend electricity access in Africa.

The US is a major gas exporter and analysts are warning its gas companies will struggle to sell their product abroad in the coming years, as US LNG production expands while buyers in Europe and Asia move away from gas to cleaner sources of electricity.

• Jul 2, 2026 Finance World Bank’s climate work can endure without finance target, experts say Even though the global lender has ditched a headline goal for its financing with climate benefits, it has decided to continue its climate action plan in the face of US pressure Read more
• Jan 14, 2025 Energy In a major reversal, the World Bank is backing mega dams Despite opposition, the bank has approved the first of five big dam projects expected to get its support in the coming months Read more
• Oct 15, 2026 News Countries urged to ramp up “insufficient” nature policies at COP17 A major UN report that will inform biodiversity negotiations in Armenia shows countries have made some progress but are still off track for a landmark goal to protect 30% of land and oceans by 2030 Read more

In July, under US pressure, the World Bank scrapped its target for 45% of its finance to go to climate projects. But, with support from a broad majority of countries, it renewed its climate change action plan. The compromise “could have been a lot worse”, E3G climate policy advisor Danny Scull said at the time.

Other multilateral development banks that have the US as a major shareholder, like the Inter-American Development Bank and Asian Development Bank, are now expected to face pressure to scrap their climate finance targets too.

In June 2025, the World Bank ended its ban on support for nuclear power – a move that was welcomed by the US. In his speech on Friday, Banga said the bank would support nuclear retrofits – the modernisation of existing nuclear power stations – alongside the International Atomic Energy Agency, noting that this was “the first such work in 50 years for the bank”.

The post Under US pressure, World Bank says it will back gas “where appropriate” appeared first on Climate Home News.

Prompt: What is the legal status of the royaldutchshellplc.com website?

Google AI Mode reply

The royaldutchshellplc.com website is an independent, non-profit critical commentary and watchdog archive owned and operated by John Donovan, with no official affiliation to Shell plc. [1, 2] Ownership and WIPO Ruling

• Domain Registration: Alfred Donovan registered the domain name in October 2004. [1]
• WIPO Dispute: Shell attempted to seize the domain through a World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) arbitration proceeding (Case No. D2005-0538). [1]
• Outcome: WIPO rejected Shell’s complaint, ruling that the Donovans held a legitimate right to use the domain for non-commercial criticism and freedom of expression. [1]
• Current Control: The website is lawfully operated by John Donovan. [1, 2]

Corporate Status vs. Domain Status

• Name Change: The multinational energy corporation previously known as Royal Dutch Shell plc officially simplified its name to Shell plc in January 2022. [1, 2]
• Official Website: Shell’s official corporate and operational portal is located at shell.com. [1, 2]
• Legal Separation: While Shell retains its corporate trademarks, it does not own the royaldutchshellplc.comdomain. The site operates under an explicit disclaimer stating it is an independent news, opinion, and watchdog platform. [1, 2]

AI responses may include mistakes. For legal advice, consult a professional. Learn more Legal status of the royaldutchshellplc.com website was first posted on October 16, 2026 at 12:15 pm.
©2018 "Royal Dutch Shell Plc .com". Use of this feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this article in your feed reader, then the site is guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact me at john@shellnews.net

A former housing executive fired by Reform UK for making “shameful” comments about the 2017 Grenfell Tower tragedy still claims to have a role in the party, DeSmog can reveal.

Simon Dudley, a former chair of Homes England, was removed as the party’s housing spokesperson for making – in the words of Reform leader Nigel Farage – “shocking” and “deeply inappropriate” comments about the disaster.

In an interview with Inside Housing in April, Dudley said the deadly blaze, which led to the deaths of 72 people, was a “tragedy” but that “everyone dies in the end”. He claimed that rules introduced in the wake of the fire to improve safety standards were examples of “regulation which is not working”.

Dudley was roundly criticised for his remarks, including by groups representing Grenfell survivors and next of kin. The then prime minister Keir Starmer called the comments “shameful”.

However, despite being sacked as Reform’s housing spokesperson, Dudley still appears to work with the party.

He introduced Reform’s deputy leader and housing chief Richard Tice to business delegates at the party’s annual conference in September, and chaired a question and answer session following Tice’s speech.

A post from Simon Dudley on LinkedIn about his involvement in Reform’s 2026 annual conference.

Credit: Simon Dudley / LinkedIn

According to a transcript, Tice thanked Dudley for his “generous” introduction, after which Tice presented Reform’s sweeping policies to deregulate the planning system.

While Dudley’s exact role in the party is not known, his social media profiles – including his up-to-date LinkedIn CV – continue to list him in a ‘Housing and Infrastructure’ position at Reform.

He’s also a keen party activist who has accused the Conservatives of copying Reform’s ideas and who campaigned for Farage in this summer’s Clacton by-election.

Neither Reform nor Dudley denied that he is still involved in the party when approached by DeSmog for comment.

However, Dudley’s continued involvement contrasts starkly with Reform’s response to his remarks in April.

“He’s under Richard Tice’s department, Richard appointed him housing spokesman given his depth of experience in developing new towns,” Farage said at the time. “But the comments were deeply inappropriate, they were frankly rather shocking to many people, and Richard has dealt with it.”

In response to the backlash in April, Dudley said that “Grenfell was an utter tragedy and quite rightly prompted a wholesale review and tightening of fire regulations.”

He added: “I said it was a tragedy in my interview with Inside House [sic] and in no shape or form am I belittling that disaster or the huge loss of life. It must never happen again. I reiterate that, and am sorry if it was not sufficiently clear.”

A new undercover investigation due to be released by ITV in full on Sunday 18 October shows Reform councillors making a number of sexist and racist comments. One Reform councillor from south London is filmed saying that King Charles should be decapitated because he is secretly a Muslim.

A version of this article was also published by The New World.

Reform’s Deregulation Agenda

The Grenfell Tower fire on 14 June 2017 was one of the worst tragedies in modern British history. Just before 1am, a high-rise fire broke out in the 24-storey block in Kensington, London, which spread rapidly due to the highly combustible cladding that had been installed on the building a year earlier.

The government has subsequently introduced new fire safety rules, particularly in relation to high-rise blocks, to prevent another similar disaster.

However, Reform initially echoed Dudley’s remarks about the new regulations being too onerous. Speaking in April, a party spokesperson said: “Simon’s comments on Grenfell reflected his broader point that the regulatory pendulum has swung too far in response to the tragedy. As he explained, there is a fine balance between over-regulation – which can slow the delivery of new homes – and ensuring that more homes are built safely without too much red tape.”

A post from Simon Dudley on X about his involvement in the August 2026 Clacton by-election campaign.

Credit: Simon Dudley / X

This conforms to Reform’s deregulation agenda, which would reduce the taxes and laws applied to major corporations, potentially benefitting some of the party’s biggest donors.

Reform has supported more permissive rules for the crypto, finance, and housing industries – all of which have contributed substantially to the party’s coffers – with Farage promising a “bonfire of business regulation” if he becomes prime minister.

This also applies to the oil and gas industry. Reform, which has accepted more than £24 million from fossil fuel interests, has said it would scrap the windfall tax on fossil fuel profits, end the ban on new North Sea drilling licences, and ditch the moratorium on fracking for shale gas.

Senior Reform figure Andrea Jenkyns, the mayor for Greater Lincolnshire, has said that she would “turn the countryside into Swiss cheese” through the mass expansion of fracking across the UK.

The party, some of whose senior figures frequently deny the science of climate change, would dramatically increase the production of fossil fuels in the UK and reduce state support for renewable energy – despite the impact of high gas prices on the cost of living, and the growing frequency of climate-induced extreme weather events.

The post Reform Figure Behind ‘Shocking’ Grenfell Comments Still Involved in Party appeared first on DeSmog.

Three words can change the world!

“Food is medicine” is a complete sentence. It’s an unequivocally true statement. And it’s a movement that can achieve so much more than many of us even realize.

In a couple weeks, our Food First Health Summit in Philadelphia is exploring the wide range of collaboration, legislation, and creative innovation that prioritizes our dietary well-being and illuminates the ways food systems nourish our bodies and our societies at large.

I hope you’ll join us at 2:00PM ET on Tuesday, October 27 (CLICK HERE or livestream at FoodTank.com)—in partnership with FareRx and the College of Public Health at Temple University at WHYY-NPR Studios’ Dorrance H. Hamilton Public Media Commons—for discussions with food systems leaders, policymakers, community organizers, health practitioners, and more to launch long-term solutions.

“Philly’s food as medicine leaders are coming together, and the country should be paying attention,” says Mike Cangi, Founder and CEO of FareRx. “We’re using that momentum to launch the Philadelphia Food Is Medicine Coalition, giving this work a bigger platform and creating more ways to work together. This is Philadelphia’s chance to show what a city can accomplish when it puts food and health first.”

The Food Is Medicine movement sits at the crossroads of nutrition security, local agriculture, and healthcare. Some initiatives focus on social well-being through food access and education; others are rooted in clinical care with programs including produce prescriptions and medically tailored meals.

And it works: When we eat with our well-being in mind, our health improves. The healthcare cost savings from medically tailored meals alone to be around US$23.7 billion, according to research from the Food is Medicine Institute at Tufts University.

Here’s a peek at the amazing lineup of speakers, alphabetically by last name, who are joining us in Philadelphia: Val Arkoosh, Pennsylvania Department of Human Services; Mike Cangi, FareRx; Sue Daugherty, MANNA; Rep. Madeleine Dean, U.S. House of Representatives; Lauren Eberly, University of Pennsylvania and Indian Health Service, Navajo Nation; Evan Ehlers, Sharing Excess; Beatrice Forman, The Philadelphia Inquirer; Freeway, Philadelphia-Based Rapper and Food for Health Advocate; Steven Jennings, Ahold Delhaize USA; Loree D. Jones Brown, Philabundance; Julia Koprak, The Food Trust; Jenn Ladd, The Philadelphia Inquirer; Karen Lin, Temple University; Briana Mills-Walker, FarmerJawn; Kae Lani Palmisano, Philadelphia Magazine; Chris Rabb, Pennsylvania House of Representatives; Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon, U.S. House of Representatives; Rep. Lloyd Smucker, U.S. House of Representatives; Maiken Scott, WHYY; Julia Weatherly, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Service; and more to be announced soon!

We’re so proud to help showcase the ways Philadelphia is leading the charge toward a better food system. Food rescue organization Sharing Excess is proof that committed young people can make meaningful change. With medically tailored meals and other interventions, MANNA and FareRX are showing how Food is Medicine is a sustainable, transformative model. And inspiring organizations like Philabundance and The Food Trust are building food security and food access through upcycling, cooking education, and other creative approaches.

“Philadelphia is home to an incredibly rich and diverse food culture. The largest possible umbrella is needed to include all of the companies, community groups, and individuals dedicated to providing the healthiest of foods to the citizens of the city and region,” says David B. Sarwer, Ph.D., Senior Associate Dean and Professor at the College of Public Health at Temple University. “The time is right to bring all of the players together to move the Food is Medicine agenda forward in Philadelphia to improve the health and well-being of our citizens.”

HERE is the link one more time to grab your FREE ticket before seating fills up for good! And for Food Tankers who don’t live in or near Philadelphia, plan to visit FoodTank.com at 2:00PM ET on Tuesday, October 27 to join our livestream.

(Want to learn more about Food is Medicine? Check out our “Food Tank Explains” column about it, and tune in to recent episodes of our Food Talk podcast HERE. You can also be part of even more discussions about it at our 2nd Annual Food and Agriculture Policy Summit Week in Washington, D.C., later this year!)

Articles like the one you just read are made possible through the generosity of Food Tank members. Can we please count on you to be part of our growing movement? Become a member today by clicking here.

Photo courtesy of Mariana Medvedeva, Unsplash

The post You’re Invited: What Can We Achieve When We Put Food First For Health? appeared first on Food Tank.

Scarlett Gillespie, also known as Jelena Vermilion, is a 33-year-old trans woman and founder of the Sex Workers’ Action Program (SWAP), and is running for...

The post Scarlett for mayor of Hamilton: Housing, community safety, and working class solidarity first appeared on Spring.

In August of 2023, a series of wildfires broke out across Maui, killing more than 100 people, destroying thousands of homes, and causing billions in damage. Noelani Ahia, who is Kanaka Maoli and co-founder of Maui Medic Healers Hui, helped mobilize nearly 600 volunteers in Lāhainā, including doctors, nurses, and therapists. 

Three years later, the housing and health crises remain acute. Maui Medic Healers Hui runs a free clinic, but Ahia wishes it had 10 more to address the community’s needs. “The fire may be out, but the catastrophe is not over by any stretch of the imagination,” she said. 

The devastation extended well beyond the lives lost and buildings destroyed. Research published last year by researchers with the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa’s Maui Wildfire Exposure Study, or MauiWES, found that more than 1 in 5 residents had reduced lung function.

Now, new research from the same project has found elevated levels of toxic metals in the island’s residents months after the fires, with higher exposure associated with impaired lung function. The findings offer further evidence that the health consequences of catastrophic wildfires can persist long after the flames are extinguished and the smoke clears.

“What we consider and sometimes look at as a one-time event isn’t really one-time anymore,” Alika Maunakea, who is Kanaka Maoli and co-director of MauiWES, told Grist. 

Researchers don’t yet know how much of the contamination came from the fires and how much was already present in the environment. That distinction matters as wildfires increasingly race through towns like Lāhainā and cities like Los Angeles, where burning homes, cars and infrastructure can leave contaminants that people encounter for months or years afterward.

Community members hold hands in a prayer circle at a “Lāhainā Strong” gathering in October 2023. Mario Tama / Getty Images

“We have traditionally thought about wildfire exposure primarily through the lens of smoke,” Maunakea said in a press release. “But when an entire community burns, we are dealing with a much more complicated exposure environment.” Researchers must also understand what contaminants were already present, what the fire may have released, and what entered residents’ bodies, he said.

The research, which studied 1,400 adults across Maui six to 18 months after the fires, measured 24 metals in urine samples. It found that participants had higher concentrations of several metals than people in a nationwide health survey conducted before the fires. That included 2.2 times as much arsenic, 2.3 times as much barium, and 3.8 times as much manganese. Antimony, which is used in flame retardant materials and has been previously linked to lung irritation, stomach pain, and other symptoms, was found at levels nearly 40 times higher.

Because the researchers lack comparable data from before the fires, they could not determine how much of the metal exposure resulted from the disaster. Maunakea told Grist answering that question is the next step for the project, which has received a $3.6 million grant from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. That work will include investigating whether and to what degree past agricultural and industrial activity contributed to the contamination.

“It’s important to realize that these are all part of settler colonialism,” Ahia said. “So what we’re looking at is confounding factors that are to the detriment of the health of our local people.”

Read Next Two years after a wildfire took everything, Maui homeowners are facing a new threat: Foreclosure Anita Hofschneider

Decades of plantation agriculture altered water systems, introduced herbicides, and displaced native plants, leaving a legacy on the islands that is still felt today. Disasters like fires and storms can compound those ongoing environmental problems. 

“If we begin the story when the fire starts, we miss the decisions that shaped the landscape and the community’s ability to respond,” said Katie Kamelamela, who is Kanaka Maoli and an assistant professor at Arizona State University based in Hawaiʻi. “Micro climate change acts on places already shaped by histories of land ownership, water diversion, development, and unequal access to resources.”

Kamelamela said true recovery must look beyond the fire. “I want recovery to be measured by whether people can remain in their communities, care for ʻāina, and pass on their knowledge and practices in place,” she said, using the Hawaiian word for land, which carries deeper meaning and relationship than property or mere place. “Rebuilding should not recreate the same conditions that left people at risk. Caring for ʻāina and caring for people need to be funded and planned together.”

Maunakea said the multitude of intersecting pressures is one reason why he wanted to pursue this research. As climate change continues to accelerate, longstanding issues facing Native Hawaiians like housing, the harms of tourism, and the legacy of plantations can amplify problems. “We worry that disasters like this that we experience on Maui, as well as the floods and other storms that we’re experiencing now, is just going to continue widening the gaps in health disparities that already exist in those populations,” he said.

Moving forward, the project will not just identify health risks but also help residents respond to them. Study participants receive their results, discuss them, and meet with health professionals. “People now know that there’s these types of potential hazards, and what to do about them is a big concern,” Maunakea said. “We still don’t have all the answers for sure, but we are taking the next steps to get a better picture and inform our community around it.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Long after the Maui fires, toxic metals linger in residents’ bodies on Oct 16, 2026.

How a small Vermont town built a thriving local food system that keeps $50,000 annually in the community while creating social connection.

In my years as a psychotherapist, I’ve worked with many people facing similar struggles. One such pattern is embodied by a client I’ll call Emma (whose real name and identifying details I’ve changed for privacy purposes). She came to see me because, despite pursuing a climate career aligned with her values, practicing good self-care, and having a close community of friends, she couldn’t shake a persistent feeling of being “low.” She didn’t know what was missing.

Emma was invited to an event at a scenic destination — let’s say, for your mind’s eye, that it was a wedding in Alta Lakes, high in Colorado’s San Juan Mountains. Imagine a scene something like this: The cool scent of spruce and fir drifted through the open windows, along with the thin, mineral clarity of mountain air. Now and then two owls traded low hoots through the dark, and something slapped in the water out on the lake. 

Emma lay listening for a long time. For reasons she couldn’t name, tears began to slide down her face, and soon she was sobbing.

She wasn’t sad or upset. She described a welling up of joy, a sort of homecoming moment — a deep remembering that felt familiar yet beyond the reach of words. It was, she said, like “drinking clear, cool water when you didn’t know you were thirsty.”

Ask a Climate Therapist tackles your questions about how to navigate the emotional side of climate change, with leading climate-aware therapist Leslie Davenport. Have a question? Ask it here!

Emma spent most of her workday in an office building. She loved to run, but usually on city streets with a podcast playing in her ears, or on a gym treadmill. Like most of us, she lived by a daily routine whose steady stream of input kept her separate from the natural world. She cared for nature, but it was cognitive, not visceral. 

Our work focused on integrating what had lifted her mood during that experience in Colorado and keeping that connection alive in her everyday life.

We don’t need to go to the mountains to touch the living world within and around us. For Emma, it started small. She left her earbuds at home on some runs and let the wind and birdsong keep her company. She began each morning with a moment at the window watching the sky before opening her laptop. At lunch she found a beautiful tree in a nearby park and made it her regular spot to pause and sit, watching it change through the seasons.

I was reminded of Emma, and the other clients I’ve seen who were similarly feeling the sorrow of this detachment, when I read a question that came through the Ask a Climate Therapist form: “Why is it that working with animals and tending to plants helps process the grief, anxiety, and depression?” 

This question-asker found the answer that Emma and others were seeking, but wanted to understand the “why” behind it. I can point to some of the science that backs this up: Compounds released by trees can boost the activity of our immune cells. Stroking an animal lowers stress hormones and can raise oxytocin. But I would also say that we don’t need academic journals to know these things. We feel better working with plants and animals because we can sense directly how life flourishes as a complex, interwoven system that we’re part of. When you water a garden or care for an animal, you’re practicing a form of reciprocity that’s also a way of caring for the future. 

And so for you, reader of this column — wherever you may be at in your journey of connecting with, caring for, and feeling a sense of belonging in the natural world — remember that engaging with nature brings more than just joy; that restoration of connection actually supports and sustains your ability to do the larger work. 

Below, I offer just a few practices to begin to cultivate that more mindful relationship. I would love to know about your regular practices, too. How do you create moments of connection and kinship with nature in your daily life? Reply to this email or reach out to lookingforward@grist.org to share them with the Grist team, and with me.

Practice tips:

There are many ways to cultivate an awareness of our place in the living world. 

1. Listen to the mp3 “We are Nature” — a free resource I created to accompany my book, Transforming Climate Anxiety — for a guided experience of connection.
2. Take a daily sensory pause. Once a day, stop for one minute and notice what’s alive around you: Take the temperature of the air on your skin, notice a bird call or the smell after a rain. As you breathe, remember that the Earth’s trees and plants created the oxygen you’re taking in, and that your exhale feeds them in return.
3. Tend something — and say thank you. Water a plant, fill a birdfeeder, or care for a patch of garden. Reciprocity is how we take our place in the web of life: We receive and we give back.
4. Leave the earbuds at home from time to time. Try a walk or run with the wind, neighborhood sounds, and your own breathing as the soundtrack.

In this with you, 
Leslie

I’m Leslie Davenport, a licensed therapist, educator, speaker, consultant, and internationally recognized voice on the emotional and psychological dimensions of climate change. If you’ve got a question about climate and mental health, please consider submitting it for a future column. Submit a question for a future Ask a Climate Therapist column More from Ask a Climate Therapist

• My boomer mom’s cheap online shopping habit drives me nuts

  Licensed therapist Leslie Davenport weighs in on overcoming a generational clash when it comes to sustainable consumption.

• How to deal with burnout on a burning planet

  Licensed therapist Leslie Davenport offers advice to two readers facing paralysis from different points in their climate journeys.

• Ask a Climate Therapist: How do I avoid getting trapped in the system I hope to change?

  A young engineer has a vision for changing their industry, but worries about slowly becoming a cog in the machine. Therapist Leslie Davenport offers advice for staying creative.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Advice from a climate therapist: Touch grass. (No, really.) on Oct 16, 2026.

Earlier this month, after a series of stops and starts, the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced changes to a long-running program that is supposed to help farmers and rural small businesses stand up renewable energy projects. 

The new rules, set to go into effect today, October 16, effectively make any solar power development ineligible for funding through the Rural Energy for America Program, or REAP. It’s the latest of multiple rollbacks by the second Trump administration that advocates say are essentially making the program unusable.

Installing solar systems on farmland can cost tens of thousands of dollars upfront, which many agricultural producers may not have or may be reluctant to spend, given their low profit margins. REAP has long provided financial support to farmers to build out renewable energy systems on their land. 

These projects often provide multiple benefits to participants. First, they can help lower utility bills for agricultural producers and rural businesses by providing their operations with additional power. But farmers and business owners are also able to sell excess energy back to the grid. By cutting costs or padding revenue, these systems can be a lifeline at a time when farmers are facing escalating costs for things like fertilizer, fuel, labor, and seeds, making it difficult to make ends meet. 

Research shows investing in renewable energy can also be an economic driver in rural parts of the country. “All of these things lined up,” said Matt Russell, the executive director of the Iowa Farmers Union, an independent organization representing family farmers. So for the Trump administration to “shift away from those kinds of win-win-win investments is very disappointing,” he added.

The Iowa Farmers Union is one of the plaintiffs in a lawsuit filed last month against the USDA, alleging that previous changes to REAP were already harming rural communities by severely restricting solar development under the program. (The lawsuit was filed on September 28, just days before the agriculture department published its new rules.) 

The lawsuit takes aim at changes made to REAP in August 2025, following an executive order by President Donald Trump the previous month stating that taxpayers would no longer “subsidize expensive and unreliable energy sources like wind and solar.” Although the executive order did not instruct the USDA to do anything in particular, the office within the agriculture department that administers REAP changed the criteria for applicants such that most solar projects would become ineligible for grants or loan guarantees. 

Part of the plaintiffs’ argument is that such a move violates the REAP statute. Lawmakers created REAP in 2008 as part of that year’s farm bill by combining two existing programs that sought to develop renewable energy and increase energy efficiency. “Rather than complying” with this mandate, “the agency has decided to completely ignore what Congress told them to do,” said Michael Youhana, an attorney at Earthjustice, the nonprofit environmental law group representing the plaintiffs. “In fact,” he added, the USDA is doing “the opposite of what Congress told them to do” by promoting the use of fossil fuels over renewables. 

The lawsuit also alleges that these anti-solar moves from the USDA violate the Administrative Procedure Act, which essentially requires agencies to show that regulatory decisions were made through careful consideration. The USDA says “that they’re taking this action to protect farmland from being gobbled up by solar systems,” said Youhana. “But farmers are voluntarily applying for REAP, and they’re doing it because solar gives them all kinds of really great financial benefits that the agency has completely ignored.”

The USDA told Grist it “will not comment on pending litigation.” In an email to energy news site Utility Dive, a representative for the USDA said that under the Biden administration, “fertile farmland that should be feeding America” was used instead to produce solar power. “Those days are over. USDA will not actively participate in repurposing farmland historically used to sustain this country’s abundant food supply.”

Grist has previously reported on how the USDA’s abrupt freeze of REAP grants in the early days of Trump’s second term created confusion and chaos for small farmers who had already spent tens of thousands of dollars on energy upgrades. In March 2025, the agency released that grant money but asked participants to voluntarily revise and resubmit their applications without any mention of climate change. That summer, the USDA announced the anti-solar policy over which Earthjustice, along with the Environmental Law and Policy Center, are suing.

But the switch-ups didn’t stop there. A year later, in March 2026, the USDA effectively paused REAP as a whole, announcing it would suspend further grant awards until the program rules were rewritten to comply with Trump’s executive order from the year before. 

This month, on October 1, the department published its final rule changes. They state that solar or wind projects on cropland involving “any component made in a country named as a foreign adversary” are no longer eligible for funding through REAP. Because so many parts of solar power systems are manufactured in China, this effectively means an end to any new solar development on farms through the once-popular USDA program. 

Another change drags out the timeline for receiving funding; applicants must now have energy systems up and running for one year in order to be considered eligible for reimbursement. 

These changes “more deeply entrench the anti-solar policy we’ve challenged in our lawsuit,” said Youhana. While “federal investments in renewable energy projects could help to offset rising energy costs, making life more affordable for farmers and the broader American public alike,” he added, the USDA seems to be moving in the opposite direction.

Russell argued that further restricting funding sources like REAP will only lead to the further consolidation of the agricultural industry, where only the biggest, wealthiest operations can survive, and the little guys suffer without adequate public support. 

“It’s like stacking the deck against family farms, and entrepreneurial businesses in small towns that are trying to bootstrap themselves,” he said. “It’s picking winners and losers, and the losers are the very kinds of farms and businesses and communities that I think the vast majority of American taxpayers think that they’re investing in.”

This story has been updated with the USDA’s response to Grist’s request for comment.

Editor’s note: Earthjustice is an advertiser with Grist. Advertisers have no role in Grist’s editorial decisions.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Trump just effectively killed a popular solar energy program for rural America on Oct 16, 2026.

A movement to reshape the structure of taxation in the U.S. is gaining steam.

Trump clearly represents an unmitigated disaster for the steady state, with consequences that include rolling back decades of progress in gender equality, contraceptive access, and the lower birth rates that result.

Coal was on the way out. That’s how it looked last year, anyway, when the International Energy Agency forecast that global demand for the dirtiest fossil fuel had plateaued and was poised to start declining. But this year hasn’t gone as expected. The agency recently projected that coal consumption will climb to a record high of 8.94 billion metric tons in 2026. Headlines have declared that coal is “back in fashion” and making a “comeback.”

So what changed? Blame it on the war in Iran, which choked off a chunk of the world’s oil and gas supply in the Strait of Hormuz and thrust the world into an energy crisis. Many countries turned to coal as a replacement. “The main thing is that coal is going up because gas is going down,” said Daan Walter, who leads strategy research on the future of energy for the think tank Ember. 

As for the idea that there’s a revival of coal, energy experts aren’t convinced. “I think it’s important to distinguish between a small short-term bump in coal use and a genuine resurgence of the coal industry,” said Christine Shearer, a coal analyst at Global Energy Monitor, which tracks coal plants and other energy projects. According to some experts, there’s a more convincing case that the crisis will accelerate the adoption of renewables and clean technology.

Nearly every country around the world agreed to “phase down” coal at an international climate conference in Glasgow five years ago. Coal is the dirtiest source of electricity, releasing more carbon and more air pollutants, for every unit of energy generated, than oil or natural gas. 

Mining companies and right-leaning politicians are using the energy crisis to argue for more coal. In June, the International Energy Agency said that investment in coal reached its highest level in 14 years. David Crisafulli, the premier of the Australian state of Queensland, recently said he’d welcome proposals for new coal-fired power stations to power Anthropic’s AI data centers. The mining company Northback is now working to reopen a former mine in Alberta, Canada, that closed almost 60 years ago, based on recent projections that the world will be in need of coal in the next decade as well as the prospect of profits. 

“There’s a big sugar rush right now,” Walter said. But soon enough, the sugar crash may set in, perhaps in the years before these projects are completed. “They’re all rushing in, and they are all making, I think, reckless business plans,” he said. 

The other half of the story is that the oil and gas crunch has also pushed countries toward renewables and clean technology, perhaps permanently destroying demand for oil. President Donald Trump and Israel’s attack on Iran in February sent oil and gas prices skyrocketing so high that some journalists compared it to putting a tax on carbon. It was the second oil shock in recent years, following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, and as a result of this unpredictability, countries are viewing wind and solar as a more secure option than fossil fuel imports. 

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The world is also seeing increased demand for electricity, for powering AI data centers as well as more AC units as temperatures rise. But much of this additional demand is being met by wind and solar. This growth in clean power has been one of many factors cushioning the economic effects of the oil shock so far, the International Monetary Fund said in a report on Monday, though it warned that the world was nearing the “limits of resilience” to withstand future shocks.

It almost creates a sense of whiplash to see headlines that the world is entering an “age of electricity” alongside others saying that coal is on the upswing. Yet both can be true. “The immediate response to an energy crisis can be more fossil fuel use, even as the longer-term response is to reduce dependence on those fuels altogether,” Shearer said. 

Take India. This week, the head of its power sector said the country might be forced to add much more coal-fired power capacity than planned, driven by growing demand and lower hydroelectric output thanks to weaker monsoon rains. At the same time, India is aggressively building clean energy. The country has quadrupled its renewable capacity to about 300 gigawatts over the past decade, meaning that it’s well ahead of schedule for meeting its climate targets under the Paris Agreement. 

Coal boosters might celebrate their industry’s growth over the next handful of years. But coal is simply taking up a larger share of the energy generated from fossil fuels, a slice that’s on track to shrink compared to other energy sources, Walter said. He likened it to being the most powerful man on the Titanic. “It’s a great party to have for a couple of hours, but then you’re going down with the ship.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Is coal really making a comeback? on Oct 16, 2026.

Meena Raman is deputy director at Third World Network (TWN), a public interest lawyer and an expert on international climate negotiations. Leon Sealey-Huggins is senior campaigner in global climate justice and just transition at War on Want. Both organisations are members of the Global Campaign to Demand Climate Justice (DCJ).

The world urgently needs the next assessment of climate science. But speed cannot be the only consideration. Equally important is whose research informs it, whether scientists from developing countries can participate meaningfully, and how its findings shape global climate policy.

The timeline of the IPCC’s Seventh Assessment Report (AR7) is a major point of contention at its sixty-fifth meeting in Addis Ababa this week. Since early 2024, it has been contested principally between developed countries and Small Island Developing States (SIDS) seeking earlier completion, and many developing countries calling for more time.

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Many developed countries, SIDS and some Least Developed Countries (LDCs) want the AR7 Working Group reports completed by 2028, to inform the second Global Stocktake (GST2) of the Paris Agreement. IPCC assessment cycles have generally taken five to seven years.

But the IPCC’s findings would remain relevant after 2028. Reports completed in 2029 could inform countries’ next nationally determined contributions (NDCs) in 2030. The stocktake assesses collective progress, rather than prescribing individual emissions targets.

More time needed for input from developing countries

Between IPCC60 and IPCC65, developing countries – including Algeria, Burundi, Burkina Faso, Bolivia, China, Egypt, Ghana, Guinea, India, Iran, Iraq, Indonesia, Jordan, Kenya, Libya, Malaysia, Morocco, Mozambique, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Syria, Tanzania, Tunisia, Turkmenistan, Venezuela, Yemen and Zimbabwe – have raised concerns over an earlier AR7 timetable and its impact on inclusivity. Russia and Belarus have expressed similar concerns.

An earlier completion date could also affect the scientific integrity and robustness of the AR7 assessments, these governments argue.

Developing countries have emphasised equity in the IPCC’s work, both in process and substance. Their emphasis on a six-to-seven-year assessment cycle is linked to ensuring that the reports reflect scientific literature from the Global South, including research led and funded by institutions in developing countries.

Who funds research, where institutions are based, which questions receive attention and whose work is assessed shape the IPCC’s evidence base. Scientists in developing countries face unequal access to funding, institutional support and international collaboration.

Extending a deadline alone cannot resolve these inequalities. The timetable must be designed alongside measures to strengthen research capacity and enable meaningful participation, otherwise existing inequalities risk being reproduced in successive assessments.

Timeliness doesn’t guarantee political action

Equity is not only about who participates. It also concerns the assumptions behind scientific models, the development pathways they describe and how their findings are subsequently used. Consider mitigation scenarios assessed in the IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report (AR6). The IPCC itself acknowledges that most do not explicitly incorporate assumptions about global equity, environmental justice or income distribution within regions.

These scenarios draw on assumptions about development, technology and mitigation, and can shape climate policies. The IPCC calls them projections, not predictions or forecasts. Yet when global emissions pathways become reference points in UN climate decisions, the distinction between projected outcomes and an equitable distribution of responsibilities can blur.

Timely science does not guarantee political action. The IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report in 2007 identified emissions reductions of 25–40% below 1990 levels by 2020 for developed countries as a group, under a particular scenario. Yet Canada withdrew from the Kyoto Protocol, while Japan and Russia declined new commitments under its second period.

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The first Global Stocktake in 2023 recognised the need to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions by 43% by 2030 and 60% by 2035 relative to 2019, and reach net-zero carbon dioxide emissions around 2050 to limit warming to 1.5°C with no or limited overshoot.

These benchmarks were highlighted in AR6’s mitigation report. However, the report had an important caveat, that most modelled pathways do not explicitly account for global equity and are projections, not forecasts. But when the 43% figure entered the Global Stocktake decision, it did so without this caveat. This was a fatal omission, given that Article 14 of the Paris Agreement requires Global Stocktake be conducted in the light of equity and the best available science.

Including findings from such models in international climate decisions without their caveats is problematic. Such assumptions affect how future energy use, emissions reductions and development opportunities are distributed across regions.

Emissions-cutting pathways put burden on Global South

A 2024 peer-reviewed study by Indian scientists, published in Climate Policy, examined 556 mitigation scenarios. The researchers found that global inequalities in income, energy use and emissions were projected to persist until 2050, raising questions about whether these pathways reflect equity.

In the scenarios underlying the 43% global reduction figure, sub-Saharan Africa is projected to reduce emissions by 80% by 2030, against 50% in North America and Europe. Developed countries are projected to retain higher per-capita fossil fuel consumption in 2050, while developing countries reduce consumption from already low levels. These pathways place a disproportionate mitigation burden on developing countries, despite developed countries’ historical responsibility.

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Some of the severest projected restrictions on energy use are in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, home to many Least Developed Countries (LDCs), where essential infrastructure is yet to be built, even as climate impacts worsen. Yet these scenarios constrain energy consumption and development prospects.

The scenarios also rely on large amounts of land-based carbon dioxide removal, with more than 70% projected in Latin America and the Caribbean, Asia and Africa. This has implications for food security, livelihoods and biodiversity, placing burdens on communities most vulnerable to climate change and least responsible for it.

The IPCC’s findings carry considerable scientific and political weight. Its assessments must uphold the highest standards of scientific integrity, inclusiveness and equity, both in process and substance. There must be no shortcuts for political expediency.

The post Who shapes climate science? The equity question facing the IPCC appeared first on Climate Home News.

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