News Feeds

• A new Gallup poll found that Americans’ No. 1 fear is car crashes. When asked about the greatest risk to their safety, 34 percent of respondents said car crashes — almost twice as many as the second-most popular response, violent crime. (Jalopnik)
• Beth Osborne blasted Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy for implying that people who ride bikes or live in apartments are unworthy of safe streets.
• Cities are using robots to evaluate sidewalk conditions and find out where improvements are needed to meet ADA requirements. (Government Technology)
• The new book “Transportation and the Shape of Cities” examines the spatial needs of various modes of transportation. (Forbes)
• Florida wants to use $198 million the federal government earmarked for electric vehicle chargers to build helipads for flying taxis instead. (The Next Web)
• The Federal Highway Traffic Safety Administration is letting robotaxi company Zoox deploy up to 5,000 vehicles in San Francisco. (The Verge)
• A Wayne County, Michigan transit funding referendum would no longer let communities opt out of the tax. (Detroit Free Press)
• Idaho’s Valley Regional Transit is shutting down a program that takes people to medical appointments due to lack of funding. (Capital Sun)
• Leaders in Philadelphia’s Chinatown neighborhood are fighting to restore federal funding for an expressway cap. (Inside Climate News)
• A Nashville city council member is considering restricting cars on Broadway after a driver hit four pedestrians. (WSMV)
• The Portland city council is considering banning right turns on red on more streets. (KGW)
• Volunteer docents on a Pacific Coast Amtrak line are getting passengers to look up from their phones and check out the scenery. (Oregonian)

In our latest, Scott and guest co-host Laurel Sutherlin (@laurelsutherlin) talk with author and environmentalist Jason Mark (@jasondovemark) about his new book “The Earth Said Remember Me: How to Revive…

A public consultation opened today on the Environment Agency’s (EA) draft decision to grant consent for gas drilling and lower-volume fracking at Burniston in North Yorkshire.

The consultation runs for six weeks until Wednesday 23 September 2026. It gives people a chance to have their say before the final decision is made.

Equipment proposed during lower-volume fracking stage at Burniston. Source: planning application

This is the second EA consultation on the proposals by Europa Oil & Gas in the village on the edge of the North York Moors National Park.

The first consultation, on the initial environmental permit application, was held a year ago. The deadline for comments in that consultation was extended after complaints by the local campaign group, Frack Free Coastal Communities, that key information was missing.

Today’s new consultation seeks views on a draft environmental permit.

This is separate from the decision by North Yorkshire Council on 24 April 2026 to refuse planning permission, later confirmed in May.

The Burniston development can go ahead only with both planning permission and the environmental permit.

The EA said it was minded to issue a permit for the proposed wellsite, known by Europa as Cloughton-2, as well as drilling and testing a borehole and the lower-volume fracking process called proppant squeeze.

Proppant squeeze is one of several lower-volume fracking operations that remain legal in the UK, despite the moratorium on high-volume fracking. The process aims to improve the flow of gas and involves injecting fluid into the well under pressure to open fractures in the surrounding rocks.

The EA said it was legally required to issue a permit where an application met requirements under environmental legislation. It can refuse an application only where one or more of these requirements are not met, including where the proposed activity would pose an unacceptable risk to people or the environment.

Ian Foster, EA area manager for Yorkshire, said today:

“We recognise there is significant public interest in this application, particularly following the local planning authority’s decision to refuse planning permission.

“The Environment Agency has a different legal role. Our responsibility is to independently assess whether the application meets the requirements of environmental legislation and whether the proposed activities can be carried out without unacceptable risks to people or the environment.

“Our assessment is evidence-based and we have published the reasons for our draft decision. We encourage anyone with an interest in the application to read the consultation documents and provide their views before we make our final decision.”

The local MP, Alison Hume, who opposed the Burniston proposal, said today:

“I will be submitting my comments on the EA’s draft permit decision and highlighting my concerns about Europa’s plans to carry out small-scale fracking … on the edge of the North York Moors.

“Given the level of concern that many local residents have expressed about this proposal, I have also written to the relevant minister to make them aware of these developments and the strength of feeling among constituents. I will continue to monitor the situation closely and keep in contact with the relevant authorities as the process moves forward.”

The consultation comprises 31 documents, including the EA’s draft decision.

All the documents can be viewed online. Comments can also be made online or by phoning the EA on 03708 506 506.

The EA can take into account:

• Relevant environmental regulations and technical standards
• Information on the local population and sensitive sites
• Whether the right process or technology is proposed by the developer
• The impact of the proposal on the use of land around the site, whether the impact is acceptable and what pollution control may be required
• The impact of noise and smell from traffic on site
• Correcting incorrect information in the application
• Information the EA has not been made aware of in the application

The EA cannot take into account

• Issues outside the remit of the environmental permitting regulations
• Whether a site should have a formal ecological designation
• Whether the activity should or should not be allowed
• Land use issues
• Impact of noise and smell from traffic travelling to and from the site
• The process followed by the EA to determine a permit

The deadline for comments has been extended because the consultation is during the summer holiday.

DrillOrDrop will report on comments submitted to the consultation.

RNs delivered a petition to their employer opposing CommonSpirit Health’s planned layoffs of more than 175 frontline health care workers signed by more than 5,000 nurses. The nurses held a rally and press conference to protest the proposed layoffs at 17 hospitals in California and their impact on patient safety. The nurses are demanding that CommonSpirit Health immediately rescind the layoffs.

This is a re-post from The Climate Brink

Jim Hansen and I have spent much of this year making seemingly opposite predictions about where 2026 will end up in the global temperature record books. He has argued since the spring that 2026 will be the warmest year on record; I have made the case that it is more likely than not to end up in second place. And in a recent post he framed our disagreement in memorably equine terms:

Based on this scientific evidence, we expect that when the horse race comes down the stretch, in November and December of this year, we will be riding a thoroughbred, a strong young horse, and Zeke will be atop a fading old nag.

For the record, I am the fading old nag in this metaphor. I have been called worse.

But here is the fun part: when the race comes down the final stretch at the end of 2026, there is a good chance we will both be declared winners. Hansen’s prediction is about NASA’s GISTEMP record specifically. Mine is about the average across the major surface temperature datasets. And when I run my own forecast model separately on each of six datasets, it gives GISTEMP a ~65% chance of a new 2026 record even as the multi-dataset average only has a ~32% chance and is likely to come in second place.

First, where my forecast stands. Back in December I projected 2026 at 1.41C (1.27C to 1.55C) above preindustrial levels, and in early June I revised that up to 1.46C (1.36C to 1.59C) as forecast models converged on a doozy of an El Niño developing in the latter half of the year. Hansen, via the Washington Post, cited my June estimate of a 26.6% chance that 2026 sets a new record.

That number has continued to creep up. With observations through June and the latest El Niño forecast ensemble, my current central estimate for 2026 is 1.50C (1.44C to 1.57C) above the 1850-1900 baseline in the average of six surface temperature datasets.1 That translates into a ~32% chance that 2026 beats 2024’s record, a ~66% chance it comes in second, and almost no chance (<2%) it falls to third or below. The figure below shows where those projections sit against the observational record.

Observed annual global mean surface temperature (average of GISTEMP, HadCRUT5, NOAA GlobalTemp, Berkeley Earth, JRA-3Q, and ERA5; °C relative to 1850–1900) and the 2026 and 2027 forecast medians with 25–75% and 5–95% Monte Carlo ranges, alongside the 2024 record (dashed) and the 1.5C level (dotted). Forecast updated 30 July 2026 with observations through June and the July-initialized multi-model El Niño ensemble.

Here we see 2026 sitting just below the 2024 record line, with 2027 well above it. So the horse race (to continue the metaphor) is drifting in Hansen’s direction, though still short of the finish line. In the average of all the groups reporting global surface temperatures, second warmest remains my central call for 2026.

It is worth being clear about why my odds keep rising, because it is not that 2026 has been running unexpectedly hot. Year-to-date temperatures have actually drifted slightly down since March (a January-June mean of 1.39C, versus 1.41C for January-March). What changed is the El Niño forecast. To show this, I reran my forecast as it would have looked with each month’s information: that month’s multi-model El Niño plume plus observations through that month.

Left: probability that 2026 exceeds the 2024 record in the six-dataset composite, recomputed at each monthly forecast vintage (that month’s multi-model El Niño forecast plume plus year-to-date observations through that month). Right: additive decomposition of the March-to-now rise into an observations step (March plume held fixed, observations updated through June) and an El Niño forecast step (July plume swapped in). Updated 30 July 2026.

The odds of a 2026 record in the composite have risen from ~7% at the March vintage to ~35% now,2 and the decomposition on the right shows that the strengthening El Niño forecast accounts for ~84% of that rise; incoming observations contributed just over 4 points. In other words, my drift toward Hansen’s position is not the 2026 observations through June being particularly extraordinary. It is the ENSO models converging on an unprecedentedly large event. If that El Niño underdelivers, these odds will sag back down. If it holds, the odds will likely hold as well. But it seems unlikely (I hope!) that we see continued strengthening of the El Niño forecast beyond what already would blow past the prior record by a “truly mind-numbing margin”.

But “the warmest year on record” is not a single number that nature hands us; it depends on whose record you check. Hansen’s prediction is specifically about GISTEMP. So a natural question is: what does my model say if I fit it to each dataset individually, using each dataset’s own 2024 record as the bar to clear? The figure below shows the result for six datasets: the four traditional surface station products (GISTEMP, HadCRUT5, NOAA GlobalTemp, and Berkeley Earth) and two reanalysis products (Copernicus/ERA5 and JRA-3Q).

Probability that 2026 exceeds each dataset’s own 2024 record, from the same statistical forecast model (trend, ENSO, and observed 2026 months) fit to each of six datasets separately, with 10,000 Monte Carlo draws sampling a 14-model El Niño forecast ensemble. Observations through June 2026 (May for HadCRUT5). Updated 30 July 2026.

The same model, fed the same El Niño forecast, gives 2026 a ~65% chance of a record in GISTEMP and a ~66% chance in Berkeley Earth,3 but only ~35% in HadCRUT5, ~24% in NOAA, ~13% in ERA5, and ~9% in JRA-3Q. Conveniently, the average across the six (~35%) lands nearly on the blended estimate (32%), which is a reassuring consistency check.

Why the spread? It is not that the datasets disagree much about how warm 2026 will be; the projections are quite similar. They disagree about how high the bar is. The reanalysis products (ERA5 and JRA-3Q) ran exceptionally hot during the 2023-2024 event, so their 2024 records sit further above their long-term trend lines and are harder to beat. GISTEMP’s 2026 median projection sits ~0.02C above its 2024 record, while ERA5’s sits ~0.05C below its own and JRA-3Q’s ~0.07C below. When the margin is a few hundredths of a degree, structural differences between datasets could end up deciding the race.

So Hansen predicting a GISTEMP record and me predicting second warmest in the multi-dataset average are, oddly, compatible bets. If 2026 sets a record in GISTEMP but not in the dataset average (or in ERA5), expect a flurry of confused headlines in January as people try and explain how its the warmest or second warmest year depending on what dataset you look at.

I should concede the larger point plainly: Hansen made this call earlier and more confidently than I did, and the odds have moved steadily his way since. If 2026 ends up warmest across the board, he won outright, and a 32% chance is the kind of thing that happens all the time. I’d also gently note that a probabilistic forecast of “second warmest, with a one-in-three chance of a record” is a difficult thing to lose spectacularly.

What our agreement on 2026 does not settle is the more consequential disagreement about why. Hansen’s forecast rests on a specific physical story: his argument for a climate sensitivity of 4-5C per doubled CO2, a large forcing boost from falling aerosols, and a warming rate that has roughly doubled.4 My forecast is simpler: it just relies on the long-term trend, the state of ENSO, and the year-to-date observations and ends up in more or less the same place. When a statistical model based on the historical trend and an El Niño forecast lands on essentially the same 2027 number as Hansen (more on that in a moment), it tells you that a single warm year, or even two, cannot distinguish between “very rapid acceleration driven by aerosols and high sensitivity” and “the trend and more modest acceleration plus a very strong El Niño.” That debate will be settled by energy balance observations and the post-El-Niño years, not by whether 2026 clears 2024 by 0.03C in one dataset.

And on 2027 there will be no horse race at all: my model puts the odds of a new record next year at ~91%. Here I should give Hansen his due on a second count. Back in December he was already predicting a ~1.7C 2027, at a time when my own central estimate was 1.57C. Seven months and many rounds of strengthening El Niño forecasts later, my regression has drifted up to 1.70C (1.48C to 1.93C): essentially the number he wrote down at the start.

Ultimately both probabilistic forecasts and confident predictions can be validated by the same outcome, and the interesting scientific disagreement (how fast is warming accelerating, and why) will outlive whatever the December photo finish shows. Either way we are in for quite a wild climate ride in both the latter half of 2026 and 2027 due to a combination of accelerating warming and a super El Niño event.

1 The blended forecast uses the average of GISTEMP, HadCRUT5, NOAA GlobalTemp, Berkeley Earth, JRA-3Q, and ERA5, each rebaselined to 1850-1900 using its own pre-1900 offset. The model regresses annual temperature on the year, the prior year’s anomaly, observed and forecast ENSO conditions, the year-to-date anomaly, and the latest monthly value, trained on 1950-2025 excluding major volcanic years, with 10,000 Monte Carlo draws sampling both regression uncertainty and a ~650-member multi-model El Niño forecast ensemble. The headline numbers use a relative (RONI-style) ENSO index; using the raw ONI instead gives a slightly warmer 1.51C and a 37% record chance, because the forecast El Niño is strong enough to sit beyond the range of the historical ONI training data.

2 This figure only uses 13 of the 14 El Niño models in the live ensemble as the 14th (SINTEX-F) was only added to the tracker in June and cannot be used for the retrospective calculations, which is why it puts today’s odds at ~35% rather than the headline ~32%.

3 It's worth noting that my odds for Berkeley Earth are notably higher than those provided (~12%) in the official Berkeley Earth update. This is largely due to my statistical model including the ENSO predictions for the remainder of the year which does not improve the fit much for most years (start-of-year ENSO conditions tend to be a much stronger predictor) but does matter in the rare years where strong El Nino events are forming like 1997, 2015, 2023, and 2026.

4 It's worth noting that Hansen’s estimate of ECS is well within our very likely uncertainty range of 2C to 5C per doubling CO2 in the IPCC AR6. And there has been some compelling evidence in recent years that ECS might be higher, though I’d personally give a central estimate closer to 3.5C than Hansen’s ~4.5C, as well as a new preprint suggesting forcing from the 2020 IMO low sulfur shipping fuel regulations may end up somewhere between Hansen’s high and my low-end estimate.

As America celebrates its 250-year anniversary, the Liberty Bell pavilion in Philadelphia is hosting millions of people from across the country. Recent upgrades, however, were designed to...

More than 35 groups today called on the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to withdraw its proposal to rescind its 2024 climate disclosure rule. The 2024 rule, which is currently stayed in litigation, requires large public companies to disclose climate-related financial risk information to investors, including Scope 1 and 2 greenhouse gas emissions.

Led by Chair Paul Atkins, the SEC’s proposal ignores the reality of climate change as a growing source of financial risk for public companies and investors, as well as overwhelming investor demand for this more comparable, reliable climate disclosure. If finalized, the proposal would undermine transparency in capital markets to protect companies with high climate-related financial risks, the groups maintain.

“The proposal reflects the desire of Paul Atkins’s SEC to ignore growing financial risks from climate change and to deprive investors of essential information,” said Elyse Schupak, climate policy advocate for Public Citizen. “For polluting industries that seek to downplay their role driving the climate crisis and their exposure to related risks, finalizing the proposed rule would be a victory. The SEC should withdraw this proposal as it contradicts the Commission’s responsibility to facilitate transparency for investors and promote well functioning capital markets.”

“The 2024 climate disclosure rule set the SEC record for most comments ever collected on a regulation, and investors showed up nearly unanimously in support,” said Alex Martin, climate finance policy director at Americans for Financial Reform. “This move is another in a long string of recent SEC actions to empower corporations over investors, and reflects this administration’s far-reaching attempts to deny the reality of climate change. If finalized, this proposal will hurt workers saving for retirement by depriving people of information needed to assess companies’ financial risks due to climate change — and by endangering other critical disclosures as well.”

Sobre las asambleas Carlos Tornel Para el filósofo francés Jacques Rancière, todo orden social se sustenta en una partición previa de lo perceptible o en un orden de lo sensible: una distribución de espacios, voces y capacidades que determina quién y qué puede verse, decirse u oírse, y reconocerse como político. La política comienza, según Rancière, cuando esta disposición se ve interrumpida: cuando quienes no debían hablar se reúnen, se nombran a sí mismos y hacen

On Assemblies Carlos Tornel For French philosopher Jaques Rancière, every social order rests on a prior partition of the perceptible or an order of the sensible: a distribution of spaces, voices, and capacities that determines who and what can be seen, said or heard, and recognized as political. Politics begins, according to Rancière, when this arrangement is interrupted: when those who were not supposed to speak, gather, name themselves, and make TapestryAlternativesGTAGTAalternativesvs.GTA…

Checks & Balances Project (C&BP) has filed a Freedom of Information Act request seeking the response times of Sussex County, Virginia, emergency medical responders.

AI-assisted searches indicate the records are on the Sussex County website, but links to those meetings and records don’t work. The failure to maintain the site and keep records available is an apparent violation of Virginia law.

Response times of the Stony Creek Volunteer Rescue Squad (SCRVS) run by Steve White, the chair of the county board of supervisors, are of particular interest. A ChatGPT search showed the SCVRS weeknight response times “consistently exceeded the 20-minute standard for several months.”

C&BP has reported that White voted to send taxpayer funds to SCVRS, which is an apparent violation of Virginia’s conflict-of-interest law. White also engineered the defunding of the positions of the county fire chief and deputy fire chief in September 2025 and the April firing of County Administrator Richard Douglas.

A previous Freedom of Information Act request by C&BP yielded an October 2025 memorandum of understanding between the county and SCVRS in which the county agreed to pay SCVRS $422,250 a year for EMS services. That amount was more than twice the revenues SCVRS reported in its publicly available tax returns from 2019, the last year they filed tax returns with the IRS.

The IRS suspended SCVRS’ nonprofit status in 2023 after it failed to file tax returns for three straight years.

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.

You may also want to read:

Checks & Balances Project seeks Steve White’s emails with state address

Checks & Balances Project files FOIA request seeking Sussex County EMS records

C&BP seeks Sussex County records on firing of county administrator

Share Post Share

The post Checks & Balances Project seeks Sussex County EMS response times appeared first on Checks and Balances Project.

Editor’s Note: This article was published by Colorado Newsline, reprinted with permission through Creative Commons.

Feds to impose new cuts on lower Colorado River states amid climate-fueled megadrought ByChase Woodruff–July 31, 2026 2:26 pm Glen Canyon Dam holds back the waters of Lake Powell near Page, Arizona, on Feb. 2, 2025. (Photo by Spenser Heaps for Utah News Dispatch)

The federal government on Friday formalized a set of guidelines for managing water use in the Colorado River Basin over the next decade, if Colorado and six other Western states can’t come to an agreement on how to deal with declining flows caused in large part by climate change.

“The Department has a responsibility to ensure the Colorado River system remains reliable and resilient for the millions of Americans, communities and industries that depend on it,” Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said in a press release. “This framework provides the flexibility to respond to changing hydrologic conditions while preserving the opportunity for the Basin States to continue working toward durable, consensus-based solutions.”

Under the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation’s “preferred alternative” for the management of the river’s reservoir system, outlined in a extensive environmental impact statement, the burden of the most severe cuts would continue to fall on the Lower Basin states of Arizona, California and Nevada, which could face mandatory cuts of up to 3 million acre-feet of water. The Upper Basin states of Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming would face only voluntary conservation targets totaling 200,000 acre-feet.

All seven states were parties to the Colorado River Compact, a 1922 agreement governing the use of water from the vital Western watershed. Today, the Colorado River provides water to an area inhabited by 40 million people across the Southwest, though agricultural uses account for the vast majority of consumption.

Since 2000, a megadrought caused largely by global warming — the region’s worst dry spell in at least 1,200 years — has stressed water supplies across the basin and pushed the Colorado River Compact to a breaking point. The last set of federal guidelines to address shortages, issued nearly 20 years ago, will expire Jan. 1, and the seven Colorado River Compact states failed to reach a new agreement before a federally imposed deadline in February.

A map of the Colorado River Basin system. (U.S. Bureau of Reclamation)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The combined amount of water stored in Lake Powell and Lake Mead, the Colorado River system’s two key reservoirs, fell this month to its lowest level since May 1957 — before Lake Powell, created by the Glen Canyon Dam, had even begun to fill.

Without a major turnaround in hydrologic conditions in the near future, water levels in Lake Powell are expected to fall by next spring to below “minimum power pool,” at which point the Glen Canyon Dam’s hydroelectric turbines would be unable to operate.

Negotiations over a comprehensive new agreement have led to an increasingly bitter dispute between the Upper Basin states — led by Colorado, the river’s headwaters state and by far the Upper Basin’s largest water user — and the Lower Basin states, especially Arizona, which has borne the brunt of the cuts imposed in recent years. Arizona is widely expected to launch a high-stakes legal challenge as soon as this summer, alleging Colorado and other Upper Basin states are failing to meet an obligation under the original Colorado River Compact to allow enough water to flow downstream.

Colorado Gov. Jared Polis issued a joint statement Friday with the governors of the other three Upper Basin states, saying that “both the Upper and Lower divisions of the basin are feeling the pain of severe drought,” and that they were “committed to continued good-faith discussions with our counterparts.”

“Many hours of meetings and negotiations took place between the Colorado River Basin states and these discussions will continue,” the statement said. “Today’s framework does not represent a final solution, but enables the River to be managed in the short-term while the seven states and (the Interior Department) continue to negotiate a consensus solution.”

In the absence of a new agreement among the states, the Bureau of Reclamation says it will continue to update its new guidelines every two years until 2036.

Andrea Travnicek, the Interior Department’s assistant secretary for water and science, said the plan “strikes a balance between flexibility and predictability … given unprecedented hydrologic conditions and the potential for considerable impacts on water users.”

In a statement, Democratic U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet of Colorado said he was “disappointed” by the failure to reach a new long-term agreement among the seven Colorado River Compact states.

“While a two-year operating plan is the bare minimum needed to operate the river, a long-term, consensus agreement that recognizes real hydrologic conditions is the only durable solution to bring certainty to the Colorado River,” Bennet said.

Editor’s note: This story was updated at 3:47 p.m., July 31, 2026, to include a joint statement from Upper Basin governors.

PHILADELPHIA, PA (August 3, 2026) Feet First Philly (FFP), a pedestrian advocacy project of the Clean Air Council, launched the seventh round of its Public Space Enhancement Mini-Grant program in partnership with Philadelphia Department of Public Health’s Division of Chronic Disease and Injury Prevention.

The initiative funds projects aimed at improving Philadelphia’s pedestrian environment and public spaces, with Mini-Grant recipients receiving funding ranging from $500 to $2,500 to create public space enhancements and safety improvements. FFP is hosting an informational webinar on August 25.

“For the past six years, our Public Space Enhancement Mini-Grant program has successfully funded 80 projects that are led by community groups, businesses, and individuals across the Greater Philadelphia region”, said Titania Markland, Clean Air Council Sustainable Transportation Program Manager. “With the launch of the seventh round, we are excited for the new ideas that community leaders will propose to improve their public spaces. We are also able to offer an increase in funding for the first time since launching this program.”

“Environments shape health,” said Dr. Kinnari Chandriani, Director of the Health Department’s Division of Chronic Disease and Injury Prevention. “It is a joy to support communities throughout the city to enhance public spaces with mini-grant funding. We are excited for another round of inspiring projects to make our city safer, cleaner, and greener.” 

In 2020, FFP launched its first Public Space Enhancement Mini-Grant program with seven projects that were led by and benefited local communities. Since then, the program has awarded 80 Mini-Grants to local organizations all over Philadelphia and provided funding to:

• Extend efforts to clean up the Cobbs Creek Trail 
• Create a pocket park in Southwest Philadelphia 
• Replace a severely damaged sidewalk outside of a community garden in Kensington 
• Create a mural on a newsstand in Germantown
• Paint an artistic crosswalk in North Philadelphia 
• Add amenities to a local meadow to make it a walking destination 
• Install bike racks to prevent illegal sidewalk parking outside of a school 
• Help develop community gardens all over the city 

For the full list of projects awarded during the sixth round (2025-2026), read more here.

“Pedestrian advocacy projects bring communities together to create safer and healthier spaces,” said Sally Hecht, a Clean Air Council Transportation Program Coordinator. “They bring people from all walks of life together and make neighborhoods around Philadelphia safer and healthier. Through the Mini-Grants, we can give Philadelphians the ability to build their communities in ways that benefit and directly support their neighbors.” 

Safety is a top priority for this program, and applicants are encouraged to identify ways their project can improve safety in their communities. 

If you are interested in applying or want more information, attend the webinar on August 25 at 12 p.m. (noon) ET. Applicants can email shecht@cleanair.org to schedule a one-on-one meeting with Clean Air Council staff to discuss their project ideas. Applications for the Mini-Grant are open until Saturday, October 3 at 11:59 p.m. ET. 

###

Feet First Philly is Philadelphia’s only advocacy group dedicated to pedestrian rights, sponsored by the Clean Air Council.

As communities across the world endure record-breaking heatwaves, wildfires and rising living costs, the world’s biggest oil and gas companies have confirmed another blockbuster quarter of profits. The Make Polluters Pay coalition says the timing exposes the true cost of delaying the end of the fossil fuel era, and is calling on governments meeting in New York this month to seize a historic opportunity to make the polluters pay.

This summer’s extreme weather has spared no continent. Wildfires are tearing through Spain and France, forcing hundreds of thousands of people from their homes. In the United States, a series of heat domes pushed temperatures past 100°F (38°C), and smoke from hundreds of Canadian wildfires produced some of the world’s worst urban air quality across North America. India endured pre-monsoon temperatures above 48°C earlier this year, while torrential rain left hundreds dead in several countries in Africa since March.

Scientists estimate that emissions from just five fossil fuel corporations – BP, Chevron, ExxonMobil, Shell and TotalEnergies – were sufficient to cause around one in four of the heatwaves recorded globally between 2000 and 2023. Those same five companies are now announcing another blockbuster quarter of fossil fuel profits. TotalEnergies has reported adjusted net income of $5.4 billion for the second quarter of 2026, Shell profit hit $9.84bn in the three months to June, more than double compared with the same period last year. Exxon clocked $14.5 billion in profits this quarter; Chevron, $12.1 billion. BP is expected to announce comparable astronomical profits on the 4th of August.

That’s over USD $40 billion in profits by just 4 large oil companies, which is more than the entire GDP of over 100 countries, reaped in rewards while the rest of the world is left dealing with climate and energy chaos. The price spikes are driven in large part by volatility in oil prices during the war in Iran.

The results land as governments prepare to resume negotiations on a UN Framework Convention on International Tax Cooperation in New York this month. A mandatory surtax on highly polluting industries is gaining support as part of that process, alongside measures to prevent jurisdiction-shopping and anchor taxing rights in real economic activity. Analysis by the Global Alliance for Tax Justice and partners estimates that aton the profits of the world’s 100 largest oil and gas companies could have generated more than US$1 trillion since the Paris Agreement was signed in 2015. The Make Polluters Pay coalition says governments meeting in New York should seize the moment to get behind it.

To mark the moment, campaigners inflated a giant barrel of oil outside the Houses of Parliament in Westminster, London, calling on the UK government to back a permanent stronger taxex on fossil fuel profits and support a strong outcome at the UN tax talks.

David Hillman, Stamp out Poverty, said

“Big Oil has spent fifty years profiting from pollution while the rest of us pay the price in heatwaves, in wildfires, in energy bills we can barely afford. That’s why we’re bringing a giant oil barrel to the doorstep of Parliament: to make sure politicians can’t look away. Governments have a real chance this month, at the UN tax talks in New York, to finally make the polluters pay. They should take it.”

Anne Jellema, Executive Director of 350.org, said:

“From Bordeaux to Phoenix to Mumbai, families are living through the cost of climate delay, while the companies most responsible bank blockbuster bonanzas. That is not a coincidence; it is a business model. Governments meeting in New York this month have a genuine opportunity to change it. Calls are growing across the political spectrum for a proper global profits tax, so the industry that helped cause these disasters pays towards the recovery, the solutions and the protection people need. It’s simple fairness: those who caused the damage and profited from it should pay to fix it.”

Tyrone Scott, Head of Campaigns, War on Want
“While people struggle with soaring bills and communities across the world lose homes, livelihoods and lives to climate disasters, fossil fuel corporations are banking another quarter of enormous profits. This is wealth extracted from people and the planet. The UK Government must stop protecting polluters and start making them pay through permanent taxes on fossil fuel profits, a wealth tax on the super-rich and by backing a strong UN Tax Convention that ends corporate tax avoidance. Those who have profited most from the climate crisis must fund the transition and the repair.”

The Make Polluters Pay coalition is calling on governments worldwide to introduce permanent, higher taxes on oil and gas profits, to fund emergency response, recovery and long-term resilience for communities on the frontline of the crisis, and to back a strong, binding outcome at this month’s UN tax convention talks.

After three years of intense and divisive negotiations, the seven Colorado River Basin states failed to reach a long-term agreement, forcing the federal government to step in.

Federal water managers on Friday announced a new 10-year plan to manage the Colorado River that opens the door to unprecedented water supply cuts. Arizona, California, and Nevada, the three lower basin states, could face up to 3 million acre-feet in water cuts. The upper basin states of Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming will also have to conserve up to 200,000 acre-feet, or 65 billion gallons in the coming decade.

The plan released Friday by the Interior department marks the first time federal authorities have stepped in to determine the management for the waterway that supports 40 million people, 30 Tribes, and 5.5 million acres of farmland across the Southwest. The new management framework comes amid an ongoing crisis on the Colorado River due to drought and overuse of the river’s dwindling supplies. As of last Thursday, Lake Powell was 22 percent full and Lake Mead was 27 percent full. Scientists have warned that warmer temperatures and drier soils caused by climate change are shrinking the river’s flow, as are winters with significantly less mountain snowpack, the source of the vast majority of the river’s water.

Burgum doubles down on debunked Reflecting Pool ‘vandals’ claims

U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro asked a judge to drop the Trump administration’s case against David Hearn, a former U.S. Olympian, whom it had accused of vandalizing the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool. The Department of Justice said Friday that flawed installation, not vandalism, caused the ‌liner of the newly renovated reflecting pool to peel. Despite the DOJ’s reversal, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum doubled down on blaming vandals, posting on X over the weekend, “The evidence is clear, vandals have repeatedly caused damage to the Reflecting Pool.”

Pirro said that DOJ prosecutors had been misled by the Interior department, which had awarded a no-bid contract to a first-time government contractor to repair the iconic landmark. Pirro blamed both the government’s vendor and the administration’s timetable, saying the pool’s poor state “was the result of a flawed installation by the contractor, Atlantic Industrial Coatings, and the rush to complete the project prior to events associated with the America 250 celebration” on July 4.

Quick hits Federal government proposes steep cuts for Colorado River Basin states

Denver Post | PBS News | Colorado Sun | New York Times | The Hill | Reuters | Arizona Republic | The Guardian | Washington Post | KJZZ | CNN | Arizona Mirror | 8 News Now | Los Angeles Times

DOJ dismisses ‘vandalism’ charges while Doug Burgum doubles down on debunked claims

New York Times | The Hill | Associated Press | Advocate | Reuters | NOTUS | Wall Street Journal

National park ranger quits, tours visitor centers to fight censorship

SFGATE

More livestock grazing on public lands could spell trouble for ecosystem health

Sierra Magazine | St George News

Forest Service moves toward unrestricted motorized access in area used by iconic western elk herd

Outdoor Life

Utahns brave 100-degree heat to protest shrinking of national monuments

Fox13

Helicopter tried to pick up firefighters before deadly burn over in western Colorado

Denver Post

The conflict over permanent climbing anchors in wilderness areas

High Country News

Quote of the day

The last 20 years everybody has played this game which is, ‘Let’s wait on the hydrology and hope the hydrology bails us out,’ but that’s become a very dangerous game to play. If you have another crappy year like this year, you could be looking at 4 or 5 million acre-feet cuts, because the reservoirs would be completely empty.”

—Brad Udall, climate scientist at Colorado State University’s Colorado Water Center, Washington Post

Picture This

@usinterior

Come celebrate the First Peoples of Yellowstone with us. From August 2–8, join Voices of Yellowstone near the North Entrance in Gardiner, Montana, for a week honoring the Indigenous cultures woven into this land: past, present, and future.

There’s a lot to take part in. An opening ceremony with the lighting of the teepees, guided cultural tours across the park (registration required), a native art market, live music, speakers, and a community potluck.

Voices of Yellowstone is hosted by @ynpforever in partnership with Yellowstone National Park, alongside the Pretty Shield Foundation, @rockymountaintlc, and @visitgardinermt. We hope to see you there.

Photos by Jacob W. Frank / NPS

Featured image: Colorado River Basin map. Source: usgs.gov

The post Federal government proposes steep cuts for Colorado River water use appeared first on Center for Western Priorities.

The Senate Judiciary Committee is set to vote on Todd Blanche’s nomination for Attorney General on Tuesday, after Blanche’s Department of Justice (DOJ) reached an agreement with Republican Senator John Cornyn with a stated goal of rescinding the corrupt $1.8 billion slush fund intended to pay Trump’s cronies and January 6th rioters and limiting his new tax immunity.

In response to the news, Public Citizen co-president Lisa Gilbert issued the following statement:

“The late-night deal reached between the DOJ and the Republican Senators who had been objecting to the Blanche nomination is clearly a face-saving exercise to try to get the Senators to ‘yes’ on that nomination, not real limitations on pro-Trump cronyism. President Trump gets to keep tax immunity for himself, his sons and the Trump Organization, potentially saving the President millions in taxes owed to the American people.

“And on the slush fund itself, Trump has not waived his rights under the scheme that called on Blanche to establish the fund, and nothing prevents Blanche from simply reestablishing it if the Senate confirms him.

“In addition, nothing in what Blanche sent out prevents the DOJ from settling lawsuits brought by the January 6th rioters and other Trump cronies, and paying them out of the general fund. We saw a staggering seven-figure deal in that vein just last week.

“And if the inadequate deal on the slush fund and Trump tax immunity wasn’t enough to stop this unfit nominee, his horrifying lack of empathy and ineptitude when it comes to the Epstein files and the way he has engaged with the victims should disqualify him instantly.

“Whatever happens at the committee vote on Tuesday, there is still time to keep Trump’s fixer from becoming AG, to keep the DOJ from becoming solely a Trump revenge agency, and Senators must do the right thing and block Blanche before it is too late.”

What whale are we talking about this month?

Thanks for asking. Last month we talked about Rice’s whales, one of the rarest whale species. This time I wanted to talk about the more commonly seen minke whale — in fact, that’s their official name, common minke whales (Balaenoptera acutorostrata).

NOAA Fisheries

So … they’re common?

Yeah, kind of. No whale species are exactly common these days, but minkes have a population of around 180,000. Their extinction risk has been assessed as “least concern.”

Something tells me you’re actually kind of concerned.

Sigh…that’s true. Iceland has started whaling again, despite global anti-whaling sentiment, and could start catching minke whales this summer. (They’ve already caught a couple of fin whales for the first time in years, which is incredibly disappointing.)

Hmph. Excuse me while I go cancel my tour of Reykjavík nightclubs.

Good call. Iceland is only expected to hunt a few hundred whales this year, so it won’t pose an immediate and massive threat to these species, but — as they say — slippery slopes…

Are there other reasons — perhaps happier ones — that you wanted to talk about minkes?

Yes, absolutely. Minke whales are among the most widely distributed whales. They’re the only marine mammal species I’ve observed on both coasts of the United States, and to me that’s amazing. I’ve seen them a couple of times on trips to Monterey, California, but I used to see minke whales most often in the decade we lived in Maine.

Money was tight back then, but I always made sure to take a whale-watching trip early in the summer, before tourist season cranked up. Minke whales show up fairly frequently off the Maine coast — and many other places in the northern hemisphere and as far south as South Africa — but they’re kind of invisible in the media. No one ever seems to talk about them. I thought it was time to change that.

Cool. So hit me up with some cool minke facts.

You got it.

First up, there’s a reason I never got a good photo of a minke on those whale-watching tours: They’re fast. They’ve been clocked at 20 miles per hour or more, which makes them pretty good at avoiding predators (and shutterbugs).

You were probably just afraid of dropping your camera into the ocean.

You’re not wrong.

Anyway, their size helps keep them both fast and difficult to spot: Your average minke weighs about 20,000 pounds, which seems like a lot, but that actually makes them one of the smaller whales, with the biggest reaching lengths of about 35 feet.

But some are quite a bit smaller. There’s a group of dwarf minke whales who top out at about 26 feet and 14,000 pounds. Interestingly, dwarf minkes don’t appear to be a separate species or subspecies, just a variation.

Another interesting detail: Minkes are usually solitary whales. Although mass feedings have been documented, these animals usually swim by themselves or in groups of two or three.

So what’s the deal with their name? I don’t suppose they’re secretly related to minks or other weasels?

Like a lot of species, they’re named after a person — but in this case, I don’t think it’s much of an honor. According to NOAA, minke whales “received their common name from a Norwegian novice whaling spotter named Meincke, who supposedly mistook a minke whale for a blue whale.”

How…? Blue whales are so much bigger!

Well, they did say Meincke was a novice.

So what’s your favorite thing about minkes?

One thing I love is the variation in their vocalizations. They click, they grunt, they emit pulses and ratchets, and some of them make “boing” sounds — a noise that mystified scientists who kept hearing it underwater for 50 years until it was finally attributed to minkes in 2005.

The evidence of regional differences in their calls keeps stacking up. Some make a vocalization called “star wars,” while others make a “bio duck” quacking.

The most recent research I found described a minke whale who was emitting “pulse trains” off the coast of Florida — sounds the whale altered when they realized researchers were nearby.

Well, nobody likes eavesdroppers.

True.

Meanwhile, there’s another mystery…

I don’t like where this is going.

Yeah, me either. For the past decade, NOAA has tracked elevated minke mortalities along the Atlantic coast, stretching from Georgia up through Maine. As of this writing, they’ve documented 209 dead minkes — although numbers dropped in 2025 and only one dead whale has been found so far this year. According to the agency, “Preliminary findings in several of the whales have shown evidence of human interactions or infectious diseases. These findings are not consistent across all of the whales examined, so more research is needed.”

Despite the inconclusive causes of death, Donald Trump, RFK, Jr., and others on the extreme right wing have used some of these deaths as an excuse to attack offshore wind power, though there’s absolutely no evidence that turbine noise harms whales.

On the other hand, as we talked about last month, noise from offshore oil development — which the Trump admin keeps championing — really does harm some species, like Rice’s whales.

So what whale are we talking about next month?

We’re heading to the Arctic to uncover one of the world’s most mysterious whale species: the narwhal.

Cool! Good thing I got my passport renewed before a certain someone stamped his mugshot all over it!

Good call.

Republish this article for free! Read our reprint policy.

The post Whale of the Month: Minke Whale appeared first on The Revelator.

A recent report from Altus Impact, Groundswell International, and the Association Nourrir Sans Détruire (ANSD) finds that agroecological practices produce better results for farmers in Burkina Faso. The results hold even in drought-stricken areas, with producers seeing higher crop yields and better financial outcomes.

The report, Transformational Agroecology in Burkina Faso, provides concrete data that agroecological practices in Burkina Faso are key to establishing stable farms and farmers.

Extreme rains, flooding events, severe droughts, armed conflict, and deforestation are contributing to large-scale land degradation, displacement, and food insecurity in the landlocked nation. The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees reports that more than 2 million people were internally displaced at the end of 2024 in Burkina Faso.

“It was important for us to create this assessment now to show evidence that agroecology can not only feed the growing population thanks to its ability to significantly increase farm yield, but also augment farmers’ and their households’ revenue,” Tsuamba Bourgou, Groundswell International’s West Africa Regional Coordinator, tells Food Tank.

The authors analyzed data from over 400 small-scale farming households in eastern Burkina Faso, comparing per-hectare profitability across different farming styles. These ranged from conventional to early and advanced agroecological practices.

Farmers practicing advanced agroecology, defined as using three or more practices such as zaï (a practice that involves digging small pits to conserve water), half-moons (digging semi-circular earthen basins to collect rainwater), low tillage, no residue burning, stone contour barriers, and Farmer-Managed Natural Regeneration of trees, saw yields that were 77 percent higher than conventional farmers and nearly double those of farmers just beginning their transition.

According to the Transformational Agroecology report, 80 percent of Burkinabé depend on farming and pastoralism for their livelihoods. Yields, food security, and farmer income are critical measures of success in the report.

Advanced agroecological farmers fared dramatically better on both fronts: they held median food stocks of 300 kg, triple those of farmers still in transition, and were far less likely to have run out of food in the past year (13 percent versus 45 percent). They also carried significantly less debt, US$8 compared to US$35, and showed greater creditworthiness with rural banks and other financial institutions.

“It enables income diversification (crops, forest products, livestock) and ensures a decent standard of living,” Ali Dianou, co-author of the report and Executive Director of ANSD, tells Food Tank. “Farmers who adopt these practices have less debt and better financial solvency.” Farmers practicing advanced agroecology saw 67 percent higher net incomes than farmers using few or no agroecological practices.

Agroecology also offers environmental benefits, helping vulnerable farming communities remain on their land even in the most difficult climate conditions, potentially keeping climate displacement at bay.

The report finds that agroecological farmers witnessed soil regeneration, which improved soil health, fixed nitrogen, and reintroduced stronger root systems less prone to erosion, all of which helps retain soil moisture and creates a buffer against both drought stress and flood risks.

Groundswell International, ANSD, and Altus Impact aim to scale agroecological practices at a territorial level, using the report’s findings as a tool for advocacy and community sensitization. The report has already been shared widely among NGOs.

Looking ahead, Dianou outlined several long-term goals for his organization, ANSD, including the development of a national agroecology strategy for Burkina Faso. ANSD also aims to shift public funding away from chemical fertilizers and toward organic alternatives, while attracting private investment through blended finance and risk mitigation instruments.

They hope that this work can center the role farmers play in shaping agricultural knowledge informed by indigenous practices.

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 Association Nourrir Sans Détruire

The post Agroecology Pays Off: Report Highlights Major Gains for Burkina Faso Farmers appeared first on Food Tank.

The post What is di-(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate (DEHP)? appeared first on ANHE.

El Niño is expected to intensify in the weeks ahead, fueling more severe heat across the globe, according to the U.N. World Meteorological Organization. The forecast comes as blistering heat shatters temperature records from Europe to Asia.

Read more on E360 →